Total Drama is notorious for its usage of Ass Pull, usually for the sake of justifying a character's elimination:
- Island:
- In "Up the Creek", the Killer Bass are left stranded in Boney Island after their paddles are destroyed, so they decide to pile up all their canoes and ask DJ to flutter-kick them back to Wawanakwa. However, DJ somehow manages to outswim the opposing team, crossing the finish line and securing victory. Not only does his strength come out of nowhere, but previous episodes heavily suggested that he was a terrible swimmer, due to suffering from hydrophobia.
- Lindsay's elimination in "That's Off The Chain" is the result of being the last person to cross the finish line. Notably, Chris uses Exact Words here, as Duncan and Owen don't even reach the finish line, while Izzy and Leshawna are MIA for most of the challenge, meaning Lindsay gets eliminated by a last minute twist that no one could have seen coming.
- Leshawna's elimination in "Haute Camp-Ture" . Chris gives the eliminated campers the chance to vote off one of the remaining contestants, but decides to count any mention of a camper's name as a vote against them. As soon as Izzy realizes this, she angrily tells everyone to stop saying Leshawna's name, but a random parrot appears out of nowhere and starts doing just that. As Chris accepts the bird's words as valid votes, Leshawna loses the competition by a landslide.
- Action:
- Lindsay's elimination in "Rock n' Rule" by accidentally voting for herself instead of Duncan is seen, by most fans, as one of the worst eliminations in the show, especially given how much focus was given to Lindsay during the season similar to Harold to the point she was considered one of the season's protagonists and a deserving winner. Sparing Duncan seems to validate the fans' suspicions of the writers giving Duncan constant Plot Armor. It doesn't help either that Lindsay was a bit smarter here than last season, so a random moment of stupidity costing her her place in the competition was seen as something contrived to keep Duncan in the game.
- World Tour:
- Up until "Picnic at Hanging Dork", every time Team Amazon lost, it was a non-elimination episode.
- In "I See London...", the teams must search for clues to help them capture a person disguised as Jack the Ripper. However, Team Amazon misinterprets one of the clues and decides to look for the criminal in Whitechapel, where they randomly run into Duncan. Embarrassed that they would have to go back empty-handed, Courtney and Gwen kidnap their former castmate and present him to Chris. The end result is that, with no foreshadowing whatsoever, Duncan is forced back into the game, while the team that did manage to catch Jack the Ripper is declared the loser. They also go through a regular voting ceremony in spite of that instead of at least announcing a non-elimination round for their accomplishment.
- Gwen's elimination in "Picnic at Hanging Dork" is the result of her allergy to eucalyptus. Not only was her allergy never once foreshadowed (not even in this very episode), but the episode kept hinting that it'd be Courtney who'd be eliminated.
- Both endings of the finale are one of these, what with feral Ezekiel stealing and destroying the money, and Alejandro being severely injured to the point of being forced inside the Drama Machine. In other words, the whole season was invalidated for the sake of movie references that even by 2010 (when World Tour originally aired) were already overdone and outdated. The ending where Alejandro wins actually manages to one-up this. In his ending, he ends up winning because Heather accidentally throws his dummy into the volcano, but the money is still destroyed and he still ends up severely injured and put in the Drama Machine.
- All Stars:
- For some fans, Mal's very existence. As one of the many reasons Mike's evil personality Mal is so divisive is the fact that there was no foreshadowing or hint to Mike having another personality in Revenge, especially one that was responsible for getting him thrown in juvenile detention years back. There is also the issue of it creating a Plot Hole in Grand Chef Auto where after Mike gets knocked out from being struck in the head by Scott, Mal doesn't awaken despite head injury being established to be his trigger.
- Sam's elimination in "Food Fright". It’s revealed that he snuck some pancakes in his pockets for fear that he would go to Boney Island again, resulting in the Vultures being declared the winners and the Hamsters voting him out. It was never hinted that he had done so, nor was there any point during the challenge where he could have done so on screen.
- In "Sundae Muddy Sundae":
- Courtney shows in a confessional that she has drawn a chart detailing how she plans to eliminate the remaining campers. Mal later exposes it to turn the contestants against her, but how he managed to get his hands on it is left unexplained.
- Near the end of the episode, a bird randomly vomits on Courtney's sundae. This causes her to lose the challenge, as she is unable to eat it when Chris changes the rules so the campers must eat their own desserts. It makes even less sense when you remember Season 3's "Chinese Fake-Out," in which Courtney's self-proclaimed strong stomach enabled her to consume a variety of disgusting foods.
- In "The Final Wreck-ening", Mike gathers his alter-egos to fight Mal and reclaim his body. Ultimately, the key to this is a very literal reset button that would erase all of Mike's personalities including Mal; he does so and supposedly absorbs a little of all of his personas while Mal simply vanishes.
- Total Drama Presents: The Ridonculous Race:
- Don pulls the classic "this was a non-elimination round if a major character happened to lose!" on more than one occasion, at least once twice in a row. But even that pales in comparison to the double elimination in "Down and Outback," taking out Rock and Spud for coming in second-last right after they beat Chet and Lorenzo.
- Reboot:
- Zee's elimination in Paddle Field Earth, which involves Chris nullifying the original voting and letting the contestants vote again at their request just because of a change of mind about who to eliminate.
- Chase's crippling pizza addiction in "A Pole Lot of Trouble", which comes absolutely out of nowhere and only serves as a device to get him and Emma back together and eliminate Chase from the competition.
- In "The Pink Painter Strikes Again", Zee is eliminated from the challenge despite not moving whereas Chase's impressive run is interrupted by Toon Physics.
- Ripper suddenly having a crush on Axel in the second episode of the second season of the reboot comes out of nowhere.
- Many of Julia’s accomplishments in Season 2 come across as this due to the fact that they all happened offscreen. From her inexplicably being able to forge a convincing film contract to trick Nichelle into quitting, to convincing the others that it was Bowie’s idea to have MK cheat for their team (despite everyone knowing Julia’s untrustworthy, as well as her rivalry with Bowie), to finding Damien's immunity idol (causing his elimination) without any explanation as to when or how she found it.
