American film character, an archaeologist and adventurer featured in a series of popular movies.

The film Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), introduced Dr. Henry (“Indiana”) Jones, a young professor of archaeology and history at fictional Marshall College, whose extracurricular activities include grave robbing and swashbuckling and whose one great fear is snakes.

In 1984, a prequel, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, was released, and in 1989, a sequel, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

A fourth film followed in 2008, titled Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

A fifth film is in development and is provisionally scheduled to be released in 2022.

The series was created by George Lucas and stars Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones. The first four films were directed by Steven Spielberg.

The first film is set in 1936.

Indiana Jones is hired by government agents to locate the Ark of the Covenant before the Nazis. The Nazis have teams searching for religious artefacts, including the Ark, which is rumored to make an army that carries the Ark before it invincible.

The Nazis are being helped by Indiana's nemesis René Belloq. With the help of his old flame Marion Ravenwood and Sallah, Indiana manages to recover the Ark in Egypt.

The Nazis steal the Ark and capture Indiana and Marion. Belloq and the Nazis perform a ceremony to open the Ark, but when they do so, they are all killed gruesomely by the Ark's wrath. Indiana and Marion, who survived by closing their eyes, manage to get the Ark to the United States, where it is stored in a secret government warehouse.

The second film is set in 1935, a year before Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Indiana escapes Chinese gangsters with the help of singer/actress Willie Scott and his twelve-year-old sidekick Short Round. The trio crash-land in India, where they come across a village whose children have been kidnapped.

The Thuggee led by Mola Ram has also taken the holy Sankara Stones, which they will use to take over the world. Indiana manages to overcome Mola Ram's evil power, rescues the children and returns the stones to their rightful place, overcoming his own mercenary nature.

The film has been noted as an outlier in the franchise, as it does not feature Indy's university or any antagonistic political entity, and is less focused on archaeology, being presented as a dark movie with gross-out elements, human sacrifice and torture.

The third film is set in 1938. Indiana and his friend Marcus Brody are assigned by American businessman Walter Donovan to find the Holy Grail.

They are teamed up with Dr. Elsa Schneider, following on from where Indiana's estranged father Henry left off before he disappeared. It transpires that Donovan and Elsa are in league with the Nazis, who captured Henry Jones in order to get Indiana to help them find the Grail.

However, Indiana recovers his father's diary filled with his research, and manages to rescue him before finding the location of the Grail. Both Donovan and Elsa fall to the temptation of the Grail, while Indiana and Henry realize that their relationship with each other is more important than finding the relic.

The fourth film is set in 1957, nineteen years after The Last Crusade.

Indiana is having a quiet life teaching before being thrust into a new adventure. He races against agents of the Soviet Union, led by Irina Spalko for a crystal skull.

His journey takes him across Nevada, Connecticut, Peru, and the Amazon rainforest in Brazil. Indiana is faced with betrayal by one of his best friends, Mac, is introduced to a greaser named Mutt Williams, who turns out to be his son (his real name revealed to be Henry Jones III), and is reunited with, and eventually marries, Marion Ravenwood, who was introduced in the first movie.