Leonard Nimoy directed Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home in 1986 with a deliberately light tone and no clear villain. The team first considered several plots, including a disease whose cure had been destroyed with the rainforests, before Nimoy chose humpback whales, whose song added mystery and whose size created logistical problems. An early script had Eddie Murphy as a whale-loving college professor, but Murphy chose The Golden Child instead, and the character was merged into a marine biologist and a reporter named Gillian Taylor. Nicholas Meyer and producer Harve Bennett rewrote the script. The team then built a whale-like alien probe whose design was changed to look more menacing. The film became one of the most popular entries in the franchise.

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.