A promo photo of a Temple Guard and a female Blue Barracuda.
Temple Guard in the movie version.
A Temple Guard is a person who guards a specific room in the temple. There are three temple guards that guard three specific rooms. They are the main antagonists in the show. If a player enters one of those rooms, one of the temple guards will jump out and try to capture him/her. The only way to go on is to give the temple guard a full pendant of life (half pendants do not count), which are earned by winning the Temple Games. If the player is caught without a pendant, he/she will be taken out of the temple and it will be his/her teamates turn. If the winning team wins one and half Pendants of Life in the Temple Games, the other half will be hidden in the temple. If the the second player finds the other half and is carrying both halves, he/she wll get an extra life, allowing the second player to have no interruptions due to the fact that it is the last temple guard. If the winning team has one or one and a half Pendants of Life in the Temple Games and if the second player is caught with no pendants or has only the half of the pendant and has not found the other half before getting caught, it is game over. However if the winning team has two pendants in the Temple Games, the team will be able to go after the treasure. When it comes to the team having two pendants, the first player might get caught by a temple guard the first time with his/her pendant and the second time with no pendants, while second player give up his/her pendant to the last remaining temple guard, which means the game would not end as quickly.
Note: Once caught by a temple guard, the room the the temple guard is protecting will no longer have the temple guard.
Fact 1: When a temple guard jumps out to capture a player, it sometimes surprises/scares the player.
Fact 2: In Seasons 2 and 3, a spirit of a temple guard may inhabit one of the trees in the Dark Forest. So if a player reaches for the key in the tree with the temple guard spirit, the rules still apply with a regular temple guard: give the tree a pendant or you are captured.
Notes
- Although Kirk Fogg refers them as the "dreaded" temple guards, the guards are actually friendly to the contestants, as in The Lily-Crested Crown of Clovis I when Katie fell off of one of the back boxes in The Shrine of the Silver Monkey and gives Eddie from The Dried Ear of Corn of Sojourner Truth the peace sign. Another guard in Galileo's Cannonball cheered "Jammin' Jon" on as he exited the temple with the cannonball.
- Even though the temple guards were supposed to "vanish" after the contestant grabs the artifact, some of them can still be seen in their hiding places in some episodes like The Star of Sultan Saladin and The Trojan Horseshoe.
- In The Enormous Iron Nose Ring of Babe the Ox, The Much-Heralded Helmet of Sir Gawain, and The Broken Trident of Poseidon, none of the Temple Guards were encountered.
- In the The Pendant of Kamehameha, the temple guard was hiding in the Dungeon but follows and captures the player in the Tomb of the Ancient Kings.
- Also, in that episode, The Moccasins of Geronimo, The Enormous Iron Nose Ring of Babe the Ox, The Lost Hornpipe of the Pirate Captain the temple guards missed their cue.
- In some rooms like The Dark Forest and The Room of the Ancient Warriors, the Temple Guards hiding in those rooms can only catch the contestants if they are in a certain position within the rooms. In other rooms, the Temple Guards can catch the players at any position just as they enter the room.
- Not all rooms featured the Temple Guards. The Pit of Despair, its successors, The Jester's Court, The Room of Three Torches, The Viper's Nest, and The Well are rooms that did not feature the guards.
- In The Crown of Queen Nzinga and The Discarded Seal of Ivan the Terrible, all 3 temple guards hid in a straight line.
- There is also a page for the temple guards on Villains Wiki.
- In the movie version, the Temple Guards had face paint instead of masks. This was slightly different with the original show.