Na novela oficial do filme, lançada ao mesmo tempo que o filme e, portanto, considerada ' G-Canon ', nós temos este pedaço de exposição:
Lando closed his eyes and tried to think of all the ways he might give the Sarlacc a thousand years of indigestion. He bet himself three to two he could outlast anybody else in the creature’s stomach. Maybe if he talked that last guard out of his uniform …
Então, ele sente claramente que a sobrevivência é uma questão de mais do que meros minutos.
Mais tarde, fontes têm elaborado isso extensivamente, criando um ecossistema inteiro para explicar que o Sarlacc libera nutrientes para manter a vítima vivo.
After being swallowed by the tongue, the victim made its way into the sarlacc's stomach to be digested, purportedly being kept alive and slowly digested for a millennium. A strong network of vessels inside the stomach punctured the victim's skin and muscles and then embedded itself into victims before injecting neurotoxins into them, preventing the victims from escaping and ensuring that they remained immersed in the acidic fluids in the stomach, and attached to the walls of the stomach.
The vessels also provided victims with nutrients to keep them alive while they were digested in agony; sometimes when a victim was in the stomach for a long time period, the sarlacc actually embedded it in the lining of the stomach to make room for other victims it swallowed and to make the stomach stronger so that other victims could not escape participially once their digestion was complete
A maneira pela qual ele mantém suas vítimas vivas além de sua expectativa de vida não é abordada em grandes detalhes, mas nós aprendemos que há um componente telepático para sua tortura e que ela desfruta da dor de suas vítimas