Zombie

A zombie or zombi was a member of the undead.

American archaeologist Indiana Jones had encountered different kinds of zombie in the course of his adventures during his lifetime.

Adventures with zombies[]

On an island in the Indian Ocean in 1940, American archaeologist Indiana Jones found himself fending off zombies when the island's inhabitants succumbed to a plague caused by the Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse.^[1]

In 1943, while searching for the Heart of Darkness in Haiti, Jones encountered two variations of zombi that could be controlled by a bokor:

'real' corpses of the dead, re-animated by magic
'chemical' living people, subdued and controlled by a potion.^[2]

Four years later, Doctor Matthias Jäger resurrected Nazi soldiers with the Philosopher's Stone but was unable to wield the artifact and he and the zombies were disintegrated.^[3]

Behind the scenes[]

The use of zombies in an Indiana Jones story was raised by author John Byrne for The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones story "The Ikons of Ikammanen", who intended to zombify either the title character or someone else, but it was blocked by Lucasfilm Ltd., leading to the development of the living statues instead.^[4]

The idea was broached again with the Dark Horse Comics miniseries, Indiana Jones: The Dance of Death, but it went unreleased late enough in development that its events were still covered, albeit briefly, in the timeline of The World of Indiana Jones.^[1]

For Indiana Jones and the Army of the Dead, author Steve Perry decided to introduce zombies as Indiana Jones had never dealt with the undead, using both magical and chemical zombie variations as a way to contrast them.^[5]