> I don’t know…the actual inspirations for Indiana Jones, like Allan Quatermain from H. Rider Haggard's novels, "King Solomon's Mines", and the real life Roy Chapman Andrews, who led expeditions to Mongolia and China in the 1920s and wore a fedora.

The actual inspiration for Indy was protagonist Harry Steele from the movie The Secret of the Incas (1954). Filmed on location in Cusco and Machu Picchu, before they became popular tourist destinations, the movie also had scenes and elements that made it into Raiders of the Lost Ark.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_of_the_Incas

The movie's available on YouTube! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TS7Fabyolw

A lot more info: http://www.theraider.net/information/influences/secret_of_in...

(And listen out for the astonishing voice of Yma Sumac!)

Definitely a missed opportunity that the article didn't discuss that obviously-derivative borrowing has been happening a lot longer than ML image generation has been around. And that borrowing is OK! Indiana Jones' appearance is very obviously based directly on Charlton Heston's character in Secret of the Incas, but the Spielberg/Lucas films are objectively better in every way than that source material.