This is Houston. Temps are already hitting upper 80s. Might as well be summer. 
The police, including Max, do wear revolvers like that in the first movie, though none are ever fired on screen. None of the assorted baddies in the first two movies, except The Ayatolla of Rock and Rolla, are shown with revolvers of any kind that I can recall. The way the revolver is introduced, in its special case and with the implication that he carefully hordes his remaining ammo, is more significant than need be if he is just Some Guy. Clearly, that revolver is not just Some Gun.
It’s not just some gun…it’s a lovingly preserved target pistol, with only a few rounds of ammo left. It’s not just gas that’s scarce in Road Warrior, it’s ammo. Max doesn’t even have working shotgun shells for the gun he uses to bluff the Gyro Captain. People are using crossbows and compressed air darts and boomerangs, ammunition is too precious to use.
So Humongous looted this gun and its precious ammo from some old military guy’s house, and has been carrying it around for a long time, waiting for the appropriate time to use it. And the climactic breakout is finally time for him to use up the carefully hoarded ammo.
I always assumed he was the military guy. All those road bandits had to have some sort of life before the apocalypse, right? His was a respected role in the military, until everything went to hell, and he found his true calling as a wasteland warlord. He is, himself, a symbol of how totally society has collapsed.
I never understood why the oil tanker in Road Warrior was filled, even partly, with sand. The extra weight would just reduce its maneuverability, speed and range. If anything, leave it empty and when you’ve led the marauders on a merry chase for a while, have the team climb into the cab, dump the trailer and take off in the tractor alone. With any luck, the raiders will divide their forces, with some staying to try to salvage/examine the dumped trailer (which could be rigged to explode), the tractor can fend off the remaining pursuers, escape and rendezvous with the bus, etc.
Possibly, the tanker had sand in it just from being unused in a desert for so many years, and they simply didn’t bother to empty it out for the escape.
Really just for the visuals, to have something coming out of the wrecked trailer at the end.
That had not occurred to me and it makes sense.
Of course the visual, as suggested by El_Kabong, is the cinematic reason.
She plots to have Mac murdered as a test in the recruiting process. She acknowledges that her people have killed several times as part of testing others who failed. Several premeditated murders, even by the law of the town as it applies to others, and an attempted murder. All that to exploit a loophole in the simple legal code to arrange for the death of a rival. That rival’s death is even more clearly a threat to her own comfort and well being than he is to the town’s well being. Master’s power is after all tied to the continuation of Bartertown even if he might still present a threat from his incompetence. Regardless of whether that death is necessary she was certainly prepared to murder to set it up.
Not a military pistol. Also not the same gun carried by The Bronze, though. The Bronze carry S&W Model 28 .357 magnums. Humungous had a S&W Model 29 .44 magnum. The guns do share a similar silhouette, but are not the same gun.It is still my opinion that the film makers had some backstory for Humungous that got jettisoned along the way.
Well, he was the spiritual leader of Iraq.
And Irolla.
IIRC, it is the same pilot. Don’t he and Max recognize each other?
Considering how often movies get guns wrong, you can’t necessarily rule out the possibility that they’re supposed to be the same gun, and the props guy just couldn’t tell the difference.
Same actor - Bruce Spence - but different characters.
The Mad Max Wikia character page for Thunderdome’s Gyro Captain (Jedediah) has a [citation needed] reference that George Miller has confirmed that they are different. I haven’t seen Thunderdome in years, but I recall a “YOU!” moment of recognition between Max and Jedediah, but it must have been after they first met in Bartertown, maybe?
Yeah, I’m remembering the “You!”, then. It’s been a while since I’ve seen them, but I thought that meant he was supposed to be the same guy as in The Road Warrior.
Tell George Miller he’s wrong. 
I also took it as a kind of wink to the audience.
Like in “Deadwood” when Charlie Utter sees the character of Mr. Wolcott for the first time. He does a double take and looks at him oddly while walking away. The actor who played Wolcott in season 2 played Jack McCall in season 1 and killed Utter’s best friend Will Bill.
He’s definitely in the movie as some guy called Immortan Joe and, according to Wikipedia, Immortan Joe is the big bad.
This adds more meaning to Hugh Keays-Byrne appearing at a cult film festival where a V8 Interceptor replica was on display.
I agree with Miller and Lemur866. Humungus was the owner of the gun, possibly a soldier himself. The picture is possibly his parents, maybe grandparents, the gun is a hoarded treasure because good preserved ammo is rare. There may have been a backstory that was intended but didn’t end up on screen. But I dusmiss any prior connection to Max. There’s no need, and it cheapens the idea that Max is a selfish wanderer who finds a cause. His basic hero self surfaces.
Empty trailers handle differently than full ones. For the deception to work, the trailer had to be heavy.
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. It was suggested the new movie was a reboot of “The Road Warrior”, but even that wouldn’t work, because the Toecutter died before the apocalypse.
True, but times are hard. Okay, she’s not a moral white hat. I still think she’s far more justified in that than not. He’s come in of the wasteland. He’s notably self-centered in his motives. She didn’t try to morally justify it to him because she rightly figured his interest wasn’t the good of Bartertown, it was getting his stuff back. From her perspective, he might just be a bandit who got blindsided and is just as much riffraff they don’t really need in Bartertown.
Plus, the job is surviving Thunderdome against Blaster, a huge and apparently accomplished combatant. It might get noted if every third tough guy who came by was starting fights with MB. Better to ensure you have a viable candidate first.
It wasn’t the same pilot. Max recognized him as the guy who stole his rig. If it were the other pilot, that helijalopy wasn’t big enough for the lot of them.