Indiana Jones Villain Deaths Ranked

The aliens, or interdimensional beings, from "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" are akin to cosmic archeologists. As Indy himself states upon seeing their collection of items from across world history, "Knowledge was their treasure." Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett) wants that knowledge for herself and pays the price for her hubris. After reuniting the lost Crystal Skull with its body, she is "rewarded" with an influx of all the knowledge the aliens have amassed over their unknown eternity, and it's too much for her fragile human mind to handle.

As her brain is overloaded with cosmic information, she begs for it to stop, but the interdimensional collective scowls at her as she is ultimately disintegrated by the overwhelming flow. Much of the aliens' motivation and character is open to interpretation, but it's likely they knew Spalko had killed many of the Ugha tribesmen who had been living peacefully in Akator for generations; having her die such a brutal sci-fi death was possibly her punishment for killing the denizens of their kingdom.

Back in 2008, when "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" was first released, much ballyhoo was made over the first act of the film, which sees the now middle-aged adventurer climb into a lead-lined refrigerator to survive a nuclear explosion. Scientists pointed out the numerous ways this would not save Indy from certain doom, but they all leave out one important detail — he's Indiana Jones.

Regardless of one's opinion on "nuking the fridge," it's worth noting that Indy isn't the only person impacted by the bomb; a squad of Russian agents try to escape the blast radius in their car, but to no avail. In fact, the last thing they see before the nuclear devastation consumes them is a refrigerator flying past them at terminal velocity, propelled by the initial detonation. As the refrigerator is miraculously thrown outside of the immediate danger zone, the Russians' car is obliterated, with its occupants turned into anonymous irradiated stains in the Nevada desert.

As a rule, most of Indiana Jones' adventures feature him stumbling into some kind of ancient tomb, usually protected by booby traps. Inevitably, when Indiana comes across one of these booby traps, he finds that he's not the first to attempt to navigate these perilous paths of death. There's always at least one dead body attached to the trap.

For instance, the beginning of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" has Indy searching alongside Satipo (Alfred Molina) for an ancient golden idol, following in the footsteps of fellow adventurer Forrestal, who went missing in the area one year prior to Indy's arrival. Eventually, Indy and Satipo trigger a trap, revealing Forrestal's corpse impaled on sharp spikes. Later on, after betraying Indy, stealing the golden idol, and trying to escape the temple on his own, Satipo suffers the exact same fate. Indy sees the bloodied body, his face frozen in a state of shock, a grisly discovery for the next generation of would-be treasure hunters.

The previously-mentioned tank chase sequence from "Last Crusade" ends with Indiana Jones and Vogel fighting atop the latter's heavily armored tank, which just so happens to plummet off the side of a mountain. In the nick of time, Indy manages to escape the armored vehicle, but Vogel is not so lucky and remains in the tank as it careens over the edge.

An impressive visual effects shot features Vogel screaming as the tank plummets toward the camera, and the impact is shown in the next shot, with a life-like dummy of actor Michael Byrne being tossed around like a ragdoll as the tank crashes to the ground. Of course, since Vogel was a full-tilt believer in Nazi ideology, none of the heroes mourn his death, though they briefly believe Indy didn't make it off the tank in time to avoid a similar fate. Naturally, Indy shows up battered but still alive, and when his hat (which was lost in the tank scuffle) lands at his feet, courtesy of a conspicuous gust of wind, he musters the strength to continue their quest for the Holy Grail.

The final act of "Last Crusade" features the Jones group and the Nazis at the hidden Grail Temple, where they must complete three tests in order to reach the treasure. The first of these, The Breath of God, has the Nazis stumped, as all of their Hatay "volunteers" thus far have been killed by the trap.

The viewer gets to follow the last of these soldiers as they attempt to navigate the trap. After the high-flying action of the tank chase, this sequence feels straight out of a horror movie, as the soldier takes uneasy steps toward his inevitable death by decapitation. It's only when Indiana Jones himself goes in that the solution is revealed. As conveyed in his father's "Grail Diary," the test is one of faith and knowledge of God. The name of the test, The Breath of God, is the clue. According to the diary, "only the penitent man will pass," as "the penitent man is humble before God."

At the last second, Indy realizes he must kneel, and as he does, a sharp sawblade passes overhead, the same blade that decapitated everyone else. A second one emerges from the floor and nearly kills Indy, but he's able to roll forward to evade the tricky trap and get one step closer to the Holy Grail.

While Indiana Jones and his father are fighting Nazis (for family bonding purposes) in "Last Crusade," they come up against a German fighter plane, which drops a bomb that destroys their car. Outgunned and unable to flee, Indy is stumped as to how he's going to survive this encounter. However, his father comes up with a plan; he approaches a flock of seagulls and uses his umbrella to chase them away — right into the path of the pursuing plane.

The entire group of birds crash into the Nazi plane, breaking through the glass and gumming up the propeller to the point where the pilot loses control and crashes into the side of a mountain. While played for comic effect, the idea of being mauled by birds before being consumed by a giant explosion is nothing to laugh about. Not to mention, Dr. Jones didn't just kill the Nazi, but dozens of seagulls.

As he returns to his son, the elder Jones remarks, "I suddenly remembered my Charlemagne; let my armies be the rocks, and the trees, and the birds in the sky."

Pat Roach suffers not one, but two of the greatest deaths in Indiana Jones history. In Indy's debut adventure, "Raiders of the Lost Ark," Roach plays a musclebound Nazi engineer working on an experimental plane. He fights Indy in single combat while the plane's propeller looms ominously in the background of the battle.

Interestingly, Indy doesn't really win the fight; he only manages to survive. While he gets a few good hits in, even breaking the Nazi's nose with one particularly perfect punch, he's outmatched. In the end, Indy is on the floor, with the engineer standing above him ... blissfully unaware that the plane has begun to move, and that the propeller is inching toward him. With a devilish smile on his face, Indy turns around and covers his face to protect him from the inevitable shower of blood. The engineer turns around just in time to get eviscerated by the propeller. While the kill itself isn't directly depicted, the massive blood spatter on the cockpit of the plane makes his fate perfectly clear.

"Raiders of the Lost Ark" revolves around the hunt for the Ark of the Covenant, the box God gave Moses carrying the Ten Commandments and God's very own power. As the Nazis, led by Major Toht (Ronald Lacey) and Indy's archeologist rival Dr. Belloq (Paul Freeman), greedily open the Ark, they learn firsthand that the power of God is not something to be controlled.

Ghostly apparitions emerge from the Ark, possibly to judge the people who dared open it. The spirits quickly turn vengeful and unleash their power on the Nazis in a magnificent display of God's wrath. Streaks of lightning lash out from the Ark, instantly killing the dozens of soldiers gathered for the ritual, while the three men who dared stand closest to the Ark suffer even worse fates. Colonel Dietrich's (Wolf Kahler) face is drained of life and implodes in a bloody mess, Toht's face literally melts off of his skull while he screams in pain, and Belloq's head explodes in a geyser of gore. Fun fact: Flames had to be superimposed over the image to avoid giving the film an R-rating, via Inside the Magic.

Indiana Jones and his ally/love interest Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) only survive because they refused to look at the spirits that emerged from the Ark, and were thus not privy to God's judgment.