Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is notable for so many things. As the most icky of the Indiana Jones series, Indy winds up in India to help out a village reliant on a magical stone, where all the village’s children have been kidnapped. Without a shadow of a doubt the darkest entry in the Indiana Jones series, this segment would actively delight in its own creepy crawly depravity, where bugs halt passage, stomach-churning buffets are devoured, and beating hearts are ripped directly from chests.

Indiana Jones fever is once again spicing up with Harrison Ford’s return to the fedora next year in Indiana Jones 5, and with the triumphant return of actor Ke Huy Quan (who played “Short Round” in Temple of Doom) in this year’s smash hit Everything Everywhere All At Once, revisiting the second Indiana Jones film now just makes sense.

Temple of Doom, Forever The Black Sheep

Always the black sheep of the trilogy, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom stood out as “the one without the Nazis in it.” But with four decades of hindsight (and with the complete and total erasure of the fourth installment, The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull, as far fans are concerned…) Temple of Doom stands as a sturdy and valid addition to the trilogy, a swashbuckling romp that should be praised for its difference in the series of films, from its sticky hot Asian setting, gross-out moments, and throwback to treasure hunting ideals.

Related: Indiana Jones 5 Producer Says Fans Will Be ‘Very Happy’ With the Sequel

Something that also makes Temple of Doom stand out from the pack is its cameos, especially how they intersect in wild ways, including a wild, one-scene cameo most people have missed. Like Indiana Jones unearthing treasures from beneath the soil, we had happened upon this artifact of a cameo by pure luck. Believe it or not, Dan Aykroyd shows up 12 minutes 51 seconds into Temple of Doom.

Who Ya Gonna Call? Wait, He’s in Indiana Jones?!

You read that right. Dan Aykroyd.

The same Dan Aykroyd who got blown by that spirit in Ghostbusters and somehow made a whole Coneheads movie. As a major icon of the 70s and 80s comedy scene, Aykroyd would write and act on Saturday Night Live, which would birth the epic Blue Brothers movie, one of the greatest comedies of all time.

Aykroyd would be involved in some of the best comedies of the ’80s: Trading Places, The Great Outdoors, Ghostbusters and its sequel, and Spies Like Us, to name the more obvious hits. Aykroyd proved that he was the epitome of the Triple Threat. This was a performer who could write his own (extremely fresh comedy) material, sing, and act, all to a ridiculously high standard. For him to also rock out in such a minuscule role for Temple of Doom quite rightfully boggles the mind. So how did we miss him for this long?

He’s Got a Full Tank of Gas, Half a Pack Of Cigarettes, It’s Dark, and He’s Wearing Glasses

Hiding in plain sight and sporting an English accent to the point of stereotype, Aykroyd appears for a single scene in the film, helping Doctor Jones and his ragtag crew on to a plane out of Hong Kong. Credited as “Weber,” Aykroyd’s input in the Indiana Jones series would last a mere 18 seconds long. With the accent, a mustache, glasses, and no close-ups, it’s no wonder that this really is such a find.

Jumping on the plane, Jones muses “I owe you a gin!” for all of Weber’s work providing an escape route on such short notice. But little does the good Doctor know that the plane is owned by Lao Che, whom they have been trying to escape…

The cameo is actually a crossover of sorts that has just enough behind it to make sense, especially when one realizes that director Steven Spielberg and Indiana Jones producers George Lucas, Frank Marshall, and Kathleen Kennedy would also appear as missionaries in the same scene as Aykroyd in Temple of Doom as well, in the top left background. Spielberg and Aykroyd had directly worked together previously on the knockabout war comedy 1941 (Aykroyd was given top billing of the cast here), and once again on Twilight Zone: The Movie in 1983; while Spielberg did not direct the same segment of that film which Aykroyd was featured in, he is credited as a producer on the film overall. The cameos continue to cross multiple streams when Spielberg showed up in Blues Brothers as a one-scene clerk.

Bizarrely enough, Spielberg (in another producer role) would be attached to yet another film with a one-scene cameo from Aykroyd with 1995s Casper, in a really cool tribute to his Ray Stantz character from Ghostbusters.

Dan Aykroyd and the Kingdom of the Crystal Head

With Indiana Jones returning to our screens next year and featuring its original star, Harrison Ford (a performer who’s never even seemed particularly keen on acting in the first place), this Temple of Doom cameo is a weird blast from the past which really puts things in perspective four decades later.

Indiana Jones 5 will put the curmudgeon and reluctant performer front and center in one of the most anticipated movies in a long time, while Dan Aykroyd (an actor entirely out of favor on screen now) ironically spends his time searching for the very aliens and crystal skulls that the Indiana Jones franchise would eventually build up to many years later with Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. (Aykroyd is a stoic believer in UFO phenomena and founded the Crystal Head vodka brand, which serves its spirits in skull-shaped receptacles.)


While fans try their best to eradicate those exact memories from Indiana Jones, the former cameo alumni of the series couldn’t be more content selling vodka by the crate for $50 a head. Hold the gin, Doctor Jones. Aykroyd’s a vodka man.