Fiction

21 Legends of the Hidden Temple Facts that Will Blow Your Mind

Alicia Bones

  1. Host Kirk Fogg had to buy his legendary denim button-down himself. His mother stitched on the show’s logo!
  2. It took eighteen hours to film a single episode. 
  3. A girl-now-woman named Sheila, once a Silver Snake, tells us, “That show was still the best experience of my life.” 
  4. Full disclosure, this writer did not appear on Legends of the Hidden Temple.
  5. The Olmecs were a highly-developed civilization in Mexico. There was no god named Olmec, but he was an animatronic god on this show.
  6. Olmec said:
    1. “I choose the legend.” 
    2. “I choose the questions.” 
    3. “It’s my Temple.” 
  7. This writer knows that the Moat wasn’t real, and the Temple wasn’t real, and the Temple Games weren’t real. But some of it was real. It had to be.
  8. In his tool belt, Kirk Fogg kept a by-then-unreadable note on a Taco Bell receipt he received from his fifth-grade girlfriend. We’ve been told it said, “Keep going!”
  9. We’ve heard from a now-man who was an Orange Iguana. He says, “I posted a clip of myself competing on YouTube. It has 98,530 views, more than any of my other videos.” 
  10. Once, the Electrified Key of Benjamin Franklin was discovered in Olmec’s Temple. 
  11. Former contestants were able to trade their experience for cool school lunches: pizza Lunchables. And hot dogs Lunchables. And hamburger Lunchables. 
  12. This writer is not ready for responsibility because I never descended the Steps of Knowledge. If I had, I would have become an adult at eleven, but I’m thirty-four and still not one. 
  13. The following image depicts Olmec Head No. 3, found in San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan: 
  1. Olmec said, “The choices are yours and yours alone!” 
  2. Once, Lawrence of Arabia’s Headdress was discovered in Olmec’s Temple.
  3. Jessie, of the Green Monkeys, says, “After the show I asked for a dog, a pony, a pool, a Harvard education, a model girlfriend, a book deal, and an international company. My parents gave me everything, but all I’ve ever really wanted was for my episode to air again.”  
  4. Keeli, of the Red Jaguars, says, “If I recall correctly, we were the first day of filming for the first season of this show, so I don’t think the show-runners had really any idea that this game was practically impossible for a kid between the ages of twelve and fourteen to complete.”
  5. Legend has it that Red Jaguar Timmy Azkarian drowned in the moat. Legend has it they left him there. 
  6. Once, the Secret of Youth was placed in Olmec’s Temple, but no child discovered it, and they all grew up. The prop department discarded the Secret after the show ended, its value belied by foam board and spray paint. 
  7. This writer bets the former contestants wish their co-workers still traded lunches. They would get the secret mulled wine thermos and the Hostess Cupcakes Allison brought and the leftover pad thai from Greg, and then these once-contestants would have no choice but to think, “God, I’m glad I excavated the Jewel-Encrusted Egg of Catherine the Great.” 
  8. This writer bets the contestants still make friends by saying they were on Legends of the Hidden Temple. If a former contestant said to me, “I was on Legends of the Hidden Temple,” this writer would buy him a ring. When former contestant husband was a child on the show, his life was set forever, and nothing has ever been more attractive to me than constancy. I haven’t been able to find much of that in my own pursuits. 

Alicia Bones is a writer from Seattle. You can read more of her work here.