Sharon Stone was one of the top choices for the role of Willie Scott before Kate Capshaw auditioned.

Shots of mining-car roller-coaster ride were done with models and a 35mm camera modified to hold extra film.

The rope bridge used during the final fight scene was actually suspended up a couple of hundred feet across a gorge on location in Sri Lanka. Acrophobic Steven Spielberg would never walk over it, and had to drive a mile and a half to reach the other side. Harrison Ford on the other hand had no such fear, and would run across it at full speed.

Cameo: [George Lucas] a missionary in the background in the airport scene at the beginning.

Cameo: [Frank Marshall] a tourist in the background in the airport scene at the beginning.

The club at the beginning is called "Club Obi Wan", a reference to a Star Wars (1977) character.

Despite being the second film in the series, the action of 'Temple of Doom' actually takes place before the other films (1935), with Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) taking place in 1936, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) in 1938, and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) in 1957.

An early draft of the script for Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) had Indy traveling to Shanghai to recover a piece of the Staff of Ra. During his escape from the museum where it was housed, he sheltered from machine gun fire behind a giant rolling gong. The same script also featured Indy and Marion fleeing destruction in a mine-cart chase. Both of these scenes were cut from that script, but resurface in this movie.

WILHELM SCREAM: When the tommy gun welding man is shot by Indy during the car chase at Shanghai.

The first film to use THX's Theatre Alignment Program, which ensures that cinemas showing the film meet stringent technical and presentation standards.

For the DVD release, over 970,000 frames were cleaned up by Lowry Digital Images, the same company that cleaned up Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), North by Northwest (1959) and Sunset Blvd. (1950) for DVD.

Lawrence Kasdan was unavailable as he was working on The Big Chill (1983), so George Lucas drafted in Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz who had previously penned American Graffiti (1973) for him. Lucas deliberately wanted to go with something with a darker tone as this had served him well with Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980).

The film's original title was "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Death" which was changed because it sounded too foreboding.

Although it's never mentioned in the film, Willie's full name is Wilhelmina.

This was Kate Capshaw's second theatrical film.

Kate Capshaw's dress in the Shanghai club was completely made of 1920's and 1930's original beads. This meant that there was only enough to make one dress. The opening dance number was actually the last scene to be shot, but the dress did feature in some earlier location shots in Sri Lanka, in particular, a night-time one with Harrison Ford and Kate Capshaw sitting by a campfire, with the dress drying on a nearby tree. Unfortunately an elephant had started to eat the entire back of the dress, which was saved just in time. Consequently, some emergency repair work had to be done with what remained of the original beads, and it was costume designer Anthony Powell who had to fill in the insurance forms. As to the reason for damage, he had no option but to put "dress eaten by elephant".

The "giant vampire bats" that are shown in the movie were actually fruit bats; vampire bats are a lot smaller.

For the bug chamber sequence, Kate Capshaw was covered with over 2,000 bugs.

Most of the cavernous mine where the mine cart chase takes place is miniature, with the walls made of painted aluminium foil.

Kate Capshaw was thrilled at the opportunity of singing and dancing in the opening musical number - a dream for any actress - but The reality was her dress was so tight, there was very little movement she could attempt without ripping it.

For the bug chamber sequence, Kate Capshaw was really covered with over two thousand insects. She took sedatives prior to the scene to get over her initial fear, and claimed "they definitely worked".

D.R. Nanayakkara, cast as the Indian village Shaman, did not speak a word of English. He delivered his lines phonetically by mimicking Steven Spielberg who was prompting him off-camera. The pauses in his dialogue were therefore not for dramatic effect, but rather waiting for his next line.

Kate Capshaw was very critical of her own character, saying that Willie was "not much more than a dumb screaming blonde".

Ke Huy Quan's film debut. An open casting call was put out to all the elementary schools to find a young Asian actor to play Short Round. Quan arrived with his brother, not to audition, but merely to provide moral support. He caught the casting director's attention because he spent the entire time of his brother's audition telling him what to do and what not to do. Steven Spielberg liked his personality, so he and Harrison Ford improvised the scene where Short Round accuses Indy of cheating during a card game. Quan won the role over about 6,000 other auditions.

Amrish Puri shaved his head for the role of Mola Ram. This created such an impression that he kept this look and became one of India's most popular film villains.

Continuity

In close up, Indy's head is about to go under the crusher. But after he picks up the saw, in the wide shot, his head is well away from the crusher.

When Willie is to be sacrificed in the lava pit and the fight breaks out at the top, the distances she is alternately lowered and raised are entirely at odds with the turning of the wheel.

The wooden log stuck on the front of the thuggees mine cart disappears in some shots.

In the spiked room, the roof keeps changing positions from shot to shot as it cuts back and forth between Indy and Willie.

In the fight between Indiana and the two swordfighters, Indiana whips one of the fighters' swords down the mountain. In the next cut he picks up the same sword.



Factual errors

During the infamous meal scene the guests are served live eels to consume. In reality, eating raw eels could be fatal to a human as their blood is highly poisonous; that's why eels are always served cooked.

After the pilots bail out and Indy comes in to fly the plane, a closeup is shown of the altimeter falling. It starts at 5000 feet. But that altitude is way too low given the view of the snow covered mountains out the front window.

The plane explodes in flames instantly upon hitting the mountainside, even though it's completely out of fuel.

The Thugees torture Indiana Jones with a voodoo doll. However, neither the Muslims nor Hindus ever used voodoo practices - which are found only in a few African and Caribbean Nations.

The Ford Trimotor of 1935 had no automatic pilot and had to be hand-flown (someone steering the plane) at all times. When the Chinese pilots left the control wheels in the cockpit, the plane was at the mercy of aerodynamics and the elements. Flying over mountains where there would be updrafts and downdrafts would have immediately upset what little equilibrium the plane would have had and immediately put it into and bank and/or dive instead of flying straight and level as it did in the movie.



Incorrectly regarded as goofs

Indy tells Willie that he "caught" Shorty when the latter was 4 years old and after "the Japanese bombed Shanghai", killing Shorty's entire family. The movie plays in 1935, but the Second Sino-Japanese War only started in 1937. However, there was also a bombing in 1932, so it makes sense.

Indy points to some bats and says that they're vampire bats. Although true vampire bats are indigenous to South America and are entirely nocturnal, the bats he is pointing at are Large Flying Foxes, binomially called Pteropus Vampyrus. So given their size it is not unthinkable to refer to them as "Giant Vampire Bats" Also he was trying to frighten Willie.

When Indy, Shorty and Willie leave the village by elephant, Shorty sits on a small elephant. Then Shorty sits in front of Indy on his elephant, before being back on his own small elephant. This is not a continuity goof because ample time passes for Short Round to dismount and mount one of the other elephants for whatever reason he chooses, say needing to talk to Indiana Jones.

Some viewers have wondered why Lao Che's two pilots chose to take off and then parachute out of the plane rather than killing Indiana and his friends while they were sleeping. The novelization explains that Lao Che ordered the pilots to kill the passengers in mid-flight, but the pilots refused to do so on conscientious and superstitious grounds, and decided to abandon the plane instead.

The Ford Tri Motor depicted in the film had an OBS (Omni bearing selector) on its panel. While these gauges are used for VOR navigation commonly today these gauges are also used for instrument landing systems (ILS) which were first used in 1929 and were coming into wide use in 1935 when the movie took place.



Revealing mistakes

During the opening dance scene, a shot has clearly been reversed to give the illusion that the dancers are rising up effortlessly from a split on the stage floor.

The amount of water that spilled out of the overturned water tower would not make it all the way to the end of the tunnels where Indy, Willie, and Short Round escape to. There were several instances where the rail car tracks went over large chasms of molten rock in which the water would have evaporated or filled up before it ever reached the end of the tunnels.

Throughout the length of the mine cart chase, Indy and friends pass through many wide-open chasms as well as several forks on the track, but yet the rushing water at the end of the chase somehow manages to traverse through all of those and still make it in full force to Indy and friends at the end of the track.

When Short Round first sets off the mechanism that results in him and Indy been trapped in the room with the descending spiked ceiling, the sounds of the mechanism are obviously those of pneumatically driven equipment.

As Indy is shot at with arrows while climbing up the bridge, it is very clear that many of the arrows hit and bounce off him.



Miscellaneous

Throughout the wagon chase scene, Willy wears sandals. However, when Indiana, Short Round and Willy flee the mine from the water, the water begins to dissolve the soil around the hole. At that moment it is seen that Willy is barefoot. However, when she and Short Round start to climb the rope bridge, it is clear that she is wearing sandals again.

At the banquet, each guest has a large round bolster behind them. However, when Willie faints at the sight of the chilled monkey brains dessert, she falls all the way back to the floor, and there is no sign of her bolster.

The owl that scares Willy appears to be either a great horned owl or a Eurasian eagle-owl, it is hard to tell for sure since it is dark and only seen for a few seconds. However neither species would be found in the jungles of southern India. The great horned owl is only found in North and South America. The Eurasian eagle-owl is only found in the northern and central regions of Europe and Asia, it is very rare for them to be found in India, and only then in the northern most parts of India. Usually the furthest south they are found in southeast Asia is Pakistan.

There is no way that Short Round (Shortie) knew that Indy and Willie jumped through the window of the club and fallen four stories and awnings into the back seat of Shortie's car at that exact moment.

The shot where the mine cart nearly tips into a river of lava is quite obviously a model shot, with the Indiana Jones miniature looking like a cheap toy.



Anachronisms

Short Round says the cave floor feels like "fortune cookies". Prior to WWII, fortune cookies were called fortune tea cakes, and largely only served in America, where he has never been to.

When Willie and Short Round are hanging from the bridge and they start climbing up, a small, modern, private plane can be seen flying (briefly) to the right.

In the overview shot in the mine, just before Short Round and Dr. Jones end up in a metal cage and learn about Kali's Blood, one of the men sending sparks in the air in the middle of the screen is sporting a very obvious blue/metal disc cutter.

In the wide shots of Indy sitting at the table talking to Lao, modern stage lights are clearly visible in the club in the background.

When the British Indian Army Riflemen arrive and fire on the Thugees, they are firing Lee-Enfield No. 4 MkI Rifle although the film is set in 1935. The No.4 Mk I was not first issued to British troops in 1939 but was not adopted officially until 1941.



Audio/visual unsynchronised

When Willie is on the elephant yelling "I can't go to Pankot, I'm a singer!" her lips don't match the audio.

In the mine, when Shorty uses the ladder as a pole vault, he holds the bag with his mouth yet we hear him scream.

As the trio is about to jump out of the plane, Shorty says, "Lady, I can't breathe," but his mouth doesn't move.

When the escaping Indian boy is leaning against a boulder to rest, the sounds of his breathing do not match the actual rise and fall of his chest.

When Indiana Jones and Short Round were caught in the room with the ceiling coming down at Pankot Palace, spikes come out of the ceiling and we see a wide shot (at 0:56:59) of Indiana Jones and Short Round in the corner of the room. In the very next close-up (at 0:57:01), Indiana yells "This is serious!" But in the preceding wide shot, his mouth moves, mouthing, "This is s - !" but no audio is heard. He also slightly slouches while saying the line, the way he does in the close-up. All this indicates that the footage of Indiana Jones yelling, "This is serious!" was used twice... for some strange reason.



Crew or equipment visible

While fighting on the hanging bridge, Indy's safety cord is clearly visible (at 1:47:41 as Mola Ram falls onto Indy).

When Indy returns to the mine to free the children, a wire is visible on the first Thuggee he punches, pulling the Thuggee across the gravel.

During the final shot of the rickshaw crashing , a third wheel in the rear of the rickshaw is visible, which allowed it to be ridden with its "nose up" for the scene.

Lao barks at Willie to "Sit Down!" after she complains about the two holes Indy has made in her dress. In the wide shot of Willie sliding onto her seat, you can see a crew member's head lift very briefly to the right of her chair, as he is obviously helping Kate Capshaw shift the chair across the floor as she sits.

Steel cable visible holding up the rope bridge (at 1:44:10 when Indy is trapped in the center of the bridge between palace guards).



Errors in geography

Florida alligators in India.

In the Indian village, everyone speaks Sinhala, the Sri Lankan language.

In the beginning Lao Che's freight plane is seen flying over the Great Wall of China. Then there is a map with a straight line from Shanghai to Chungking. The wall is nowhere near that but further north and west of Shanghai closer to Mongolia.

In the shot where Indy enters the main hold of the aircraft (while fleeing Shanghai), a map on the wall to his left shows Burma as a separate country (with a thick colored border marked to separate it from British India). The map overlay tracking the flight from Shanghai to Chungking and towards India) has a similar detail. Burma was a part of the British Indian empire till April 1937, and maps drawn in 1935 would show Burma, Bangladesh and India (now separate countries) as a contiguous political entity, with no international border separating Burma from the rest of British India (this happened only after 1st April 1937).

After Indy takes off from Shanghai in the Ford Tri-Motor 4AT, we see a shot of the plane flying over the Great Wall of China just before the map comes on screen, but then the map shows the plane's route as going from Shanghai, WSW to Chungking, and again West onto India (before crashing). The Great Wall of China snakes across Northern China north of Beijing, which is hundreds of miles north of Shanghai, so the plane's route, according to the map, takes it nowhere even close the Great Wall.



Plot holes

During the mineshaft sequence Mola Ram tries to drown Indy, Willie and Shorty with the water of a huge cauldron. Since it has been established that the mineshaft is full of many caverns, some of which contain lava, there is no way that that water could have reached all the way to the end of the shaft.

This movie is a prequel to Raiders of the Lost Ark, where Indiana Jones is initially skeptical of the Ark's powers and casually dismisses Marcus' concerns about any supernatural occurrence. Considering that, in Temple of Doom (which takes place a year before), Indy faced unmistakably supernatural events and his whole purpose was to recover a sacred artifact, the plot of Doom retroactively makes Indy's skepticism in Raiders nonsensical.

The Thuggees are tough men with weapons, and Mola Ram has the power of voodoo on his side, but yet they only use kids for slave labor and not the adults from the villages too, which would benefit them much more.

When Willie wakes up Indy and Short round on the airplane, Short round goes to the back of the plane while Wille shows Indy the empty cockpit. They contemplate the danger, then as they exit the cockpit Short Round comes up and shouts "No more parachutes!" Why would he be looking for those? At this point he has no idea the plane is in danger.

The villagers children are seen wearing no footwear while prisoners, most likely to keep them from escaping. Yet the captors allow Short Round to keep his shoes on.



Character error

Although they might be consumed in some parts of Southeast Asia, snakes, insects, and monkey brains would never be served in India (and especially not in the palace of a Hindu king or "maharaja") due to very strict Hindu and Islamic dietary codes. In fact, a significant portion of Indians (mostly Hindus) are strict vegetarians due to those religious dietary restrictions.

Short Round supposedly was born and grew up in Shanghai, however he only spoke Cantonese (dialect of Canton) in the movie, not the Shanghainese dialect.

During the car chase, one of Lao Che's goons is shot in the head and then he screams.

Indy describes Sankara meeting Shiva on "Mount Kalisa," which he pronounces "kah-LEE-sah." This is a gross mispronunciation of the actual abode of the Hindu god Shiva: Mount Kailash, which is sometimes spelled "Kailasa" and is pronounced "kai-LAH-sh."

The type of pike held by the guards at the palace dinner, is not Indian, it is a Chinese "guandao".