Trivia
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Spoilers (4)
Blixa Bargeld, of the German industrial band Einstürzende Neubauten, is credited as having provided the "spirit voices".
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"Imhotep" was actually the name of the architect who developed the first pyramids in ancient Egypt, most notably the Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara around 2600 BC. His ability was such that he was later said to have descended from the gods. His name means "one who comes in peace"
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With the exception of a loin cloth and a few pieces of jewelry, Patricia Velasquez's costume consists entirely of body paint which took 14 hours to apply.
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Ardath Bey, an anagram of Death By Ra, is the name of a sworn protector of mankind from the mummy Imhotep. However, in The Mummy, Ardath Bey is the alter-ego of the mummy Imhotep (played by Boris Karloff) when he attempts to pass for a modern Egyptian.
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An Egyptologist was brought in to phonetically render what Ancient Egyptian might have sounded like for the dialogue.
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The library disaster was done in one take. It would have taken an entire day to re-shoot if a mistake had been made.
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According to director Stephen Sommers, Universal phoned him the morning after this movie was released and said, "We need another one."
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It was originally planned to open the film with the old black and white Universal logo that had been used at the beginning of The Mummy which would dissolve into the blazing desert sun.
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The white nightgown Evelyn wore when the ship was attacked became transparent when it got wet and had to be digitally painted white during post production.
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The opening voice-over was originally intended to be read by Imhotep. Director Stephen Sommers later realized that Imhotep wouldn't be able to speak English, and gave the voice-over to Ardath Bey instead.
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When King Tutankhamen's tomb was found on November 4, 1922, the person in charge was George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon. Along with him was his daughter, Lady Evelyn Carnarvon. Rachel Weisz's character is named Evelyn Carnahan. Originally, her character was meant to be Evelyn Carnarvon. She and her brother were to be the children of the "cursed" Lord Carnarvon. The only evidence of this left in the film is in the line where Evelyn tells O'Connell that her father was a "very, very famous explorer". The Mummy novelization goes into a bit more detail on her back story.
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The white cat seen in Evelyn's apartment is given no name in the film, but in the movie novelisation the cat's name is revealed to be Cleo.
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A different take of Ardath Bey's introduction scene on top of the mountain was used later in the film when O'Connell and crew are crossing the desert at night. This time, the lighting was adjusted accordingly.
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During the filming of the scene in which hail and fire fall down on Cairo, dried dog food was painted white and used as balls of hail, thrown down on the set.
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While filming, John Hannah sprained his wrist and had to wear a brace on it, which shows up during his final scenes.
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The locusts shown in the scene at Hamunaptra were mostly computer-generated, but a number of live grasshoppers were used for the shot; the grasshoppers were chilled in a refrigerator to make them more sluggish and easy to film.
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The line "think of my children!" given by Beni in the scene aboard the riverboat was ad-libbed by Kevin J. O'Connor.
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The scenes showing the Cairo streets were shots of a souk in Marrakesh that was so expansive that the actors and crew were warned not to wander too far from the set or risk getting lost.
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The shots of Giza port were shot in England and edited digitally to show the pyramids and Nile.
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The children shown in the shots of the Bedouin trading outpost, as well as the shots of the Royal Air Force runways were local Marrakesh children.
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The scene in which the scarabs come from the sands to chase the explorers was done by using an air compressor on the set that went off to simulate the insects' emerging from the sand.
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In the scene on the riverboat, Beni is thrown overboard and into the river by O'Connell; during filming, Kevin J. O'Connor helped Brendan Fraser to appear as though he was throwing him overboard by jumping up.
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In one scene, Beni is shown with a sackful of gold which he is trying to load onto a camel, and Beni pulls the camel by the reins but the camel doesn't budge; the camels all, for some reason, hated Kevin J. O'Connor.
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Kevin J. O'Connor had been roughed up so much during the filming of the scene with Beni in the Egyptologist's office that he was badly bruised and his nipples had to be iced afterward.
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Despite the name, the title character was never mummified. His followers were, but he was subjected to a very different death.
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In the original script, Evy was supposed to say, "He's gorgeous" when she first sees the fully resurrected Imhotep. The line was filmed, but removed from the final cut.
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The plastic dummies used as dessicated corpses in the film to represent the Mummy's victims are the same as those used in the cult 1980s sci-fi film Lifeforce. One character even refers to the Mummy sucking the 'lifeforce' out of people.
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When Clive Barker was attached to the project, The film was intended to be a low budget horror film. Barker's vision for the film was violent, with the story revolving around the head of a contemporary art museum who turns out to be a cultist trying to reanimate mummies. George A. Romero was brought in with a vision of a zombie-style horror movie similar to Night of the Living Dead, but this was considered too scary.
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Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Chris O'Donnell and Matthew McConaughey were considered for the role of Rick O'Connell.
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Leonardo DiCaprio was rumoured to have been offered the role of Rick O'Connell, it's believed DiCaprio was said to have loved the script and wanted to be in it. However he already agreed to star in The Beach, it also said that DiCaprio asked if The Beach could be delayed so he could film The Mummy, but producers refused. However, filming of The Beach was delayed anyway.
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Spoilers
The lever-triggered slowly settling stone megaliths with sand pouring out like water, from which the characters must escape or be entombed alive, are based upon Howard Hawks' Land of the Pharaohs, where Pharaoh Cheops's tomb is constructed to be sealed in this manner after he is placed within. Historically no such sophisticated engineering technology was ever employed.
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The character Ardath Bey was originally scripted to die at the end of the film. This was changed by director Stephen Sommers.
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The location shown in the scene where Imhotep and his minions corner the protagonists was an actual entrance to a thirteenth-century graveyard in Marrakesh. In the shots of the graveyard entrance, a manhole cover was used for the surviving protagonists to escape; the manhole was constructed for the film and had a large pad inside so that the actors would land on the pad and not hurt themselves.
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During the filming of the scene with scarabs eating his brain, Omid Djalili acted out his character's pain so much that he had ended up tearing his own shorts off.
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