- Awesome Music:
- Ann Wilson's "Best Man in The World
", with music composed by John Barry. There's an instrumental version online conducted by Barry in his signature style. - Along with "Wisdom of the Ages" and the adaptation of "Puttin' On The Ritz" for the dancing tin can scene, the song was one of the few Barry pieces to actually remain in the film; Barry's original score was almost completely thrown out when it was decided that as an Eddie Murphy movie, it called for more Eddie Murphy-esque music. Thus Michel Colombier did a funkier score.
- Ann Wilson's "Best Man in The World
- Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The dancing Pepsi can scene. While back in the day it can be considered Visual Effects of Awesome, by modern standards the scene is extremely jarring and comes out of nowhere.
- Complete Monster: Sardo Numspa is an Evil Sorcerer who seeks to murder the titular "Golden Child" to allow the hordes of Hell to overrun the Earth. Attacking a Tibetan monastery with his men, Numspa has the monks slaughtered and is revealed to have even ordered the murder of children to get his hands on the Golden Child. Failing to get a dagger he needs for his plans from social worker Chandler Jarrell, Numspa has Chandler tortured and when he obtains the dagger, tries to have Chandler killed, murdering a young woman who tries to protect him.
- Hilarious in Hindsight: Jarrel meets Kala, a Half-Human Hybrid whose ancestor was supposedly raped by a dragon. Eddie Murphy later on stars in Shrek where he plays a Donkey that ends up in a loving relationship with a dragon that didn't quite start out consensually.
- And earlier played a dragon himself in Mulan.
- Memetic Mutation: The Charles Dance clapping gif with the "Applause" sign above his head◊ comes from this film's dream scene.
- "I said I-I-I-I-I-I-I want the kniiiiiiiiiife..."
- Signature Scene: Bring up The Golden Child to someone, and the first reference point will certainly be "I-I-I-I-I want the knife".
- Tough Act to Follow: For all intents the movie was a success, with a domestic total of $79 million on $25 million. Yet distributor Paramount treated it as a Box Office Bomb for not being a smash hit like Eddie Murphy's previous movie for them, Beverly Hills Cop (not helping was how studio bosses Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg left to Walt Disney Productions). Murphy himself, while showing Creator Backlash, highlighted it was not a flop even if treated as such - "My pictures make their money back. No matter how I feel, for instance, about The Golden Child – which was a piece of shit – the movie made more than $100 million. So who am I to say it sucks?"
- Special Effect Failure: The Stop Motion animation used for Numspa's demon form is really jarringly bad, which is atypical given that the effects were done by Industrial Light & Magic.
- That there was a much better sequence with an animated Pepsi can dancing earlier in the film makes the terrible demon effects stand out even more.
- Visual Effects of Awesome: The dancing Pepsi can.
