 ✓
| ||
| This villain was proposed but was rejected by the community for not being heinous enough or lacks what is necessary to be a Pure Evil villain. Therefore, this villain shall be added to our "Never Again List", where proposed villains rejected by the community shall be placed to prevent future proposals of the same evil-doer. They can be proposed again (with the permission of an administrator) if new elements appear in their series that can change their status as non-PE villains. Any act of adding this villain to the Pure Evil category without a proposal or creating a proposal for this villain without the permission of an administrator will result in a ban. | ||
| “ | Dr. Jones! I am Obergruppenführer Helmut Von Mephisto, knight of the Black Order, representative of his eminence Heinrich Himmler. You have something that belongs to the Third Reich! You will please hand over the scroll – or face certain death! | „ |
| ~ Helmut von Mephisto to Indiana Jones. |
General Helmut von Mephisto is the main antagonist of the 2009 adventure novel Indiana Jones and the Mystery of Mount Sinai, the second and final installment of the Scholastic's Untold Adventures series based on the Indiana Jones franchise.
He is a Ahnenerbe general and member of the Nazi Party who assists the German Army during World War II. In 1941, von Mephisto crosses paths with the American archaeologist Indiana Jones, whom von Mephisto obssesses himself with killing.
History[]
Past[]
Even as a kid, Helmut von Mephisto was known for being a troublemaker, given how his mother had to lock him up for misbehaving. He would weirdly thank her for doing so, however, assuming it was for his own good. He climaed to be descendant of Frederick the Second of Prussia, deemed by him as one of the greatest Aryans.
Growing up, von Mephisto joined the Nazi Party upon Adolf Hitler's rise to power. After training in the Nazi special school Wewelsburg Castle, Mephisto joined the Schutzstaffel (SS) under Heinrich Himmler's mentorship, becoming a high-ranking member of the Ahnenerbe.
Throughout his career, von Mephisto received the Iron Cross, the Blue Max and the JagerSchaft, which Himmler personally gave to him, much like the Death's Head Ring.
Indiana Jones and the Mystery of Mount Sinai[]
In 1941, Colonel Musgrove's agents had learned about Helmut von Mephisto's interest on Mount Sinai, where unnamed civilizations had hidden incredible machines of destruction thousands of years ago, after the loss of the Hall of Records. Being alerted about the American archaeologist Indiana Jones being also after Mount Sinai, Mephisto sent one of his men after Jones, but the spy was killed by a jaguar Jones and his companion Bert come across, prompting Indy to be alerted from Mephisto. Months later, Helmut comes across Indy at Vatican City and forces him to surrender and give him the scroll. Hoping that the Nazis and Fascists don't attack civilians, Indy makes a distraction to escape, so Mephisto and his men leave their fellow Fascists behind, but Indy crashes their vehicles and keeps escaping. However, Mephisto catches him by destroying some automobiles and declares his intention to move on from ammunition in favor of an unlimited supply, promising to take the scroll from Jones' roasted corpse and claim the creations of the German gods to command the master race, threatening the lives of a nearby village. Despite this, Indy outsmarts Mephisto and knocks him into a river where he gets electrocuted and has to be retrieved by his men.
Later on, von Mephisto is prophezied by the Imam (Sallah's elderly friend from Raiders of the Lost Ark) as a demon who, if finds Mount Sinai with his evil servants, is gonna unleash evil over all of the Earth with inimaginable weaponry. The next day, as Indy explores Mount Sinai while avoiding the Nazis stationed there, von Mephisto comes across Bert and her guide Roca, whom he kills before presenting himself to Bert. She doesn't try to surrender, but Mephisto summons his troops to endanger Giovanni and Isabella, two Italian kids accompanying Jones and Bert, so she relents. Mephisto takes them to the zone where he is forcing his own men to be gorily killed by Mount Sinai's rock colossuses, but as no more of his men want to volunteer, Mephisto decides to send Bert, Giovanni and Isabella to be killed. However, Indy intervenes and convinces Mephisto to let him open Mount Sinai's doors through flammable materials to neutralize the oclossuses instead of using Professor Erik Jan Eckart to open them in exchange of sparing his friends, which von Mephisto begrudgingly agrees. Indy succeeds and Mephisto reprimands Eckart for neglecting anti-gravitational forces studies, before ordering Indy to get inside the doors by having his men point their guns to Bert and the kids. Indy does so, so von Mephisto and Eckart enter and announce their intentions to have the Third Reich count with floating armies and explosive rockets that may fly from Berlin to London in a heartbet and infinite amounts of gold no nation casn't resit.
Despite Indy fulfilling his part of the deal, Helmut decides to execute him as they never had a deal concerning his fate, but as for the fates of Bert, Giovanni and Isabella, they are gonna be send to a concentration camp, where they will surely die but he will not be the one who kills them. Although Indy appeals to still being useful, Mephisto orders his firing squad to execute him as he and Eckart will study the magic powder, with Eckart already formulating the recipe. However, Indy finds his way out of his predicament and Bert interverns, saving him before the colossuses, who are working again, start disintegrating all the Nazis, reducing them to atoms by the shafts of death, including Eckart. Uncaring of his men's fates, Mephisto tries to escape with the recipe, but tries to kill Jones before leaving. However, Indy and Helmut have one final fight that ends when one of the colossuses crushes Mephisto, seemingly to death, permitting Indy, Bert and the kids to escape.
In spite the Nazis being stopped from using Mount Sinai's weapons for themselves, Bert's suspicions that Mephito may have survived prove to be true, as Mephisto is shown to have survived at the end of the book, though at thecost of his mechanical army. Half-mad and half-dead, von Mephisto sees how one of Mount Sinai's missile-like obelisks activates, the rocky roof reveals the night sky and the obelisk takes off silently towards the Orion constellation. It's completely unknown what happened to von Mephisto afterwards, but given his loss of his mechanical arm and his men, chances are that maybe Mephisto died left in Mount Sinai, was severely reprimanded by his superiors upon coming back to Germany or may have survived and went on to participate in further World War II missions.
Trivia[]
- Helmut von Mephisto's mechanical arm was conceived by the late J.W. Rinzler as a reference to the earliest concept arts of Major Arnold Ernst Toht from Raiders of the Lost Ark. In those concepts by the late Ron Cobb, Toht was meant to be a Nazi cyborg, but George Lucas scrapped the idea for being "too unrealistic" for the film's 1936 setting. Chris Columbus would later try to use the idea for Helmut Gutterbuhg, one of the villains from Indiana Jones and the Monkey King, an early version of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Due to his work in the making-of book The Complete Making of Indiana Jones, Rinzler opted to use the idea for his book and succeeded.
- A theory that became popular before Thomas Kretschmann's character was revealed in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny was that Kretschmann would play Helmut von Mephisto, given Kretschmann's physical similarities to the character and how former writer Jon Kasdan mentioned the Rinzler's novel during the sessions he led when Dial of Destiny counted with a writers' room at one point. However, the film's casting announcement put this theory to rest with the reveal that Kretschmann was playing Colonel Weber instead.
- Helmut von Mephisto is one of the few Indiana Jones villains to get away with their crimes. However, as World War II is ongoing when the book takes place, it's possible that Mephisto may have been killed in the conflict later on.
External Links[]
[]
 Villains
| ||
|
Nazi Party Thuggee Soviet Union Others | ||