Teenagers and reality TV–a deadly combination that can truly bring out the worst in people.
We’ve already discussed the most good and evil Total Drama contestants, but what if
we took a look at every character’s worst deed?
How different would our rankings be?
Let’s find out–I’m Brad with WickedBinge, and today we’re Ranking EVERY Original Total
Drama Contestant’s WORST Deeds, from the least egregious to the most vile.
For those unfamiliar, the OG cast consists of the original 22 contestants from Total
Drama Island, as well as Alejandro, Sierra, and Blaineley from World Tour.
We won’t be including Chris and Chef since those two are hosts rather than contestants…plus,
come on, we all know Chris would get the top spot.
Let’s begin with characters whose misdeeds aren’t bad enough to call their overall
morality into question.
These are the Flawed Deeds.
First up is Tyler’s Worst Deed: His Ego.
Yes, really; the absolute worst deed we can attribute to Tyler is the fact that he has
an ego.
He’s constantly overestimating his abilities, and is clumsy enough to normally be more of
a hindrance to his team than a help.
Really, though, this entry is a huge reach as Tyler is by far one of the nicest characters
in the Total Drama series.
We get that having an ego can be annoying to some, but for as nice of a guy as Tyler
is overall, if that’s as bad as he gets, he’s earned his place as the least offensive
contestant in Total Drama.
And what is a loveable, dimwitted jock without his loveable, even more dimwitted girlfriend?
Enter Lindsay’s worst deed: Allying with Heather.
As much of a loveable lamebrain as she is, Lindsay is technically an antagonist in most
of Total Drama Island, teaming up with Heather and believing she’s a good friend.
But honestly, we can’t say much bad about her even during this time; she’s being manipulated
by Heather, and despite her “friend”’s desire to be mean and manipulative, she’s
consistently sweet and caring with everyone around her.
When she finally realizes that Heather was taking advantage of her kindness and naivete,
she goes off on her in one of the most satisfying moments in the entire series.
Go off, queen!
While to many fans, their worst deed is simply being a bit annoying, next we discuss what
we believe is Katie and Sadie’s Worst Deed: Turning On Each Other.
These two go hand in hand, hence their shared placement on this list.
While they’re generally pleasant people with an admittedly sweet(if sometimes grating)
BFF dynamic, they aren’t without their faults.
When they get lost in the woods, they start to blame each other for the dilemma, bringing
up each other’s faults and past mistakes rather than helping each other get out of
the woods.
While it did show some loss of restraint, an argument between friends is nothing uncommon–especially
between teenagers–so we’re going to give them a modest placement on our list.
Unless you count generally biting sarcasm as a bad deed, Noah’s Worst Deed is Refusing
to Play Dodgeball.
Noah tends to tease and even downright insult his fellow teammates quite often, seeing himself
as superior to them.
But as cynical as he is, Noah isn’t really hurting anyone–but he was certainly hurting
his team in the episode “Dodgebrawl,” where he refused to participate in the challenge
and help his team.
He was then shocked that his teammates eliminated him, which really calls his title as “the
smart one” into question.
Sure, it’s nothing malicious, but while he’s not hurting, he definitely isn’t
helping.
Man, talk about a serious character derailment.
Up next is Trent’s Worst Deed: Losing his Team’s Challenges.
In season 1, Trent was more or less the straight man of the group.
An unremarkable guy, but also an inoffensive one…then Total Drama Action asked the question:
why not make him genuinely hard to watch?
He basically becomes more or less what would happen if Cody actually ended up dating Gwen–the
guy is straight-up desperate to stay in Gwen’s good graces, and is willing to do absolutely
anything for her.
While this sounds sweet on paper, it manifests in Trent losing challenges for his team on
purpose.
Were it not for Justin informing the rest of his team, this likely would’ve continued
through the whole season.
It’s not a terrible crime or anything, but Trent definitely let his friends down by his
desperation for Gwen.
Next up is the contestant who’s larger than life.
He might be a total sweetheart, but we’ve got to mention Owen’s Worst Deed: Acting
as a Mole.
The closest this big lug has ever come to even remotely being an antagonist, was in
Total Drama Action.
Owen is hired by Chris to intentionally stir up drama among the contestants and their relationships
in the latter half of the season.
While being manipulative comes naturally to plenty of characters in the cast, Owen is
not one such character.
He clearly feels absolutely terrible about his dirty work, genuinely struggling to keep
the charade up at all.
Also notable are his motives; due to Owen’s parents going into ludicrous debt buying a
cheese cellar, he had to accept Chris’s offer to pay it off in exchange for his spying.
It’s still not a particularly nice deed–but he was stuck between a rock and a hard place,
and we have to give some sympathy there.
Rounding out this category is the absolute simp icon himself.
Cody’s Worst Deed: Obsessing over Gwen.
Although he’s generally a nice person and one of the more harmless Total Drama contestants,
Cody is a bit overbearing when it comes to his crush on Gwen.
The phrase “down bad” doesn’t even come close to doing Cody justice.
While he’s at least pretty open with his advances, that doesn’t take away from the
fact that he tends to constantly push his way into Gwen’s life despite her complete
and utter lack of interest.
Sometimes he even crosses the line into downright creepy territory, like the time he had Tyler
take his picture with Gwen…while she was asleep.
He might not be a total creep, but Cody still has a bit of work to do on himself.
Now we’re entering a category for Really Bad Deeds.
These are the deeds that are inexcusably bad–but far from irredeemable or pure evil.
We’re sure this next entry will be happy he didn’t end up at the bottom of our list.
Ezekiel’s Worst Deed is Sexist Remarks.
And before anyone asks–no, we’re not counting any of Ezekiel’s deeds in his mutant form.
Poor guy.
But for this deed, we go back to the very second episode of the series, in which he
messed up all of his chances with one sentence.
Upon questioning how his team lost the challenge due to them having less girls, he reserves
a sure place on the Boat of Losers–the first one ever, in fact.
While this wasn’t a cool thing to say, it’s clear from his mannerisms that Ezekiel is
far from malicious–he’s just been raised with such sexist values, even citing that
his father instructed him to look out for the girls at the competition.
While he’s not exactly a saint, an insensitive remark being the worst of his sins is pretty
darn good by Total Drama standards.
Now we move from everyone’s least favorite socially awkward nerd to everyone’s favorite–it’s
Harold’s Worst Deed: Sabotaging Courtney.
One of Total Drama’s funniest characters, Harold usually uses his mad skills for the
good of his fellow contestants, but he’s also done some bad–like the time he got
Courtney wrongfully eliminated.
Were this post-season 1 Courtney, we would actually applaud him for this–but Courtney
actually hadn’t been shown as too malicious in the start of Total Drama Island.
Harold sabotaged the votes to get her eliminated as payback towards Duncan for his constant
bullying.
Now, we’re not condoning bullying–and we’ll certainly get to that later–but
Harold still got someone eliminated who hadn’t really done him any wrong just to spite his
tormentor, and there were surely better ways to go about payback.
Speaking of payback, Harold will probably want some when he sees that we’re pointing
out a flaw in his beloved Leshawna.
Her worst deed: Badmouthing Other Contestants.
Leshawna is one of the best Total Drama contestants, acting as a sort of big sister to the other
campers, and one of the few people who takes none of Heather’s nonsense.
But in Total Drama Action, she has a momentary fall from grace when she manipulates her teammates
into letting her take the prize for one challenge, and proceeds to badmouth them behind their
backs.
She leaves some pretty scathing comments that end up really hurting the feelings of those
around her–but later, she does make up for it with a heartfelt cheer routine full of
compliments to them.
Redemption is worth a lot.
Next up, unless you’re ready to fall in love, look away, because we’re gazing into
the face of pure beauty for Justin’s Worst Deed: Manipulating Others.
Many fans characterize Justin as the prototype of Alejandro, being a less-than-fully-realized
version of the other dark-skinned charmer antagonist in the series.
What really sets them apart is that Justin is an overall decent guy, and he seems totally
chill outside of the field of reality TV–but don’t go thinking he’s innocent.
Justin has no problem using his looks to manipulate others, whether it’s having the ladies help
him in his challenges to tricking Harold into helping him save Princess Courtney, only to
betray him.
Justin is totally used to having everything handed to him for his absolutely gorgeous
looks, and this leads to him being a bit of a jerk sometimes.
But since he’s an overall nice person who lacks any truly awful deeds, so we won’t
put him any higher.
Now let’s move from insanely beautiful to insanely…insane.
Izzy’s Worst Deed is….um….we actually aren’t sure.
Let us explain: it’s a running gag in the series for her to be chased down by the Royal
Canadian Mountain Police, with her first elimination in Total Drama Island being brought on by
her running away from their helicopters.
Given izzy’s incredibly reckless nature, penchant for explosions and even occasional
violence, there’s no telling what Izzy did to be chased down so thoroughly by government
officials, but the fact that it’s such a nonchalant issue for her is telling that whatever
it is, she’s capable of some freaky stuff.
We’ll settle for placing her in a moderate position here, though–it’s not like we
can ask her.
Plus, for all his charm, Justin isn’t guilty of cheating–unlike our next entry, Bridgette’s,
whose Worst Deed is Cheating on Geoff.
Cheating is a BIG no-no–and why you’d do it when you know you’re being broadcast
to the whole world is beyond me.
But that’s exactly what happened when Alejandro put his charms on Bridgette in the Yukon challenge
of World Tour.
By tempting Bridgette into kissing him, he manages to get her tongue stuck to a pole
at the last second.
So not only was she ready to cheat on her partner on national television, Bridget was
ready to full-on tongue kiss this guy.
Sure, Geoff has his flaws as well–and Bridgette did offer a very heartfelt apology to him
when she returned in an aftermath episode–but that doesn’t excuse both cheating on and
publicly humiliating your partner.
But as bad as that was, the whole “publicly humiliating cheating” thing gets worse when
discussing Beth’s Worst Deed: Cheating on her Boyfriend.
One of the running gags in Total Drama Action is Beth’s insistence on her boyfriend being
a gorgeous male model with his own headshots.
But throughout the season, we still see Beth flirting with the other contestants, from
starting out as one of Justin’s orbiters to kissing Harold and claiming she’s “giving
us a try.”
In the season finale, we find out that Beth was being completely truthful about her boyfriend–meaning
she was repeatedly cheating on her model boyfriend.
If I were you, Beth, I’d refrain from showing him those episodes…
It might be shocking that we haven’t mentioned a certain softhearted animal lover yet, but
believe it or not, DJ’s Worst Deed is Pushing Owen off a Cliff.
As uncharacteristic as it sounds, in the episode “Paintball Deer Hunter,” DJ has a rare
moment of violence.
DJ and Owen took on their respective roles of deer and hunter with full commitment.
This results in Owen chasing DJ up a cliff to corner him…only to realize he’s out
of paintballs.
It would’ve been quite easy for DJ to just prance off into the distance like the peaceful
deer he’d been playing the whole time, but instead he actively pushes Owen off of the
cliff–an act that could’ve easily killed him.
It’s a surprisingly violent, malicious deed from a character who’s nothing of the sort.
But if nothing else, we can give this the defense of it being a deed committed in a
cartoon–Total Drama, no less, which means that it’s still significantly less of a
risk to Owen’s safety than practically any of the challenges the campers are forced to
compete in.
But pushing someone off a cliff is a pretty awful deed for the poster-child of kind characters
in the series…
And we’re going to round out this category with the most popular Total Drama contestant:Gwen’s
Worst Deed, of course, was kissing Duncan.
On its own, that doesn’t sound all that bad, but consider that this happened in the
very same episode Courtney and Gwen became friends.
She knew how much Duncan meant to Courtney, but that didn’t stop her from smooching
him in the confessional.
Were it not for poor Tyler’s luck resulting in him being a witness, it’s possible Courtney
would never have found out that her new best friend had almost immediately betrayed her.
To her credit, Gwen did feel really bad for it–and honestly, the rest of the season
punished her more than she deserved.
So we’ll let her off just outside of our final category.
These are the Terrible Deeds–and you might be surprised at some of the characters who
fell this low.
We’re actually going to lead with one of those shockers.
Party-loving Geoff’s worst deed is his time hosting Total Drama Action’s Aftermath.
Geoff is generally one of the nicest and friendliest contestants in the Total Drama series, but
equally worth discussing was his role as the host of the Total Drama Aftermath episodes
in season 2.
Geoff lets the power go to his head pretty quickly, not only becoming a complete diva
but also torturing his guests for their amusement.
Whether it’s exposing their private deeds and painting misleading pictures or even forcing
them into an electric chair that shocks them if they don’t tell the truth, Geoff is essentially
a miniature version of Chris in this arc.
He may have apologized later once he got a taste of his own medicine, but it’s still
a pretty striking change of character that leaves a bad taste in everyone’s mouth…especially
the people he gave a literal electric chair to.
But at least being a bully isn’t a core trait of Geoff’s…unlike Duncan, whose
worst deed was bullying Harold.
While Duncan does have his fair share of kind deeds, there’s also the face-value side,
and the fact is that he can be a huge jerk.
He’s a ringleader of bullying the nerdier contestants, particularly Harold, who he constantly
haggles.
He also regularly threatens violence against others and insults them, making him one of
the show’s most unsavory characters–despite his occasional good deeds.
We would place the whole blowing-up-a-mansion(i mean, ‘cottage’) thing here instead, but
we’ll give him a pass since it was Chris.
The guy’s got some payback coming.
But he’s not the only character with violent tendencies.
In fact, Eva’s worst deed of extreme anger issues easily beats him in that regard.
It’s pretty much her entire character–Eva uses her extreme athletic skills and strength
to intimidate the other campers, most memorably when she turned on her entire team on suspicion
that one of them had stolen her mp3 player.
When she returns, she makes it her mission to target Bridgette–which is weird, considering
she wasn’t any more complicit in Eva’s elimination than any other camper–and when
she’s inevitably eliminated as soon as she comes back, she has to be held in a straitjacket
to prevent her from presumably killing the other contestants.
Okay, maybe she wouldn’t ACTUALLY kill anyone–but she’s still the most purely violent out
of all the campers.
We now enter our top five, starting with the most infuriating Total Drama character of
all, Heather, whose worst deed is…being Heather.
Seriously–she might have grown in World Tour, acting as a sort of antihero to Alejandro,
the season’s main villain.
But very seldom can any of Heather’s deeds be attributed to sheer altruism.
Leshawna had it right when she said Heather’s as mean as a snake–in fact, she’s probably
worse, since snakes don’t consider those around them as fully expendable, malleable
objects on their path to victory.
Heather is incredibly mean, implied to be racist, treats just about everyone around
her absolutely horribly–ESPECIALLY Lindsay, the only person who seems to like her in season
1.
Heather does get some points for growing into a somewhat better person, though.
That’s definitely a lot more than we can say for the series’ resident C.I.T.,
Courtney.
Her worst deed is Blackmail.
Courtney is easily one of, if not the most manipulative Total Drama contestants.
She won’t let anything get in her way of victory, whether it’s using a PDA or stringing
others along in relationships (in quite possibly the worst character assassination in the series).
But she most frequently resorts to blackmail to get her way–most memorably in the post-season
1 special “Total Drama Drama Drama Drama Island,” where she threatens to pop the
hot air balloon Owen, Cody, DJ, and Tyler are riding in so they’ll fall to their deaths.
It’s entirely possible she was bluffing, but given her ruthless methods throughout
the competition, we at least can’t entirely count it out.
The Bronze Medal of Evil Deeds goes to the only contestant who could truly rival Heather’s
villainy, Alejandro.
His worst deed: Mass psychological manipulation.
Alejandro is responsible for most of the eliminations throughout World Tour.
He sees the others as his playthings, using them in any way necessary to get to the top.
Whether it’s using naive contestants like Tyler as allies, eliminating any characters
smart enough to see through his facade like Noah, or–most egregiously–his constant
charming of the female contestants to get them eliminated and sometimes even endangered.
Getting Bridgette stuck to a pole in the Yukon, where she could have frozen to death, and
pushing Leshawna out of the plane before she even got her parachute on come to mind.
Alejandro is bad news, and he’s without debate the biggest threat in the OG cast–you
know you’re serious trouble when Heather is a saint in comparison…by your own admission,
mind you.
She might be one of the funniest cast members, but there’s nothing funny about Sierra’s
Worst Deed: Stalking and S*xual Harassment.
While she’s portrayed as a lighthearted character, Sierra’s creepy behavior towards
Cody is actually quite sickening when you think about it.
On multiple occasions, she squeezes and kisses Cody against his will, ignoring his very clear
assertions that he’s not even remotely interested in her.
Worse still, when Cody rightfully votes for Sierra, asserting that he finds her unwanted
advances incredibly creepy, she plays the victim, acting brokenhearted–and of course,
poor Cody is pressured to pick up the pieces.
Cody might have been a bit creepy towards Gwen in some instances, but whether or not
Sierra was an attempt to give him a taste of his own medicine, she certainly wasn’t
a proportional response.
As nice as she is when she isn’t being a total creep, we’re not going to sit here
and act like it’s okay.
Yet one thing every other entry on this list has in common is that they’re all just kids
still learning about who they are, as well as dealing with the pressure of being celebrities.
There’s one exception, though–we’re giving the Gold Medal of Evil Deeds to Blaineley,
for Endangering the Lives of Minors.
Debuting in the Celebrity Manhunt special taking place between Action and World Tour,
Blaineley is the only adult contestant on our list.
Incredibly fame-hungry, she’ll do anything to make sure ratings stay high–and even
more importantly, that she stays in the spotlight.
On one Aftermath episode, she releases dangerous wild animals to “stir up drama”--which
basically means endangering the underage contestants on the set, and probably the rest of the crew
as well.
She also kidnaps Bridgette and sends her, unaccompanied, to Siberia in her place to
conduct an interview so she can stay and host the show.
Blaineley is the closest to “pure evil” that any of the Total Drama contestant reaches,
and what absolutely cements her position(as if these deeds weren’t enough to) is the
fact that she’s a grown woman who has no problem endangering the safety of children
on national television just to get a bit of fame and ratings.
At least Chris is pretty darn funny.
You’re not Blainelyriffic or whatever, Blainely–you’re just the absolute worst.