Yuri Valentinovich Knorozov, a Soviet ethnographer who is particularly renowned for the pivotal role his research played in the decipherment of the Maya script, the writing system used by the pre-Columbian Maya civilization of Mesoamerica.

                                                                         Also, Dr. Evil.

Photographed in his island lair somewhere in the South Pacific.  Or the icy Arctic.  No one is sure where.

 

This is a real person.

He apparently was always scowling like that.  

At school, the young Yuri was a difficult and somewhat eccentric student, who made indifferent progress in a number of subjects and was almost expelled for poor and willful behavior. He also developed an appreciation for a freshly shorn ... well, you'll have to watch the movie for that.

During WWII, he served the Soviet Union as an artillery spotter, and rode with the Red Army into Berlin.

"You say there are schnitzel in Berlin??"

Later in life, after the success of his decipherment of the Mayan script, President Cerezo of Guatemala awarded Knorozov the Order of the Quetzal.  Not to be outdone my mere Guatemalans, the government of Mexico then awarded Knorozov the Order of the Aztec Eagle, the highest decoration awarded by the Mexican state to non-citizens.  Knorozov then bit a chuck out of the medal, and declared it to be delicious.

In his very last years, Knorozov is also known to have pointed to a place in the United States as the likely location of Chicomoztoc, the ancestral land from which—according to ancient documents and accounts considered mythical by a sizable number of scholars—indigenous peoples now living in Mexico are said to have come.

He also, apparently, was able to reproduce, with a woman (surely unwillingly, as he likely preferred his mates to be).  

The issue was not, unfortunately, named Scott, but Ekaterina.  Maybe there was a Scott, but he died and is buried in a shallow grave somewhere in eastern Siberia.

Quite the story, and all of it is true.  Or some of it.