Trivia / Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

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• Actor-Inspired Element: It was Cate Blanchett's idea for Irina Spalko to have a bob cut.
• Actor Leaves, Character Dies: Henry Jones is said to have died in-between films due to Sean Connery's 2006 retirement.
• Awesome, Dear Boy:
  • While he would later come to regret it, Shia LaBeouf was so excited to be in a new Indiana Jones movie (to the point of not being able to speak for a solid minute, by his own admission) that he accepted the offer without reading the script or even knowing what character he'd be playing.
  • Cate Blanchett had wanted to play a villain for a "couple of years" and came up with many of Spalko's traits (like the bob haircut) herself.
• Banned in China: Subverted in Russia. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation tried to get it banned, but failed.
• Beam Me Up, Scotty!: A lot of people as of late seem to remember Indy saying "In your dreams, kid" to Mutt when he's about to put on Indy’s hat at the end, but he never says the line. See Justin Whang’s video for more info.
• California Doubling: This is the only Indiana Jones film to be shot entirely in the United States. As in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Hawaii doubles for the jungles of South America, although this time they filmed on the Big Island rather than Kauai. Additionally, New Mexico doubles for Nevada.
• The Character Died with Him: Marcus Brody did not appear in the film due to Denholm Elliott's death in 1992. A statue honoring Brody, on the Marshall College's grounds, is shown, and the character's death was written into the movie with the death of the actor. Indy also has a picture of him on his desk, showing Brody during Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (in a moment when he was lost so how the picture was taken is a bit of a mystery).
• Channel Hop: A director example: This was Steven Spielberg's first movie since The Lost World: Jurassic Park not done by DreamWorks SKG. Between 1998-2005, the films he directed were by produced or co-produced by them.
• Creator Backlash:
  • Two years after it came out, Shia LaBeouf opened up about his feelings on the film, expressing disappointment with it, saying he felt like he "dropped the ball on the legacy that people loved and cherished." The statement would later damage his relationship with Spielberg, who told him, "There's a time to be a human being and have an opinion, and there's a time to sell cars."
  • Screenwriter David Koepp admitted that he wasn't happy with the idea of aliens being in the film and that he tried to convince Lucas and Spielberg to change it but they refused.
• Creator's Favorite: Steven Spielberg named Irina Spalko as his favourite villain in the series.
• The Danza: Dimitri shares the same name as his late actor Dimitri Diatchenko.
• Development Gag: Not for the film itself, so much as one Spielberg produced thirty years earlier. The original time machine in Back to the Future was converted from a used refrigerator, which Doc Brown would take to an A-Bomb test, letting the bomb's effects send Marty back to his rightful time. However, Spielberg was uncomfortable with the idea, concerned that kids might climb into abandoned fridges to play-act the scene, and so asked Robert Zemeckis to find a different approach, which he did once it proved too expensive to pull off. However, no good idea goes unpunished, as guess what iconic scene occurs in this movie?^note For the uninformed, older refrigerators were held closed with latches that locked from the outside. More contemporaneous models are held closed with magnets, meaning that this wouldn't be a concern to modern parents.
• Fake American: U.S. General Bob Ross is portrayed by New Zealander Alan Dale.
• Fake Russian: Cate Blanchett, an Australian native, plays the Ukrainian Colonel Irina Spalko.
• Kids' Meal Toy: Burger King sold toys based on key scenes from the movie, such as the tomb reveal, in their Kids' Meals. The film also got its own Double Whopper sandwich and an online game.
• Hide Your Pregnancy: Cate Blanchett was actually three months pregnant by the time she finished filming, which make her fencing on moving vehicle stunts even more impressive.
• Real-Life Relative: Sasha Spielberg, the real-life daughter of Steven Spielberg, briefly appears as a slugger in a bar.
• Role Reprise:
  • Harrison Ford reprises his role as Indiana Jones 13 years after his previous appearance in The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles episode "Young Indiana Jones and the Mystery of the Blues".
  • Karen Allen returns as Marion for the first time since 1981's Raiders of the Lost Ark.
• Saved from Development Hell: It took 19 years for the film to be released, mainly because it took that long for George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford to find a script they liked.
• Sequel Gap: Came out 19 years after Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Scarlett Johansson, Natalie Portman, Gemma Arterton, Michelle Yeoh and Virginia Madsen were considered for the role of Irina Spalko before Cate Blanchett was cast.
  • John Rhys-Davies opted out of returning for a quick cameo as Sallah for the wedding scene between Indy and Marion at the end. He later regretted declining the offer, hence why he returned to the role one last time for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. As he tells the Onion AV Club:
    Davies: "I guess it would’ve been rather sweet to be in that last little thing, and they did offer to bring a camera crew to me in order to film a bit of blue screen where you would’ve seen me clapping for the happy couple. But that’s all it would’ve been. I don’t know, I suppose I felt as though it would’ve cheated the audience just a little bit. I like to think the audience has some fondness for Sallah, and just to give him an appearance as brief as all that, a quick cutaway… well, that's sort of short-selling him, isn't it, really?"
  • Henry Jones, Sr. was supposed to have a small role in the film, but Sean Connery declined to return, quipping, "Retirement is too enjoyable." His character died between films as a result.
  • John Hurt's character was originally meant to be an aged, slightly off-his-kilter Henry Jones Sr., but Hurt himself didn't like the idea of "stealing" Sean Connery's character, and he was re-written as Oxley. Of note is that virtually nothing was changed, they just name swapped him.
  • During the film's decades-long Development Hell, both Roy Chiao (Lao Che) and Ric Young (Kao Kan) from Temple of Doom expressed interest in returning to the series, with Spielberg even considering making them the main antagonists. Those plans were quashed when Chiao died in 1999.
  • Early script treatments from The '90s supposedly had Indy communicate frequently with the alien, who would have had a name and a backstory.
  • In one of the treatments, Indy has a daughter instead of a son, which lines up with the original version of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles before they were edited to remove all the "present-day Old Indy" scenes.
  • Frank Darabont's original script was called Indiana Jones and the City of the Gods from which originated the aliens and the infamous "Nuke the Fridge" scene, but did not include Mutt.
• You Sound Familiar: In the European French dub, General Bob Ross was voiced by Marc Cassot, who also voiced René Belloq (Paul Freeman) way back in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

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