Short Round Indiana Jones: Who He Is and Who Plays Him

Short Round is the boy who travels with Indiana Jones through Temple of Doom, played by Ke Huy Quan, who is billed third behind Harrison Ford and Kate Capshaw. The film (1984), directed by Steven Spielberg, runs 118 minutes. He is credited only as Short Round, so he has no alternate names.

The movie introduces him in 1935 in Shanghai, where Indy is making a deal with the crime boss Lao Che at a nightclub. The deal turns into a poisoning attempt and a wild chase, and Indy escapes with the club singer Willie Scott and the boy Short Round.

Temple of Doom is his only appearance among the five main films, so his whole history sits in one story. If you want the wider cast, the Indiana Jones characters page covers everyone who matters, and the Indiana Jones cast page lists who plays them.

Short Round starts Temple of Doom as a stowaway companion on a getaway and ends it as the person who pulls Indiana Jones back from the brink.

The film opens in 1935 at a Shanghai nightclub, where a deal with the crime boss Lao Che sours. Indy leaves with the singer Willie Scott and Short Round, and the three climb aboard a plane that turns out to be Lao Che's. The pilots jump, the plane is left to crash, and an inflatable raft carries the trio down a mountain and into a river in India. They end up in Mayapore, a starving village whose people ask Indy to recover a sacred stone and their missing children.

The road leads to Pankot Palace and a lavish banquet hosted by the young Maharaja. After an assassin comes for Indy in the night, he finds secret passages beneath the palace and a hidden temple. There the Thuggee priest Mola Ram carries out human sacrifices, while the village children are worked as slave labor in a mine.

Short Round's arc turns here. Indy is captured and made to drink a potion that leaves him in a trance, and Willie is readied for sacrifice. Short Round gets free of the slavery and shakes Indy out of the trance. Without that, Willie is lost and the children stay in the mine.

The three then free the children and retrieve the stones, fleeing in a runaway cart chase and a flood. Above a gorge, Indy cuts the rope bridge and many cultists drop to the crocodiles. Mola Ram hangs on, the stones burn his hands, and he falls to his death.

Short Round's closest bond is with Indiana Jones, his main foil in the film is Willie Scott, and Mola Ram and Lao Che are the antagonists whose schemes drag him into the plot.

With Indiana Jones, the relationship is partner and younger helper. Indy escapes the Shanghai deal with Willie and Short Round, so the three are already traveling together when the plane crash strands them. The mine sequence shows how far that bond goes: Short Round is the one who breaks Indy out of the trance.

With Willie Scott, he shares the raft ride and the long road to Mayapore and Pankot Palace. The film ends with Indy and Willie sharing an embrace as the villagers celebrate, and Short Round is among the heroes who return the stone and the children to Mayapore.

Lao Che is the crime boss whose plane strands the trio and starts the journey. Mola Ram, the priest who leads the Thuggee cult, holds the village children as slave labor in a mine, and Short Round escapes that slavery before he reaches Indy.

Short Round survives Temple of Doom and ends the film safe in the village of Mayapore. After Indy defeats Mola Ram on the broken bridge, British Indian Army soldiers arrive, called by the freed young Maharaja, and overcome the remaining cultists. The heroes then bring the sacred stone and the rescued children home to the grateful village.

That is the last the series shows of him. He does not appear in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), which is set a year after Temple of Doom, and he is not part of the plots of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) or Dial of Destiny (2023). No later film reveals what became of him as an adult.

Temple of Doom is a prequel, so it does not set up a direct sequel. It comes first in story order, which you can follow on the Indiana Jones movies in order page and the Indiana Jones timeline.

In my opinion, Short Round's best moment is the one in the mine where he snaps Indy out of the trance, because the whole rescue depends on it. Indy has been forced to drink the potion and Willie is being prepared for sacrifice, so nothing moves until a boy who has just escaped slavery reaches him. It could be argued that this is the most important thing any sidekick does in the five main films.

My second pick is the Shanghai escape. The film opens with a deal gone wrong, a poisoning attempt and a chase, and it ends with Indy, Willie and Short Round on the plane crash and the raft ride down a mountain into India. It sets up the trio as a unit, so the later scenes land harder.

Third is the runaway cart chase through the mine and the flood that follows. The three heroes free the children, take back the stones and flee, and perhaps it is the film's busiest set piece. That being said, it is the trance scene that carries his character, not the chase.

If you want to see the character at his best, start with Temple of Doom and watch the mine act in order. If you are comparing sidekicks across the series, the Indiana Jones movies ranked page shows where the film sits against the rest.