Chummy Mummy

Let me tell you about my buddy,
He's 3,000 years old,
He's wrapped in bandages and covered in moldy debris
My undead mummy and me.

— Phineas and Ferb, "My Undead Mummy"

Not unlike their fellow undead brethren, mummies are commonly depicted as evil, malicious, or just plain scary. This is especially the case if they were a Nepharious Pharaoh in life. However, this isn't true for all mummies.

Despite being shambling corpses with eerie glowing eyes and covered in aging bandages, some mummies are benign and harmless. Depending on the work, a mummy of this nature may even be downright jovial or outright heroic. Why a particular mummy, or mummies, acts friendly varies. Some were quite sociable in life and remain so in (un)death, while others started out mean in life but mellowed out after their death and mummification. While still overall rarer than other fun and helpful undead characters, it's become more common to see relatively harmless mummies in fiction.

A Sub-Trope of Mummy and can overlap with Seductive Mummy if the mummy in question is also female. Compare Friendly Ghost, Friendly Neighborhood Vampire, Friendly Skeleton, Friendly Zombie, and Wonderful Werewolf.

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Examples:

Advertising

• Monster Cereals: Along with Frankenberry, Count Chocula, and Boo-Berry, the mascots used to also include the lesser-used Yummy Mummy, who shilled Fruity Yummy Mummy. Like his cohorts, he was a friendly monster who simply encouraged kids to eat his favorite cereal.

Anime & Manga

• How to Keep a Mummy: Mii-kun the Mummy is both adorable and harmless.
• Zombie Land Saga: Downplayed. Ai Mizuno is a zombie wrapped head to toe in bandages, giving the appearance of a Bandage Mummy. Nonetheless, she's a professional idol and very popular both before and after being resurrected. She's very kind to her fans and assumes a mentor role helping her fellow idols make progress in their careers.

Comic Books

• The DCU: The heroic Creature Commandos have occasionally had a mummy on their team.
• Empowered: Yummy Mummy plays with this trope. She is technically a heroic character, but like many of the Superhomeys, she's not exactly the epitome of selflessness. She has friends, but they come off as a Mean Girls-style clique.
• Magic Trixie: Nefi, one of Trixie's Cute Monster Girl friends, is a little girl mummy. Magic Trixie sleeps over at her home in "Magic Trixie Sleeps Over" and discovers she has servants who carry her everywhere and even eat food for her while she experiences the tastes.
• Marvel Universe: N'Kantu, the Living Mummy, is an African tribal warrior of the "Swarili" that was mummified alive through magic means as punishment for inciting a slave rebellion in ancient Egypt. He wakes up after 3000 years and starts fighting magic, Egyptian-themed crime.

Films — Animation

• Hotel Transylvania: Murray the Mummy (pictured above) is an extremely friendly, fun-loving, and good-natured mummy. Along with Frank, Murray is easily the most jovial and light-hearted of the main monster characters.
• Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School: Tanis, a girl mummy, is undoubtedly the nicest and sweetest among the Grimwood girls. Her mummy daddy is amicable as well, outright hugging Shaggy and Scooby for getting Tanis the volleyball trophy (though like the other monster fathers, he does threaten them about taking good care of his daughter before he leaves).

Films — Live-Action

• The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec: Adèle's main goal is to find the mummy Patmosis, who she believes to be Rameses II's medical doctor, and have Professor Espérandieu revive Patmosis so that the doctor can help cure her lobotomized sister. Though he turns out to be a nuclear physicist and thus is unable to help Adèle, Professor Espérandieu's ritual is so strong that when it revived Patmosis, it ALSO activated ALL the mummies in the Louvre. Adèle therefore seeks them out in order to find the real doctor to help her sister. They eventually decide to see the sights of Paris.
• Night at the Museum: A mummy's magic stone tablet brings all the statues and other displays to life at night. The mummy himself is assumed to be evil because everyone knows mummies are evil, plus the fact that he was banging on the sarcophagus cover and moaning. Turns out he's actually a really Nice Guy who just wants to be let out of his sarcophagus. His tablet's magic also kept him looking like a living Egyptian man (Rami Malek, in fact) rather than a rotting ghoul.
• In the Disney Channel original movie Under Wraps (1997), the mummy is actually non-threatening and friendly towards the kids that befriend him.

Literature

• Dr. Greta Helsing: Behind the Masquerade, mummies tend to have ordinary jobs in fields that let them avoid the public. Greta meets one at a supernatural health spa and quickly befriends him over their shared interest in medicine, though he does indulge in some comedic lurching when a Muggle gets in and sees him.
• Dummie de Mummie, a series of Dutch childrens books, resolves around main character Goos ending up befriending the eponymous friendly mummy, and having a series of adventures with him. The books have also been adapted into 3 movies.
• The Last Adventure of Constance Verity: Amun is an immortal mummy that Connie has on speed dial for whenever she needs to ask about Ancient Egypt.
• Mr. Men: In "Mr. Men: Adventure with Monsters," several Mr. Men and Little Misses end up in a haunted house and come across some monsters, and one of them includes a mummy. The monsters turn out to be quite accommodating, and the mummy even pours some tea for everyone.
• The mummies in Pyramids are friendly types who just want to get the whole "the kingdom is in peril and we've all been brought back to life" thing sorted out, and help Teppic in doing so. After all, he's their descendent.
• Khaba from Rowley Jefferson's Awesome Friendly Spooky Stories is a pretty chill mummy, which causes him to become an overnight celebrity.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons: There are Ka, really powerful mummies that are not hostiles and can even be convinced to help the players if they have the proper offerings.
• GURPS: An illustration in Undead featured two humans (a man and a woman), a mummy, and a vampire as an investigative team. The mummy had his arms around the humans, looking glad to finally have friends. The woman looked disgusted, while the man was smiling and shrugging like "Hey, let's go for it!" The vampire appeared to be sulking, like he wished they'd all go away.
• Magic: The Gathering: On the plane of Amonkhet, mummies are white-aligned servants of the living, doing most of the menial labour while the living train.
• Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: Some Tomb Kings can be friendly to foreigners as long as they show due respect and don't try to steal anything. They are specifically a sort of "blessed undead" that really hate any of the usual corruption and foul magic typically associated with undead beings.
• Mummy: The Resurrection has the titular mummies as heroic characters out to defend the world from the God of Evil Apophis.
• Mummy: The Curse is a downplayed example. Mummies are the protagonists and are at least not inherently evil, but they aren't necessarily good, either... and even that is only after they've been awake for a while and had a chance to regain some mental faculties. A newly awakened mummy is near-mindless, superpowered monstrosity driven to protect its tomb by any means.

Video Games

• Animal Crossing: Lucky the dog villager has an overall appearance that evokes this; he's completely wrapped in bandages and only a single glowing eye is visible. Being a Lazy villager, however, he's very approachable, chill, and easy for a player to befriend.
• Captain Commando: Jennety, a.k.a the Mummy Commando, is a mummy warrior and one of the four playable heroes. He is on the same side as the titular captain defending Earth from Genocide and his minions and a fan-favorite among players due to his awesome spinning blade move which can melt enemy mooks to the bones.
• League of Legends: Amumu the "Sad Mummy" is merely a shy child who's starved for affection. Unfortunately, he's afflicted with a curse that rots away anything he touches, which makes it dangerous for others to approach him, causing him further anguish.
• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: Link meets the self-mummified Sheikah monks who award him the rewards for beating their trials. One of them also becomes a playable character in Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity.
• Math Blaster Mystery: The Great Brain Robbery features a female mummy who always compliments Rave on his appearance before getting to the word problems and like the other monsters in the mansion, doesn't seem to care that he's basically trespassing.
• MediEvil 2: Dan's new ally (and later Love Interest) is Princess Kiya, an ancient Egyptian Princess mummy who assists him in battling Lord Palethorn and his minions.
• The vendor in Pumpkin Jack is a mummy that sells skins for Jack's character model.
• The Sims 3's expansion "World Adventures" adds mummies, and through a complex process involving repairing a sarcophagus and expending 5 canopic jars looted from Egyptian tombs it's possible to summon a mummy and add him or her to the household. Mummies can hold jobs, learn skills, and befriend other Sims or even fall in love. Just keep them away from fire.
• The Secret World: The "Black Sun, Red Sand" story arc introduces Säid, an ancient Egyptian prince living it up in the modern world as a businessman, and though he prefers £12000 suits to bandages, he's still clearly a mummified corpse. While undoubtedly a hedonist and a mercenary at heart, Säid is on your side throughout the conflict in Egypt - as are the Kingdom, the crime syndicate of resurrected mummies that he represents. Plus, he's quite charming and a lot more honorable than he's prepared to admit.
• Tutankhamun (yes, that one) from Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy is not only benign, but serves as the co-protagonist, handling puzzle based missions while Sphinx takes care of the action.
• The land of Mumford in Super Lesbian Animal RPG appears to be populated by mummy enemies. Eventually it's revealed that this enemy 'race' is actually one mummy adventurer by the name of Nef, who's been healing between battles. Once Nef and the party get to know each other, she mellows out (though remains somewhat standoffish), and becomes friendlier when the group helps her investigate the mystery of how she was reanimated.

Web Videos

• Chadtronic: Chad co-hosts his shows on cursed commercials with a mummy named Wraps, who's friendly (if a bit snarky) and speaks in a voice that sounds like Dr. Claw from Inspector Gadget.

Western Animation

• The Backyardigans: In "Scared Of You", Tyrone is portrayed as the Mummy King, and he turns out to be nonthreatening. He even helps Austin retrieve the other monsters, Uniqua the werewolf and Pablo the vampire.
• Ben 10: Ben's alien Snare-Oh is mummy-like and, much like the rest of his transformations, used for superheroics.
• Casper's Scare School: One of Casper's (himself a Friendly Ghost) friends is a mummy named Ra. Although Ra's both an Attention Whore and Hot-Blooded, he's ultimately a good person.
• Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers: The episode "Throw Mummy From The Train" has a mummy emerge from his sarcophagus to pursue a greedy archaeologist's assistant. This mummy's name is Hiram, and he tries to stop the assistant from adding a sacred ring to the sphinx's forehead. Hiram isn't really scary, just anxious that the pharaoh's curse will be realized. The Rescue Rangers actually try to help Hiram Set Right What Once Went Wrong.
• DuckTales (2017): Downplayed. The eponymous mummies from "The Living Mummies of Toth-Ra!" are not actual mummies, but living people dressed in bandages. Overall, they're very friendly (if misguided).
• Downplayed in the Fangface episode "The Creep From The Deep". Molezuma, the Aztec mummy that features in that episode is dangerous and unfriendly, but really all he wants is his sacred treasure back. The real villain is the Phantom Thief who stole it. Helping Molezuma achieve his Ghostly Goals is presented as an unambiguously good deed, and the episode ends with him contentedly returning to his watery grave.
• Hotel Transylvania: The Series: Similar to Murray from the films, Pedro Moomay is a kind and well-meaning mummy and one of Mavis' True Companions.
• Mickey Mouse (2013): In "Entombed", Mickey and Minnie explore Ancient Egyptian tombs, getting scared of the things they find. When the mummy in the tomb comes to life, he gently and politely asks if they could give his wrappings back. However, Mickey and Minnie are frightened by his appearance and flee.
• Mummies Alive!: The titular mummies (Armon, Ja-Kal, Nefertina, and Rath) are heroic mummies. They are the designated protectors of Prince Rapses during the times of ancient Egypt and his reincarnation Presley Carnovan in the present day.
• Mummy Nanny: The eponymous mummy is a five thousand year-old woman named Nile who is awakened as a mummy in the modern day and serves as the nanny to two children.
• Phineas and Ferb: In "Are You My Mummy?", Phineas and Ferb fantasize about getting their own mummy, spending time in the park with him, dancing with him, using him to fend off bullies, and having him deejay for their friends.
• Tutenstein: While he has his flaws, mummy protagonist Tutankhensetamun is shown to truly care about his friends, both in the past and in the present.
• Vampirina: Like basically every other monster on the show, the mummified King Pepi and his mummy niece Nefi are some of the nicest people you'll ever meet.

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