After “Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom,” What Happened to Short Round?
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), while the second entry in the Indiana Jones franchise, is a prequel to Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). Throughout the picture, Indy (Harrison Ford) is accompanied by his sidekick Short Round (Ke Huy Quan), an eleven year-old Chinese orphan. Since Short Round’s character didn’t appear in Raiders, he only exists within the story of Temple of Doom. Naturally, that makes people curious - what happened to Short Round after his adventures with Indy during Temple of Doom?
In film lore, Short Round simply disappears. But consulting other Indiana Jones materials considered part of the official franchise canon, Short Round lives on.
The character showed up in an issue of The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones, a Marvel Comics series printed throughout the 1980s. In the comic, he accompanied Indiana on an expedition in the Caribbean sea hoping to find Atlantis, where he ended up rescuing Indiana during a pirate attack. He then returns to boarding school.
Additionally, The Lost Journal of Indiana Jones, which was published in 2008, tells that Short Round became an archaeologist like his adventurous mentor, and went on to track down the Peacock’s Eye - the diamond Indy lost at the beginning of The Temple of Doom.
An Indiana Jones / Star Wars crossover story also exists (called Star Wars Tales) in which Short Round and Indiana discover the remains of Han Solo in the crashed Millennium Falcon. However, this story is quite obviously not part of official Indiana Jones canon and is not to be considered accurate about the character’s future endeavors. There are a few other non-canonical adventures for Short Round that are dismissed.