Bandage Mummy



When someone is badly injured and you need to get that across, show him post-accident partly or completely encased in plaster casts and/or bandages. Usually, they'll be in a hospital bed, with maybe one or two arms or legs suspended, and completely immobilised.

If the tone of the work is lighter or more comedic, expect it to be played for laughs. For example, screams muffled by the bandages as a visitor accidentally sits on an injured limb, or the patient trying and failing to crane his neck forward to eat his dessert.

If the work is more serious or the creator feels like dropping a Drama Bomb, well... few things are more shocking than seeing a loved one unconscious, immobile and so wrapped up they're no longer recognizable.

Not to be confused with Bandaged Face or Bandage Babe.

Truth in Television, obviously.

Advertising

 * That "Got milk?" commercial with the guy in the full body cast, where the idiot family shoves a cookie into the mouth hole, but don't pay attention when he starts choking for lack of milk? There's a carafe of it right next to him. Pure Nightmare Fuel.
 * This Golden Sun: Dark Dawn US commercial shows the misuse of Djinn will lead to.

Anime and Manga

 * Horrifyingly used in Grave of the Fireflies.
 * Neon Genesis Evangelion - Rei at the beginning and.
 * Spike in the Cowboy Bebop episode "Pierrot le Fou" after being trashed by the title character. Lampshaded by Faye.
 * Also after he fell out of a window in "Ballad of Fallen Angels".
 * Played for comedy in The Slayers; Zolf, a.k.a. the "Mummy Man" in the first season of the television series and Naga in the first episode of the Slayers Excellent OVAs.
 * Shishio Makoto of Rurouni Kenshin is covered head-to-toe in bandages. His un-bandaged visage is surprisingly attractive... for someone who was shot and burned alive and survived.
 * It gets a Shout-Out in Busou Renkin, from the same author, in which at one point Mahiro bandages Tokiko so much she ends up looking like Shishio.
 * The lepers in Princess Mononoke.
 * In an episode of Nerima Daikon Brothers, Hideki is taken to an opportunistic hospital and placed in a hospital room. His brother Ichiro happens to be in the bed next to his, but since he's covered in bandages from head to toe, Hideki's reaction to Ichiro's attempts at communication is simply "Why is that mummy talking to me?"
 * In earlier chapters of Rave Master Haru usually ends up heavily bandaged after his fights-one time Elie even wraps him up like a mummy. Whether this stopped in later chapters because he became more skilled, Hiro Mashima decided it was too unrealistic, or he just realized that his characters walked around with massive injuries so much anyway that there was no point in 'coddling' them is a mystery.
 * Isamu in Macross Plus after a crash while flight-testing one of the experimental Veritechs.
 * An early episode of the Pokémon anime ("Ignorance is Blissey") has a Blissey wrapping most of Ash's body in bandages, then he turns around to a Nurse Joy who screams at the sight of him.
 * Mr. Shinuhe from Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service — who may be a revivified Egyptian mummy, or just a burn victim who knows way too much about ancient Egyptian burial customs for comfort. He seems to enjoy teasing our heroes with evidence either way.
 * Played for comedic effect multiple times in Ranma ½.
 * Usopp in One Piece, after the fight with Mr. 4 and Ms. Merry Christmas, in which he, among other injuries, is grabbed, smashed through some walls and hit with a four-ton bat, sending him flying into the air and falling to earth.

Film

 * When Mad Max visits Goose in hospital and sees what's left of him wrapped in bandages, he outright refuses to believe it's Goose.
 * A classic one at the ending of It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World shows nearly the entire cast in hospital, bandaged or cast in plaster and bemoaning their fate. Cue Ethel Merman.
 * Played for comedy in Johnny Dangerously, where Johnny's brother is in a full-body cast, next to another hospital patient with another full-body cast. His mother identifies Johnny's brother by the color of his eyes, and writes his name on the cast.
 * Franz Liebkind is reduced to a version of this by the end of The Producers, although still wearing his Nazi helmet.
 * Happened to the dog in There's Something About Mary.
 * Bullseye is this at the end of Daredevil.
 * The protagonist of Kung Fu Hustle is reduced to this state after he gets his everything beaten thoroughly by the Beast.
 * Lampshaded in "Daddy, Mummy", one of the segments in Twilight Zone: The Movie: The hero runs to the hospital still dressed as a pulp flick mummy, and a nurse asks, "Have these bandages been changed recently?"

Literature

 * One example played simultaneously for laughs and Squick is from Catch-22, in which a fully-bandaged wounded flier has one tube going in and one tube going out, and once a day the bottles of fluid attached to each tube are switched around.
 * Not completely covered, but Mr. Bump of The Mr. Men fame.
 * The Way Things Work has a picture of a mammoth severely injured in a gliding accident bandaged and posed to look like an airplane.
 * In Little House in the Big Woods, a kid who gets swarmed by bees is shown all wrapped up in the illustrations.

Live-Action TV

 * Get Smart: Max gets the full-body treatment a few times.
 * In M*A*S*H, as a practical joke, Hawkeye and BJ (and Frank?) give Margaret's fiance three-quarters body cast from the chest down during his bachelor party after he passes out, claiming that he got injured, so he's all plastered up for the wedding and the honeymoon.
 * This happens when Jerri runs Mr. Jellineck over in Strangers with Candy.
 * Those lips! Those pillowy lips!
 * In Monty Python's Flying Circus episode 27, Erik Njorl is called into court to answer charges that he (among other things) assaulted police officers. He's wrapped in bandages from head to toe due to the injuries he received in the fight.
 * Done several other times, including the hilarious sketch with fully bandaged patients being forced to wait on the doctors hand and foot, with the most seriously injured among them forced to compete in sports, such as running obstacle courses.
 * An episode of Mr. Bean had one of the patients of a Take a Number hospital in a full body cast. He tries jumping the queue by stealing that patient's ticket, among other tactics.
 * Strong Girl Bong-soon: All the actual criminals beaten up by Bong-soon in episodes 1 and 9 end up this way in the hospital, eventually filling several wards. Most of them get out by episode 14.

Video Games

 * In Disgaea, Mid-Boss appears like this after one of the fights against him (the third, I think).
 * Otani Yoshitsugu from Sengoku Basara is bandaged head to foot due to him suffering from leprosy. It's pretty damn unnerving.
 * Every time your character lost all his energy in the Ghostbusters videogame adaptation for SEGA Megadrive/Genesis, he would become covered in bandages. Played for comedy.
 * Joshua Graham of Fallout: New Vegas, due to being burned alive for his failure by Caesar. By passing a speech check, he tells you that every night he has to replace the bandages and upon exposing his wounds to the air he feels the pain of being burned alive once again.

Web Comics

 * Doc Rat: Necessary treatment for a splinter in the paw. But not for a fractured hand.
 * Strays: Feral, when Holland met him.

Western Animation

 * In The Simpsons, the family visits daredevil Lance Murdock in the hospital when Bart decides to become a daredevil. Murdock's arms and legs are in casts & slings, and he signs a headshot with a sharpie in his mouth.
 * It's not a complete body binding, but after Thrust gets his metal butt handed to him by Starscream in Transformers Armada his next scene shows him with bandages around his pointed head and his arm in a cast. Given that he's a robot one wonders at the point of putting bandages on at all.
 * Happens to both Cody and Trent in Total Drama Island, Cody after he's mauled by a bear and Trent after he falls out of a plane and hits the ground.
 * Lucius on Jimmy Two-Shoes, but he deserves it.
 * One episode of King of the Hill has Peggy end up in a full body cast after a skydiving accident.
 * Brainy after getting sunburn in The Smurfs episode "Mummy Dearest". Also Clumsy in The Smurfs and the Magic Flute.