Jimmy's still rather sore over the Father's day incident.
The Superstition Episode is centered around some sort of unlucky superstition or superstitions. Maybe it's Friday the Thirteenth. Maybe a character accidentally breaks a mirror and freaks out about the seven years of bad luck that they’re sure will follow. Maybe a skeptical character pets a black cat or walks under a ladder to prove such silly superstitions aren't true. In any case, that character will be plagued by bad luck for the rest of the episode. The character may insist their extreme bad luck is merely a coincidence, or they may be superstitious from the start. Either way, there may be another character who disagrees, and debates with them about the validity of superstitions.
If the worst comes to the worst, their bad luck will spread to their friends. Then their superstitious friends may try to avoid them or they will try to avoid their friends so they won‘t catch their bad luck. At the end of the episode something will happen that convinces the character they never were or are no longer jinxed, and the bad luck will never come up again.
Though the bad luck often is treated as "real", subversions that attribute it to a mundane cause are common. If the characters have no way to tell if the it's a coincidence or not, the bad luck may be interpreted as Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane. If the bad luck is supernatural and connected to Friday the 13th, see Special Occasions Are Magic.
The episode often mentions other unlucky superstitions or good luck charms such as the Four-Leaf Clover or Lucky Rabbit's Foot. May be started by a Bad Luck Charm.
If a character just happens to be unlucky for an episode, that's not this trope. Neither is Not My Lucky Day, for when a character just misses extreme good fortune, though they may overlap. For it to be a Superstition Episode, the bad luck has to be remarked upon and attributed to some sort of superstition. For characters who are chronically unlucky, see Born Unlucky. Supertrope to Chain Letter.
Examples:
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Comic Books
- Played with in an early issue of Batmannote called "The Thirteen Club". The titular club is a TV program of skeptics debunking superstitions. However, they find that The Joker wants to join their club as the thirteenth member and won't take no for an answer. After instead inducting Batman as the 13th member (other prospective members started to bail not wanting to be anywhere near Mistah J), The Joker decides out of revenge to plot a series of crimes keyed to the superstitions the members had debunked in the broadcast For instance
- Archie Comics:
- One where Betty notices it is Friday The Thirteenth, and prepares for it. Unknowingly, she set off Disaster Dominoes that missed her, but got everyone around her involved.
- There was one other, with Archie bringing misfortune on himself trying to avoid bad luck—and not being careful.
- Disney Ducks Comic Universe: Whether Donald Duck is actually unlucky or brings it all on himself varies Depending on the Writer; in one comic Donald is superstitious and that causes him to bring harm on himself (such as a Blind Shoulder Toss after spilling salt
brings in an angry customer). In the end, his nephews tell him that the Aesop is "being superstitious is bad luck".
- "Tiki Torture" from Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi #2 (DC Comics) deals with a tiki statue Kaz buys and brings home to the bus. Legend supposes that it brings bad luck, but Kaz handwaves it off. The girls are besieged with mishaps; they can't even destroy the thing without something unlucky happening.
- In an Iznogoud comic, Wa'at Alahf breaks a mirror over his head to free a guy from a curse. As a result, the guy is blessed with seven years of good luck and Wa'at is cursed with seven years of bad luck (that only last for the remainder of the comic).
- Lucky Luke: Lucky Luke discovers his opponent Phil De fer is superstitious and uses this to his advantage by luring him into a saloon which has a black cat crossing by, a mirror lying on the ground which Phil steps on and breaks and a calendar falling down notifying it's Friday the 13th. When Luke stands in front of the saloon mirror he knows Phil won't dare to shoot at him, because it might break, thus making him able to fire at him and defeat him.
- Scooby-Doo: Gold Key issue #20's "Unlucky Luck" focuses on Velma trying to cure Shaggy and Scooby of being superstitious. As part of a game, she gets the two to get rid of their luck talismans then has Fred and Daphne plant rewards among bad luck elements (walking under a ladder, black cat crossing their path) along the route they eventually take. Velma's plan backfires: Shaggy and Scooby retrieve their talismans, thinking if what they went through was bad luck, imagine the good luck they'll have now.
- Superman:
- Triplicate Girl of Legion of Super-Heroes became Duo Damsel when one of her three selves was killed by Computo the Conqueror. While this was a nightmarish trauma for her that took her years to recover from (and too afraid to fight Computo again), she was never surprised; she had used her power three times that day, something that is considered bad luck on her planet.
- In Adventure Comics #396, Supergirl bumps into a so-called black wizard who shows her his "bad-luck room, containing traditional objects which cause misfortune": a mirror, a ladder, a black cat, salt... Supergirl believes it to be superstitious nonsense so she spills salt, breaks a mirror, walks under a ladder... to prove her point. She then walks off and starts having one case of bad luck after another, but she soon realizes that it is a hoax devised by the alleged magician.
- In Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane #7, Lois wears an Egyptian hat as part of a story debunking superstitions. It seemingly causes her to contract the ability to kill with a kiss. (It was really a trick on the part of one of Metropolis' criminals.)
Films — Live-Action
- In Eskimo Day, Shani is superstitious through and through:
- She tries to start the car on the third attempt, saying "please, not first time, not second...". When it starts the third time, she says "thank you, car".
- She is horrified by the sight of a single magpie.
- She avoids the cracks, taking comical big steps in her high heels.
- She blocks the path under a ladder, to prevent Neil and Bevis from taking that route.
- She tries to persuade a black cat to cross her path, without success.
Literature
- There's a The Baby-Sitters Club book where Mary Anne thinks she's gotten a bad luck charm. It turns out some cruel girls just told her it was bad, and were using it as an excuse to play pranks on her. The irony is that the charm - a mustard seed - is good luck, as her father pointed out.
- Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The main plot of Hard Luck is Greg getting a Magic 8 Ball and using it to make decisions for him. He just wants something to answer all his questions for him and acts upon its responses.
- Roys Bedoys: In “It’s Friday the 13th, Roys Bedoys!”, Roys wakes up on Friday the 13th and realises he’s forgotten to do his laundry, steps on cat poop, finds the lunch lady has run out of chocolate milk and apple juice, and then forgets to tie his shoe, tripping up. His friends assure him that these were just the result of carelessness or coincidence, and then his luck turns around when he gets invited to a pizza party.
- One of the Sabrina the Teenage Witch tie-in novels had characters who interacted with and then lost a lucky rabbit's foot have a run of extreme bad luck that gets progressively worse.
Live-Action TV
- In the 3rd Rock from the Sun episode "Superstitious Dick," Mary and Dick receive chain letters. Mary immediately throws hers away and is hit by constant bad luck, which she insists is coincidental. Seeing all this happen, Dick spends much of the episode hedging over what to do with his chain letter.
- In The 10th Kingdom, Tony breaks a whole roomful of magic mirrors, and immediately starts to suffer from bad luck — starting with losing his way, and ending with literally breaking his back. This takes place after he breaks the Magic Mirror they'd been chasing for the whole series, too. An interesting aspect to this is that when the seven years' bad luck is first brought up, it's in the context of having broken a magic mirror, rather than an ordinary one—suggesting that this rather than superstition is the reason the bad luck is magically enforced.
- The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.: In a Halloween Episode Briso & Bowler have to deal with Bad Luck Betty, a superstitious deputy, while on a case. Where she goes bad luck follows, although she always says it's an accident — while also following various superstitions. For example, she managed to put the sheriff in a full body cast: she tossed salt over her shoulder just as he came in, which made him lose his footing and a grandfather clock fell on him.
- The Brady Bunch:
- When the Brady Bunch went to Hawaii, they found a cursed tiki necklace that caused things to go wrong.
- In one of the last episodes all the kids suddenly think that Cousin Oliver is a jinx — bad stuff happens when he's around. They get de-convinced of that when they take a tour of a movie studio and Oliver is the Umpteenth Customer, so they get to make a real movie.
- In the Castle episode "All Wrapped Up in Death", Castle becomes convinced he's been cursed by a Mayan mummy from a museum exhibit after he opens its sarcophagus and looks upon its face. The precinct razzes him about it (removing bolts from his chair so it collapses, then having the bomb squad rig the coffee maker to spew steam at him), but when the elevator stops working with Castle inside it, they tell him even they're not that cruel. He gets the curse lifted somehow by the end of the episode... then cuts himself with a bread knife.
Castle: What's the difference between "curse" and "clumsy"?
- CSI: Miami: In "Curse of the Coffin," Ryan inadvertently defiles a crime scene linked to Santeria by collecting a tiny coffin as evidence and, after a series of mishaps, begins to believe he's been cursed. Most of the incidents are explained, but after it appears the Villain of the Week has gotten away with murder by fleeing the country, the coffin is discovered missing from the evidence locker. Cut to a beach scene with the coffin in the sand underneath the killer's chair.
- In the Friends episode "The One with the Giant Poking Device", Phoebe refuses to go to the dentist because she's convinced that every time she does, somebody close to her dies.
- A common theme in Gilligan's Island. In fact, the Skipper seems to be very superstitious in general, often requiring the Professor to be the voice of reason.
- In "Waiting for Watubi", Gilligan unearthes a tiki idol and is convinced it would bring bad luck.
- In "Voodoo", The Skipper is convinced that a voodoo witch doctor had turned Gilligan into a chimp.
- Although, in one episode where the castaways are plagued by a nasty witch-doctor, the the Skipper is right this time, and when the witch-doctor gets upset at the Professor for his constant denial that his powers are real, the Professor falls victim to a rather nasty curse.
- In an episode of The Golden Girls, Rose gets a call from her sister in St. Olaf, telling her that there's a drought problem, and town natives are being asked to remain celibate for the duration. (An old local superstition says that refraining from sex will cause rain to return; more acceptable than the usual ideas about that, probably.) While Rose is one to adhere to tradition, she makes the mistake of taking Blanche's advice and not telling Miles about it, and their relationship starts to suffer as a result. (Fortunately, at the end, Rose gets a call from her sister again who tells her — clearly in the middle of sex — that it's raining, and Rose learns not to listen to Blanche.)
- Home Improvement had Tim throwing away a chain letter (sent to him by Al) and refusing to believe there is bad luck associated with it. After a series of mishaps he is on the edge of believing, but Jill then reads off a list of all the Amusing Injuries he has had over the past couple of years and concludes his current streak really isn't all that different from his normal life.
- One episode of The Love Boat has two elderly people who are survivors of the sinking of the Titanic go for a cruise onboard the Pacific Princess. Gopher says that you call people who survive a ship sinking are bad luck; Captain Stubing instead called them "rather lucky."
- M*A*S*H: Col. Potter makes Radar remove a Korean good-luck totem from the middle of the camp because it's blocking traffic, after which a bunch of bad things happen — from a lighter not working to a bus crash (literally). Radar puts a horseshoe up in Potter's office to ward off the bad luck. Klinger also mentions that he's wearing a blue bead necklace because the Korean who sold it to him said it would ward off evil spirits.
- An episode in season one of The Mentalist had a witch who had cast a death spell on the Body of the Week. After Patrick meets her, he prompts her to cast a death spell on Cho. During the rest of the episode, Cho had more than one close call...
- In an episode of My Name Is Earl Randy makes Earl stay where he is because a black cat crosses his path; then just as the 5 hours (or however long it's supposed to take for the bad luck to dissipate) is up, it crosses his path again. Earl takes this as a sign from Karma to do a list item where he stole a woman's cat.
- Scrubs references The Brady Bunch story when J.D. buys his own tiki necklaces for a group vacation. They joke around about certain things happening to them being bad luck, even mimicking the sound used for the Brady story, but overall it was just some arguments between couples and not actual bad luck.
- Shining Time Station: In "Bad Luck Day at Shining Time Station", it's Friday the 13th, and Schemer encourages his nephew, Schemee, to sell fake good luck charms he made, such as vinyl horseshoes, plastic four-leaf clovers, and rabbit's feet made from his mother's wool coat. However, Schemee takes his uncle's technique of scaring people into buying them a bit too far.
- Supernatural: In "Bad Day at Black Rock", Sam accidentally invokes (by touching) a cursed rabbit's foot. He has incredibly good luck for a while until he inevitably loses it (as father figure, Bobby puts it "Everyone loses it"), and then Sam's luck goes extremely bad. Not a straight example perhaps, because the rabbit's foot is a cursed object, so it isn't just superstition — though how it works is based on superstition — because touching the rabbit's foot really IS good and then bad luck.
- This happened on an episode of Taxi. Reverend Jim had a strange dream involving Alex doing some odd things which culminate in him dying, Alex laughs off his concerns, and Louie spends the rest of the episode pointing out how all of the events happening to him match what Jim dreamed of. The climax of the episode involved Alex Tempting Fate by donning a weird costume (including a catcher's mask) and dancing around his apartment, when the doorbell rings. They open the door, revealing the dread spectre of a... Girl Scout selling cookies.
Music Videos
- The music video for Stevie Ray Vaughan's cover of "Superstition" invokes an awful lot of bad luck charms, which leads to the entire band getting taken out one by one.
Webcomics
- A running gag in Ape, Not Monkey (for example, the short arc starting here) is for Toby to try and discredit some superstition or other, only to be hit by a "coincidental" strike of bad luck.
Web Original
- On a Protectors of the Plot Continuum mission set in Star Trek: The Original Series, an agent who accidentally gets a Red Shirt from the disguise generator has bad luck through the entire mission.
Web Videos
- In the SuperMarioLogan episode "Bowser Junior's Bad Luck", Junior breaks a mirror while he, Joseph, and Cody were playing dodgeball. This brings him a lot of bad luck as a result.
Western Animation
- Arthur: In the episode "Friday the 13th" Brain gets so sick of a conversation on superstition brought on by inane Baseball rituals that he attempts to prove bad luck wrong by repeatedly ducking under a ladder, dancing on the pavement crack and breaking a mirror. Bad luck ensues. He tries to fix his bad luck by bringing a bag carrying good luck charms around with him all the time. At the end of the episode, he finds he's been carrying around the wrong bag, but everyone considers the sports clothes inside instead to be other good luck charms.
- As Told by Ginger: In the episode "TGIF" Carl actively tries to court danger on the day itself by trying out every superstition imaginable, walking under a ladder, opening an umbrella indoors etc, but its Ginger who gets hit by bad luck when her sweater gets ripper and the Foutley family have to vacate their house when mold is found.
- It's a one-shot, but the Tex Avery short Bad Luck Blackie is about a kitten who enlists the help of a black cat to give bad luck to the bulldog that kept tormenting it.
- Big City Greens: In “Blue Tater”, while the Greens are harvesting potatoes for their food truck, Cricket finds a blue potato, which Gramma is convinced is cursed. She manages to convince Cricket, and after the family encounters a series of mishaps along the way to the Food Truck Roundup, he manages to convince Bill that the curse is real. Only Tilly is unconvinced, and when she points out that all the mishaps were caused by Cricket himself due to his contant overreactions, Cricket finally realizes there’s no actual curse.
- The Big Hero 6: The Series episode "Mini-Maximum Trouble", the others discover Wasabi is extremely superstitious when he spills some salt. Fred takes it upon himself to prove there is no such thing as bad luck by doing assorted "unlucky" things like walking under a ladder. Immediately afterwards, everything starts going wrong for him. It turns out his "bad luck" is being caused by Minimax, who has become a villain due to a short circuit.
- The Care Bears (1980s) episode "Bad Luck Friday" focuses on superstitious Brave Heart having to save the other care bears who got lost in the jungle, on Friday the 13th.
- In the Code Lyoko episode "Hard Luck", Odd accidentally breaks a mirror. Ulrich tells him he'll get seven years of bad luck. Odd doesn't believe it and rants about how various superstitions are ridiculous. However, a series of unfortunate events plague him and eventually the rest of the team starts to consider him bad luck. At the end of the episode Odd finally admits he is jinxed, only for Aelita to tell him jinxes don't exist and he has to wait for his luck to change. It does.
- Dennis the Menace (1986): In "Charmed I'm Sure", Dennis worries about bad luck when he finds out that it's Friday the 13th. When Mr. Wilson overhears, he gives Dennis a nickel to get him out of his hair (or what's left of it). When both Dennis and Margaret start having good luck with it, they begin to think the nickel is a lucky charm, and Mr. Wilson tries to get it back. When he finally does, he still has bad luck and he gives the nickel back to Dennis. However, this turns out to be a premature decision, as Margaret's father called to offer to buy the nickel for a hundred dollars, much to Mr. Wilson's shock. Dennis is relieved when his day ends with good luck, until Margaret wants him to take her to the ballet she had gotten with her good luck.
- The Donald Duck cartoon "Donald's Lucky Day": Donald is a courier delivering a package on Friday 13, and a radio broadcast on the subject puts him on edge. First he narrowly avoids going under a ladder, which leads him to crash into a mirror. Then he finds a black cat trying to cross his path, and spends most of the cartoon trying to elude it. And for added suspense, the package is a Time Bomb that two ruthless criminals sent to their intended target.
- There was an episode of Doug that invoked this. Doug seemed to have a lucky streak at winning games against his crush, Patti. After she gets ticked off about it, he tries to break his luck by breaking a mirror, running under ladders and doing his weird ritual involving mashed potatoes. Afterward, he is having all sorts of bad luck, but since he wants to lose a game against her, it would be good luck for him to lose, and his winning streak continues.
- An episode of Ed, Edd n Eddy features Eddy being plagued by a cursed telephone. The worst part of it is, the bad luck is afflicted on him even if someone else answers it.
- The Fairly OddParents! had "That Old Black Magic", where Timmy visits a theme park on Friday the 13th, and several bad luck superstitions happen to him. It later turns out that all bad luck is caused by anti-fairies. They would go on to be recurring villains, though "bad luck" would be dropped in favor of "being evil".
- There was an episode of The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy where Billy spilled salt and failed to toss some of the salt he spilled over his left shoulder, leading to an entire run of bad luck that only gets worse, including breaking several mirrors, black cats, stepping on a crack (that does break his mother's back), and so on. He gets so desperate that he tries to find every manner of lucky item he can (including at least four lucky horseshoes), culminating in him attempting to rip up a Four-Leaf Clover but getting attacked by gophers. It turns out that had he thrown the salt when he was supposed to, a bad luck causing snail wouldn't have been able to get into his brain and wreak havoc like it had been to that point.
- In the Hey Arnold! episode "Friday the Thirteenth", it's Friday the thirteenth and Arnold's and Gerald's families insist they carry around good luck charms and avoid unlucky things. Arnold and Gerald try to prove superstitions are false, but end up with bad luck. Because Wolfgang gave it to them.
- In Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi, there was an episode pertaining to all the bad luck. At the end of the episode, with the girls' bad luck beginning with a misread legend, Yumi calculates that they gained 199 years of bad luck in a single day. Fortunately, when the legend is read correctly, they realize they actually gained a hundred years of good luck, then lost 99 of them. (The trio doesn't see that the day is Friday the 13th, presumably causing them to lose the one they have left and break even.)
- In the Jackie Chan Adventures episode "Tough Luck", the Chan family receives a cursed Irish emerald that gives the owner bad luck. The only way to nullify the curse is to return the emerald to its tomb in Ireland, or for someone to receive it willingly. Having it stolen from you, however, leaves the curse with you.
- One episode of The Land Before Time TV series has Spike eating a red tree-star which Petrie believes brings bad luck to those eating it. Petrie then grows even more convinced when a series of misfortune befall the Gang during their adventure to a geyser field, which culminates in Spike getting splashed in a mud puddle leaving him with a bad smell. However, that stench covering Spike becomes useful in warding off Redclaw and his minions, leading Petrie to believe that his bad luck had given them good luck instead.
- An episode of Lilo & Stitch: The Series featured an experiment named Shoe, who causes nothing but bad luck. At the end, the characters discover that he can be set to cause good luck instead.
- Lynn from The Loud House is extremely superstitious, especially around sports. One example is the infamous episode "No Such Luck," where Lynn, and pretty soon the whole family, starts to believe that Lincoln is bad luck after he attends one of Lynn's baseball games and her team loses.
- Martha Speaks had "Martha Changes Her Luck", in which Martha believes she is cursed as she starts having bad luck after she walks under a ladder and breaks a mirror.
- The first act of the Mr. Bogus episode "Bad Luck Bogus" dealt with Bogus getting an overwhelming streak of bad luck after inadvertently breaking the bathroom mirror whilst trying to get rid of his overbearing Aunt Bogunda (An Expy of Mrs. Marcus, no less). Because of that, Bogus finds himself at the receiving end of all of kinds of unusual incidents, ranging from getting smacked by a sentient tube of toothpaste, slipping on a bar of soap, and not to mention being menaced and tormented by a huge and rather ugly lookalike that somehow entered the house by use of the broken mirror (The mirror acts as a portal to Bogus' homeland called Bogusland).
- On one episode of The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Tigger breaks a mirror in Rabbit's home, and Rabbit tells him that means seven years bad luck. Tigger dismisses it, as it wasn't his mirror that broke, and he tries to help Rabbit avoid bad luck, which just results in Rabbit getting one misfortune after another. Eventually, it's revealed that the mirror belonged to Pooh, so Tigger tries to help him avoid bad luck, with the same results. Eventually, after everyone but Tigger suffers from bad luck, it become apparent that Tigger is the one who is unlucky, so he's cast out. The others feel sorry for him and reverse the bad luck by "fixing" the mirror (taping a picture of Tigger onto the mirror so that he thinks it's his reflection). Christopher Robin later reassures Pooh that the whole "broken mirror equals seven years bad luck" thing was just a mere superstition.
- The Noveltoons short "The Stupidstitious Cat". A very superstitious cat wants a bird for breakfast, and Buzzy the Crow is targeted. Buzzy uses the cat's superstition to outwit the cat. Buzzy then freaks out when he discovers it's friday the thirteenth.
- A sort of version occurs in The Penguins of Madagascar. Rico gets a fortune saying he will meet a foul end. Skipper assures him that it's just a superstition. Julien, wanting Rico to believe the fortune, sets up a bunch of incidents to make Rico believe he's having bad luck. It later turns out that meeting a foul end meant that a duck (waterfowl) would crash down on him, meeting its "end".
- In the Popeye short "I Don't Scare", Bluto takes advantage of Olive Oyl's superstitious behavior to sabotage her date with Popeye.
- Razzberry Jazzberry Jam: The episode “The Forever Song” revolves around the titular endlessly-looping song, which supposedly brings bad luck (read: Amusing Injuries) to anyone who tries to stop singing it without having someone else pick up where they left off.
- The Regular Show episode "Fortune Cookie" shows Benson getting a streak of good luck, while Rigby gets the opposite. When the group visits a Chinese restaurant and Benson gets a fortune of good luck while Rigby gets the opposite, Rigby becomes jealous and switches the fortunes when Benson's not looking. Benson reads his new fortune, which predicts bad luck, and mindlessly discards it. The rest of the episode shows Benson on a streak of bad luck, with Rigby getting the opposite.
- Parodied heavily in the The Ren & Stimpy Show episode "Superstitious Stimpy", where Ren ends up with a lot of bad luck for ridiculing superstitions on Tuesday the Seventeenth, but becomes a Skeptic No Longer once he finds out that he was born on that day, prompting them to try various insane ways to cure him of his "bad juju".
- Rocko's Modern Life had an episode where Filbert is selected to appear on a game show for a chance to win a new house. Then he goes to a Chinese restaurant and receives a fortune cookie saying "BAD LUCK AND MISFORTUNE WILL INFEST YOUR PATHETIC SOUL FOR ALL ETERNITY". The rest of the episode is centered on the poor turtle attracting a horde of black cats, walking under ladders, breaking an entire store worth of mirrors, and repeatedly receiving the same horrible fortune after opening an entire bag of fortune cookies. When he actually makes it onto the game show, his bad luck causes the giant wheel to unbolt and lay waste to half of O-Town...but then it rolls back to the studio and lands on 'WINNER'.
- In the Sitting Ducks episode "Feet of Fortune," Bill learns that his foot has bad luck all over it by Madame Bevousky. He goes through tons of bad luck such as dodging a street sweeper, and it gets so bad to the point that he can’t even trust his own friend.
- The Smurfs had a few of them. One was where Clumsy accidentally broke Vanity's mirror and thought he brought seven years of bad luck on himself, and another was where the Smurfs thought Papa Smurf turned into a frog because he made that kind of wish at a so-called wishing tree.
- In the Sonic Boom episode, "Unlucky Knuckles", Knuckles thinks he has bad luck after frequently losing to Sonic at Gopher Ball and tries to restore his luck by putting himself in harm's way, the idea given to him by Sticks.
- Star Wars Resistance: In "Kaz's Curse", Kaz is cursed by an angry pirate after having insane Beginner's Luck at a game of chance. Kaz denies that curses are real and insists that everything is a coincidence, while his friend Neeku believes that every single even remotely bad thing that happens near Kaz is due to the curse. Eventually, talking to Cool Old Lady Mika leads Kaz to realize he is afraid of the supposed curse, and she shows him how to get over it. Mika lampshades it at the end by remarking that pilots like Kaz tend to be a superstitious lot.
- Tangled: The Series: In "Curses!", Rapunzel is cursed after taking her lost telescope back from Madame Canardist, who found it, then tried to sell it back to her. Rapunzel at first denies curses are real, while Hook Foot believes that every bad thing that happens near Rapunzel is due to the curse. Eventually, Eugene leads Rapunzel to realize that bad things happened because she believed she was cursed, which allows Rapunzel to get over it.
- Thomas & Friends:
- In "Percy's Lucky Day", Percy feels as though he has some bad luck when he accidentally mistakes a green hankerchief for a green flag, tears a sack of mail, and runs over some fallen pumpkins on the line (courtesy of a careless Bill and Ben). Stephen gives Percy a horseshoe to represent as a lucky charm to help him regain his confidence, but when Percy realizes that he lost the charm, he has to find confidence in himself to help pull Bill and Ben back onto the rails.
- In "Thomas' Not-So-Lucky Day", Thomas has a run of bad luck in Italy when he moves under a ladder, spills bags of salt, and a black cat crosses his path. To turn his bad luck around, Thomas follows Lorenzo's strange, superstitious advice, and this works. At the end of the episode, he learns from Gina and Mia that good luck doesn't come from superstitions, but rather it comes from working hard and thinking positive.
- In an episode of Totally Spies!, Alex breaks a mirror and is convinced she'll have seven years of bad luck. Sam and Clover try to convince her otherwise, but unlucky things keep happening to her and she tries to quit being a spy so she won't hold them back. In the end Sam and Clover walk Alex under a ladder, telling her that the two forms of bad luck cancel each other out. Then Alex is back to normal, but Sam and Clover become unlucky.
- In an episode of The Wild Thornberrys, Eliza befriends an aye-aye who she insists isn't the cause of the bad luck that plagues her, calling that a silly superstition like walking under ladders, while she walks under a ladder.
