Tiki idol

The tiki idol is a small wooden idol that Beth found on Boney Island during the canoe challenge that would curse Beth's team later in Total Drama Island.

Total Drama Island
Beth took it from the island only because she wasn't aware that it would curse her team, since she was not there with everyone else at the time that Chris warned the campers not to take anything from the island in order to avoid being cursed forever.

By taking it off the island, she "cursed" the Screaming Gophers and caused them to lose the next three challenges until Beth's elimination in If You Can't Take The Heat.... When Cody was eliminated, she showed him the tiki idol when bringing him to the Dock of Shame. When Cody sees the idol, he tries to warn her about what she did, but his warning is muffled by his bandages he is wearing due to a bear attack.

In the If You Can't Take The Heat..., Beth also put it on the presentation table for the dinner cooked for Chris in the challenge, which also caused her team to lose the challenge. Once the other campers found out that Beth had taken the idol from Boney Island, they were angered that she put them in danger. She said that she'd return it. However, it is later revealed that instead of returning it, she broke it up and flushed it down the communal washroom toilet. Despite this, the curse she put on the team eventually disappears after her elimination.

In Trial by Tri-Armed Triathlon, it was revealed that Beth never returned the idol to Boney Island as she had said and had instead broken it into three pieces and flushed it down the septic tank. The idol was found in a package on the beach of Boney Island by Owen and Heather.

Chris explained the story of what happened to the idol then instructed the campers to return their third of the cursed idol to the Cave of Treacherous Terror while one member of the team piggy-backs the other. They were also told to do their task quickly, because Chris claimed that the longer each team had their chunk of the idol, the more the curse would affect them. Geoff and Gwen were the only ones to return the idol to the cave.

Trivia

 * The tiki idol resembles an immunity idol seen in Survivor.
 * This, however, appears be the opposite of the immunity idol. Generally, finding the immunity idol is good in Survivor, but in this situation, it brings bad luck to the founder.
 * The Total Drama World Tour counterpart of this cursed idol is the Curse of the Mummified Dog, as both curses span the course of several episodes, severely affect the contestant's team, and eventually result in the elimination of the contestant who started it.
 * Unlike the mummified dog's curse, this curse was proven to be real.
 * In addition, this curse didn't completely decimate the entire team, like it did with Team Victory. It wasn't also effective as much to the season.
 * Total Drama Island is currently the only season to feature the tiki idol, as it did not appear in future seasons.