God Does Not Own This World: Crichton sold adaptation rights for a film, later spent a year and a half making an adventure game (together with a programmer and an artist), and then his publisher discovered he accidentally sold the game rights too. Because video games did not really exist back when he negotiated. The game was renamed to Amazon and underwent some changes. Amy the gorilla became a talking parrot, killer gorillas became cannibal natives, diamonds became emeralds. And the hippos were left unchanged.
Technology Marches On: The book is full of technobabble, which was probably impressive when the book was published in 1980, but is now hilariously dated. A particularly amusing example is the 'amazingly sophisticated' computer that has 189K of memory.
Cast the Runner-Up: Bruce Campbell originally auditioned for the role of Elliot. Having him and Tim Curry sharing the screen would've surely caused the universe to implode.
Creator Backlash: In his autobiography, Bruce Campbell derides John Patrick Shanley's insistence on his scripts being filmed exactly as written. After the first take, the director chided him for adding a few "uh"s, meaning for the whole filming process he had to be more concerned with making sure he didn't let out any more unconscious interjections rather than actually performing, and imagines the same was true for everyone else.
Averted with some of Campbell's costars: Ernie Hudson is proud of his work on the movie, supposedly calling Munro his personal favorite character. Laura Linney says that while Congo didn't present her with much of an acting challenge, she remembers the experience of making it fondly, viewing it as a valuable learning experience on the ins-and-out of Hollywood.
Follow the Leader: After the smash success of Crichton's other modernized Jungle Opera pastiche, Jurassic Park, this film was almost immediately optioned by Hollywood (with significantly diminishing returns).
Money, Dear Boy: When asked if he had any regrets about the film, Bruce Campbell replied, "Well, the cheque cleared".
Pop-Culture Urban Legends: There are rumors of a Deleted Scene where one of the gorillas, in a pivotal scene in the movie, wields a laser gun. Nobody is sure if these rumored scenes exist, but YouTube channel Funhaus started an investigation after discussing it on their movie podcast. This is probably a misremembered conflation of the climactic scene where a laser gun is used against the gorillas by the human protagonists.
Sequel in Another Medium: The film has a 1996 video game sequel, Congo The Movie: The Lost City of Zinj which is a FPS.
Star-Making Role: For Laura Linney. Though Linney had a few minor film and television roles before Congo,note She had notably appeared as a singer accused of murder in Law & Order the previous year she was mostly known for her theater work at this point in her career. Her performance was generally considered one of the movie's high points, and she wound up finding more prestigious film work soon afterwards.
Vacation, Dear Boy: Bruce Campbell was just fine with the small role he got in the film, as it meant a few days of shooting amid several weeks of tropical vacation on the studio dime.
As Bruce Campbell said when asked why he decided to be in this (for reasons beyond a paycheck), he made note that by all means the movie should have turned out a lot better than it did, considering the people they got as the writer, director, editor, producer, and composer. On paper it seemed like an automatic winning formula.
Frank Marshall originally intended to use the computer work pioneered on Jurassic Park for the gorillas, but opted for suits as computers weren't yet capable of reproducing hair.
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