The boyhood adventures of the greatest action hero of all time: Indiana Jones. Young Indy travels the world, meeting some of the greatest figures of the early 20th century, and participating in the events that helped shape history.
When Professor Henry Jones Sr. is invited to give lectures all over the world in May 1908, he takes along his wife and son, and invites his former tutor Miss Helen Seymour to teach Henry Jr. during the trip. Their first stop is Cairo, Egypt. When Junior, who prefers to be called 'Indy' and Miss Seymour visit the pyramids, they are invited by T.E. Lawrence (another former student of hers) to join an archaeological dig. When the mummy disappears and a priceless headpiece is stolen, young Indy gets his first taste of adventure. On their next stop in Tangiers, the family stays with Professor Jones' former class mate Walter Harris. Indy befriends a young slave named Omar who belongs to Emily Keen. The two of them get into trouble when they Indy insists on visiting the market place to see a salted head displayed on a pole. Caught by slave traders, they are end up at an auction from which only Harris can attempt to rescue them.
On safari in British East Africa in September 1910, ten year old Indiana Jones befriends a Massai boy named Meto who helps him in his search for the little seen Fringe-Eared Oryx for former US President Teddy Roosevelt. From there on he and his family and tutor travel to Paris, France where Indy meets a young Norman Rockwell and gets involved in a quarrel between the painters Edgar Degas and Pablo Picasso. The young American boys get a fascinating insight into modern art as Picasso schemes to one up the old master Degas.
Henry Jones Sr. takes his wife, son and the boy's tutor to the world's first psychoanalytical conference in Vienna, Austria in November 1908. Young Indy meets Princess Sophie of Austria, daughter of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and develops deep feelings for her. He even asks Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and Alfred Adler for love advice. On their next stop in Florence, Anna Jones becomes the object of affection for the persuasive opera composer Giacomo Puccini. With her husband away in Rome, Anna is torn between her feelings for her husband and the impulsive Italian.
The globe trotting trip that Henry Jones, Jr. sets out on in the early 1900s next takes him and his family to Russia. A few acts of clumsiness puts Indy at odds with his father who is greatly displeased with Indy. Indy runs away into the Russian countryside and wakes in the morning on a haystack. He encounters an odd, cantankerous old man named Leo Tolstoy, who is in full agreement that "hell" is other people. Both are running away to seek a simpler life. They cross the countryside, encountering colorful Gypsies and avoiding fierce Imperial Cossack troops. The hardships of the journey make Indy homesick, but he won't soon forget his journey with the stubborn old man. Indy's next destination is Greece, where his mother Anna realizes that father and son need to spend more time together.
January, 1910. The Jones family attends a meeting of the Theosophy movement in Benares, India. There young Indy befriends a young boy named Jiddu Krishnamurti who is presented by the society to be the next world teacher and possible messiah. Traveling on to China in March, mother Jones takes Miss Seymour and Indy on a sightseeing trip while father meets with Chinese translator Yen Fu. Indy becomes ill during a rain storm and the travelers seek shelter with a poor Chinese family. Dispite the misgivings of his mother, a local doctor is allowed to treat the boy with acupuncture.
It's 1916, and Indiana Jones is living with his dad in Princeton, New Jersey. Spring break is fast approaching, and all Indy can think of is taking his girlfriend Nancy to the prom in a slick new Bugatti. The car's foreign engine is impossible to get parts for, but a favour from a professor working at Thomas Edison's laboratory raises his hopes. His plans are sidetracked when a mysterious break-in, the theft of an electric motor, and rumours of German spies result in a mystery that only Indy and Nancy can unravel.
Indiana Jones and Remy Baudouin arrive in Ireland in April 1916 on their way to London where they plan to join the Belgian Army. In order to raise enough money for their fare to England, they both start get a job at a local pub. Here Indy meets struggling play wight Sean O'Casey and soon impresses two Irish girls who think he's an American millionaire traveling the world. When they finally arrive in London, Indiana meets a spunky female bus conductor and suffragette named Vicky Prentiss who is not afraid to make her stance on women's rights be known to anyone who will listen. Finding they have a lot in common, Indy asks Vicky to accompany him on a visit to his former tutor, Helen Seymour, but soon realizes Vicky is adamant in having her opinion heard.
August, 1917. Using the name 'Henri Defense', 17 year old Indiana Jones has enlisted in the Belgian army to fight in the Great War. After all his commanding officers have been wiped out during combat in Flanders, Corporal 'Defense' is left in charge of what's left of the 9th Belgian Infantry. They are assigned to the French 14th Company and dispatched into the Battle of the Somme. When Indy is captured by the Germans, he quickly gains a reputation as an escape artist, and is sent to the maximum security prison at Dunsterstadt on the Danube.
September, 1916. As Corporal Henri Defense, young Indiana Jones has become a motorcycle courier stationed near the trenches at Verdun. His friend Remy is still in the trenches, and both grow more disillusioned about the war each day. Chosen to sneak into enemy territory on account of his gift for languages, Indy overhears German officers speaking of the imminent arrival of their most powerful artillery guns, nicknamed Big Bertha. A month later Indy and Remy are granted leave to Paris, where Indiana meets the exotic dancer Mata Hari at a dinner party. He falls for her immediately, but soon finds out she is dating other men as well, including the French Minister of War.
November 1916. Indiana Jones and Remy Baudouin have managed to get a transfer from the European trenches to the plains of Africa. On arrival, they both receive a promotion to the rank of lieutenant in the Belgian Army. When they take the wrong train they end up in Moshi. Desperate to join their unit in Lake Victoria, the two men bump into the 25th Royal Fusiliers, a unit of cranky old men led by Indy's old acquaintance Frederick Selous. Indy's passing knowledge of trains and fluent German comes in handy for the Fusiliers, who are about to go on a mission to find and destroy a Phantom Train that carries an enormous German artillery gun.
Despite disobeying orders, Indy is promoted to Captain after capturing a German machine gun. He is then ordered to cross the jungle with Remy and Captain Boucher to pick up a shipment of weaponry. Along the way his Ubangan Sgt, Barthelemy picks up the sole surviving child from a disease ridden village despite Boucher's orders against it. On the way back, Indy and company succumb to disease themselves, and are picked up by Albert Schweitzer and the orderlies from his jungle hospital. At first resistant to being treated by a German, Indy soon begins to realize that Schweitzer is not interested in war, only attempting to cure people against all odds.
Indiana Jones transfers from the Belgian army to the French intelligence service, where his first assignment is as a reconnaissance photographer for the 124th Squadron, a group of volunteer American pilots in the French army. When his plane is shot down, Indy encounters the infamous "Red Baron" - Manfred von Richthofen. After a daring escape, Indy is parachuted back into Germany on a mission to convince aircraft designer Anthony Fokker to defect to France, and he discovers a new German superweapon - a new airplane intended to bring the war overseas.
Indiana Jones, now a captain in the French army, is assigned to escort two Austrian princes to meet with Emperor Karl I and convince him to broker a peace deal with France and Britain at the expense of Austria's alliance with Germany. Two months later, at the French Embassy in Petrograd, Indy must decide between his loyalty to his friends and his work in French Intelligence when he is pressed to discover details of a possible bolshevik revolution in Russia which would cripple the French war effort.
May 1917. Sixteen year old Indiana Jones joins an international trio of spies plotting against their German counterparts in the neutral city of Barcelona. After his old acquaintance Pablo Picasso helps him get a job at Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, Indy devices a plan to forge a love letter written by the German cultural attaché to make it seem he is having an affair with the Countess of Toledo. In August of the same year, Indiana is reassigned to Prague where he is to receive an important phone call. Unfortunately his hotel room proves to be unequipped with a phone. Indy heads for the Ministery of Telephones, where he learns that having to confront Czech bureaucracy can be quite a trial.
Working with a beautiful lady spy, Indiana Jones is assigned to assist the British forces in their attack on the Turkish-occupied town of Beersheba. With a regiment of the Australian Lighthorsemen approaching, Indy must defuse the explosives the Turks have placed throughout the town.
June 1918. Indiana Jones is working to get Austrian deserters safely to the allies side in the Italian Alps. In his spare time, he is wooing an Italian beauty named Guiletta. When he finds out another man is vying for her attention, Indy and his new pal, ambulance driver Ernest Hemingway make plans to crush Indiana's competitor by smothering Guiletta with presents and compliments.
A top-secret mission for French Intelligence brings Indy to Istanbul during the First World War. Exploring the city's dark and dangerous streets, he is thrust into a web of betrayal and murder when he discovers a vile Turkish plot to assassinate French espionage agents. Evil of a more enduring kind awaits him in Transylvania where he engages in mortal combat with bloodthirsty Vlad the Impaler and his horrific army of the living dead. With his very life at stake, Indy must garner all his strength and wits in order to defeat the fiend and save mankind.
Finds Indy vagabonding around the South Pacific on a treasure hunt for a fabled lost diamond. The war in Europe ends but a new adventure begins for Indy when a mysterious man's dying words, "The eye of the peacock!" send him and Remy on a thrilling treasure hunt for one of Alexander the Great's most prized possessions. Pursued by a dangeroud one-eyes man, Indy follows the trail of the diamond from London to Alexandria to the South Seas, where he has a run-in with a murderous band of Chinese pirates. The shipboard battle that ensues is a spectacular display of swords, guns and flying fists. Marooned by the priates on a remote desert island, Indy is captured by savage headhunters, but before they can turn him into a shrunken head and cannibal stew, he is rescued by anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, and makes a life-altering decision.
May 1919. Indy is in Paris working as a translator during the peace conference following the end of the Great War. He meets up with T.E. Lawrence once more but finds his ideals have changed a lot since the start of the war. Indy then decides to finally head home to Princeton even though it means having to face his father. He gets reacquainted with his childhood friend Paul Robeson, who becomes the subject of racism as they visit New York city.
New York, June 1920. Twenty-year-old Indiana Jones is working backstage at George White's Scandals in 1920. Having just arrived in the Big Apple, Indy manages to woo no less than three girls in as many days: singer Peggy, poet Kate and socialite Gloria. He manages to get Peggy a song to sing by his good friend George Gershwin, Kate and her friends at the Vicious circle will review the show and Gloria's father helps out to back the show when White needs financial help.
Indy takes a job as assistant to a Hollywood studio executive in an attempt to earn his college fees. His job is to get flamboyant and difficult director Erich Von Stroheim to complete his latest epic on time and with the budget, or else.