Brendan Fraser nearly died during a scene where his character is hanged. Rachel Weisz remembered, "He [Fraser] stopped breathing and had to be resuscitated."
Brendan Fraser was cast due to the success of George of the Jungle (1997). Stephen Sommers also commented that he felt Fraser fit the Errol Flynn swashbuckling character he had envisioned perfectly. The actor understood that his character "doesn't take himself too seriously, otherwise the audience can't go on that journey with him."
In one scene, Beni is shown with a sackful of gold which he is trying to load onto a camel. Beni pulls the camel by the reins, but the camel doesn't budge. The camels all, for some reason, hated Kevin J. O'Connor.
With the exception of a loin cloth, a few pieces of jewelry, and pasties, Patricia Velasquez was nude except for body paint, which took four hours to apply.
The library disaster was done in one take. It would have taken an entire day to re-shoot if a mistake had been made.