Trivia: Michelle Yeoh and Jet Li are martial arts icons of Asian Cinema and are real-life friends, as well as acting together on numerous films, but this marks the first time they are playing enemies.
Trivia: The name of first assistant director, P.J. Voeten, appears as the brand name of the dynamite which is planned to be used for the blow-up of the tower in the Gateway.
Trivia: The motorbikes with sidecars used in the chase are a playful homage to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, in which Indy and his dad escape on a motorbike with almost the same configuration.
Trivia: The French Foreign Legion uniform hanging in Rick's closet is Brendan Fraser's actual wardrobe from the first film.
Trivia: At one point, Jonathan briefly mentions that he'd like to open a casino while talking to himself at Shangri-La. This is a reference to the original script for the prior film "The Mummy Returns", in which Jonathan did indeed own a casino, before it was cut out due to pacing and budgetary reasons.
Trivia: All of the Chinese soldiers wear Nazi soldier uniforms with the swastikas replaced by Chinese characters. The officers wear SS uniforms with the same modifications. This is done to make it easier to identify them as bad guys.
Trivia: Supposedly, one early draft of the script had Rick and Evie resurrecting Imhotep from the first two films as a begrudging ally to help them defeat the Dragon Emperor. Imhotep actor Arnold Vosloo wasn't keen on this idea, and opted out. He was also good friends with Stephen Sommers, who directed the first two films, and didn't want to do a "Mummy" movie without him at the helm. (Sommers produced this film but stepped away from the director's seat).
Trivia: A fun little tid-bit about how an effect was achieved. According to one of the effects artists, when the Emperor is dying, you see parts of his face sort of bubbling and melting and turning black. Especially his cheeks. Evidently, this is actually digitally manipulated footage of sheets of processed cheese being melted and burned, which was then color-corrected and 3D mapped onto Jet Li's face. I guess you could say this movie kinda takes the term "cheesy" to a whole 'nother level.
Trivia: The scenes in the snowy mountains were actually filmed on an incredibly hot soundstage. Everyone was profusely sweating at all times under the hot stage lights. It reportedly was so hot that whenever she could, Maria Bello would wear literally nothing beneath her coat except a bra.
Trivia: Director Rob Cohen and his wife are among the couples dancing in the final scene. They're the bald man with a gray goatee and the taller brunette woman in the dark blue dress with white gloves. They're most easily visible to the left of Alex and Lin when they have their brief dialogue exchange.
Trivia: Despite playing their fully-grown son, Luke Ford was only thirteen years younger than Brendan Fraser and fourteen years younger than Maria Bello.
Trivia: The Mad-Dog character is a continuation of a tradition in the series - in each movie, an old pilot friend of O'Connell arrives to help. Winston in the first film, Izzy in the second film, and now Mad-Dog in this third film.
Trivia: Rachel Weisz did not appear in the third installment because she had 'different interests than the screenplay', which was widely believed to mean that she thought the film was poorly written.
Chosen answer: For one thing, just because two different years are shown does not mean that a full twelve months passed before they arrived in China. Also, travel to an undeveloped third-world country in the mid 20th century was not like it is today. There were no jet planes, much pre-planning and preparation would have to be done before departure, different modes of transportation would have to be arranged, and there would be many stops, delays, and transfers along the way. This could cumulatively take many months.
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