For the bug chamber sequence, Kate Capshaw was really covered with over two thousand insects. She took sedatives prior to the scene to get over her initial fear, and claimed "they definitely worked."
D.R. Nanayakkara, cast as the Indian village Shaman, did not speak a word of English. He delivered his lines phonetically by mimicking Steven Spielberg who was prompting him off-camera. The pauses in his dialogue were therefore not for dramatic effect, but rather waiting for his next line.
Ke Huy Quan's film debut. An open casting call was put out to all the elementary schools to find a young Asian actor to play Short Round. Quan arrived with his brother, not to audition, but merely to provide moral support. He caught the casting director's attention because he spent the entire time of his brother's audition telling him what to do and what not to do. Steven Spielberg liked his personality, so he and Harrison Ford improvised the scene where Short Round accuses Indy of cheating during a card game. Quan won the role over about 6,000 other auditions.
In an April 5, 2022, New York Times interview with Robert Ito, Ke Huy Quan (Short Round) remembered his costar Harrison Ford's kindness to him as a child: "he was an amazing guy. So down-to-earth, so humble, and really generous as an actor. And he taught me how to swim. We were just hanging out at the swimming pool in Sri Lanka in our hotel, and he says, 'Ke, do you know how to swim?' I didn't, so he says, 'Come on, I'll teach you.'"
Kate Capshaw was very critical of her own character, saying that Willie was "not much more than a dumb screaming blonde."
Dan Aykroyd: as Weber, the British-accented man who escorts Indy, Short Round and Willie onto the cargo plane. Aykroyd had previously worked with Steven Spielberg on the film 1941 (1979).