I love the NBC sitcom Community (2009-2015). I try not to suck out the joy by overthinking, but the copious references to Indiana Jones and an Anthropology course within the series that quickly goes off the rails are too much fun to ignore. What follows isn’t an analysis of the series, but instead a thinly veiled excuse to list some of the show’s more prominent pop culture archaeology references before delving into an utterly absurd minor obsession I can’t let go.
Specifically, the possibility that there’s a covert military-intelligence apparatus operating below Greendale’s campus.
The premise of the series is simple: 7 students at a (fictional) community college in Colorado form a study group and then form a tight bond. Greendale is a community college that offers both 2 and 4 year degrees, which is an actual thing in some places so let’s just move along.
Most of the Indiana Jones references support the characterizations. This is a sitcom, after all, and pop culture references can do a lot of work in a short amount of time. Particularly when one of your protagonists is a pop culture obsessed self-insert for the showrunner.
In “Social Psychology” (1.4), media-obsessed aspiring filmmaker Abed (Danny Pudi) forgoes a chance to catch an Indiana Jones marathon on the big screen in order to help high-achieving classmate Annie (Allison Brie) with a project. It all goes wrong, but at the end of the episode Annie and Abed get a chance to bond. And take the opportunity to dunk on the 4th film in the Indiana Jones franchise.
Later, in “Remedial Chaos Theory” (3.4), we see that Abed and his now-roommate Troy (Donald Glover) have a large-scale recreation of the temple complex from Raiders of the Lost Ark, “with real rolling boulder” in the middle of their new apartment.
Those are nice elements, but it’s in season 2 that the writers had some real fun at the expense of the sagging Indiana Jones franchise. When Jeff Winger (Joel McHale) learns that his body isn’t perfect in “The Psychology of Letting Go” (2.3), he has a crisis about aging. Physician’s assistant (Patton Oswald) hilariously likens the process of aging to Temple of Doom:
In the season 2 opener, the study group started a new course together: Anthropology.
By the end of the episode (sorry, spoilers here), professor June Bower, played to perfection by Betty White, has been suspended after shooting one student with a poison blow gun dart, offering a beverage made of her own urine to the class, and – the final straw – attacking another student with an ancient weapon during a group presentation.
I love her.
Psychology professor Ian Duncan (John Oliver), has no idea what to do with the class he inherits in her absence. When informed that Anthropology is the study of humanity he exclaims, “And I thought Psychology was a racket!”
When study group member Shirley (Yvette Nicole Brown) objects to Professor Duncan filling time with youtube videos of people farting, he reminds her that, “Nothing is off limits.” He later adds, “This subject’s lack of definition cuts both ways.” While there’s certainly a lot you could be offended by in these episodes, I enjoy how well they capture cultural anthropology’s very real and sometimes confusing disciplinary boundaries.1
But now I want to get back to the covert military-intelligence aspect of the show that almost certainly exists nowhere but in my head.2
In “Epidemiology” (S2E6) a zombie outbreak ruins the campus Halloween party. What the Dean (Jim Rash) thought was army surplus taco meat turns out to be a bio-weapon identified with the words “Classified Phoenix.” When he calls the number on the packaging and reads the phrase “echo-tango-x-ray-9-9-7” the military instructs him to lock down the campus & wait 6 hours.
This is a brilliant episode which pays homage to the Walking Dead franchise and Ridley Scott’s Aliens. It’s an excellent example of the blend of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror that inserts healthy doses of absurdism into the series while retaining the mundane setting and restricted sitcom budget. Without spoiling the ending, it’s safe for you to assume that, somehow, the characters survive to return the following week and may not even remember what happened during the events depicted.
At the end of the 6 hour quarantine, the military comes screaming in to contain the disaster. The Dean is impressed at their punctuality, to which the General remarks that “they’ve had a lot of practice.” Whether they were 6 hours away or nearby monitoring the situation is something we’ll never know. However, a reference to the Dean procuring taco meat for another Halloween party the following year will suggest that the military may get that practice responding to repeated containment breaches right here at Greendale. How would the Greendalians know, if the army is erasing all their memories after each incident?
In “Custody Law & Eastern European Diplomacy” (S2E18), Britta (Gillian Jacobs) discovers that one of Abed’s dorm mates (guest Enver Gjokaj) is an unrepentant war criminal. This is apropos of nothing really, but it begs questions about who approved his Visa because that dude is not in hiding & he’s deeply nostalgic about genocide.3
“Digital Exploration of Interior Design” (S3E13) has a throwaway gag where the Dean reads the school’s bylaws for the 1st time & learns that all of the students are technically in the Army Reserve. Less ominous than the war criming, but I like to be thorough in my pointless obsessions.
At the end of “Analysis of Cork-Based Networking” (S5E6), Professor Duncan calls the school supply room to order staples & accidentally calls in an airstrike. (I really need to save and upload this clip before it disappears).
In “Queer Studies & Advanced Waxing” (S6E4), Frankie (Paget Brewster) complains that she can’t reach the campus IT lady. Her emails all bounce back in Aramiac and when she tries to call a high-pitched sound on the line makes her nose bleed. Brewster actually played Deb the IT lady in an earlier episode.
Which episode?
“Analysis of Cork-Based Networking.” The one with the missile strike. While that’s probably a coincidence & this gag is likely an innocent riff on SFF tropes about encountering oneself in another dimension or timeline, viewed in the present day there’s also an ominous Havana Syndrome undercurrent.4
The most overtly militaristic episode5 is probably “G.I. Jeff” (5.11), which makes great use of that perpetually popular archaeological fiction trope: Nazis conducting archaeological digs to obtain occult objects. The episode is primarily an animated homage to G.I. Joe. In reality, and with as few spoilers as possible, Jeff is in denial about turning 40. Abed lures him back to reality by convincing him that Cobra has been conducting an archaeological dig at “the Greendale site” and the artifacts he presents Jeff with begin to loosen the grip of his delusion.
But what if Jeff’s delusion isn’t that he’s a cartoon commando in a perfect plastic world?6 What if this entire episode is actually about Jeff having once been an Army commando whose repressed memories are taking the form of an animated G.I. Joe episode because they’re threatening to break through whatever Winter Soldier-esque conditioning he’s received?7
You can’t prove it didn’t happen!
This would also go a pretty long way towards explaining why everyone on campus is exceptionally good at paintball and seems to have a lot of experience with weaponry. It would also explain why Ellroy (Keith David) claims to have coined the phrase “lock and load.”
And let’s not forget the shadowy and powerful air-conditioning repair school annex, helmed by Vice-Dean Laybourn (John Goodman). Wherever there is air, they have eyes. And their own elaborate justice system. Maybe we shouldn’t think too much about that whole situation.
Series creator Dan Harmon and the surviving members of the cast, minus Chevy Chase, are allegedly in pre-production8 of the long-anticipated feature film which would cap the goal of “6 seasons and a movie,” but somehow I suspect the plot is not going to explore this little lacunae from reality I’ve carved out.
Probably.
Corrected some typos but need to replace the video with the clip with subtitles. I apologize for the inaccessibility.
- This brief discussion of the Anthropology course in Community comes from a larger lecture on archaeology in horror films which I originally gave as part of the Writing the Occult series. “Relics: The things left behind, and what we do with them.” (May 10, 2025 ) ↩︎
- and in an earlier Bluesky thread which I’ve expanded for this post. ↩︎
- Please note that this episode aired in 2011. It was a simpler time. ↩︎
- Are there other timelines in Community? Oh yes, yes there are. ↩︎
- sort of. ↩︎
- When Jeff discovers no one has genitals in the world of GI Jeff, things become less perfect. ↩︎
- Let’s just take a moment to acknowledge that Joe and Anthony Russo directed a lot of episodes of community and submitted their paintball episodes as their audition reel to Marvel to win the job of directing Captain America: The Winter Soldier. And that there’s a great homage to Winter…no. I have to stop this now. ↩︎
- or maybe even production. no one can get their story straight. ↩︎
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