The actors playing the tribesmen Arak, Barak, Karak, Sarak, and Tarak were the members of the juggling troupe The Flying Karamazov Brothers.
Three members of the production team were killed in a plane crash while scouting locations in Morocco. The film is dedicated to them along with Romancing the Stone screenwriter Diane Thomas, who died in a car accident.
Romancing the Stone (1984), the predecessor of this film, was the only produced screenplay for writer Diane Thomas. She had been working as a waitress in Malibu when producer/star Michael Douglas optioned her script for $250,000, allowing her to quit her job. Sadly, Thomas died in a car accident, while working on a new movie project with Steven Spielberg the following year, about seven weeks before the opening of this film. She was a passenger while her boyfriend was driving a Porsche that Douglas had bought for her as a thank you gift. This film is dedicated "In Memory of" Thomas.
Kathleen Turner resisted making the sequel because of her money squabble over the original, and because she didn't like the script, over which she had negotiated approval. She only signed after Fox filed a $25 million lawsuit against her.
The end title song is Billy Ocean's "When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going." In the music video for the song, stars Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner and Danny DeVito lipsync and dance as doo-wop backup singers. Because the three stars were not members of the Musicians Union, the video was banned in the UK. Despite this handicap, the song would be Ocean's first #1 UK hit.