8. Dr. Henry Jones Snr. - Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
There's nothing more frustrating than when a character is suddenly referred to as "being dead" in a sequel or a follow-up, despite the fact that there was
no reason to ever mention it. Okay, so Sean Connery had retired when Spielberg and Lucas got around to making
Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and there was no way that they were going to get him back to reprise his role. Fine. Was it really necessary for us to be treated to an awkward shot of a photograph of Dr. Henry Jones Snr. in this movie and bluntly told that he died a while ago, though? Because I'm pretty sure that any fan of the series would have just preferred for the fate of this character to have been left ambiguously - he had nothing to do with the plot, after all, so it wouldn't have been weird to not have involved him in the story. And it's not just the corny shot of the photograph that makes this death feel unjust, it's that the character is mentioned
again at the end of the movie for pretty much no reason. Did Spielberg and Lucas genuinely believe fans would be angry if they didn't tell us Henry was dead? It feels so horribly shoe-horned in.