Rick O'Connell

Richard “Rick” O’Connell is a fictional character appearing in Universal Pictures’ remake trilogy of The Mummy franchise: The Mummy (1999 film), The Mummy Returns and the upcoming The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. First introduced in the trilogy’s first installment, actor Brendan Fraser has portrayed him in all three live-action films and the character has also appeared in the short-lived children’s television show The Mummy: The Animated Series.

Fictional biography
O’Connell states in The Mummy Returns that, during his childhood, he was once at an orphanage. While there, Young Rick was given a mysterious tattoo on his right arm, depicting a pyramid with the Eye of Horus above. This is revealed by the Medjai leader Ardeth Bay to be a Medjai symbol, and suggests that Rick was chosen at childhood by the covert society to be one of them, and that he was destined to slay the Scorpion King. However, this is only touched upon and discovered in the first sequel, and is a nonexistent problem in the first film.

The Mummy
As shown in the beginning scenes of The Mummy, Richard O’Connell was at one time an American recruit in the French Foreign Legion, along with his traitorous, cowardly semi-comrade Beni Gabor. In the battle at the ruins of the legendary Hamunaptura, ancient Egyptian City of the Dead, Rick participated in the massive fight against a raging army of Tuareg, showcasing his excellent skill with guns. But he was eventually overcome by the sheer number of Tuareg and retreated deep into the ruins, where Beni had scrambled into a stone doorway and closed the heavy stone door before Rick could make it.

When the pursuit ended with O’Connell trapped in front of a half-buried statue of the Egyptian God Anubis, Rick surrendered and braced himself for death. But suddenly the Tuareg’s horses went into a wild panic, sensing the supernatural energy radiating from the stone statue, and the desert people were compelled to retreat. Unable to believe his luck, Rick then began to hear ghostly ancient Egyptian words echoing from the foreboding statue, and then a mysterious force began to carve the haunting image of a shrieking human face in the sand at Rick’s feet. Terrified, O’Connell rushed out of the ruins and into the open desert where he noticed a group of mysterious desert people watching him from afar. He then made his way back to civilization.

Three years later, Rick had found himself imprisoned in Cairo after “just looking for a good time” and waiting on the gallows. Now filthy, ragged and feral in appearance, O’Connell was visited just before his sentence by a beautiful British librarian, Evelyn “Evey” Carnahan and her bumbling brother Jonathan. They questioned him about a small Egyptian puzzle box that Rick had found and taken as a souvenir from Hamunaptura all those years ago. It turned out that the little artifact had come into their possession after Jonathan stole it from Rick at a bar awhile beforehand, and that inside was hidden a tattered map to the legendary city itself. Being an avid Ancient Egypt enthusiast, the proper, inexperienced Evelyn believed this fabled location to be the burial site of King Seti I’s massive treasure…as well as the hiding place of the Book of Amun Ra, an Egyptian artifact made of pure gold and containing magical incantations. Rick is asked if he could reveal the city’s location (Evelyn planning an expedition to find the Book of Amun Ra), and responds by unexpectedly kissing Ms. Carnahan full-on-the-lips through the prison bars. After snarling “then get me the hell outta here!” Rick is dragged away to the gallows while a shocked and insulted Evey watches.

During the hanging, as Rick is being strangled to death by the taut rope (which incredibly did not break his neck upon the drop through the floorboard), Evelyn strikes a deal with the prison warden, and O’Connell is cut down just in time before he blacks out. Afterwards, Rick gets a massive haircut and shave job, turning himself into a polished, intimidating and extremely handsome man, which shocks Evelyn at first. He, the girl and her brother (as well as the greedy prison warden, who also wants to reap benefit from the city’s riches) then board a boat down a river in the approximate direction of the city.

During a night on the voyage, Rick reveals to Evelyn his opinion on the city: He thinks that some kind of evil is buried under that sand, and that the place truly is cursed, which a skeptical Evelyn scoffs at. When questioned about why he kissed Evey at the prison before being dragged to the gallows, Rick just mischievously replies with a chuckle that “I was about to be hanged, seemed like a good idea at the time…”

As an insulted Evelyn stomped off, Rick came across an old friend shifting through the baggage…Beni Gabor, who also survived Hamunaptura. Fully prepared to shoot the traitorous little pig, Rick is told by his former friend that Beni is now guiding a group of treasure-seeking American hotshots to the city as well, and then O’Connell tosses Beni over the side into the water. However, immediately afterward Rick discovers wet footprints on the ship deck-headed straight for Evelyn’s cabin.

He arrives in time to save Evey from a hook-handed man dressed in black with strange tattoos, who seeks the map and the ‘key.’ A large battle then ensues on the deck, with a whole group of black-clad tattooed men setting fire to the ship as the passengers escape into the river. After arriving on shore, the next morning Rick and Jonathan purchase camels (while Evey buys a beautiful black dress) and begin the long trek through the Sahara desert toward the ruins, with Rick acting as guide. Evelyn ends up being the first one to reach the city in a race with her party and the American treasure hunters’ group.

While camping in the ruins of Hamunaptura, Rick and Evelyn discover the feet of the half-buried Anubis statue O’Connell had encountered three years prior. Inside is hidden what Evey hopes is the Book of Amun Ra, but the American group claims that they found the statue first. Undaunted, Evelyn and Rick decide to travel deeper into a subterranean cave beneath the base of the statue and secretly dig up right between the statue’s legs and take the book first. In the course of this plan, they accidentally dislodge a sarcophagus buried at the feet of the statue above, which is locked shut by a strange lock of Ancient Egyptian design. Evey then realizes that the little puzzle box that Jonathan stole from Rick is the key to unlock the cover.

They do so, and discover within a still-decomposing male mummy, an oddity for a mummified corpse. Inside are fingernail-marks carved into the inside of the coffin, which reveals that the man was buried alive. Scratched into the coffin in hieroglyphics is a cryptic message: “Death is only the Beginning…”

Meanwhile, the Americans have uncovered a box from the statue base; inside is a black book made of obsidian, the evil companion volume to the Book of Amun Ra, titled the Book of the Dead. Ignorant of the warning written on the box, the Americans remove the book and five sacred jars. That night, Rick catches Evey stealing this book from the Americans’ camp, and she succeeds in opening it with the same key for the mummy’s coffin. After a wary O’Connell advises that she not play around with the sacred object, a skeptical Evelyn tries reading a few lines of the book, and in doing so unknowingly resurrects the mummy they discovered earlier back to life. A massive swarm of locusts suddenly appear out of the night, and attack the camp. While running away from the terrible insects, Rick, Evey, Jonathan and the American group encounter carnivorous scarab beetles, and Evelyn falls down a trap door hidden in a stone wall. A few moments later, Rick finds a terrified, staring Evey and chastises her for hiding and not regrouping with them…until her looks where she is staring and freaks out at the walking, talking mummy snarling at them. With a single blow of his shotgun and a defiant scream at the creature, Rick temporarily incapacitates the mummy while they flee the corridor.

They, along with Jonathan and the Americans, are then confronted by the same team of black-clothed men that attacked their boat en route, who lament that they have now failed (thanks to Evelyn) in their lifelong ambition to prevent the mummy from being resurrected. They advise that the strangers leave immediately, and the group’s leader, Ardeth Bay, tells O’Connell that the mummy is an immortal monster which cannot be killed by mortal weapons, and that “he will never eat, he will never sleep, and he will never stop…”

After fleeing the city (unaware that the mummy has recruited Beni Gabor as his servant in exchange for sparing the Hungarian’s life), Rick and Evelyn take refuge in a Cairo hotel. They argue over whether to stay and find a way to stop the monster or leave and spend the rest of their lives together. An uncaring Rick claims that he fulfilled his part of the deal by leading Evey to Hamunaptura, and says that a reanimated corpse is no longer his problem. A bitter Rick then visits the local bar, chatting with his old friend Sir Winston Havelock, who is a disgraced World War I pilot who laments not dying a martyr. When O’Connell, Jonathan and the paranoid Americans spit out bourbon that tastes eerily like blood, Rick realizes the mummy’s presence in the city. He and Evelyn make haste the hotel of one of the unfortunate Americans, Burns, who had suffered his eyes and tongue being ripped out during an encounter with the mummy back in Hamunaptura. They discover the poor man’s body reduced to a shriveled-up skeletal corpse, and witness the mummy (having absorbed the life essence of Burns) instantaneously growing a new layer of skin and muscle: stage one of his regeneration. It is here that Rick discovers the creature’s fear of cats and the fact that the mummy seems to have mistaken Evelyn for his former lover back in ancient times.

After this encounter, Rick and Evelyn meet up with Ardeth Bay, who revealed the long-kept-secret history of the mummy. In the year 1290 BC Ancient Egypt, there was a priest named Imhotep, the closest friend of Pharaoh Seti I. He was the one who presided over the death ceremonies of the deceased, and was secretly having an affair with the King’s mistress, the beautiful Ank-su-namun. When they were caught together by the Pharaoh himself, they teamed up and murdered the King themselves, but then the Medjai, Seti’s loyal bodyguards and greatest warriors, arrived in response to a call for help by Seti’s daughter Nefertiti, who had secretly witnessed the murder. Ank-su-namun, in defiance, committed suicide, having made a deal with her love Imhotep to resurrect her from the Underworld in secret at a later time. True to his promise, Imhotep secretly stole the body of his beloved, and took her to Hamunaptura, where he attempted a ritual with the stolen Book of the Dead to revive her. However, Imhotep had been followed by the Medjai and was caught before the ceremony was completed. His servants were to be buried alive as punishment, but Imhotep would be punished by being cursed with the Hom Dai, a terrible spell which would transform him into the undead for all time, and grant him the power to control and command the Ten Biblical Plagues. Buried at the feet of the Anubis statue in Hamunaptura, the Medjai became a secret society, who throughout history they and their great descendants would guard the ruins of the City of the Dead, and try with all their power to prevent anyone from accidentally (or purposefully) reviving Imhotep.

Thanks to Evelyn and her gang, Ardeth Bay and his men, the descendants of the Medjai and the same desert warriors which Rick had glimpsed three years prior, had failed this mission. They would now have to find a weapon capable of killing Imhotep before he carried out the curse which the American hotshots had unleashed by opening the crate carrying the Book of the Dead. A side effect of the Hom Dai was a task that Imhotep was bound by sacred law to carry out: whoever opened the box holding the Book would be hunted down by the Creature himself and he would drain them of their organs and fluids one after the other until his body was completely restored to its original human state. Evelyn states her belief that if the Book of the Dead brought him back to life, then possibly the Book of Amun Ra has the power to kill him. The problem is that it was originally thought that the golden Book was hidden in the statue of Anubis, but that was where the Americans found the Book of the Dead, so that would imply that the original hiding place of the black Book, the statue of Horus, is actually where the Book of Amun Ra is now located. They all create a plan to find the remaining Americans and bring them to safety before Imhotep reaches them first, and then they must return to Hamunaptura, find the Book of Amun Ra and then use the sacred incantations within to defeat Imhotep.

Just then Ardeth Bay notices that the citizens of Cairo have become Imhotep’s slaves due to some mind-controlling spell, and sport ghastly boils and sores on their skin. Chanting repeatedly, “Imhotep, Imhotep, Imhotep,” the zombified people break into the Cairo Museum where the heroes are discussing their plans and are forced to escape in a car, while Beni Gabor alerts his master to their escape. While speeding through the Cairo streets, the car is savagely attacked by a horde of hypnotized people, and Rick fends them off by punching and tossing. However he is unable to save Daniels, the last doomed American, from being knocked over the side by the ravaging zombies, and is quickly sucked dry by Lord Imhotep, thus completing his regeneration and now fully restored to his humanity. The car is inevitably overrun and crashes, and while Rick and his companions flee the vehicle they become trapped in a small corner of the street. Imhotep then steps forward and commands that Evelyn come with him, and in return he will spare Rick and Jonathan and Ardeth Bay’s lives. Rick is very reluctant and unwilling to let Evelyn leave, but Ardeth convinces him to “live today, fight tomorrow.” After promising that Rick and he will meet again, a smug Imhotep breaks his word and orders his army of hypnotized slaves to kill them. Rick and his companions manage to escape down a manhole, but cannot save the Curator from being overrun by the vast mob.

The next day O’Connell recruits Sir Winston Havelock and his biplane in a mission to rescue Evey before Imhotep returns to the city and sacrifices her so that he may raise Ank-su-namun’s soul, which would then possess Evelyn’s body. During the flight, Imhotep creates a monstrous sandstorm, which takes on the form of Imhotep’s horrifying visage. The vast wall of sand then swallows up the tiny biplane, and Rick and his friends are only saved when Evelyn distracts Imhotep with a desperate kiss, throwing off his concentration and causing the sandstorm to dissipate. The plane is forced to make a crash-landing, and in the impact Havelock is killed, finally fulfilling his wish of dying a hero.

When Rick and Jonathan and Ardeth Bay arrive at Hamunaptura, they are just in time to uncover the Book of Amun Ra and disrupt the sacrificial ceremony. Rick steals a sword from a nearby golden statue and then valiantly leaps to Evey’s rescue, slicing her chains and fending off Imhotep’s mummified priests, having been recently revived by their master. With incredible agility and fighting skills, Rick slices and kicks and battles the horde of mummies in a slightly comical moment of action heroics. Unfortunately, when Jonathan desperately reads an inscription on the Book of Amun Ra’s cover, a battalion of soldier mummies are revived and are ordered by Imhotep to kill Rick. While the reanimated corpse of Ank-su-namun (who attempts to finish the ritual herself) attacks Evelyn, Rick is left alone to fight the soldiers, and gets quite a beating at the finish. Just when Rick is about to be slain, Jonathan finally reads the correct incantation, giving him authoritative power over the soldiers, and then orders them to kill Ank-su-namun. A furious Imhotep attempts to murder Jonathan, and Rick rushes to the rescue, slicing off the mummy’s arm. Livid, Imhotep tosses O’Connell clear across the room, and Jonathan manages to retrieve the key from Imhotep’s cloak.

As Evelyn and Jonathan unlock the Book of Amun Ra and begin searching the gold pages, Imhotep continues to mercilessly toss Rick into the air, landing with bone-breaking pain. The undead priest then lifts Rick up into the air by his neck, and states that, “now, it’s your turn…” At that very moment, Evelyn finds the crucial spell, calling forth a supernatural chariot of blue energy from the Underworld, driven by Anubis himself, which strips Imhotep of his immortal powers granted by the Hom Dai. Rick is disappointed that the spell has apparently unaffected Imhotep, but when O’Connell impales the mummy in the gut with his sword, Imhotep reacts in shock and pain, and for the first time in more than 3,000 years, Imhotep holds his own blood. The now-mortal priest then stumbles backward into a bog pit where ghostly spirits beckon him to the Underworld. As Rick watches with the slightest hint of sympathy, Imhotep disappears beneath the water, after stating once more, “death is only the beginning…”

Suddenly the entire chamber begins to collapse and close up, activating stone doors and locks. While they quickly rush out of the treasure chamber, the still-surviving Beni Gabor, who pleads for them to wait follows Rick and Evey and Jonathan, but the gigantic stone door closes shut before Beni can crawl under. Silently biding farewell to his old friend, Rick then leads the others out of the city as it collapses upon itself, disappearing into the sands of the Sahara. As the heroes catch their breath and say farewell to Ardeth Bay (who survived a horde of mummies that attacked Rick and himself while digging out the Book of Amun Ra), Rick finally admits his love for Evey with a passionate kiss, and the three of them then set off into the sunset back home, unaware that the camels are carrying large sacks of gold that Beni had hidden while trying to escape with the riches during the final battle.

The Mummy Returns
In The Mummy Returns Rick is now married to Eve and has a son, named Alex. When Imhotep's loyal followers ressurect the muumy from the ruins of Hamunaptura, Alex is kidnapped and they must go on a quest to get him back and stop Imhotep from slaying the Scorpion King and using his invincible army to conquer the earth. But Alex has activated the bracelet of Anubis, an object which acts as a map to the location of the Gold Pyramid where the Scorpion King slumbers, so in addition to saving Alex, Rick O'Connell must now save the world from two evils...

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor will initially take place in ancient times in China and follow the background of the film's villain (Jet Li). The film will move forward to a post-World War II setting.

Weapons
Rick has used several firearms of various kinds. Here is a list of some.
 * Colt M1911 .45 Pistol
 * Webley .455 Revolver
 * Winchester Model 1887/1901 Lever-Action Shotgun
 * French Model 1874 Service Revolver