Trivia for
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)

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• When describing how he prepared for playing the role of young Indiana Jones, River Phoenix explained that he didn't really base his portrayal on the Indiana Jones character. Instead, he decided to do his rendition of actor Harrison Ford. So he observed Ford out of character before acting his part.
  
  
• 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.
  
  
• To help achieve the sound of thousands of rats, sound designer Ben Burtt actually used the higher registers of thousands of chickens.
  
  

• At the climax when the temple first starts to split apart, one of the sounds employed is someone rubbing on a balloon.
  
  
• Steven Spielberg is on record as saying he made the film for two reasons: 1) to fulfill a three-picture obligation he had with George Lucas, and, 2) to atone for the criticism that he received for the previous installment, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984).
  
  
• Having Sean Connery play Jones' father was an inside joke to James Bond being the father of Indiana Jones. Spielberg had always wanted to do a Bond film but did Indiana Jones as a James Bond type character.
  
  
• Steven Spielberg's favorite of the first three "Indiana Jones" films.
  
  
• Both tanks (the hero tank for full shots and process tank for closeups of action) now reside at the Disney/MGM Studios in Disney World in Florida, although the process tank is no longer on display.
  
  
• The music playing in the scene where Indy meets Adolf Hitler is adapted from the "Königgrätzer Marsch" by Johann Gottfried Piefke (1815-1884).
  
  
• When it came to filming the rat scene, the producers inquired of their insurer, Fireman's Fund, whether they were insured if the animals were for some reason indisposed, due to illness, an accident, or simply because they refused to perform. This was a delicate issue, as one lost day of filming can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, yet the experts at Fireman's Fund were able to reach a compromise which pleased both sides. They asked the director what would be the least number of rats needed for a dramatic shot. If different camera angles were used, 1,000 rats would probably be sufficient, came the answer. Thus Fireman's Fund underwrote the world's first insurance policy with a 1,000-rat deductible.
  
  
• Sean Connery was always Steven Spielberg's first choice to play Indiana Jones's father.
  
  
• Harrison Ford (Indiana Jones) and 'Pat Roach' (Gestapo) are the only actors to appear in all three films in the trilogy. Roach played Giant Sherpa/First Mechanic in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)' and Chief Guard in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984).
  
  
• First Indiana Jones movie to receive a PG-13 rating by the MPAA. Although Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) was instrumental in the development of the PG-13 rating, the MPAA only gave it a PG-rating.
  
  
• When George Lucas met with Steven Spielberg to discuss a third Indiana Jones movie, he wanted to have it set in a haunted mansion. Spielberg had just finished Poltergeist (1982) and decided that he wanted to do something different. Lucas then came up with the idea of the Holy Grail and Spielberg added the idea of a father/son sub-story.
  
  
• Director Trademark: [Steven Spielberg] [music]
  
  
• Director Trademark: [Steven Spielberg] [father] Henry Jones Sr. was never around after his wife died.
  
  
• For the sewer sequence, technicians rigged up 1000 mechanical rats to fit in with the hundreds of real rats.
  
  
• Sean Connery and Harrison Ford wore no trousers during the shooting of the entire Zeppelin sequence (mainly because it was filmed in a very hot studio and Connery didn't want to sweat too much).
  
  
• Harrison Ford was the one who suggested using River Phoenix to play him as a teenager.
  
  
• When shooting in Venice, they were allowed to have complete control of the Grand Canal from 7am to 1pm for one day.
  
  
• Costume designer Anthony Powell sourced real Nazi uniforms from Eastern Europe for all the actors playing German soldiers.
  
  
• The production had two tanks for the tank chase scene; one of them was made of aluminum. The whole chase took about 10 days to film, instead of the projected two days.
  
  
• There were several scenes that were shot but did not make it into the final film. To this day, it remains unreleased in all formats. Among the scenes cut out were:
  • 1. Indy saw a rubbing charcoal picture of the stained glass with numerals in the plane. Part of it was used in the plane montage scene. It shows his eagerness to rub the knight's shield in Venice.
  • 2. A longer scene at the entrance hall in Brunwald. After Indy knocks out the butler, both Indy and Elsa hid the body in a decorated sarcophagus nearby.
  • 3. Two alternate takes of the butler saying "Then I am ..." one take had him saying 'Jesse Owens' while the other saying Mae West before settling for Mickey Mouse.
  • 4. The infamous scene in the parade of the director (Suzanne Roquette) filming the parade.
  • 5. After getting the diary back, Indy knocks out an officer with a long coat,thus it explains why he was wearing a long coat in the airport.
  • 6. A cat and mouse game between the Joneses and Vogel's gang. The Germans were guarding the plane ticket counters and Indy goes unnoticed of getting the zeppelin ticket in another counter.
  • 7. A longer Zeppelin scene where the drunken ace tells stories. It was intercut with the Jones' discussion.
  • 8. After the Joneses escape by the plane, the drunken flying ace with the Gestapo man tried to pursue them with another standby plane hooked to the zeppelin. But then they plunged to death because the pilot did not start the engine when disengaging.
  • 9. The Joneses meeting Sallah in Iskanderun's train station.
  • 10. Another German tank crew blowing the mouth hole of the canyon.
  • 11. A longer version of Kasim's death. Kasim held Elsa's hand with blood on her shirt as he slid down before he reading his lines.
  • 12. An alternate version of The Word of God scene. Indy steps on the J word only to have spiders crawling up to his necks. This shot appears in certain video covers.
  • 13. Indy was taken to Donovan's apartment against his will as Donovan's henchmen aimed guns at him.
  
  
  
• The idea of an airplane being carried by an airship was actually taken from the U.S. Navy airships U.S.S. Akron and U.S.S. Macon. Each airship, slightly smaller than the Zeppelin shown in the movie, actually had a trapeze (also known as a "sky hook") under the belly of the airship, and hangar space inside for up to four small planes. The planes were intended to act as scouts that used the airship as a flying aircraft carrier. The builders of the Hindenburg also attempted, with help from the Navy, to install a similar trapeze on the Hindenburg shortly before her disastrous last flight in 1937. The idea was for the small plane to act as a mail courier. However, the pilot was unable to "hook on" to the trapeze consistently, the experiment was abandoned, and the trapeze was removed from the Hindenburg before she departed for her final flight. In The Great Waldo Pepper (1975), the character of Kessler was based on that pilot, WW1 German ace Gen. Ernst Udet.
  
  
• While filming in Petra, Jordan, the Jordanian Royal Family (Queen Noor, Prince Hamzah, Prince Hashim and Princess Iman) visited the set.
  
  
• The temple right at the end of the movie exists, but not in Alexandretta. It is in Petra, in Jordan. However, there is no inside to it - the doorway that can be seen on screen is huge, eight or nine people shoulder to shoulder can easily walk thru it. It leads to a huge empty square room carved from the top down over two stories high. Similarly, they would be unable to get "lost" down the valley as the valley stretches for about a mile or so, and there is no other route but out.
  
  
• The film stars a former James Bond (Sean Connery), a former Bond ally (John Rhys-Davies), a former Bond girl (Alison Doody), two former Bond commanding officers (Michael Byrne and Billy J. Mitchell), a former Bond nightclub owner (Vernon Dobtcheff), and three former Bond villains (Julian Glover, Stefan Kalipha and 'Pat Roach' ).
  
  
• Begins with a shot of a rock in Utah which is reminiscent of the Paramount Pictures logo. See also Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008).
  
  
• Walter Donovan was played by Julian Glover, and Donovan's wife was played by Glover's wife, Isla Blair.
  
  
• When Indy is at Walter Donovan's, his wife enters the room begging Donovan to join the party, in the background the Star Wars (1977) theme commonly dubbed Storm Trooper march can be heard in the background being played on a piano.
  
  
• John Williams inserts the Ark of the Covenant's theme from Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) when Indy and Elsa come across a representation of the Ark on a wall in the catacombs below Venice.
  
  
• The character named "Fedora" in the credits (played by Richard Young) was in the script originally named Abner Ravenwood, Marion Ravenwood's father and Indiana's mentor who was mentioned in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981).
  
  
• Director Steven Spielberg included the opening scenes as a tribute to his own experiences as a Boy Scout.
  
  
• Harrison Ford cut his chin in a car accident in Northern California when he was about 20. In the movie, this cut is explained by young Indiana Jones cutting his chin with a whip. See also: Working Girl (1988).
  
  
• The dog barking when young Indy passes with the cross in his hand is an Alaskan malamute, the same type of dog the Lucases owned in the late 1970s.
  
  
• Unable to keep his hat on during the scene where he was chasing the tank on horseback despite trying glue, tape, and newspaper wedges, Harrison Ford pretended (in a "Making Of" special) to staple the hat to his head.
  
  
• Although Sean Connery is only 12 years older than Harrison Ford, he plays his father. See also the trivia entry for Family Business (1989).
  
  
• In the movie the grail is located in the Republic of Hatay near the city of Alexandretta. There actually was a Republic of Hatay from 1938 to 1939, after the region was granted independence from French Syria and before it became a province of Turkey. The capital of Hatay was Alexandretta before 1939 when the city's name was changed to Iskenderun and the capital moved to Antioch. An early title indicates the movie's action takes place in 1938.
  
  
• Chris Columbus wrote a rejected draft in which Indy traveled to Africa and dueled a Monkey prince, but the script was also rejected because of too many negative African stereotypes. However, the tank chase sequence in the film was taken from his draft.
  
  
• Just after watching Indiana wrestling with a Nazi, the soldier who looked through the periscope says something to his teammates in German. What he says translates as, "The American! He fights like a girl!"
  
  
• Indy's trademark hat, jacket, and whip currently reside in the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. These items remained on display during filming of 'Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull' , as they used numerous duplicates for their prop costumes.
  
  
• According to the address on the package he received from Italy, during The Last Crusade, Indy teaches at "Barnett College".
  
  
• Indiana Jones' horse also appeared in Rambo III (1988) as John Rambo's horse.
  
  
• When making Star Wars (1977), George Lucas owned a dog named "Indiana". This means that Sallah's laughing "you were named after a dog?" is true.
  
  
• When Indy and Elsa are in the underground tunnels in Venice, she points to a drawing on the wall and asks what it is. Indy tells her it is the Ark of the Covenant. She asks if he is sure and he says, "Pretty sure." This is a reference to Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) where Indiana Jones searches for the Ark.
  
  
• Julian Glover was originally approached to play the role of Vogel (The Nazi Colonel).
  
  
• When Dr Jones Sr. scares the "seagulls" to fly up and stop the plane, they are in fact pigeons, and not seagulls, as seagulls are not trainable. If you look closely you can also see that there are a number of 'cut out' seagulls in the sand, which do not move as the others do.
  
  
• Gregory Peck was considered to play Indy's father, should Connery have declined he role.
  
  
• The first and only Indiana Jones movie to receive an MPAA rating higher than PG; the recently created PG-13. This was the certificate that Steven Spielberg himself was partly responsible for (see Trivia for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)).
  
  
• The biplane used in this movie was also used in The Mummy (1999) and the "Doctor Who" (1963) story "The Deadly Assassin".
  
  
• During the Castle Brunwald rescue, Dr. Jones Sr. expresses dismay at Indy inadvertently bringing the diary into enemy hands saying that he "should have mailed it to the Marx Brothers". Harpo Marx revealed in his autobiography that he once really had to smuggle a journal of important documents out of Russia to keep them from falling into enemy hands.
  
  
• Indy's true name is finally revealed in this movie: Henry Jones, Jr. In the previous two films (and in this film, up until the final minute), he has only been referred to as "Indiana Jones" and variations thereof. ("Dr. Jones", "Indy", etc.)
  
  
• One of the false grails in the knight's chamber at the end of the film, a tall, weathered gold chalice with a large cup at the top dotted with thick gems, was the same chalice prop featured in _House That Dripped Blood, The (1970)_ in the segment "The Cloak", almost 20 years earlier.
  
  
• Henry Jones (senior) was, according to his backstory, born in the 1860s, which would make him roughly 75 years old at the time of the story. Sean Connery was only 58 at the time of filming, hence the beard and general "old man" attire his character wears.
  
  
• Indy impersonating a Scottish lord at Castle Brunwald was a nod to Indy's father's unspoken backstory, in which he was a Scottish university professor before emigrating to the USA to live in Utah, where Indy was born.
  
  
• Billy J. Mitchell and Jerry Harte, despite being credited in the end titles, were cut out of the final print.
  
  
• Tom Stoppard did uncredited rewrites on the script.
  
  
• Amanda Redman was asked to play the female lead but passed because of her fear of rats.
  
  
• WILHELM SCREAM: after the first grenade has been thrown in the desert gunfight scene.
  
  
• Two thousand rats were bred for the production (they had to be bred specially as ordinary rats would have been riddled with disease).
  
  
• This was the last film for veteran cinematographer Douglas Slocombe.
  
  
• When Tom Stoppard was brought in for rewriting the dialogue, specifically the lines for Henry and the Henry-Indy exchange. He was paid $120,000. After the film's release and success, he was paid another $1 million as a bonus. In "The Last Crusade: An Oral History," an article published in Empire magazine in 2006, Spielberg said about the Jr. and Sr. conversations, "It was an emotional story but I didn't want to get sentimental. Their disconnection from each other was the basis for a lot of comedy. And it gave Tom Stoppard, who was uncredited, a lot to write. Tom is pretty much responsible for every line of dialogue."
  
  
• Most of the uniforms worn by the Nazis in the Berlin book burning scene are authentic WW2 uniforms and not costumes. A cache of old uniforms was found in Germany and used in the film.
  
  
• During pre-production, the character 'Donovan' was originally called 'Chandler'.
  
  
• Denholm Elliott had been diagnosed with AIDS shortly before filming began, and was seriously ill on some days.
  
  
• 'Alex Hyde-White' plays Henry Jones, Sr. during the 1912 prologue with River Phoenix. However, Hyde-White's face is never shown and his lines were dubbed by Sean Connery.
  
  
• In the beginning of the film when Harrison Ford is teaching his class, he says, "...If it's truth you're interested in, Dr. Tyree's philosophy class is right down the hall." This is a reference to Ford's own professor (Ford was in fact a Philosophy major), Dr. William E. Tyree, at Ripon College, Ripon, WI.
  
  
• The music in Berlin when Indiana meets Adolf Hitler is indeed the "Koniggratzer Marsch" but is in fact a combination of this march AND the "Hohen Friedsberg" which is played about half way through and then goes back to the "Koniggratzer Marsch".
  
  
• Kevork Malikyan originally auditioned for the role of Sallah in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), but lost the role to John Rhys-Davies when he missed out the final round of auditions previously. However, Spielberg remembered his performance in the audition and cast him for the role of Kazim.
  
  

• SPOILER: Donovan's death sequence by rapid aging was the first all-digital composite. In previous films involving computer generated visual effects (i.e., Young Sherlock Holmes (1985) and Willow (1988)) CG elements were output to film and added to final film print using optical printers. For "Last Crusade" ILM scanned several filmed makeup transformations of "Donovan's demise" and "morphed" the elements together digitally. By doing this, film (was for first time) scanned, digitally manipulated, and output back to film rather than arranging film elements with an optical printer.
  
  
• SPOILER: It took a week to film Julian Glover's death scene.
  
  
• SPOILER: The gun used to shoot the Sean Connery character is a Walther PPK, which was the gun Connery used in his James Bond movies.
  
  

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