In an old Indy trope, he grabs his hat from between two closing slabs of stone as he is exiting the Sudan temple.

The DS version of the game reveals that Archie's store is called Tan's Exotic Imports in San Francisco's Chinatown.

Indy finds that members of the Hip Chen Tong meet in the Lao Che Lounge. It's unrevealed whether this establishment is connected to the criminal overlord Lao Che whom Indy had dealings with in Shanghai in The Dinosaur Eggs and The Temple of Doom.

Indy breaks into a room below the lounge where American dollar bills are seen pinned on clothes lines, possibly implying the tong is counterfeiting money.

In the Wii/PS2 version of the game, Blind Duck, pursued by Indy, takes the kidnapped Suzie Tan into a San Francisco fireworks factory. For some reason, the factory suffers an incendiary event and the building catches fire. This is before Indy even enters the building! What caused the incendiary event? In this version, we don't know, but in the PSP version the fire is caused while Indy is inside the building fighting Blind Duck and his tong members, where some fireworks start a fire.

Indy and Archie ride a trolley car through the streets of San Francisco, evading the tong. The city of San Francisco is known for its trolleys.

In the Wii/PS2 version of the game, Maggie has hired the Panamanian boat to go up the river before Indy gets there, and the captain convinces them to share it. In the PSP version, it is Indy who has hired it first.

In the PSP version of the game, Indy and Maggie have to fight off Sudao's thugs before they get a chance to leave on the boat.

The boat captain (named Jacques in the novel) tells Indy that the rumor is someone is hiring mercenaries in Panama City (the capital of Panama) to go after the same clues Indy is after.

After escaping Panama with vital clues, Indy heads to Istanbul and the museum at Topkapi Palace, former residence of the Ottoman Sultans.

In the palace at one point, Indy uses his whip to swing across from one balcony to another on a flagpole holding the flag of Turkey.

Maggie reveals that she learned to ride an elephant in Kenya. 

In the PSP version of the game, Indy calls one of the Nazis he encounters "Fritz". "Fritz" was a common derogative nickname given to German troops in the WWI through WWII years.

While being chased, Indy makes a snide remark to the elephant he rides through Istanbul, "You know why Hannibal never conquered Rome? He was riding an elephant." Hannibal (247-181 BC) was a Carthaginian general, considered to be one of the greatest military leaders in history. Possibly his most well-known achievement is his march across the Alps with his troops and war elephants at the beginning of the Second Punic War. Though he held much of Italy for some time, he never managed to conquer the city of Rome.

The shepherd clue points Indy to the lost Nepalese city of Suya Desh in the Himalayas. This is a fictitious city. The Himalayas is a reference to the Himalayan Mountain Range in Asia which hosts the world's highest peaks.

The novel has Kingston explaining that the men who brought Indy and Maggie to the lost city are the royal guard of Suya Desh.

After Indy retrieves the staff from the Nepalese temple, Maggie pulls what appears to be a Luger P08 pistol and takes the staff from him in her capacity as an undercover British agent.

The double-hulled German airship seen in Nepal is called the Odin. Odin is the ruler of Asgard, the home of the gods in Norse mythology.

The flags fluttering at the back of the Odin do not appear to be actual flags of any real world nations!

The fighter planes mounted in the hangar of the Odin in the Wii/PS2 version of the game appear to be Messerschmitt Bf-109 models. In the PSP version, they are biplanes.

Near the end of the game, the Staff is used to part the waters of the Bay of Bengal Indy and Maggie have escaped into. Moses is said to have parted the waters of the Red Sea with the staff in the Bible's Book of Exodus. In the Wii/PS2 version of the game, it is Völler who does it. In the PSP version, it is Indy.

At the end of the game, Indy is in possession of the Staff, but it suddenly turns into a snake and slithers away into the desert. In the Book of Exodus, the Staff is twice said to turn into a snake, when Moses throws it down to the ground at God's command, and later when Moses' brother, Aaron, throws it down in front of Pharaoh to demonstrate God's power.

Notes from the video game novelization by Rob MacGregor

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

guacaros

Marcus Brody

Jeanine

Archie Tan's daughter/Suzie's mother

Dragon Arm

Silver Tooth

Gestapo agents

American-German Cultural Center director

Lao Che Lounge bartender

Pigeon Man

Rory

seaplane bush pilot

Missing Teeth

bartender

Abner Ravenwood (mentioned only)

McNulty

ghost people

Great Mother/Flora

Balam/One Arm

ghost people chief

Mustafa Kazak

museum guard

Wolfgang (Gestapo agent, mentioned only)

Kadin

harem women

Veli (dies in this novel)

Ahmed

Wolf (dies in this novel)

Rosicrucian

Captain Faust

Italian diplomat’s wife

Nazi guards

Turkish server

palace public relations chief

Deirdre Campbell Jones (mentioned only, deceased)

Fynn Völler

Swiss diplomat

Sherpas (mentioned only)

Nawang Topkay

Bethany/Artis Moore

Kingston's assistant

Guardians of the Staff (mentioned only)

Suya Des teenager

Odin kitchen workers

Odin chef

Bruno

Calcutta teenager

Calcutta holy man

Didja Know?

Rob MacGregor wrote a novelization of the video game storyline for Del Rey books, but when the release date of the games was moved ahead one year to 2009, Del Rey was unable to publish it at that time (despite the novel being finished), so the publisher decided not to publish it all. MacGregor was later able to make it available as a free ebook in 2023.

Though the military of Nazi Germany are the villains of the story, the different game versions do not use the Nazi swastika symbol, replacing such instances with the German Iron Cross symbol. Possibly this was for the purpose of making the games available for sale in Germany, which has laws about how Nazi iconography can be presented.

Didja Notice?

The quote that opens the novel from the Bible's Book of Exodus about the Staff of Moses is an actual passage from the Bible. "Staff of Moses" and "Staff of Kings" are used interchangeably in many religious and scholarly works. They refer to the same thing.

CHAPTER 1: TEMPLE OF THE COSMOS

This chapter is a prologue, taking place in Panama in October 1921.

The Mayan temple Indy raids for the Jade Sphere is named as the Temple of the Cosmos only in the PSP version of the game and here in the novelization. It is a fictitious temple.

This chapter takes place in the Darién Jungle of Panama. This is an actual region of the country of Panama, near the Gulf of Darién. However, the Maya civilization of 2000 BC to 1697 AD did not reach as far south as Panama as the temple is seen to be located here. Maggie remarks on this later in the story.

Indy is afraid if guacaros (grave robbers) steal the Jade Sphere from the temple, they will sell it someone who just thinks of it as a curiosity, like a crystal skull. Indy has experience with a crystal skull, the fictitious Crystal Skull of Cozán, from The Philosopher's Stone, The Dinosaur Eggs, The Hollow Earth and Secret of the Sphinx. While there are real world crystal skulls alleged to have been made by pre-Columbian Mesoamerican civilization(s), modern scientists and academics are extremely skeptical, with research generally suggesting they were made in the mid-1800s in Europe, when interest in relics from ancient foreign cultures was very high.

Indy is said to have learned to use his bullwhip from long hours of practice as a teenager. He first attempted to use on in "The Cross of Coronado".

Indy tells Völler that if Professor Kingston knew he was sneaking around the temple in the middle of the night against orders, he would send him back to Berlin. Völler is said to be German, so it may be that he is from Berlin directly, or Indy just uses the city's name symbolically since it is the capital of that nation.

The novel mentions that Indy is wearing a new fedora and leather jacket. I guess he has to replace them now and then what with the all the beatings they take in his adventures!

In the novel, Indy and Völler face guacaros in the Temple of the Cosmos instead of just booby traps as in the video game.

In the novel, Indy is able to place the Jade Sphere in his jacket pocket. In the video game, the sphere is about the size of a honeydew melon.

CHAPTER 2: ON CAMPUS

This chapter takes place at the fictitious Barnett College, where Indy is currently employed (since "The Arms of Gold" Part 1), in January 1939.

    As the chapter opens, Indy is smoking a pipe in his office, grading a freshman paper that attempts to link the Biblical flood with the destruction of fabled Atlantis.

    This is the first indication we've had that Indy smoked at all.

    There are multiple tales in real world ancient myths of a great flood over the world in pre-history, including the Great Flood described in the Bible. Atlantis is a mythological land mass, once harboring an advanced civilization, that later suffered a severe cataclysm that sank the land beneath the ocean; Indy will soon brush up against the Atlantis myth in another video game, 1992's Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis.

Marcus informs Indy about a new exhibition by Völler at the American-German Cultural Center in San Francisco which includes bricks from the Tower of Babel, pieces of Jacob’s Ladder, and ancient Egyptian military artifacts from the bottom of the Red Sea. The American-German Cultural Center of San Francisco is fictitious. The Tower of Babel is known in the real world mostly for its part in the story of the Book of Genesis in the Old Testament of The Bible, as a tower built by humanity in an attempt to reach Heaven. Jacob's ladder is a reference to the ladder to Heaven seen by Jacob in the Biblical Book of Genesis. The Red Sea is an inlet of the Indian Ocean, lying between Northern Africa and the Arabian Peninsula.

Indy protests to Marcus, "...I just can’t run off at a moment’s notice anymore." Is Barnett College holding Indy to stricter regulation of his classes these days? (Though Indy splits anyway when he receives the telegram from Archie Tan.)

Indy's department secretary here is named Jeanine. In The Last Crusade, it was Irene Appleton.

Here in the novel, Indy receives a telegram asking for help from his old friend Archie Tan. In the PSP and DS versions of the game, he receives a phone call from him.

CHAPTER 3: CHINESE NEW YEAR

Indy arrives in Chinatown during a Chinese New Year celebration, complete with a large inflated dragon big enough to swallow a Studebaker. The date of Chinese New Year varies from year to year, but occurs on a date from January 21 to February 20 on the western Gregorian calendar; in 1939 it landed on February 19 and was called the Year of the Rabbit. Studebaker was a U.S. wagon and automobile maker 1852-1967.

Indy reflects that Kingston had disappeared a few years ago on an expedition to Nepal while Indy had been on a research project involving the Ark of the Covenant. This is, of course, a reference to Indy's adventure in Raiders of the Lost Ark, set in 1936.

The novel describes Archie's grandaughter Suzie Tan as looking about 13 years old.

 When confronted by some knife-wielding toughs on the Chinatown streets, Indy remarks that it is considered bad luck to carry a knife, or even scissors, on the Chinese New Year because you might cut your luck for the year ahead. This is an actual superstition in Chinese culture. It is stated here that Indy learned of this superstition from a co-ed from Hong Kong he'd had a fling with while an undergrad.

In the night, Indy finds Archie's shop dark, with the door hanging slightly open. Entering, he finds it ransacked and mutters, "Life on the rough and tumble Barbary Coast. Where are you, Archie?" The Barbary Coast was a crime ridden neighborhood of San Francisco that existed from about 1849 (the Gold Rush) to 1917, with aspects of "racy times" legacy existing into approximately into the early 1950s.

When three German men in trenchcoats burst into the shop and grab Suzie, Indy guesses that they are Gestapo agents working for Völler. The Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei) was the secret police of Nazi Germany from 1933-1945.

Völler is fascinated by the Fuhrer's search for religious artifacts and eventually becomes the Oberarbeitsleiter, the director of such searches in the Verteidigung Germanisches Altertum (Defense of Germanic Antiquity) under Heinrich Himmler. Oberarbeitsleiter is German for Senior Work Supervisor. The Fuhrer (Leader) of Nazi Germany was Adolf Hitler, the evil Chancellor of Germany from 1933-1945. Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945) was leader of the Nazi secret police. He is known to have had an intense interest in the occult. Verteidigung Germanisches Altertum is a fictitious department of the Nazi government.

The Waffen-SS was the combat arm of the Nazi SS.

Völler reflects on the Nazi failures to obtain the Ark of the Covenant in 1936 and the Holy Grail two years later. The Ark failure was seen in the aforementioned Raiders of the Lost Ark. The Holy Grail episode refers to events in The Last Crusade.

Völler has already obtained many important religious artifacts for the Nazis, including bricks from the Tower of Babel, pieces of Jacob’s Ladder, Dead Sea Scrolls, and fragments of the Septuagint.

The Tower of Babel is known in the real world mostly for its part in the story of the Book of Genesis in the Old Testament of The Bible, a tower built by humanity in an attempt to reach Heaven. Jacob's ladder is a reference to the ladder to Heaven seen by Jacob in the Biblical Book of Genesis. The Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection of ancient Jewish manuscripts, primarily in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, but they were not discovered and uncovered until between 1946 and 1957 in caves near the Dead Sea. The Septuagint is the earliest known Greek translation of the Old Testament of the Bible from the original Hebrew language from about the 3rd Century B.C.

CHAPTER 4: STAR OF THE ORIENT

The novel reveals Blind Duck's more formal name is Wu Ming, though this may also be a pseudonym.

CHAPTER 5: THE JADE SPHERE

The old ship Indy finds under the Lao Che Lounge is a clipper ship from the Gold Rush era. A clipper was a type of merchant sailing vessel, designed for speed, used from the mid-1800s, fading in the 1870s.

CHAPTER 6: THE STAFF OF MOSES

Suzie rescues Indy and Archie from the trolley car in a Dodge pickup truck.

When Archie gives Indy the jade sphere and tells him Professor Kingston wanted him to take it to Panama, Indy asks what he is supposed to do with it, "...play Mayan basketball?" The Mayan ballgame  pok-a-tok, somewhat similar to basketball, was invented over 3500 years ago. In the Wii/PS2 version of the game, Indy briefly plays a twisted version of the game while dodging gigantic stone balls that are rolling around the playing court with him.

Indy and Archie take a plane from San Francisco to Los Angeles, then another to Panama. In the video game editions, Archie does not accompany Indy.

Chapters 6 and 7 are divided by a paragraph quote by Dr. Jones himself from a lecture on the topic of Central America in Fall, 1938. The comments he makes about the Maya temples at Uaxactún and the Caracol at Chichén Itzá are accurate.

CHAPTER 7: INTO THE JUNGLE

As the chapter opens, Indy and Archie's plane ride ends with the pilot having landed on a small dirt strip in the jungle in the extremely remote town of Cana, with the pilot telling them, "Good luck, muchachos." Muchachos is Spanish for "boys". Cana appears to be a fictitious town in Panama.

When a drove of peccaries come thundering down the jungle trail, Indy grabs Archie by the arm and pulls him off the trail, into the jungle. After they've passed Indy tells him peccaries will gore you with their tusks and chew off your face. This is a gross exaggeration, as peccaries generally leave humans (and other animals) alone unless they feel threatened.

Here in the novel, Indy (and Archie) meet Maggie in a bar in the town instead of at the steamer dock on the river.

Maggie once refers to Indy has hombre. This is Spanish for "man".

The poker player with the missing teeth refers to Maggie as puta. This is a derogatory Spanish slang term for a woman, essentially "bitch".

    The novel explains that Maggie is a photojournalist, originally from Dublin, Ireland where she grew up as the only girl among a family of six children. At fifteen, she took a job as an au pair for an American diplomat and ended up traveling the globe with the ambassador and his family. An au pair is a young adult from another country who lives with a host family and provides childcare and minor housework in exchange for room, board, and a stipend. This arrangement allows the au pair to experience foreign culture while contributing to the family's daily life.

    During this experience, she was given a Kodak Brownie camera to document the children's lives and she fell in love with photography and eventually landed a photojournalist internship in New York, later becoming one of the first to document the Spanish Civil War in 1936. The Spanish Civil War lasted from 1936-1939. The Kodak Brownie was a line of affordable portable cameras made by Eastman-Kodak from 1900–1986.

Maggie is in Panama now for National Geographic to document the Simar people before their culture is swallowed up by modern civilization, and also to look into recent Nazi visits to the region. The Simar appear to be a fictitious group of indigenous people.

Indy tells Maggie that his head is a little tender right in the spot where she accidentally clobbered him with a lead pipe during the bar fight the night before. She pokes at the spot and he yells "ouch" and suggests that maybe if she kisses it, it'll get better faster. This is a touchback to a moment in Raiders of the Lost Ark when Marion kissed him on several bruised and battered portions of his body.

CHAPTER 8: UP THE RIVER

When Maggie comes up from down below on the steamer, she is dressed in a bathing suit and Indy asks her if she is going swimming. She remarks she doesn't wish to be bait for the piranhas and caimans, she is just going to sunbathe. While caimans are found in Central America, piranhas are not, their normal habitat being in South America.

Jacques warns Indy to beware of venomous snakes in the jungle, particularly the coral snake, fer-de-lance, and bushmaster. These snakes do actually exist in the Panamanian jungle.

Jacques tells Indy about Scottish settlers who tried to establish a settlement in the Darién Gap in 1699 and of an American expedition in 1854 that got hopelessly lost in the jungle and was forced to eat their dead. The two journeys to the Darién Gap did take place at those times, though there is no evidence that the American expedition ate their dead, popular rumors to the contrary.

On page 61, Maggie describes the Spanish Civil War, including, "Hitler pressured General Franco to take Madrid and Guadalajara. Hitler saw it as a prequel to an eventual battle between fascism
and communism, Germany and Russia." Francisco Franco (1892-1975) was a Spanish general who led the victorious Nationalist forces in the civil war and became dictator of the country from 1939 until his death in 1975.

Page 62 reveals that, along with Indy, Völler had also studied under both Kingston and Ravenwood at the University of Chicago. He finished his schooling at his homeland of Germany's University of Dresden.

The Brownie Six-16 camera Maggie uses on page 64 was introduced by Kodak in 1933.

Indy's explanation of the origin of the swastika symbol in many ancient cultures, and which was appropriated and perverted by Hitler for the Nazi Party, is true.

On page 66, pierda sacrados, no pistolas, and "Soy un amigo," are Spanish for "sacred stone", "no guns", and "I am a friend", respectively.

CHAPTER 9: UNCHARTED TERRITORY

No notes.

CHAPTER 10: BENEATH THE CANOPY

On page 78, Indy's crew in the jungle see a pair of large spiders engaged in a mating dance on a web. Jacques comments, "Oh, yes, watch closely. The female is going to bite off the head of
the male after they complete the act. Very interesting mating conduct, don’t you think, Indy?" And Indy responds, "Reminds me of a certain lady from my past." He is probably thinking of Marion Ravenwood.

CHAPTER 11: THE LOST PYRAMID

On page 81, "Sieg Heil!" and herr are German for "Hail victory!" and "mister". "Que pasa aqui, hombre?" and "Como se llama," are Spanish for "What's going on here, man?" and "What is your name?"

On page 83, Balam says, "No eres Kingston." This is Spanish for "Kingston is not here."

Also on page 83, Indy says, "Los guaqueros no son mis amigos." This is Spanish for "The guacueros are not my friends."

CHAPTER 12: THE GREAT MOTHER

No notes.

CHAPTER 13: MIND GAMES

On page 95, Indy asks Balam, "Donde esta mi amiga, Maggie?" This is Spanish for "Where is my friend, Maggie?"

On page 99, Archie tells Indy that he puts on his fake Chinese accent partly because Anglo-Americans expect all Asians to speak like Charlie Chans. Charlie Chan is a fictional Hawaiian police detective created by Earl Derr Biggers who has appeared in numerous books, movies, TV shows, and comic books, known in films for being heavily-accented (and, some would say, stereotyped).

On page 101, Indy recalls words he’d seen written above a doorway at the ruins of Delphi, "Everything in moderation." This was in The Peril at Delphi, a novel written by the same author as this one.

CHAPTER 14: KINGSTON'S NOTES

On page 104, the walls of the Venus room of the pyramid ripple like Jell-O. The Jell-O brand of gelatin dessert has been made since 1897.

On page 109, several Brown Shirts accompany Völler into the pyramid to intercept Indy. "Brownshirt" was used to refer to members of the Sturmabteilung (Storm Detachment), the original paramilitary division of the German Nazi Party, founded in 1920 and clothed in brown uniforms.

On page 112, Indy says to McNulty, "Kumpel! Guten Morgen!" This is German for "Buddy! Good morning!"

On page 112, Sudao says, "Hola, amigos! Encontramos otra vez." This is Spanish for "Hello, friends! We found each other again."

On page 113, Völler reveals that Maggie works for British Intelligence, Section D. Section D (Section for Destruction) was formed in April 1938 for wartime irregular warfare, guerrilla warfare, destruction, and sabotage against enemy units during WWII. It merged with the SOE (Special Operations Executive) in 1940.

CHAPTER 15: THE SULTAN'S BALL

Indy and Maggie take a 1925 Rolls-Royce Phantom limousine to the Sultan's Ball.

In the novelization, the museum curator is named Mustafa Kazak instead of Yasin as in the video game.

On page 117, Indy sees a Mercedes limousine with a triangle of swastika flags.

On page 117, Indy retrieves his Webley pocket revolver from his luggage in the limo.

On page 118, Indy sees a display labeled as artifacts of Troy, probably excavated in the 1870s by Heinrich Schliemann and that he probably excavated Troy II, a city built on top of the site of famed Troy of Homer’s Iliad. The Iliad is an epic poem from ~8 BC by the Ancient Greek author Homer, telling of the Trojan War, a mythical war between the walled city of Troy in modern day Turkey and the Achaeans (Ancient Greece) around the 12th or 13th Century BC. The first Troy is believed to have existed from around 3000 to 2550 BC, when it was destroyed by fire. Troy II was soon erected over it by the survivors and lasted to about 2300 BC. Heinrich Schliemann (1822-1890) was a German amateur archeologist who excavated the ground of what was originally believed to be the site of the ancient city of Troy I, but is now likely-identified as Troy II. 

On page 119, "Bis spatter. Verstehen Sie?", "Woher kommst du?" "Vertieidigung germanisches," "Auf Wiedersehen!", and "Wo ist Wolf?" are German for "See you later. Do you understand?", "Where do you come from?", "Defense of Germanic," "Goodbye!", and "Where is Wolf?"

CHAPTER 16: THE LAST HAREM

    On page 126, Kadin tells Indy about the history of harems of the Byzantine world and the Ottoman Empire, mentioning that India's Mughal emperor Akbar had 5,000 women and Sassanian kings having as many as 12,000. The Byzantine World was another name for the Eastern Roman Empire, which existed from the 6th-15th centuries AD. The Turkish Ottoman Empire existed from 1299-1922. The statements about royal harems in other parts of the world during these times is accurate.

    Kadin's comment that the last sultan, Mehmed VI Vaudettin, left Turkey seventeen years ago, is correct. He ruled the nation from 1918 to 1922, when the Ottoman Sultanate was abolished.

Also on page 126, Indy sees a book open on a table and at first thinks it must be the Koran, but it turns out to be a cookbook. The Koran, of course, is the chief holy book of Islam.

CHAPTER 17: UNDER PRESSURE

The information about the Thule Society on page 130 is accurate.

An elderly man tries to speak with Völler, telling him he is with the Rosicrucians of Turkey and would like to talk about the influence of the order on the Third Reich. Rosicrucianism is a mystical and spiritual tradition that began in early 17th century Europe, influenced by Esoteric Christianity and Hermeticism. The Third Reich refers to the German state under the Nazi Party of dictator Adolf Hitler.

On page 131, Völler says to the Rosicrucian, "Ja, ja, sehr interessant." This is German for "Yes, yes, very interesting."

On page 131, Captain Faust reports to Völler, "Schlechte nachrichten." This is German for "Bad news."

On page 136, Indy realizes that Maggie reminds him of Deirdre. This is the woman Indy was briefly married to before her death in the Amazon jungle in The Seven Veils.

CHAPTER 18: THE SHEPHERD'S CHAMBER

On page 138, Indy finds a bathysphere in the underground cistern and recalls that Professor Kingston had once told him about his cousin in California, who was building the first submersible sphere, with testing in the Black Sea and the Straits of Bosphorus. Indy reflects that he'd heard of a bathysphere which was proven in operation in 1934 at a depth of more than 3,000 feet. In the real world, Otis Barton (1899-1992) was the inventor of the bathysphere, which reached a depth of 3,028 feet in 1934. Later in the novel, Kingston's cousin's name is revealed to be Henry, so perhaps this Henry beat Otis Barton to the invention in the Indiana Jones universe. The Black Sea is a marginal sea lying within both Europe and Asia, bounded by Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Russia, and Georgia. The Bosphorus Strait connects the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara through the Turkish city of Istanbul.

On page 139, Völler holds a Smith & Wesson .38 revolver on Indy.

On page 142, Maggie remarks that Völler is full of blarney. "Blarney" is a term originating in Ireland that means flattering or wheedling talk that is deceptive or misleading.

On page 143, Maggie thinks of her mother and remembers her telling her as a young girl long ago about the wee folk and how they will always help you out in a fix if you call on them. "Wee folk" is a term in Celtic folklore for a hidden race (or races) of very small people living in the woods or caves or even water, who stir up mischief or, occasionally, prove helpful, to normal people. Many cultures throughout the world have legends of such little people.

CHAPTER 19: RAMPAGE

On page 145, after hearing the sound of a dropped loose shoe nearby, one of the German guards says, "Was war das?" This is German for "What was that?"

The quote on page 150 attributed to Graham Phillips about the alleged Staff of Moses is from the real world author's 2002 book The Moses Legacy, exploring the archeological and historical evidence of the origins of Judaism.

CHAPTER 20: THE CLOUD CITY

After she and Indy head from Istanbul to Katmandu to continue the search, Maggie telegraphs her home office in London for further instructions. Katmandu is the capital and largest city of Nepal.

On page 152, Maggie knows from Indy's stories of his world travels that this is not his first visit to Nepal, and she has gathered that his last time there involved a woman. His last known trip to Nepal was less than a year ago, in Thunder in the Orient, and it did involve one Sophia Hapgood, though they were not romantically involved during that adventure. It's highly likely though that author MacGregor is ignoring Indy's comic book adventures and is instead referring to his visit to Nepal early in Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indy's former lover Marion Ravenwood.

In the novel, the Shepherd is a glowing compass, similar to the Shepherd found in the PSP version of the game. In the Wii/PS2 version, the Shepherd is a large bell-like device that Indy must ring several times to have it point out the location of the Staff (in Suya Desh). In the DS version, the Shepherd was a corpse in a sarcophagus containing a puzzle box holding a note to go to Lukla (a small town in Nepal near Mount Everest).

Here in the novel, the lost city in the mountains is spelled Suya Des instead of Suya Desh as in the video game versions. Indy thinks of the city as if it were the living embodiment of Shambhala, the mystical hidden city described in Tibetan Buddhism. He reflects that, a few years ago, a novelist, James Hilton, published Lost Horizon based on the legend, calling his city Shangri-La. Indy and Marion Ravenwood discovered another Himalayan city that was compared to Shangri-La (Ra-Lundi) in "The City of Yesterday's Forever". And a Himalayan city found in "Thunder in the Orient" Part 4 is called Chanri-Ha, which Indy believes Hilton himself discovered and based his novel on. Here in this novel, it is stated, for Indy, legend and reality had merged. But, in the PopApostle canon of Indiana Jones, the legend had merged with reality in "The City of Yesterday's Forever" with his first discovery of a lost Himalayan city!

When Indy, Maggie, and Nawang are brought into the hidden city, a seemingly total solar eclipse takes place (the Moon passing in front of the Sun). However, in the real world, the only total solar eclipse to take place in 1939 was on October 12, many months after the "early 1939" setting of the story, and also this one would not have been visible in Asia. A partial eclipse took place in April 1939, which might be argued to be within the timeline of the story, but it was also not visible in Asia.

On page 156, Kingston welcomes Indy to Suya Des, referring to it as "Cloud City". This may be a nod by the author to the Cloud City of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, visited by actor Harrison Ford's other best-known screen character, Han Solo.

CHAPTER 21: ONE MORE SURPRISE

On page 158, Kingston explains that there were three shepherds that were created around 900 B.C., about the time of the Exodus. One was hidden in a temple that eventually became the site of the cisterns below the Sultan’s Palace in Istanbul. A second was hidden on Mt. Nebo, and a third somewhere in Tunisia. The Exodus, of course, is a reference to the flight of the Israelites from Egypt across the Red Sea in the Biblical Book of Exodus. Mt. Nebo is a ridge in the country of Jordan, where Moses is said to have been given a view of the Promised Land shortly before his death. Tunisia is a country in North Africa.

Kingston goes on to say that he found the first shepherd in the storage room of a museum in Tunis. Tunis is the capital of Tunisia.

Kingston remarks to Indy, "You know by now, Indy, that sacred objects cannot be found in the ordinary way. They are found by the seeker who follows his heart and the clues that mysteriously appear along the way. But I don’t have to tell you that."

Kingston reveals that since he was healed by the Staff, he cannot be separated from it by any large distance, or he will die. This is like Hilton's city of Shangri-La, where the extraordinarily long-lived inhabitants cannot leave the city's nearby environs without rapidly aging and dying.

Page 161 explains that the Odin was originally designed to be a luxury liner, but was taken over by Völler's group after the Hindenburg disaster. This references the Hindenburg disaster of 1937, in which the German zeppelin by that name, which used hydrogen for its buoyancy, exploded and burned, essentially ending the airship era of popular commercial flight.

Most of the German speech on page 162 is already translated into English in the dialog. Fräulein means "miss".

CHAPTER 22: THE STAFF TEMPLE

Bethany tells Indy she first met Kingston in Chicago.

Bethany mentions that Himmler led an expedition to Tibet last year in search of the roots of the Aryan race. This was an actual expedition that took place in 1938.

Indy and Maggie are told by Bethany that, in the temple, they will see "a five-foot tall statue of Vishnu, the supreme being of Hinduism. In this version of Vishnu, he appears as Narasimha, who is manlion, Vishnu’s fourth incarnation." This is accurate to the descriptions of Vishnu in Hindu mythology.

CHAPTER 23: ALL ABOARD

No notes.

The song quote made before Chapter 24 is from an actual African-American spiritual of unknown authorship, first known in the mid-1800s, "Go Down Moses". This particular arrangement of the chorus is from the Louis Armstrong recording (1958). The song again is about the Jewish exodus from Egypt in the Book of Exodus.

CHAPTER 24: NO ESCAPE

On page 178, a mechanic on the Odin says the ship is headed for the Bay of Bengal to rendezvous with the Wolfram. The Bay of Bengal is the part of the Indian Ocean between the Indian subcontinent and the Indochinese peninsula. The name of the second airship, Wolfram, may be a nod to the 2008 video game (and earlier manga) Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces which has an airship of the same name.

CHAPTER 25: GOD'S WRATH

Bethany remarks that she speaks German because her grandmother who raised her was from Munich.

On page 189, Völler makes the claim that the Aryans came into existence after a divine thunderbolt shattered the ice that locked the world and imprisoned the race. This seems to be a fictitious mythology made up for the novel. The Nazi ideology was that the Aryan race was the pinnacle of human racial hierarchy.

CHAPTER 26: PARTING WAYS

After their jump from the Odin, Indy and Maggie miraculously find themselves on the floor of the sea, parted by the power of the Staff. The Odin lands long enough to disgorge several Kettenkrads, a cross between a motorcycle and a tank, in pursuit. (Photo by Ben Norwood from Wikipedia.)

On page 194, Indy and Maggie try to hide from the approaching Kettenkrads under the dorsal fin of a whale caught beached in the split waters. Maggie says, "I don’t like it here, but I suppose it’s better than its gullet," and Indy responds, 'Hey, let’s not mix our Bible stories." He is referring to both the story of the parting of the Red Sea by Moses' staff in the Book of Exodus and to the story of Jonah being swallowed by a whale in the Book of Jonah.

On page 195, Indy recalls hearing that the average depth of the Bay of Bengal was two miles. This is incorrect, though there are portions of the bay that are almost 3 miles in depth. The average depth is a little over 1.5 miles.

The pathway of parted water leads Indy and Maggie to the port of Calcutta. Calcutta is the capital city of the Indian state of West Bengal.

Memorable Dialog

you Americans, so full of swagger, yet so timid.mp3

force of habit.mp3

no argue on boat.mp3

name your price.mp3

that's very brave of you.mp3

why does it always have to be Germans?.mp3

pretty shabby.mp3

can't you stampede any faster?.mp3

why Hannibal never conquered Rome.mp3

I must have left my machine gun in my other purse.mp3

I sure know how to pick 'em.mp3