DATELINE TOOBWORLD - NOVEMBER 7, 1922

Ralph Drang:

My grandfather was a member of the team that discovered King Tut's tomb.  

Inside the tomb there was this curse written on the walls.  

It was written in Egyptian hieroglyphics....  

It said "All who read this are doomed!"

He left the tomb and he was dead within three days....  

It's been passed down for generations and now it's come to me!

'Dear John'

Besides the fact that Ralph Drang's grandfather was just as fictional as Ralph, this could only have happened in Toobworld.  No one from the original expedition died within three days of the discovery.

From the Unmuseum:

Herbert E. Winlock, the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, made his own calculations about the effectiveness of the curse. According to Winlock's figures, of the 22 people present when the tomb was opened in 1922, only 6 had died by 1934. Of the 22 people present at the opening of the sarcophagus in 1924, only 2 died in the following ten years. Also ten people were there when the mummy was unwrapped in 1925, and all survived until at least 1934.

Lord Carnavan, who owned the castle/mansion that served as 'Downton Abbey' and who financed the expedition, is considered the first to have died after exiting the tomb and that was three months later, not three days.

Had it not been for that fact, we might have made a claim that it was Ralph's maternal grandfather who died.  That way we could have said any member of the team could have been the father of Ralph's mother and t'would serve as a splainin as to why the last names differed.  It would not have been the first time that a fictional TV character was related to someone from the Trueniverse.  (Art Carney, Tim Russert, Bryan & Greg Gumbel....)

Otherwise we would have to claim that Grandpa Drang wasn't listed in the official records as a member of the team; that he may have just tagged along for the adventure.

So that's what we'll do.  We'll fall back on this being purely televersional, just as is the case with all of the fictional characters who died on the Titanic, at Custer's Last Stand, and in the World Trade Center.  (Howard Carter existed in the real world, and has a televersion.)

O'BSERVATION:
The entrance to King Tut's tomb was discovered November 4, 1922.  So Ralph's grandfather died on November 7th of that year...

BCnU.....