Curse of the Mummified Dog

This article is about the alleged curse placed on DJ and the rest of Team Victory in Total Drama World Tour when he accidentally destroyed a mummified dog. It causes DJ to hurt at least one animal in every episode up until his elimination. The curse was supposedly lifted in Newf Kids on the Rock when DJ found a fish, Irene, with an Egyptian symbol on the side, believing it to be a sign that the curse was lifted. By the end of Jamaica Me Sweat, however, LeShawna's assumption that the curse was only real by the power of suggestion was proved correct, because DJ only began to hurt animals again when he discovered that Alejandro had lied to him about his curse being lifted. Thus, the curse was nothing more than a massive obsession that single-handedly decimated Team Victory, as well as DJ himself.

Theme Song
While the contestants are on the human pyramid, a seagull flies straight into DJ's head, foreshadowing his animal curse throughout the season.

Walk Like An Egyptian - Part 1
When DJ, LeShawna, and Harold enter the pyramid in the "Pyramid Over Under" challenge, they see a row of mummified animals while they are running through the door marked with a scarab. DJ stops and says that he feels sorry for the mummified dog and wants to give it a treat. He then pets it, and it crumbles into dust, beginning the supposed curse. DJ freaks out about "killing" the dog which LeShawna dismisses but it causes a large number of scarabs to come out of the walls and ceiling to attack them. Despite being the first ones to finish the challenge, their luck doesn't last long.

Walk Like An Egyptian - Part 2
In the beginning of the episode, DJ tries to stop Harold from using their team's stick as a jousting weapon. He grabs it from Harold's hand and throws it into the air, only to have it hit a seagull and upset DJ. He talks in the confessional about how he loves animals and that this kind of thing would never happen back home. Team Victory ends up losing the first challenge due to Ezekiel losing the stick that they needed to finish the challenge. This is Team Victory's first loss after the curse.

Super Happy Crazy Fun Time Japan
This episode has the first actual mention of the curse. In the "Human Pinball" challenge, LeShawna volunteers DJ to do the challenge. DJ is dead set against this because he has to be in the pinball with a panda and after hurting the dog and bird in the previous two episodes, he doesn't want to hurt any more animals. He reminds everyone of the curse that was set on him. He greatly exaggerates the story though, imagining that both the dog and the pyramid exploded after he pet the dog. LeShawna reminds him that that isn't what happened at all and the dog just disintegrated. But he still doesn't feel good about it. He reluctantly does the challenge anyway. During the challenge, DJ does badly injure the panda that he's in the challenge with, T'sing T'sing. He is visibly upset about this, and even loudly declared that he wanted to go home. At the end of the episode, Team Victory loses their second challenge in a row after DJ throws the commercial challenge, in hopes that his team would vote him off for it. T'sing T'sing appears in the confessional and vote for DJ, despite not being a contestant. Even DJ voted himself off out of guilt. DJ's plan almost worked, as he received a majority of the votes from his team. However, when DJ was supposed to leave, Harold quit the competition instead, sparing DJ.

Anything Yukon Do, I Can Do Better
DJ is pulling his sled for his team but cries because he misses his mother. This causes his tears to freeze and blind him for the challenge. He has no idea where he's going and tries to tell his team, but they don't hear him. While his eyes are shut, he keeps running and accidentally kicks a baby seal off a cliff and into the water. This devastates him and he wants to go back and help it but LeShawna tells him that the seal is climbing back up. DJ doesn't believe this until Lindsay makes a fake seal sound. The baby seal does eventually make it back up, but it is very angry with DJ. Despite crossing the finish line first, Team Victory loses once again because Bridgette wasn't with them when they finished. DJ says the only way that he'll believe he isn't cursed is if he isn't voted off. He isn't voted off, and is convinced for a short time that he's not cursed.

Broadway, Baby!
When the contestants make it to turtle pond, DJ goes to go get the big apple from his team. But once he gets it, he is attacked by a large group of snapping turtles. He eventually escapes and gives Lindsay the apple. He notices a snapping turtle biting the back of his shorts and takes it off and tosses it in the water, but a larger snapping turtle surfaces and eats it. DJ is saddened and asks "Why?" LeShawna tells him that it's because he's cursed and that's why. Team Victory finally doesn't come in last place, they come in second. But Chris reveals that it isn't an elimination challenge so they have no benefit of getting second place and are not satisfied.

Aftermath: Bridgette Over Troubled Water
In the "That's Gonna Leave a Mark" segment, T'sing T'sing is revealed to have cast his vote right before DJ (implying the order of the votes shown in the episode may not necessarily be the actual elimination order done while filming). As DJ is approaching the confessional, T'sing T'sing springs his attack and stamps DJ's face with elimination stamps.

Slap Slap Revolution
In the beginning of the episode, DJ claims that he does not want to hurt any more animals and believes that he is still cursed. LeShawna says that DJ needs to pretend like the curse doesn't exist or it will never go away and DJ likes this idea, but his reassurance doesn't last long. A seagull sits on DJ's lap after LeShawna closes the hole on the plane. DJ tries to warn it about his curse, but the seagull continues to appear around him. After DJ falls out of the plane with the rest of the contestants, the seagull lands on his head. In the first part of the challenge, it accidentally gets caught in the meat grinder, leading DJ to believe that it dies. It makes it out alive, but is completely bald. The seagull throws meat at DJ's eye for revenge. After Team Victory finishes creating their sausage, they go down the snowy hill and Chris gets a dangerous and rabid baby goat to attack the contestants. DJ catches the goat as it lunges at him, reassuring it that he won't hurt it. However, it was hit by a passing tree branch, and was knocked right out of DJ's hands, spinning around painfully on the branch and making DJ upset once again. However, doing this did result in the goat not harming anyone. Team Victory once again lost the challenge and LeShawna was voted out of the competition.

The Am-AH-Zon Race
After it starts to get dark in the Amazon, DJ feels insects crawling all over him so he tries to shoe them off. But he later finds out that he was hurting small monkeys that were attracted to the bananas. He bandages each individual one that's hurt and tries to creep away while they sleep, but steps on a stick and wakes them up, resulting in all of the monkeys attacking him. Lindsay points out that the animals attacked him instead, and they also won the challenge, meaning the "curse" may be lifting. However nothing ended up changing in the competition, as the episode was non-elimination.

Can't Help Falling in Louvre
Before the challenge starts, three animals are released to chase the contestants, one of them being the baby seal that DJ ran over in the Yukon, which begins to chase him. DJ then finds an Egyptian exhibit that contains the same mummified animals he saw in Egypt, and thinks his curse can end here. He leaves Lindsay alone, letting her do the rest of the challenge alone. He takes the mummified dog he found there, and plans to take it to Egypt and put it in the pyramid where the old one was. Even though he has no idea of how he would do this. On the way out of the museum, he is attacked by the seal (again), and accidentally crashes into the Sasquatchanakwa, and a vase falls in his head annoying him and Sasquatchanakwa starts to chase him. Later, DJ squashes the foot of the Bear, causing it and the Sasquatchanakwa to crash, and chasing him again. Then all of them crash with the sculpture that Lindsay was near to complete, destroying it. The mummy dog is going to fall, which it does. However, Izzy catches it, which DJ breaths a sigh of relief for, but does so too soon, because right after, Izzy smashes the mummified dog onto the ground. Team Victory loses again and DJ wants to vote himself off, but Chris doesn't let this happen. DJ tries to lose the tiebreaker challenge but does not, leaving him as the last remaining Team Victory member despite the fact that he doesn't want to be there. This may be an effect of the curse.

Newf Kids on the Rock
After landing the plane in water, Heather throws DJ the seat cushion she was clinging to so he would float. He refused to get into his boat but is picked up by a killer whale. While on the whale, he accidentally pushes the cushion into its blowhole, causing it to struggle. The whale manages to fling DJ into the boat and also shoots the cushion out of it's blowhole, which hits a passing seagull, the same one which had been affected by the curse in the past. Towards the end of the episode, Team Chris is Really Really Really Really Hot and DJ are left to do a challenge involving drinking apple cider vinegar, solving a Newfoundland saying, and kissing a cod. Heather points out the Egyptian symbol on the fish, telling DJ that it might break his curse. DJ won't do it at first but Alejandro agrees with Heather and DJ winds up kissing the fish. After two hours of nothing bad happening to an animal, he believes his curse is broken and sides with Alejandro rather than Heather. Alejandro reveals at the end of the episode that he was the one that drew the symbol on the fish to trick DJ into thinking his curse was lifted.

Jamaica Me Sweat
DJ is convinced that he's not cursed anymore because he believed Alejandro and Heather's idea of kissing a cod with an Egyptian symbol on it breaks the curse. He names his fish that broke his bad luck "Irene." He takes Irene everywhere with him, even to the confessional, and this continues throughout the challenge. She almost gets hurt once, but DJ saves her, further convincing him that the curse is over. But later in the episode, Alejandro reveals that the Egyptian symbol on Irene's side was painted by him. He purposely says this to Tyler, hoping that DJ overhears him and he does. This causes DJ to panic, while Alejandro apologizes with fake sympathy. He leaves Irene behind when he does the third round of the "Bobsled of Death" challenge, to make sure that she is safe, but hurts three seagulls and a walrus in the middle of the challenge, causing him to lose and DJ was automatically eliminated because of it. After DJ landed in the sand from the plane after he was eliminated, a pile of red ants began to crawl up over his body, causing him to scream and run off. The fact that the curse only began again once DJ had realized Alejandro had lied to him leads to the conclusion that the curse was psychological and only had the power that DJ gave it, as LeShawna had mentioned at an earlier date.

Aftermath: Revenge of the Telethon
DJ appeared as a guest during the aftermath after his recent elimination. So that Geoff can get donations for the show, he introduces a segment called "DJ's World of Animals." He shows scenes of DJ hurting animals during his time on the show. The first two are scenes from Super Happy Crazy Fun Time Japan when he hurt a panda and Broadway, Baby! where he hurt a turtle. Then previously unseen clips are shown. At one point, he knocks down a tree which lands on a bear going to the bathroom. He is also shown to accidentally crush two mice sleeping in his shoes when he steps on them. At one point he stops a squirrel in New York to give it something to eat and the homeless man from Celebrity Manhunt's Total Drama Action Reunion Special and What's Not To Love from Broadway, Baby! runs over it on his bicycle. In Newfoundland, DJ runs his boat into an iceberg with a polar bear on top. A helicopter then randomly falls on top of the polar bear. The seagull is shown to have gotten hurt by going into the propeller of the Total Drama Jumbo Jet when DJ released it into the air. The segment then ends and many of the animals that DJ had hurt before (Such as the Baby Seal, Baby Goat, and Monkey) are at the Aftermath studio in cages. DJ almost pets the goat, but it roars him away. When the donations get to a certain price, Blaineley releases the animals, which causes DJ to run away outside the studio. However, the animals do not chase after DJ - they instead attack everyone else, including the camera. After the commercial break, it is shown that they left the studio destroyed and everyone injured.

Trivia

 * This curse is ironic, because DJ loves animals more than any other character on the show.
 * The seagull is the only animal to be hurt more than once by the curse, as it is hurt six times by the curse.
 * This is the Total Drama World Tour counterpart of the Tiki Idol's curse in Total Drama Island as the dog cursed DJ, and the Tiki Idol cursed the Screaming Gophers.
 * The only animal he has handled without harming in Total Drama World Tour, is his pet fish, Irene, in Jamaica Me Sweat.
 * Though, this could be because DJ thought that the curse was lifted. Thus, he didn't hurt any animals again until Alejandro told him, which eventually got him eliminated.
 * It was technically proven that the curse never was real, and was simply all in DJ's head. Even though Irene wasn't really a magic fish that could lift the curse, DJ didn't hurt any more animals due to believing that his curse had been lifted. However, upon realizing that Irene was fake, he started hurting animals again.
 * There is a possibility that the curse of Team Victory may not come from the Mummified Dog, but from the actual naming of the team as "Team Victory". Sierra states in The Am-AH-Zon Race that any team that predicts good luck always loses. Thus, it makes it possible that by choosing to call themselves "Team Victory" (for being the first team to make it through the pyramid in Walk Like An Egyptian - Part 1), karma prevented them from winning any elimination challenges, leading to the total annihilation of the team prior to the merge.