Indiana Jones and the Palace of Heaven is a Fix Fic rewrite of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, removing the more contenous elements - the "nuke the fridge" scene, the aliens, and Mutt Williams, reimagining the child of Indy and Marion Ravenwood as a daughter - Marianne "Junior" Jones - while keeping the Soviets as villains and a plot revolving around the Cold War and nuclear power.
- Affectionate Nickname: Indy calls his daughter Junior, and she likes it about as much as he did.
- Big Bad: Irina Spaklo, seeking Kunlun and its Red Mercury mine in order to create a meson bomb and win World War III.
- Breaking Old Trends: In this case Indy walks away with a major treasure - the Buddhist Sutras from Journey to the West, albeit the Joneses decide to entrust them to a monastery of Shaolin nuns in the Himalayas.
- Call-Back: Indy stills gets letters from Willie Scott, having settled back down in Missouri with Short Round.
- Central Theme: Grief, and how there is no right or wrong way in dealing with it. Both Indy and Junior dealt with the loss of Henry Sr in their own ways.
- Despotism Justifies the Means: Spalko admits to Indy to not believing in Marx or any of the tenets of Soviet Communism; like Stalin, she only believes in seeking power for its own sake.
- Doting Grandparent: The late Henry Jones Sr adored his granddaughter.
- Dies Differently in Adaptation: Spalko meets her end as a meal for the Snow Lion pride.
- Happily Married: Indy and Marion, having tied the knot in 1939.
- Hidden Depths: Indy is quite well read in Marx, and attempts to have a conversation on the finer points of dialectical materialism with Spalko, at which she freely admits her only loyalty is to Stalin, and to conquering the world in his name.
- Hypothetical Casting:
- Keira Knightley as Marianne "Junior" Jones.
- Michelle Yeoh as Shayama, the abbess of a convent of Shaolin nuns in the Himalayas.
- MacGuffin Location: The titular Palace of Heaven, Kunlun, which contains the only known supply of Red Mercury.
- Mineral MacGuffin: Xirang or Red Mercury, a mineral found in the Himalayas, that produces an isotope ten times the destructive power of uranium.
- Panthera Awesome: Just like the legends, Kunlun is guarded by a pride of Snow Lions.
- Science Hero: Junior is already a gifted physicist at the age of twenty.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes??: For Henry it was rats, for Indy it's still snakes, and now for Junior it's bats, which Kunlun is full of.