Tenochtitlan (in Indy's dream only)

Aztecs (in Indy's dream only)

Kate

Jerry Travis

Barnett College students

Samuel Corn/Colonel Klaus Gerhard Kerner

Dr. Jastro (mentioned only)

Atlanteans (mentioned only)

Madame Sophia devotees

Nur-Ab-Sal

Dr. Hans Übermann

Roger Fontane

Miss McMurphy

Kerner's thugs

German soldiers

Nuremberg citizens

German colonel

Didja Notice?

In Indy's dream on page 1, a decorated Mexican Indian figure (Nur-Ab-Sal) declares himself to be Tenochtitlan, god of war. Tenochtitlan was actually the name of an Aztec city-state that existed in what is now Mexico for hundreds of years. The city was associated with the Aztec god of war, Huitzilopochtli.

Page 2 indicates that Indy lives in the Barnett College faculty quarters at this time.

The character of Samuel Corn in the comic is the same as Mr. Smith (actually German colonel Klaus Kerner) in the game.

"Corn" identifies one of Indy's arrowheads as 18th Century Iroquois. Iroquois or Haudenosaunee (Native name) was a confederacy of five indigenous peoples in northeast North America that existed when French and English settlers arrived on the continent. In 1722, a sixth people joined.

On page 8, a shelving unit in Barnett's archeology department storage room is labeled "Moctezuma" and "Aztec". Moctezuma was an Aztec emperor in the 15th Century AD. The Aztecs were an ethnic group of Mexico in the 14th-16th Centuries, known for the Aztec Empire of the time.

In panel 5 of page 8, a crate is labeled "Anno 1913". Anno is Latin for "year".

Indy remarks to Marcus that he considered Dr. Jastro to be sloppy and a braggart.

On page 9, Indy finds the horned statue in the storage room and the tag on it reveals it was found not far from Reykjavik and dated to 1500 B.C. Reykjavik is the capital of Iceland.

When "Corn" steps in on Indy and Marcus in the storage room at gunpoint, Indy clues Marcus in to dive to the side by commenting, "This is just like that time in Algiers! Right, Marcus?" Algiers is the capital of Algeria.

On pages 10-11, "Corn" says, "Verteufel!", "Schnell, schnell! Fahren wir!", "Himmel! Jetzt!", "Verdammt!", and "Er hört nicht auf!" These are German for "Damn it!", "Quick, quick! Let's go!", "Heavens! Now!", "Damn!", and "He won't stop!" 

The necklace that puts Sophia in touch with Nur-Ab-Sal looks much different here in the comic than it does in the computer game.
Necklace in the computer game	Necklace in the comic

On page 19, Indy thinks of Sophia as fleecing suckers like some three-card monte dealer. Three-card monte is a con game played on the street where a dealer uses sleight of hand to trick players into betting they can find the "money card" among three face-down cards, but the operator uses misdirection, speed, and shills among the spectators to ensure the player loses each time.

On page 24, Kerner says, "Danke sehr!" This is German for "Thank you very much!"

Page 25 opens with Dr. Übermann and a German colonel in Nuremberg, Germany, examining the artifacts recovered by Kerner in the U.S.

Übermann remarks that he believes the artifacts are clues to a very powerful energy source and the colonel asks, "As powerful as Hahn and Strassmann's atomic reaction?" Fritz Strassmann (1902–1980) and Otto Hahn (1879-1968) were German chemists who identified the phenomenon of nuclear fission, after bombarding uranium with neutrons to from the element barium.

A bank of equipment with gauges on it and the word "BOSCH" is seen in the background in panel 3 of page 25. Bosch is a German engineering and technology company founded in 1886.

Dr. Übermann is depicted here with a Hitler-style mustache, known as a toothbrush mustache.

On page 26, Kerner exclaims, "Lieber gott!" as he watches Übermann's demonstration of the Atlantean device. This is German for "Dear God!"

Notes from the computer game Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis Video game Story by Hal Barwood & Noah Falstein Developed and published by LucasArts 1992

Characters appearing or mentioned in the computer game, not in the comic book

Didja Notice?

    The game opens with Indy searching what is later said to be the attic of Caswell Hall at Barnett College. But why does he swing in through a closed window on his bullwhip, shattering the glass?? Can't he just walk in? (The novelization explains that the passageway to this long-forgotten storage room had been walled up in the 1920s during renovations. In the novel, Smith helps Indy uncover the lost passage and Indy enters through it rather than swinging in through the window.)

    Barnett College is the school at which Indy is seen teaching in The Last Crusade. It is a fictitious institution.

In the attic, Indy sees a statue of a primitive warrior and comments, "Poor Marcus...he thought this was a Masai warrior." The Masai are an ethnic group in East Africa, known as fearsome warriors.

Indy also finds a stone carving of Shiva, a medieval gargoyle, a copy of an Egyptian statue of Horus, a chest that may have belonged to Columbus, and a "peculiar statue". Shiva is the Hindu god of destruction and transformation. Gargoyles are mythological monsters, statues of which were once believed to frighten away evil spirits. In ancient Egypt, Horus was one of the chief gods and was depicted as having a falcon's head. Christopher Columbus (~1450-1506) was an Italian explorer who is credited with opening up the New World for Spain in 1492. Later in the game, Indy concludes the "peculiar statue" is a crude copy of a Persian idol; Persia is the ancient name of modern day Iran.

In the lower portion of the attic, Indy finds textiles from the Shawmut collection and a totem pole possibly carved by Potlatch Indians. "Shawmut" is a term for a certain region near Boston, Massachusetts, probably derived from the Algonquian language. "Potlatch" refers to a gift-giving ceremony among a number of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest of North America.

In another level of the school library, Indy finds cheap copies of a Siamese idol in the form of a cat. "Siam" was the name of Thailand before 1939. Siamese cats are a breed of domestic cat originally native to Siam, now popular in Western nations.

After taking the horned idol and its contents from Indy and Marcus at gunpoint, Mr. Smith turns to the window and asks himself, "Wo ist Fritz?" This is German for "Where is Fritz?"

    Indy and Marcus find Smith's passport in his coat, revealing his real name to be Klaus Kerner, a member of the Third Reich. The Third Reich refers to the German state under the Nazi Party of dictator Adolf Hitler.

    The comic book adaptation reveals he is a colonel in the SS (Schutzstaffel, "Protection Squadron"), the Nazi secret police.

Smith's coat has a copy of National Archeology magazine stuffed into a pocket. This is a fictitious magazine.

Indy says that his position as field supervisor for the Jastro Expedition in Iceland was his first real job. This would have been around November 1929 according to Indiana Jones: The Ultimate Guide. According to the comic book adaptation, the expedition was sponsored by Barnett College. By "first real job", Indy must mean his first real job in archeology, for he had a number of non-archeology jobs previously.

Here in the game, Marcus does not seem to know who Sophia is. But he is well aware of her in the earlier story in the Indiana Jones chronology, Thunder in the Orient, with Sophia telling Indy in Nepal that Marcus should have informed him that it was she who asked for Indy to join the expedition.

Here in the game, Indy tells Marcus that Sophia was a spoiled rich kid from Boston. But in the comic book adaptation, Sophia says she is from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The novelization refers to the stagehand Indy speaks to while watching Sophia on stage as Lenny.

In her lecture on stage, Sophia talks of the alleged history of the fabled city of Atlantis, written about by Plato. Plato was a philosopher in ancient Greece who founded the first institution of higher learning in the Western world, the Academy, in Athens. Plato wrote of Atlantis as an advanced island city of far gone history in his Timaeus and Critias as part of an allegory on the hubris of nations which, after an ill-fated military campaign against Greece, lost favor with the gods and was sunk into the ocean.

Sophia speaks of the Great Spirit who guides her thoughts, calling it Nur-Ab-Sal. Though "Great Spirit" is a term used by numerous cultures around the world throughout history, Nur-Ab-Sal is a fictitious Atlantean god-king made up for this story.

During Sophia's lecture, Indy gives the stagehand the latest newspaper and the man is excited to flip through it to see if the Dodgers won. At this time, the Dodgers were the Major League Baseball team based in Brooklyn, New York (now based in Los Angeles since 1958). Brooklyn is one of the five boroughs of New York City.

As Sophia mentions to Indy, orichalcum is a mythological metal second only to gold in value and associated with Atlantis by Plato. However, an actual metal labeled as orichalcum was finally found in 2015-16 in an ancient sunken shipwreck off the coast of Gela, Sicily and analysis found it was composed of mostly copper, some zinc, and small percentages of nickel, lead, and iron. It is obviously not a mythical fuel as seen in this story.

Sophia claims to hear from Nur-Ab-Sal in her mind, telling her to find the Lost Dialogue of Plato. Historians are certain that there are many dialogues of Plato lost to history, but no definitive single one referred to as the Lost Dialogue of Plato.

Notes from the computer game novelization by Dale Dassel (pages 1-32 roughly cover the events of Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis #1)

Summary of this portion of the novelization

Indiana Jones is forced by a Nazi agent, Klaus Kerner, to crawl through a hidden tunnel beneath Barnett College to retrieve a mysterious horned bronze idol, while Marcus Brody is held at gunpoint. Indy finds the idol in a secret, long-forgotten treasure vault filled with uncatalogued artifacts. During the escape, Indy and Marcus briefly overpower Kerner, but the Nazi ultimately escapes with the idol.

Investigating Kerner’s motives, Indy discovers a link to his former assistant from an earlier Icelandic expedition, Sophia Hapgood, now a flamboyant New York psychic obsessed with Atlantis. Indy rushes to warn her, interrupting her sold-out stage show at the Imperial Theater just as Nazi agents attempt to seize her. A chaotic brawl erupts onstage, exposing Sophia’s theatrical tricks, but Indy and Sophia manage to fend off the attackers.

Afterward, Sophia’s apartment is found ransacked—Kerner has already searched for Atlantean artifacts. Sophia reveals she still possesses a powerful bronze pendant from the aforementioned Icelandic expedition. When activated with a rare metal called orichalcum, the pendant produces an eerie, seemingly supernatural manifestation, convincing Indy that the artifact may hold real power. Sophia claims the relic is connected to Atlantis and a lost Platonic text, the Hermocrates, which could unlock immense technological energy. Though skeptical, Indy realizes the Nazis’ interest poses a global threat. Reluctantly but resolutely, he agrees to help Sophia return to Iceland to investigate further.

Meanwhile, Kerner orders his remaining agents to follow Indy and Sophia, retrieve the necklace, and kill Indy if necessary—setting the stage for a race against the Nazis to uncover the secrets of Atlantis. 

Characters appearing or mentioned in this novel, not in the video game

Barnett College janitor

Imperial Theater ushers

Henry Jones, Sr. (mentioned only)

Marion Ravenwood (mentioned only)

Karl Sankt

Torsten Fleischer

Didja Know?

This book is a fan-written novelization combining elements of the game and comic book and was released online for free from 2010-2013. This piece by Dale Dassel is generally held in high regard for its quality of writing and research.

Didja Notice?

The novel opens with a quote from Colonel P.H. Fawcett from his book Lost Trails, Lost Cities.

Colonel Percy Fawcett was a British explorer and archaeologist who disappeared in the Brazilian jungle with his son Jack and Raleigh Rimell in search of the lost city of Z in 1925. The Colonel Fawcett mystery plays a large part in the Indiana Jones novel The Seven Veils. Lost Trails, Lost Cities is a posthumous book put together by Fawcett's son Brian Fawcett in 1953.

PROLOGUE

   Page 7 states that Marcus, in his mid-sixties, was no age for a man of his disposition to be gallivanting around the world after artifacts. Yet, Indy will do that at least into his 70th year (The Dial of Destiny).

The novel places these events in June 1939 instead of May, perhaps because The Lost Journal of Indiana Jones indicates June for this adventure. (Page 216 of the novel has Sophie saying it is June 22, specifically, the day she and Indy arrive at Knossos.)

Page 16 describes Sophie's performance venue as Imperial Theater on West 45th Street. This is an actual theater at 249 West 45th Street the in midtown Manhattan borough of New York City.

On page 17, at the utility entrance of the theater, Indy is confronted by a heavy bouncer who looks like a Cro-Magnon in a tuxedo. Cro-Magnons were the first modern-type early humans to settle in Europe; they generally had broader faces, more prominent brow ridges, and bigger teeth than typical humans today.

On page 22, Indy asks the Nazis he's fighting, "Habt ihr Typen vergessen, wie man spricht?" This is German for "Have you guys forgotten how to speak?"

On page 23, Indy points at the pile of unconscious foes on the stage and tells the audience in the seats, "No tickets." This is a callback to the same line made by him in The Last Crusade after tossing a Nazi out the window of a grounded zeppelin's passenger compartment.

CHAPTER 2: DEPARTURE

The Ahnenerbe mentioned on page 26 was a branch of the Nazi SS dealing with research on the history of the Aryan race. Indy previously encountered members of the Ahnenerbe in the "Tomb of the Gods" storyline, and possibly other Nazi treasure seekers he'd encountered had been working for the organization as well.

On page 28, Hermocrates (5th Century BC) was a Syracusan general during the Athenians' Sicilian Expedition of the Peloponnesian War. The book called Hermocrates is a hypothetically believed to exist dialogue, the third part of Plato's trilogy along with Timaeus and Critias.

Page 29 has Indy reflecting that he already spent most of his sabbatical leave from Barnett on the Grail quest (in The Last Crusade).

On page 29, the Wehrmacht is the name for the unified German armed forces from 1935-1945 during the Nazi reign.

On page 31, Sophia places a call to Pangaeascape Travel Agency. This is a fictitious business. 

The only outward sign of Kerner's fealty to the Nazi party on his expensive suit is the Reichsadler pin. This is a heraldic eagle symbol that was used by the Nazis.

On page 31, Kerner threatens Karl to spend the rest of his career on the corpse disposal squad at Dachau. Dachau was one of the first Nazi concentration camps in Germany, built in March 1933.

On page 32, Karl and Torsten are referred to as Abwehr agents. The Abwehr was the German military-intelligence service from 1920-1944.

Also on page 32, Jawohl is German for "Yes, of course."

Memorable Dialog

the coldest year of my life.mp3

think big like the Americans.mp3

Back to Indiana Jones Episode Studies