History Main / CuRse

InvertedTrope to {{Blessing}}

* One episode of ''Series/TheMiddleman'' had a survivor of the Titanic cursed with immortality so long as his tuba remain intact for his heinous crime: pretending the tuba was his child and thus stealing the seats of a woman and her child. The tuba itself is an ArtifactOfDeath capable of killing anyone who hears its E Flat note by filling their lungs with the icy waters of the North Atlantic. After a decades he comes to consider himself CursedWithAwesome though.
* Played with in ''Series/{{Leverage}}'' where a con involved making the curator of a museum off balance, stressed, and ill. He was suffering from cold-like symptoms which were exasperated by the team and his coworker mentioned an Egyptian curse due to the mummy they had on hand. Just as he was considering the possibility she changed tune and said “That’s all nonsense. Everyone knows it’s a bacteria.” His mood was not improved.
* ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' and ''Series/{{Angel}}'' has Angel, a vampire cursed with a soul. If he ever has a moment of perfect happiness (such as having sex with Buffy), the curse is broken, he loses his soul, and he reverts to being Angelus, the ''incredibly'' evil vampire that he was before getting cursed.
** The gypsies may not have thought this through. The soul made him deeply depressed and constantly thinking about the hundreds of people he’s killed over the years, but the escape clause allows him to return to being one of history’s most sadistic killers.
* ''Series/{{Merlin|2008}}'' episode "The Lady of the Lake". Freya was a Druid girl cursed to turn into a winged werepanther at the stroke of midnight.
* On ''Series/{{Misfits}}'', one of Rudy's many one night stands is upset that he doesn't want to date her and curses him so that his penis starts to rot. Simon has a vision that if he doesn't figure out how to stop the curse, it will fall off. It looks so bad that many people gasp or scream at the sight of it. At the end of the episode, he apologizes to her and she reverses it.
* ''Series/MysteryHunters'': A couple of episodes investigate alleged curses such as the curse of the play theatre/Macbeth and an allege curse that occurs if one enters Useful Notes/Tutankhamun's tomb. Subverted though as it seems that incidents that are allegedly caused by the curses seem to be coincidences.
* ''Series/PowerRangersDinoThunder'': A MonsterOfTheWeek episode featured Ethan accidentally invoking an ancient Egyptian curse by translating hieroglyphics on "King Tuttenhawken's" tomb, causing constant, relentless bad luck. His only way to break it involves killing him while flying, which he does with a new [[MerchandiseDriven flying triceratops motorcycle]].
* ''Series/{{Rome}}'':
** After Caesar rejects her for political reasons, his mistress Sevillia writes out a formal curse according to Roman custom. It doesn't work, so she conspires to his assassination instead. Later she curses her long-time rival Atia, and this curse appears to be more effective, possibly because she [[DrivenToSuicide sacrifices herself]] to invoke it -- Atia's son gains all the power she wanted for him, but Atia loses the love of her life Marc Antony.
** After discovering his wife's infidelity, and realizing his children were keeping the secret from him, Vorenus curses them all to damnation. This is SeriousBusiness for a Roman so [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone Vorenus is aghast]] when he returns to his house and finds them missing. Pullo assures him he can just lift the curse when his children return. They don't, having been abducted and sold into slavery by an enemy of Vorenus while he was absent.
* ''Series/{{Charmed|1998}}'': As a series about witchcraft, these pop up semi-frequently. The most notable instance was when Phoebe began receiving PastLifeMemories, coupled with physical manifestations of said past life attacking her. Throughout the episode, she comes to the revelation that her past self was evil, and a curse was put on her soul (by past Prue and past Piper, no less), [[YourDaysAreNumbered dooming her (and all reincarnations of her soul) to die at the exact age Phoebe currently is]]. [[GrandTheftMe Through taking control of her past self's body]], Phoebe herself is able to counter the curse, dodging her own demise.
** Happens to Phoebe in [[Recap/CharmedS6E15IDreamOfPhoebe I Dream of Phoebe]] where Phoebe, after freeing a Genie she thought was good, is forced to [[BecomingtheGenie take the Genies place in the bottle]]. Turns out the Genie was actually a Demon, cursed to be a Genie after she refused to marry a sorceror. Turns out the Curse works beyond the original Genie as whoever frees the current Genie,whoever it may be, takes their place. This feature of the curse is used to turn the Demon back into a Genie again by the end.
* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1985'': In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1985S3E24 Cat and Mouse]]", after being found in bed with the wife of a warlock, a curse was placed on Guillaume de Marchaux. During the day, he is trapped in the form of a cat. However, he can freely transform between a man and a cat at night. The warlock also cursed him with immortality to prolong the spell.
* The premise of ''Series/SeriouslyWeird'' is that the protagonist Harris Pembleton disrespects Steve, the God of Chaos, in his own realm and is cursed for life to be [[WeirdnessMagnet targeted by all that is Weird]].
* A common belief among fans of the ''Series/EurovisionSongContest'' is that performing second in the Grand Final is cursed. Contestants who perform early are already at a disadvantage (as viewers may not remember them by the time voting begins) but ''nobody'' has ever won while going second, and the slot has produced more last-place entries than any other.

** TabletopGame/{{Ravenloft}}, in addition to making the normal ''D&D'' curse spells harder to get rid of, has "curses of vengeance" which can be invoked by any character on somebody they believe has wronged them (whether or not they've actually wronged them). They can have pretty much any effect the players and/or DM can come up with from merely annoying to deadly. They aren't guaranteed to work, though.

It isn't [[CursedWithAwesome awesome]] and was not [[BlessedWithSuck meant as a blessing]], this is a [[BlackMagic wicked spell]] intended to harm or even kill the cursed character. A common variant is the GypsyCurse. TheProductionCurse is this applied to the people involved in developing a product. Contrast the ProtectiveCharm, which can block or lessen curses. See also OneCurseLimit, in which a victim can only suffer a single curse at one time. See also CurseThatCures, when a character seeks out a curse because it will cure them of a sickness or injury as a side effect, or {{Geas}}, which is a curse that someone must constantly do on their own, or else die. See also PrayerOfMalice, where someone petitions a [[GodIsGood generally benevolent deity]] to curse someone instead.

* In Japan, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_the_Colonel The Curse of the Colonel]] has afflicted the Hanshin Tigers ever since fans threw a statue of [[{{UsefulNotes/KentuckyFriedChicken}} Colonel Sanders]] into the Dotonbori River after the 1985 Japanese Championship Series.[[note]]They didn't do this on a lark - fans who resembled members of the Tigers were jumping into the river in honor of those players, but one of the Hanshin Tigers players was white, so they threw the statue in as the ClosestThingWeGot.[[/note]] It was believed that the Tigers would never win another championship until the statue was recovered, but they've kept losing since it was found in 2009. Some attribute this to the fact that the glasses and left hand are still missing.

* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1985'': In "Cat and Mouse", after being found in bed with the wife of a warlock, a curse was placed on Guillaume de Marchaux. During the day, he is trapped in the form of a cat. However, he can freely transform between a man and a cat at night. The warlock also cursed him with immortality to prolong the spell.

* The city of UsefulNotes/{{Philadelphia}} and the Curse of Billy Penn. Philadelphia's City Hall is topped by a statue of William Penn (the founder of both the city and the entire colony-now-state of Pennsylvania), and for many decades there was a gentleman's agreement in place that didn't allow any building in the city to be higher than it. This agreement was broken in March 1987 by the opening of One Liberty Place three blocks away. Before then, all four of Philadelphia's major sports franchises had seen a good deal of recent success: [[UsefulNotes/MLBTeams the Phillies]] had won the World Series in 1980 and had also clinched the NL Pennant in 1983 (if this doesn't seem like a lot, consider that the club predates the first World Series (1903) by twenty years and 1980 was their first World Series victory ''ever'' ); [[UsefulNotes/NationalBasketballAssociation the 76ers]] had swept the Los Angeles Lakers to win the 1983 NBA Finals and also made the Finals in '77, '80, and '82; [[UsefulNotes/AmericanFootball the Eagles]] reached Super Bowl XV in 1980 before losing to the Oakland Raiders (a big deal for a team whose last NFL title was in 1960); [[UsefulNotes/NationalHockeyLeague the Flyers]] had won back-to-back Stanley Cup championships in 1974 and '75, as well as appearing in the Finals in '76, '80, and '85. Once the new skyscraper opened and the statue of Penn was overshadowed, none of these teams won a championship despite some close calls:

* Discussed several times in ''Manga/CaseClosed''. Since it's set in a country [[Myth/JapaneseMythology with a rich mythology]] but the series itself is practically devoid of any actual magic, whenever a supposed "curse" takes place and causes deaths as a result, it's ''always'' a murder committed by a GenreSavvy human who takes advantage of said mythology to stage said kills.
* ''Manga/DenjinN'': The murders are initially believed to be as supernaturally odd series of accidental deaths by the public and Misaki and somewhat of an UrbanLegend before [[SpreeKiller Tadahiro]] outs himself in public.

** After Caesar rejects her for political reasons, his mistress Sevillia writes out a formal curse according to Roman custom. It doesn't work, so she conspires to his assassination instead. Later she curses her long-time rival Atia, and this curse appears to be more effective -- Atia's son gains all the power she wanted for him, but Atia loses the love of her life Marc Antony.

--> '''The Father:''' ''Thrice now I curse, and from the first, your family shall feel the worse. Soon shall you see, they'll surely be, in the most dire jeopardy.'' (Referencing Alexander's enslavement and Rosella's nearly becoming a HumanSacrifice to a dragon in game 3) ''Then, as your foe, 'tis I who'll sew, the spell to cause heart to slow.'' (Referencing Graham's heart attack in the 4th game) ''And for my shame, for you the same, o'er Daventry your heirs shan't rein!'' (Referencing the 6th and 7th games, but invoking a {{Fanon}} theory on the latter)

* ''Literature/SwansBraidAndOtherTalesOfTerizan'': A wizard in Oreen has cursed the city with hot weather, the Council is told by his servant. To break this, Terizan is hired for stealing the object which focuses this, a "curse anchor". [[spoiler:However, it turns out this isn't the result of a curse-the servant wants her for [[ForcedTransformation another curse]] which affected her master]].

** Several other characters apparently fell into magical springs where ''something'' drowned in it, and suffer InvoluntaryShapeshifting themselves.

* From the "Dead Moon Circus" arc of ''Manga/SailorMoon'', Queen Nehellenia, an homage to fairy tale villains like "[[Literature/SnowWhite The Evil Queen]]" or "[[Literature/SleepingBeauty The Wicked Godmother]]", makes an unwelcome audience to Princess Serenity's christening. Queen Serenity banishes her back to the dark side of the moon, but before leaving, Nehellenia declares before the entirety of the Silver Millennium, the Princess will never inherit her Mother's throne. Years later the Moon Kingdom is destroyed in an attack by Metalia and the Dark Kingdom.

* ''Franchise/WonderWoman'' [[ComicBook/WonderWoman1942 Vol 1]]: In "The Curse of Montezuma" there is a flashback to the cruel greedy Conquistador's ship being sunken by a curse hundreds of years ago. The treasure within the sunken ship is recovered by Diana for the descendants of those who had it stolen from them.

* ''Literature/SwansBraidAndOtherTalesOfTerizan'': A wizard in Oreen has cursed the city with hot weather, the Council is told by his servant. To break this, Terizan is hired for stealing the object which focuses this, a "curse anchor". [[spoiler:However, it turns out this isn't the result of a curse-the servant wants her for [[ForcedTransformation another curse]] which affected her master.

[[folder:Newspaper Comics]]
* ''ComicStrip/TheFarSide:''
** A couple is looking at their vacation slides, with the husband chuckling over the peasant woman who threatened to put a curse on him if he took her picture.. and he's half-dissolved into a lumpy snaggled-toothed hulk.
** A mummy to the trio of archaeologists who have just cracked open his sarcophagus: "Well, that's a curse on you, and a curse on you, and a curse on ''you!''"
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