Western Animation / Scooby-Doo! in Where's My Mummy?

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The ninth installment in the Scooby-Doo Direct-to-Video series produced by Warner Bros Animation, Scooby-Doo! in Where's My Mummy? was the only one to get a limited theatrical release in selected cities of the United States.

Velma has been in Egypt for six months helping out Prince Omar, who's working on restoring The Sphinx, so the gang tries to surprise her by visiting. However, they run out of water in the Mystery Machine's radiator. While looking for water, they meet an Egyptian nomad named Amahl Ali Akbar, who shows them the way to the sphinx. When they arrive, they meet the former host of a show called "Fear Facers," Rock Rivers, who hopes he can come to Egypt and get some footage to revive his show. Eventually, Scooby picks up Velma's smell, and they find her, surprising her as they had originally intended.

Velma introduces her friends to Omar, then shows them an ancient necklace she found within the tomb of Cleopatra. However, treasure hunter (and grave robber) Dr. Amelia von Butch shows up with her crew to loot Cleopatra's grave. Using modern equipment, they open the tomb via explosion. Once the grave is opened, it unleashes a curse made by Cleopatra, stating that all who enter shall turn to stone. Nobody believes it, so von Butch decides to enter the tomb anyway, despite the fact that Omar had recently been separated from the others and turned to stone. Once in the tomb, a trap is set off, splitting up the gang.

This film provides examples of the following Tropes:

• Actor Allusion:
  • Oded Fehr plays a mysterious Egyptian who helps the heroes and has a helpful falcon named Horus, much like his character in The Mummy (1999).
  • Fred Jones at one point does an impression of Scooby-Doo on Daphne's orders, alluding to how both characters are voiced by Frank Welker.
• Adventurer Archaeologist: Velma has become an archaeolgist on an adventure. Von Butch is a deconstruction. She behaves in a similar way to characters like Lara Croft but is viewed in a more negative light, as such dramatic methods are not how ethical archaeologists should operate.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: After being captured by Cleopatra and her undead army, Amelia fearfully begs her for mercy, promising to stop looting treasures, open an orphanage, save the rainforest and recycle if the undead queen lets her go. Cleopatra refuses.
• Artistic License – Geography: Despite what this film shows, the Sphinx isn't out in the middle of a vast stretch of desert. It's smack-dab on the western edge of Giza, the third-largest city in Egypt, with a road not 200 feet away. The Nile is also significantly wider at Giza than how it's depicted.
• Artistic License – History: The Battle of Actium is portrayed as Egypt being conquered by the Romans, which is simpler to get across than the Roman faction Cleopatra allied with fighting the one she didn't.
• Artistic License – Politics: In real life, Egypt has been a Republic since 1952. Omar being a prince suggests it remained a monarchy in this timeline. Although he and his father may be part of a benevolent secret society, or he could be a younger son from a different country's royal family who's simply into Egyptology.
• Bare Midriffs Are Feminine: Both of Amelia von Butch's minions wear short-sleeved shirts, but Natasha's shirt bares her midriff whereas Campbell's covers his.
• Big Damn Movie: It's an awfully complex plot on the character's part.
• Big Friendly Dog: Scooby adores Velma, and it shows in the scene where after picking up her scent, he barrels into her much in the same way he usually does with Shaggy.
• Chekhov's Gun: Scooby's ability to recognise scents leads to the reveal.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Scooby and Shaggy jump from a falling platform to save their lives.
• Dark Action Girl: Amelia von Butch, who is essentially a Corrupted Character Copy of Lara Croft with acrobatics and combat skill alike. She's one of the few Scooby-Doo antagonists to outright and personally attack any threats in her way, thus technically assaulting people trying to ward her off from Cleopatra's crown. One of her team, Natasha, is also a pretty skilled marital artist and helps steal the map from Daphne and Fred.
• A Day in the Limelight: This is Velma's movie.
• Durable Deathtrap: All of the traps are perfectly functional, despite the tomb being thousands of years old (though this could have been Justified, seeing as the entire plot was set up to catch the bad guys). This includes the crocodiles swimming in the water.
• Foreshadowing:
  • When von Butch arrives, Prince Omar notes, "Velma, we must act quickly." This was a hint for both Prince Omar and Velma creating the plot. Also the above mentioned Berserk Button... Well, Velma "can't see without her glasses", remember?
  • Also, before confronting the undead army, Shaggy finds several sacks of cement inside the tomb, which is what the stone statues are actually made of.
  • At the climax, Cleopatra's ghost hops into the same boat as the gang and paddles with them to escape the rushing waters filling up the tomb. Seems like a stock Scooby gag, right? Not quite; she isn't trying to chase them in the boat, she's trying to help them. After all, these are her best friends.
• Gambit Pile Up: There's Hotep who's actually Armin Granger, who is illegally damming the Nile River and manipulating a cult, there's Dr. von Butch and her tomb raiders, and then there's the actual mummies Velma, Omar and their workers, all of them with vastly different, equally complicated plans.
• Good Archaeology, Bad Archaeology: Velma, Prince Omar and their workers use the standard methods while working on restoring the Great Sphinx of Giza, treating the ruins with respect and care. Dr. Amelia von Butch, on the other hand, is the film's main villain and cares only about taking the treasure inside for herself, thinking nothing of blowing up the tomb entrance (as Omar says, "She has just destroyed two thousand years of history.") rather than carefully opening it and having her agents attack Fred and Daphne so she can steal the ankh necklace Daphne is carrying, since it will let her get deeper into the tomb.
• Grappling-Hook Pistol: Amelia Von Butch uses one on two occasions to escape from the mummies.
• Hero of Another Story: Delightfully averted. Scooby and Shaggy are separated from Fred, Daphne and Velma and are taken in by a bunch of people who act like the ancient civilizations of Egypt and believe the duo to be an ancient dog pharaoh named Ascoobis and his faithful servant respectively, whom they eagerly welcome into their community. The community's leader, Hotep, is eventually revealed to be Armin Granger, an engineer who is ilegally harming the Nile River and is taken prisoner by Amahl, who thanks Shaggy and Scooby for what they did. Yup, the two most cowardly members of the gang solved a mystery on their own without any assistance.
• Hollywood Atlas: The film portrays the pyramids of Giza as being many miles from civilization but they are actually on the outskirts of Cairo, of which Giza is a suburb.
• Hollywood Mirage: Scooby and Shaggy experience one at the beginning of the film.
• It Belongs in a Museum: Velma says this about Cleopatra's treasure.
• It's Personal: After Fred discovers Velma turned into a stone statue, he angrily declares that "this time, it's personal!"
• Jerkass: Amelia von Butch, in spades. She's hellbent on getting the Crown of Cleopatra out of a vain claim for her riches, and anyone else can go rot for all she cares as the most sour member of the cast. She even has Prince Omar's phone taken and smashed so no one can call the authorities on her. Considering Velma as Cleopatra is actually the Big Good, Amelia marks her role as the Big Bad with ease.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: The Scooby gang takes on Cleopatra to undo the curse on Velma and Prince Omar, with Daphne, Scooby and Shaggy distracting her with a makeover. They raise an army to Storm the Castle. Velma was very surprised by this, since she's used to Shaggy and Scooby running in the other direction.
• Men of Sherwood: The city of Egypt-obsessed luddites who Shaggy and Scooby encounter later get recruited to pose as a real Egyptian army (and then fight like one) to counter the army of undead mummies. The mummies themselves also surprisingly qualify, as they're a bunch of archaeologists being led by Velma who are conducting a heroic "Scooby-Doo" Hoax to scare off or fight off hostile tomb robbers. There's more fighting than in most Scooby-Doo movies, but like in most Scooby-Doo movies, no one dies.
• Monumental Damage: At the end, Shaggy sets off a giant firework, which hits the Sphinx's face and knocks its newly-restored nose off. Instead of getting mad that all his team's hard work was ultimately for naught, Omar decides it looks better that way and leads the gang in an Everyone Laughs Ending.
• Mummy: As expected, the monsters this movie focuses on are animate mummies.
• Mythology Gag:
  • In the 1969 episode Scooby Doo and a Mummy, Too, the gang had faced a mummy whose m.o. was turning people to stone with a curse. In fact, this might have been where Velma got the idea for the hoax.
  • Velma dresses up like Cleopatra. She did so previously in the very same episode as she, Shaggy and Scooby were trying to elude the mummy of Anka.
  • Scooby shows a lot of affection for Velma, much like during his days as a pup.
• Never Smile at a Crocodile: Nile crocodiles are among the traps inside the tomb of Cleopatra. They will try to eat the players.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain!: When Amelia von Butch removes the crown of Cleopatra, she accidentally triggers a trap which releases the water of the Nile river and sends it back to the riverbed, thereby saving Egypt from a terrible drought.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: The Undead Army capturing Von Butch and her cronies.
• OOC Is Serious Business: Normally, Shaggy and Scooby want to get away from monsters, even if they aren't real. When they learn that Velma was turned into stone, however, they insist that they need to go in, undo the curse, and save her. Velma was very touched by this.
• Our Mermaids Are Different: During the aforementioned mirage, Shaggy briefly turns into a merman.
• Recruit the Muggles: The gang recruit a bunch of Egypt-obsessed Luddites they encounter to pose as the real army of the undead and throw of the group already impersonating those mummies as a "Scooby-Doo" Hoax. When the deception fails, the gang’s new allies are then willing to fight the original fake Army of the Undead.
• The Reveal: Velma and Omar, along with others, are behind the Cleopatra mystery.
• Save the Villain: Shaggy, Scooby, Fred and Daphne attempt to do this in the climax. It turns out the villain wasn't in any real danger, and this effort at saving her almost causes her to escape with the treasure.
• Scary Black Man: Arguably Campbell, one of von Butch's team, who is capable of crushing a cellphone with his bare hand in moments and carries around a machete.
• Scary Scorpions: Hotep plans to sacrifice Shaggy and Scooby by feeding them to the Spirit of the Sand, a gigantic scorpion-like monster which turns out to be a robot built by Hotep himself.
• "Scooby-Doo" Hoax: Velma was behind it all, dressing up as Cleopatra, and using Prince Omar and his workers to dress up as the mummies in order to scare away treasure hunters.
• Seductive Mummy: Played With; Cleopatra first appears as a beautiful woman, before turning into a scary crone. It is later revealed that she was actually Velma in disguise, and there are hints at a romance between her and Omar.
• Shown Their Work: The pyramids during the flashback are designed the way they would have looked like during Ancient Egypt, being covered in white limestone and topped with gold.
• Spanner in the Works: It turns out the Scooby-Doo Gang nearly became this for Velma's plot, which was to scare off the grave robbers, when they showed up.
• Villainous Face Hold: Cleopatra's ghost does this to Amelia von Butch when she is captured and begging for mercy.
• We Would Have Told You, But...: Velma and Omar don't let the rest of Mystery Inc. in on their plan to scare off Amelia von Butch and her cronies with a Cleopatra-hoax—Velma apologizes but justifies it by explaining that she was doing it to protect them, feeling that the plan itself was too dangerous for them to partake in.