Trivia / Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine

• Dummied Out: Despite the N64 port being huge for an adventure game on its console, a few things from the PC version are missing, including the below-mentioned Monkey Island Easter Egg, which N64 players presumably wouldn't be familiar with anyway.
• Easter Egg: The level "The Infernal Machine", among its All the Worlds Are a Stage sections, includes a secret area recreating a section of The Secret of Monkey Island, and including portraits of, among others, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Jar Jar Binks, and Guybrush Threepwood. The "Return to Peru" level features a room containing the Close Encounters mountain, unlocked by playing the film's famous chimes using a series of buttons.
• Follow the Leader: The game doesn't even try hiding its inspirations from the Tomb Raider games, while for the most part playing inferior to them. Which is ironic, considering how Tomb Raider developer Core Design was once paranoid that LucasArts would sue for making a game that was too close to Indy.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: For the longest time, playing the game required either tracking down an N64 cartridge or using fan-made workarounds due to compatibility issues with modern hardware. However, the game would eventually be re-released through Good Old Games with updates allowing it to be played on modern computers.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Hal Barwood initially wanted to make a game based on Indiana Jones and the Saucermen from Mars, a screenplay for a fourth film which had been rejected. Lucasfilm didn't permit him to move forward with the idea, as Saucermen from Mars was ultimately rewritten into Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
  • Initially, Hal Barwood was working on a game called Indiana Jones and the Iron Phoenix, involving Those Wacky Nazis after the end of World War II trying to revive Adolf Hitler with the Philosopher's Stone. This was cancelled when German publishing laws regarding Nazi revival topics were tightened, something which would have certainly prevented the game from releasing in one of its biggest markets. The concept was instead given to Dark Horse Comics.
  • The game was originally to have been one level longer, with an additional level between Tian Shan River and Shambala Sanctuary called Shambala Waterworks. In the end, the waterworks were merged into a small part of Shambala Sanctuary.
  • The developers intended to add a multiplayer mode, but the idea was discarded because it was too complex for the game design. However, a non-functional prototype of the multiplayer mode remains buried in the source code of the game.