Klaus Kerner

CHARACTER
Klaus Kerner
Gender	Male
Birth	August 23, 1889 Düsseldorf, Germany
Death	1939 The Colossus, Atlantis
Nationality	German
Profession(s)	SS Colonel
Allegiance(s)	Nazi Germany

"I, Klaus Kerner, shall rule the world! That Bavarian upstart, Hitler, will kiss my feet!"

―Klaus Kerner

Klaus Kerner (alias Samuel Corn and Mr. Smith) was a Prussian colonel in the SS, tasked with investigating the lost city of Atlantis for the Third Reich in 1939.

Biography

"If anyone's going to become a god, it must be me!"

―Klaus Kerner

Klaus Kerner was born on August 23, 1889 in Düsseldorf, Germany.

In 1939, Klaus Kerner visited Dr. Indiana Jones at Barnett College. Dressed in plain clothes to disguise his true identity, he inquired about artifacts connected with the lost continent and gave him a 'key'. Jones found in Barnett College's museum a horned idol, which, when provided the key, revealed a small metallic bead. This Kerner stole. Trying to keep him from escaping, Indy kept his coat, which contained his passport and a copy of National Archeology. They realized that Kerner was interested in Sophia Hapgood and the Jastro Expedition.

Kerner however "visited" Sophia's house in New York and ransacked it looking for her necklace, while she was presenting an Atlantis-themed show about the Atlantean deity Nur-Ab-Sal as a psychic. Indy went to New York and had to disrupt her presentation to warn her. They entered her home after Kerner left.

Returning to Germany, Kerner gave the items to Dr. Hans Ubermann who later discovered that the artifacts held the key to becoming immortal as well as having the same capabilities as uranium without any radioactivity, which could very well help the Nazi cause with their militarity.

Kerner's demise.

During the course of the ensuing adventure, Kerner had several further scrapes with Jones and Hapgood. When the two competing teams arrived at the object of their quest, The Colossus, Ubermann made plans to position himself as the Third Reich's immortal leader; but the ambitious Kerner shoved him aside and jumped into the machine first.

Upon failing to notify the Nazis that the Colossus didn't really work due to how it horrifically mutated Atlanteans only for his warnings to be dismissed by Kerner as imperfections Aryan men like him lacked, Jones convinced Kerner into believing that only one bead would be required in the machine (citing Plato's tenfold error). Kerner believed Jones' lies and had Ubberman activate the machine: rather than a god, despite initially enlarging him, it transformed Kerner into a grotesque horned humanoid. Unable to live with what he had become, Kerner then committed suicide by throwing himself into a lava flow.

Behind the scenes

Sophia Hapgood and Klaus Kerner in the video game.

Klaus Kerner was voiced by an unidentified voice actor in Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. LucasArts employee Hal Barwood came up with Kerner as a character who could "unlock" the game's story in the same way he conceived Nur-Ab-Sal as a key to the story's resolution.

One of the game-over outcomes within the game shows Hans Ubermann using ten beads in the machine with Indiana Jones as the test subject resulting in Jones' transformation into an ethereal being with a brief lifespan. This indicates that Kerner wouldn't have achieved his desired result even if he'd used ten beads.

Although he didn't appear in Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings, Kerner was briefly visible in the game's teaser trailer released at E3 2006 because the presentation included a clip from Fate of Atlantis of Kerner's fight with Indiana Jones at Barnett College as the narrator explains the development of video game consoles while presentin the ultimately unrealized in-house developed LucasArts version for the game.

Differences

In the lead-up to the release of Fate of Atlantis, Dark Horse Comics published a four-parter comic book adaptation of the game as a tie-in to the video game. However, it contained several differences between the source material, especially in regards to Klaus Kerner's characterization:

In the video game, Kerner is portrayed as a somewhat athletic tall, strong, Aryan man whose passport indicates that he is approaching his 50s and is just over a decade older than Indiana Jones. In the comic adaptation, Kerner is portrayed as a thin, gray-haired, mustached individual. His death is also different: in the game, Kerner kills himself out of horror at his transformation, whereas in the comic his shape continues to morph until he is reduced to a puddle of goo.

In the game, Kerner has a habitat of running his hand through his hair or flipping his hair. Ubermann is frequently shown to demean Kerner as less intelligent than himself and near the God Machine, says Kerner isn't prepared to be the top god, as Kerner mumbles under his breath "we shall see", foreshadowing his subsequent attempt to hijack the device. In the comic, Kerner is shown to secretly think Dr. Ubermann is a fool and derisively calls him "Pork Flesh". Kerner dismisses the scientist as unworthy to be a god in his inner thoughts at the God Machine, even expressing his plans to overthrow Adolf Hitler.

Appearances

Kerner's transformation into a mutant in the game.

• Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis comic (First appearance)
• Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
• Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis: The Action Game

Sources

• Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings: Prima Official Game Guide
•  Lucasfilm Games Rewind: Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis on Lucasfilm.com (backup link on Archive.org)