*Doctor Elsa Schneider was an Austrian art historian and former Olympic swimmer who was recruited to find the Holy Grail in order to acquire immortality for Germany.

Around 1938, Schneider was involved in a scheme with American industrialist Walter Donovan to extract information from professors Henry Walton Jones, Senior and Indiana Jones in order to discover the location of the Grail through the former's Grail Diary. The Joneses eventually realized her true nature and recovered the diary from her at a Berlin bookburning rally.

Afterwards, Schneider accompanied Donovan and Colonel Ernst Vogel to the Republic of Hatay to find the Grail Temple where she betrayed Donovan and made him inadvertently wither away with a False Grail. Her obsession to acquire the Holy Grail for herself, however, would end up being her undoing.

An Austrian temptress, Elsa Schneider was a very conflicted woman. She claimed that she didn't believe in the swastika and indeed was saddened at the destruction of knowledge. As an art historian, Elsa was very devoted to the pursuit of knowledge and regarded books very highly; at the rally in Berlin, Germany, Elsa wept at the sight of so many books being consigned to the flames. This, alongside her obsession to find the Holy Grail for her own glory, was one of the key factors for which Elsa refused to burn the Grail Diary. Indiana Jones could see her averting her gaze from before looking forward again at the burned books, concluding she was slightly disturbed at the sight; indeed, despite her claims to believe in the Grail, Elsa acknowledged she had committed mistakes, like failing to realize the Party's evils and falling in love for Jones despite those never being her intentions. Betraying Donovan with the False Grail was perceived by Indy as her trying to do something right to make amends, but wondered if maybe it was to further her own ends instead. She was a double agent, willing to help Jones as long as his work benefitted her or her employers. She regarded the Grail as her true passion, with men such as Jones and politics just being a means to a another end for her, being willing to keep herself at Donovan's side until they found the artifact, whose promises she regarded as too wondrous to pass up for herself, even if that meant dying trying to get it.

Seductive, sinister and full of secrets, Elsa was the definition of a true femme fatale whose face was deemed by Indy as a riddle in addition to lovely and soft. She had blonde hair and lapis-lazuli eyes. Her eagerness to get into the catacombs made Jones see her as a "girl with spirit", finding her a dedicated scholar, a cool-headed partner and a warm-blooded woman, which was what Jones looked for in his life. She also had a distaste for rats, evidently suffering from musophobia. She was also quite ruthless, as demonstrated by how she seduced both Joneses to get closer to them and the Grail before dropping them without hesitation once they were no longer needed. Despite that, however, she was also capable of qualities like sympathy, sorrow and compassion – having reacted in horror when Donovan shot Henry Walton Jones, Senior. This possibly proved the last straw, as she would later offer to find the Grail for Donovan upon arriving in its chamber, only to intentionally pick the wrong one and get him killed – but ultimately her lust for the material gain of the Grail corrupted her and led to her death, showing that glory and power meant more to her than her own life.*