*Maria Straussler was an intelligence operative, working alongside US intelligence, and posted to Romania towards the end of World War I.

Biography Born around 1893,[2] Maria Straussler eventually got engaged to François Picard, a French national.[1]

Together with fellow Allied agents Indiana Jones, Colonel Waters, Dr. Franz Heinzer, and Nicholas Hunyadi, Maria was sent to Transylvania in 1918 to investigate separatist Romanian general Mattias Targo. Maria herself had a personal connection to the matter; her fiancé Picard had previously been sent to investigate Targo and disappeared.[1]

Colonel Waters was reluctant to bring a woman with them, but Maria assured him that she could handle herself. She demonstrated this by revealing herself to have stolen the colonel's knife, and proved her skill by throwing it into the support beam behind the man so the blade was buried inches above the Colonel's head. She later used this skill to kill Dr. Heinzer after he was exposed as a double agent and shot newly found François. Maria and Indiana Jones were the only two of their team to make it out of Targo's castle alive.[1]

Behind the scenes Maria Straussler was portrayed by Danish actress Simone Bendix in The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles episode "Transylvania, January 1918", later edited into Masks of Evil.[1]

Little of the character's background, including her nationality, is known whereas her counterpart Nicholas Hunyadi is specifically identified as a Romanian native to the region and new to the service. Straussler is engaged to a French national and possesses a German surname, but she works alongside US intelligence.[1]

It is possible that Maria is Romani[1] (an ethnic group also known by the derogatory term "Gypsies"), not to be confused with Romanians. They are a recurring element of Dracula adaptations, such as the Francis Ford Coppola film Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) and Van Helsing (2004).

Maria is an expert with knives,[1] a skill that she shares with Zoltan, a former circus performer.[3]*