Season two has reached an end, and everyone is living the big life outside of the show. All twenty-two contestants gather to collect a Gemmie Award for their show. However, their wonderful world comes crashing down when the former host announces a new reality show to replace them. In a desperate attempt to save their fame, all of the contestants (plus a new face) join together in a full out race to New York City in a bus to beat out a team of dirtbags and their leader. All the while a third show documents their every move. But what does their old host really have planned?
Tropes:
- Affectionate Gesture to the Head: Chris teasingly gives Heather a noogie when he calls her, Alejandro, and the other contestants dupes.
- Air Quotes: Sierra tries to interview Noah, but he ignores her in favor of a phone call. Trying to keep the flow going, she turns to the camera and theorizes that Noah landed himself an important job in "the industry", adding a hint of sarcasm by using air quotes.
- Ascended Fanboy: Sierra is introduced here as the ultimate Total Drama Fangirl, doing a broadcasting for her blog. By the end of the episode, she is invited to join the cast.
- Attention Whore: All of the original twenty-two contestants become this. When Chris seems intent on throwing them away for a new show, they band up to stop Chris from making it happen because none of them want to lose their fifteen minutes of fame and go back to their ordinary lives.
- Baby Talk: Bridgette's and Geoff's relationship is a popular point of gossip, especially when it turns rocky. They make up with each other during an interview with mature apologies and baby talk like "little schmoopy-schmoo" and "cutie patootie". Josh and Blaineley judge them hard for how anti-drama the baby talk is.
- Balloon Belly: Two gossip topics concern weight gain by the contestants since the end of Action. One scoop deals with Gwen mocking Heather for her three-ounce worth of plumpness bulging from her midsection. The other scoop covers Harold's new sack belly which he cultivated with burritos to expand his diaphragm and thus become a better beatboxer.
- Bankruptcy Barrel: When the cooking show of DJ and his mother goes bust, they're left with nothing but their bus and the barrels they wear.
- Big "NO!": Done by Geoff when he finds out he isn't going to be in the next season.
- Bitch Alert: Alejandro makes his grand entrance by walking through the crowd of veteran contestants with his nose in the air and his arms wide. He knocks over Cody and ignores the high-five Chris tries to share with him even as the host cheerfully calls him his next big star.
- Bowdlerise: In the American version.
- When the gang needs a bra to use as a catapult, Leshawna throws them hers and then quips, "What? You ain't never seen triple Ds before?" which gets changed to "What? You ain't never seen a big bra before?"
- Izzy's bleeped-out swears during her rant at the director of photography are replaced with "stinking" ("...Or I'll kick your stinking butt! I want you off the stinking set!")
- Call-Back: Noah sleeping on top of Cody is a reference to their Accidental Kiss from "The Big Sleep."
- Car Fu: The campers race the dirtbags to get to the Orpah Show studio first for an interview. Once their bus catches up with the dirtbag's bus, they start ramming into each other to get ahead in the race.
- Cat Fight: Celebrity Manhunt's co-host Josh is an unabashed cat fight enthusiast. He gets to interview Gwen and Heather together at a time when they've been in an online war for weeks and professionally asks them if this is truly what they want their relation to be like. Both girls answer with an insult to the other and in seconds they're at each other's throats, much to Josh's delight.
- Chirping Crickets: When the contestants are locked out of the Gemmie Awards by Chris because their fame has come and gone, they are at a loss for words. As a tumblewood blows by, a cricket chirps until an Duncan squashes it out of annoyance. Animal lover DJ is not amused that Duncan knowingly killed an innocent bug.
- Cluster Bleep-Bomb: Izzy's acting career takes a nosedive when she goes ballistic against her filming crew. Her tirade is all on tape, but only gets run in the bleep-heavy censored version.
- Dumped via Text Message: Trent, Cody, Justin and Harold had formed a Boy Band after the events of Action. To show the fame going to their heads, Justin breaks up with a girl over text in the middle of an interview, and Trent asks him to send the same text to his girlfriend. To hammer it in, a girl in the window behind them is then shown getting a text and bursting into tears.
- Early-Bird Cameo: Alejandro, Sierra, and Blaineley, who become contestants in the follow-up season.
- Edible Ammunition: The contestants fire chocolate out of DJ's bus towards the Dirtbags' bus.
- Establishing Character Moment: The first time we see Alejandro, he's coldly making his way through the contestants and being rude to Chris.
- Expository Hairstyle Change: Enough time has passed from the Action finale that Heather now has a full head of hair tied back into a short ponytail.
- Facepalm: Lindsay arrives at the Gemmie Awards in casual dress thinking it was just a rehearsal. She tries to save her fashion faux-pas by pointing out the cute new earrings she's wearing, prompting Sierra to facepalm.
- Felony Misdemeanor: Chris angrily fires Noah for getting him a cold latte.
- Foodfight!: Celebrity Manhunt gets its hands on photos of Duncan and Courtney enjoying a fine dinner at a restaurant, getting into a fine argument, and ending the evening with a fine food fight.
- Formerly Fat / Formerly Fit: As is tradition on these kinds of shows, there are several tabloids of celebrity weight gain and weight loss.
- Gwen makes fun of Heather's three-ounce weight gain; the camera zooms in on a tiny layer of pudge sitting on Heather's formerly-rain-thin waistline.
- Harold gains weight to "expand his diaphragm" and become a better beatboxer.
- Subverted with Owen, who becomes a spokesperson for exercise gear but doesn't look any different, he just tapes a picture of abs onto his body.
- Leshawna goes on 'The Largest Loser' and loses some of the weight in her butt.
- Grand Finale: "Total Drama Celebrity Manhunts TDA Reunion Show" is the special that closes the book on Action and makes way for World Tour.
- Groupie Brigade: Eva is accosted by her fans who all want her autograph. She fights them off, but this only makes the fans like her more. Collecting stories and photos of her freak-outs becomes a new thing they do.
- Handshake Substitute: Blaineley and Josh fistbump in anticipation of getting as much gossip and drama out of the Total Drama contestants as they can.
- High-Five Left Hanging: Chris greets Alejandro warmly as he walks up to him, calling him "buddy" and "[his] next big star" while he raises his hand for a high-five. Alejandro walks right past him with his nose in the air and his arms to the ground.
- I'm Cold... So Cold...: Upon realizing that her 15 minutes of fame are over and with that her popularity, Heather despairs that she feels cold.
- Kidnapping Bird of Prey: A gopher accepts its fate as the contestants' bus drives off a cliff and comes falling downwards onto the critter. The bus comes to a standstill just above the gopher courtesy of the band of Leshawna's quality bra. The gopher is relieved for half a second when it gets dragged off by an eagle swooping in.
- Lethal Chef: DJ's Mother. While she and DJ became famous for their cookbook and her secret spice, the recipes were so high in cholesterol that they ended up killing a lot of people.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: After the bus crash, Geoff, Justin, Beth, Trent, Katie, Sadie, Eva, and DJ's Momma go out on foot to look for help for the rest of the campers, even risking their lives when they accidentally stumble into an active Doom Town. What is the reward for their attempt to save their friends? That they don't get nominated for World Tour, while the people who preferred to sleep, sunbathe, eat, and overall do nothing to improve their predicament all do get to be in World Tour.
- Now That's Using Your Teeth!: A segment on Eva reveals that she's upped her training regime. One form of training she's been doing is pulling a filled bus with her teeth by means of a rope.
- Nutritional Nightmare: DJ's and his mom's cooking show gets hit by lawsuits, after their food (while delicious) gives multiple people fatal heart attacks.
- Odd Friendship: Sierra and Izzy. Also Tyler and Leshawna during their time on other reality shows up to this point.
- Pillow Pregnancy: Blaineley and Josh discuss Leshawna's and Tyler's worst career moves. Josh considers the fact that Tyler faked a pregnancy, including fake baby bump, as the plan he should've left in the drawer.
- Rousing Speech: The former contestants are locked out of the Gemmie Awards and informed there'll be new faces to star in Total Drama Dirtbags. They accept defeat and head home, but Sierra calls them back with a stalkerish speech that they owe it to their fans not to give up yet and should hijack the Dirtbags' interview on the Orpah Show to pull the spotlight back on them. When DJ offers his mother's bus to make it to the interview, everyone gets on board with the plan.
- Secret Test of Character: Chris admits that there was no Total Drama Dirtbags and that it was all just to test them if they wanted to keep their fame; and a test for the real new season Total Drama World Tour.
- Shout-Out:
- The Gemmie Award is possibly a reference to the Emmy Award and the Canadian Gemini Award.
- The Louvre's security guard yells "Omelette du fromage!".
- Heather's school, "White Pines High School", is a real high school in Ontario.
- Justin, Cody, Harold and Trent's band is called The Drama Brothers.
- A Drama Brothers album parodies the famous "Abbey Road" album cover done by The Beatles.
- Harold's H-Bomb outfit is based on Ali G.
- Izzy appears in movie posters based on Kill Bill, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, King Kong (1933) and The Sound of Music.
- The scene of Izzy freaking out at an on-set director of photography is a reference to what Christian Bale did on the set of Terminator Salvation. Much of the dialogue is almost identical to the original rant, with the exception that the high swears have been replaced with lower ones, including the lines "Don't just be sorry; think for a second!" and "I'm ready to go now!".
- Tyler and Leshawna appeared on Extreme Chess: Pillar Edition and So You Think You Can Eat That?.
- Leshawna once starred on Largest Loser.
- Tyler goes on a reality show where he wears a fake baby bump, much like Scott Baio Is 46...and Pregnant.
- Chris asks Chef if he learnt to drive from NASCAR.
- Chris' Total Drama Dirtbags show is going to be revealed on The Orpah Show.
- Sierra's "third-generation Chris McLean scholar" speech is an allusion to Millionaire Matchmaker.
- A gopher pulls out an umbrella when the bus is falling towards him, much like how Wile E. Coyote does.
- The scene where the rescue party find the nuclear testing facility in the middle of the desert is a reference a scene in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. It doubles as a reference to The Hills Have Eyes (1977) due to the presence of flesh eating mutants who were formerly residents of a nearby town but were mutated as a result of the radiation from the test site.
- Sleep Cute: Most of the contestants choose to wait in the canyon for help after their bus crash. It is a long wait, so at some point the lot falls asleep. In a Call-Back to "The Big Sleep", Noah once more snuggles up to Cody, but this time they're not horrified about their positions when they wake up. Courtney and Duncan, who had just prior to the crash rekindled their relationship, also sleep together, as do Leshawna and Harold, whose relationship at this point is a highly affectionate friendship.
- So Proud of You: Leshawna is impressed when Noah kicks the TV with Chris's face on it and calls him a "shmuck".Leshawna: Didn't know you had it in you, string bean!
- Spit Take: Chris spits all of the latté Noah just brought him out into his face because it's cold. He also fires him.
- Talk Like a Pirate: Harold gets the idea to attack the Total Drama Dirtbags bus with a makeshift catapult because that's a tactic he learned at pirate camp. His friends set up the weapon and Harold switches to pirate lingo when he gives the order to attack.
- Throw the Dog a Bone: After having her name dragged through the mud all season due to the Trent incident, things start looking up for Gwen, with Josh and Blaineley openly rooting for her. She also gets to beat the crap out of Heather on live TV.Josh: If there's a fight between Heather and Gwen, I'm on Team Gwen all the way!
Blaineley: Me too! Grumpy Gwen doesn't wear the teen uniform, she's weird and awesome and the total anti-Heather! - We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties: The contestants that went to look for help reach the Celebrity Manhunt studio, where they're informed that by leaving the bus they are disqualified from participation in the next season. Eva freaks out and rampages through the studio, throwing and breaking whatever she can grab. The hosts call for the end of the episode, but it comes too late to obviate a technical difficulties screen. It's a black-and-white, Art Deco-inspired still of Blaineley getting choked by the Drama Machine while Josh looks on in melodramatic shock. It lasts for four seconds and the accompanying music is an instrumental rendition of "The Girl From Ipanema".
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Aside from his very first confessional ever, Ezekiel disappears from all of the group shots of the crew who stayed by the bus and advanced to the third season.
- You Monster!: Duncan and Courtney get into a fight over who should be driving the bus. He calls her insane and she retorts that he's a monster. Then they kiss.
- Your Makeup Is Running: Lindsay's makeup goes running during her forceful arrest at the Louvre for damaging The Mona Lisa.
