King Ramses' Curse
Original air date: 1/7/2000 (produced in 1999)
Production code: CCD-105a
Courage discovers a slab of Egyptian stone, which turns out to be an ancient relic worth a million dollars. Due to its value, Eustace refuses to return the slab without payment, and its rightful owner ravages the family with a trio of plagues as punishment.
The Clutching Foot
Original air date: 1/7/2000 (produced in 1999)
Production code: CCD-105b
Eustace wakes up with a fungal infection on his foot. Refusing to visit the doctor, the fungus consumes Eustace and takes Muriel hostage. While Courage is forced to carry out their footwork, he races to find a cure.
"King Ramses' Curse" features examples of the following tropes:
- 2D Visuals, 3D Effects: As one of the show's first uses of Medium Blending, King Ramses is made with CGI.
- And I Must Scream: The ending has Eustace, due to his refusal to return the slab, be turned into a part of the slab. He's still screaming even after the slab's been returned to the pyramid where it belongs, and where it is said that it will remain for all time. Thankfully, Negative Continuity means that he's somehow been freed in the next episode.
- Asshole Victim: King Ramses's artifact is stolen from a museum by two criminals. They don't get very far, as Ramses appears and goes straight to the locusts after they refuse to return it.
- Brown Note: King Ramses's second curse is annoying the Bagges with a record player playing a song about him. Out of universe it's actually considered hilarious, but in universe it's horrifying enough to be considered worse than the water plague.
- Bullying a Dragon: Despite all the curses King Ramses throws at them, including a flood and a really annoying song, Eustace stubbornly refuses to give up the slab without a reward. Even when they make it through all three curses, Eustace still refuses to give in and ends up imprisoned in the slab himself. Muriel even calls him out for this.Muriel: Eustace, what are ya waiting for? 'Till we're six feet under?!
- Cathartic Chores: With the house being eaten by killer locusts and presumably having only minutes left to live, Muriel vents her stress by cooking a sumptuous feast. She faints with relief when Ramses calls off the plague just in time.
- Department of Redundancy Department: When Courage finds King Ramses's slab and brings it inside, Eustace describes it thus:Eustace: Garbage! From King Garbage! Of the Garbage Dynasty! Stupid dog, always bringing garbage into the house.
- Devoured by the Horde: The third plague is a swarm of locusts that is implied to do this to the thieves who initially stole the slab in the first place, as it descends down on them before the scene cuts away, and when it cuts back to them, they're completely gone, car and all. The same is implied to happen to Eustace in the end, as after he taunts Ramses for running out of plagues after he survives all three, the latter simply summons another swarm.
- Disco Sucks: Ramses's second plague is a disco song about him that's so annoying that it inflicts agonizing pain on everyone who listens to it. The fact that this is the second plague also indicates that, in universe, an obnoxious disco song is considered worse than a flood.
- Drowning Pit: The first plague Ramses sends turns the entire house into one by making water appear out of nowhere, forcing the residents up to the attic. To prevent himself and his owners from drowning, Courage holds his breath, swims through the flooded house down to the basement, and pulls a large drain plug in the floor to drain the water.
- Faux Horrific: The second plague is... gratingly catchy disco music. The entire cast treats it as the worst of tortures.
- Flat-Earth Atheist: Despite all of the supernatural experiences that he has presumably already been subjected to (based on previous episodes), and how obviously otherworldly King Ramses appears even in terms of the discordant animation style, Eustace believes that it is just the professor pulling a "Scooby-Doo" Hoax to make him give up the slab that he refused to return earlier.
- Irony: King Ramses delivers a series of plagues to Courage, Eustace, and Muriel in response to Eustace's refusal to return his Slab. Ramses is often depicted as the Pharaoh from the Book of Exodus, who prompts God to strike Egypt with plagues for refusing to free the Hebrew slaves despite Moses constantly warning him to do so. While the Pharaoh of Exodus is never named and was not likely to be Ramses, popular culture nonetheless makes him the one whose pride and arrogance make him a victim of plagues, while here, it is Ramses who gets to deliver plagues to punish Eustace for being a brat.
- Know When to Fold 'Em: Subverted. Eustace surrenders Ramses's slab when he realizes that he's about to die if he doesn't, but then immediately tries to lay claim on it again when he thinks that the threat has passed. Ramses gives him an even worse fate than being Devoured by the Horde for his continued arrogance.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Eustace gets his comeuppance for his callous greed as he gets imprisoned in the slab in place of Ramses, as punishment.
- Loud of War: One of the plagues Ramses unleashes on Courage and his owners is obnoxious disco music ("King Raaamses! The man in gauze, the man in gauze!").
- Mood Whiplash: This episode is generally regarded as one of the scariest ones around, with a priceless jingle in the middle — "The man in gauze, the man in gauze, King Ramses!" — and the man himself saying "Come onnnnnn" in the same aged, moaning tone as ever when Courage thwarts the first curse by pulling a plug in the basement.
- Mundane Luxury: When celebrating that the slab will make him rich, Eustace plans to buy such extravagances as a flyswatter, a shovel handle, and a lightbulb for the attic.
- Shout-Out: King Ramses's flat design was based on Parappa The Rapper.
- Suckiness Is Painful: The second curse is just blasting annoying house music.
- Super Not-Drowning Skills: It takes about 25 seconds for Courage to swim from the attic to the basement on a single breath. Since he's a small dog with tiny legs, it's impressive that he can hold his breath that long, let alone swim that distance during that time. And that's assuming that this was shown in Real Time and nothing was skipped over or trimmed out, meaning that this all could have taken longer than what was shown.
"The Clutching Foot" features examples of the following tropes:
- Agony of the Feet: Muriel and Courage attempt numerous remedies to cure Eustace's foot fungus, much to his pain. These include rubbing a cactus on the foot, sticking it in a pail of lobsters, and using some unidentifiable horrid concoction that only causes severe burns.
- Banana Peel: The fungus plans to rob a train that Courage stopped, but it slips on the peel from the banana Courage was eating and ends up derailing and blowing up the train.
- Body Horror: Eustace's foot gets a fungus that swells his foot so much that it takes over his whole body and starts a mobster crime spree.
- Everything Sensor: The Computer has Courage put a sample of the Clutching Foot in its CD-ROM drive to analyze it.
- Giant Foot of Stomping: The foot, who actually has enough self-heavy lifting to stomp Muriel, taking her hostage for the remainder of the episode.
- Gross-Up Close-Up: Eustace's infected foot has a couple of unflattering close-ups before the fungus fully takes over. Also, we probably didn't need to see a zoom in of his toothless gums as he's screaming during the "cactus treatment".
- Here We Go Again!: After Courage cures the fungus by vigourously licking Eustace's foot, the episode ends with him finding out that it has moved to his tongue instead.
- Wound Licking: More like Fungus Licking. After analyzing a sample of the fungus taken from Eustace's foot, the Computer deduces that dog spit will get rid of the fungus. Much to Courage's disgust, he reluctantly licks the fungus everywhere, which actually cures Eustace's foot as it begins to shrink back to its regular form.Computer: Work up a good drool, baby.
- "Return the slab..."note
