We're not quite sure at what point Jones made his offer to Bootstrap, but somewhere in the ten years of dark, crushing oblivion, ol' Bill got desperate enough. That's Jones's prey - desperate men. Men who'll do anything to escape death (or, in Bill's case, an eternity of pain), even sign their soul over to the devil himself. Maybe Jones came right as it was lifted, but more likely he came somewhere in the middle of it all. Bill looks too mutated to have only been around for a few months, but not enough to have been there ten years. And all Bill wanted was death while he was down there; I don't think he would've accepted Jones's deal if he knew he would get to pass on soon.

A slightly revised version of Kit's brilliant recounting goes thusly:


[10 YEARS BEFORE CotBP]

Young Jack: Hey, let's go find some Aztec gold!

Crew: Okay!

Barbossa: Ooh, pretty ship.

[THREE DAYS OUT]

Barbossa: So, what say ye give me those bearings to the treasure?

Young Jack: Okay!

Crew: MUTINY!

Young Jack: ...Oh.

Jack's left on island, Barbossa takes over, they go to Isla de Muerta, get pretty gold.

Crew/Barbossa: Yay! We're rich!

Bootstrap: Hey, guys, by the way, Jack was kinda my friend an' all. Even though I said nothing and did nothing at the time, I feel a bit bad about the whole mutiny thing, y'know?

Barbossa: ...Sucks for you.

Crew: Yay gold! *squander*

Bootstrap: Yeah, I pretty much hate myself now. And you guys. So I'm gonna send one of my pieces off to my innocent son (who you'll never find), thus condemning us all to an eternity of suffering. Hah. Serves us right.

Crew: ...

Bootstrap: *insubordination*

Barbossa: Y'know, I don't like you much. Bye-bye, Bill.

*cue Pintel voice-over* "'e strapped a cannon to Bootstrap's bootstraps, an' the last we saw of ol' Bill Turner, 'e sinkin' into the crushin' black oblivion o' Davy Jones' Locker." [author's note: not the actual Locker; just a common sailor term for the bottom of the ocean]

[LATER]

Barbossa: Oh, hey, turns out that gold was cursed after all. And we need to gather all the pieces back up. And we need the blood of every man who took a piece. Fun. Where'd that Bootstrap guy ever go off to, anyway?

Random Crew Member: You sent him to the bottom of the ocean.

Barbossa: Oh, I remember. That was fun. 'Cept now we need his blood an' all. Drat.

Random Crew Member 2: Hey, didn't Bill say somethin' about a kid?

Barbossa: ...Let's go kid-hunting!

[cue dramatic music]

[IN ENGLAND ABOUT TWO YEARS LATER]

Young Will: My Mum's dead, my Da's a merchant sailor (and a good man!) who never visits and is off sailing somewhere, I'm all on my own, and all I got was this lousy gold medallion. Oh well. Off to the Caribbean! Because that's probably where my perfectly honest, loving father is right now!

[IN THE CARIBBEAN A MONTH OR TWO LATER]

Pearl Crew: The gold calls...

Captain of random ship that Will's on: Uh-oh.

Pearl Crew: GOLD!!!! *killmaimslaughterburn* Hey, we didn't find the kid OR the gold! Dangit!

Young Will: *unconscious*

Young Elizabeth: Look! There's a random kid floating in the water! Ooh, gold! *steal*

Young Will: *freakout* *unconscious*

[EIGHT YEARS LATER]

Elizabeth: *fall*

Medallion: *SIGNAL*

Pearl Crew: GOLD!!!!!

[THAT NIGHT]

Pearl Crew: *plunder*

Elizabeth: Parley!

Pirates: 'Kay.

Barbossa: Hey, you have our gold!

Elizabeth: *defensive* I didn't steal it!

Barbossa: ....Right. Name?

Elizabeth: Turner. I wish.

Barbossa: Sweet. Let's go.

[LATER]

Barbossa: Hey, your blood didn't work!

Elizabeth: I lied. Duh.

Barbossa: *RAGE*

Will: *rescue*

Elizabeth: *take gold back*

Jack: *bargain*

[LATER]

Barbossa: Hah! I captured you all again.

Will: No you didn't?

Barbossa: Say wha?

Will: I'll kill myself!

Barbossa: By all means.

Will: My name's Turner!

Barbossa: *interest*

Will: *bargain*

Barbossa: *loophole*

Will:...Shoot.

[LATER]

Pearl Crew: Kill the whelp!

Jack: *appear* Aye! But not yet.

Barbossa: Huh?

Jack: *distract* *steal gold* *trick* Hey, we're friends now!

Barbossa: Sweet.

Jack: I lied.

*fight*

Jack: *slice hand, bleed on gold* *throw to Will*

Will: *slice hand, bleed on gold*

Jack: *shoot*

Barbossa: Hah. I can't die.

Will: ...Yeah you can. *drop gold into chest*

Curse: *lift*

Barbossa:...Oh. *die*

I am so confused!

Wait, wait.


Okay so Jack, Bootstrap, and Barbossa. All on a ship.
Yes?
Bootstrap and Barbossa decide to mutiny against Jack.
Bootstrap is sad.
While Bootstrap is angsting over the regret for mutinying against Jack, they got get CURSED AZTEC GOLD.
They're all cursed.
Barbossa mutinies against Bootstrap and threw him into the ocean. Still cursed, he's suffering. Most painfully so----maybe even worse than Prometheus, himself.
Barbossa says, "Okay, this whole CURSED AZTEC GOLD thing blows. I can't eat my apples!"
They think, "We need all gold pieces and ZOMG blood sacrifice."
So they knew Bootstrap had a kid? They came upon Elizabeth and they tried to lift it, right? This all being Bootstrap is at the bottom of the ocean. They didn't think, "Oh hey, Bootstrap's got the curse too, why don't we go do him a favor, apologize profusely, offer him a magpie and get this CURSED AZTEC GOLD off of us." ???

I don't get it.

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Okay, still don't get it. Sorry about confusing everyone!

I think we have 2 ideas. 1 that Bootstrap was the first to take a peice of gold, so that's why it had to be his blood, and 2 that they needed the blood of all the people who took gold. We never saw the rest of the crew giving blood, but I guess it could happen.

Am I right about this?

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^ It's #2. Barbossa mentioned that they all gave their blood in his speech before they cut Elizabeth. He says "And who among us has paid the blood sacrifice owed to the heathen gods?"I'm not quite sure where the first idea came from. It was the same thing that my friend told me when I watched it with her for the first time. Probably some internet rumor, or the writers original idea.



Because Bootstrap didn't have his gold piece anymore, Will had it. And even if he did, it would be like finding a needle in a haystack: searching the entire ocean floor for him. And they might not have found him in time before Davy Jones signed him on. So they forgot about him and instead tried to find the elusive child with both the blood and the gold. They obviously knew Bootstrap had a "child." I think after they found out the gold was cursed they were questioning each other trying to remember where they spent it and Bootstrap told them all "I sent it to my kid in England and you'll never find it. So now you all will be cursed forever for what you did to Jack!" Barbossa got angry and strapped a cannon... etc., etc.

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To Kit: Barbossa never "mutinied" against Bootstrap. Barbossa went from being First Mate (to Jack) to being Captain. Bootstrap was just a crewmember who happened to be a friend of Jack's.

First of all, about ten years before CotBP, Jack had somehow acquired the bearings to Isla de Muerta, and he was determined to go find it. The journey started out with Jack (maybe mid-twenties, at the oldest) as Captain of the Pearl and Barbossa as his first mate. The rest of the crew that we see in CotBP was his crew then, plus Bootstrap. Well, the Pearl happens to be a very nice ship. The best ship to sail the seas, in fact. So Barbossa sees that this little upstart whelp of a pirate has an awesome ship and the bearings to a massive legendary treasure, and he starts to get a bit jealous. So he starts plotting a mutiny against Jack. The rest of the crew agrees to it, and three days into the journey, they act. Barbossa convinces Jack to give up the location of the treasure (claiming that since everything was in equal share, the location should be as well), and then the crew mutinies. They leave Jack marooned on the island that we see in CotBP, and then head off to Isla de Muerta to get filthy stinkin' rich. Bootstrap says nothing because, hey, it's not exactly smart to speak up against a whole crew of armed pirates who think otherwise.

They find the treasure and, being pirates, promptly take every last piece of it, dividing it up amongst themselves. Bootstrap takes some just like everyone else, because who's going to pass up free gold? They go on their merry way back to Tortuga (or some other port of pleasure) and go about "frittering away" their new-found wealth. Well, somewhere in that time, Bootstrap starts to feel really guilty. Jack was his friend, after all, and Bill just left him to die. Being a friend of Jack's, Bootstrap probably knew about the nature of the curse and was more prone to believing it than the others. Overcome by guilt, he determined that they all deserved the curse they'd contracted and deserved to live with it for all of eternity. So, to prevent it from being lifted, he sent one of the 882 pieces off to his son (Will) in England, where he figured Barbossa would never look. Later, Bootstrap decided to actually stand up to Barbossa (he always was a bit delayed in doing the right thing). Barbossa got tired of dealing with him, so he took the most logical solution - tie a cannon to ol' Bill and push him overboard. Being undead, Bootstrap simply sunk to the bottom without dying, where he spent the next [insert number here] years in constant torment until Jones presented his deal.

When Barbossa and the others finally figured out "Oh, hey, there is a curse," it was too late. Bootstrap was gone, and his piece of gold was halfway across the world.

[interlude]

In reference to the curse itself, it's the second one, Peregrin. It's as Barbossa explained to Elizabeth - Cortez acquired the gold by bloodshed, and so any who take it must pay their own blood in order to lift the curse on them. However, it's also a cumulative thing (this is where it gets complicated):

Say persons A, B, and C (here being Barbossa's crew, including Bootstrap) all went together to find this gold and took some. The curse would not be lifted until all 882 pieces were back in the chest and A, B, and C had given their blood to appease the gods. But if, while A, B, and C were still trying to lift their own curse, person D (Jack, right before the big fight scene) came along and took a piece of his own, then they have to wait until all 882 pieces are back in and A, B, C, and D have all given their blood (which was why Jack sliced his own hand before tossing his gold to Will). Clear as mud? Great. The writers are either mad or brilliant (though it's remarkable how often those two traits coincide).

[/interlude]

Back to our story.

So, under the ABC clause, Bootstrap has to give his blood in order for the curse to be lifted from all the others. Except he's 20,000 leagues under the sea, and it's rather hard to locate exactly where you dropped someone into the ocean, especially when one accounts for currents and all. But, there's a chance (they hope) that his child is a close enough relation for the blood to work. Only one problem: they have no idea where the kid is. Barbossa decides to look for the kid to some degree, but at the same time get as much done as possible. So they sail around for the world for the next ten years, tracking down all of the pieces of gold that they spent in various places - 881 of the 882 - and each giving his blood in turn. So, all they have left is the 882nd piece of Aztec gold and Turner's blood. They keep looking for Bootstrap's whelp, but with no luck (mostly because he's busy growing up in Port Royal, the last place they'd think to look). And the gold medallion is lying dormant in Elizabeth's desk drawer.

That's where we come in with CotBP. When Elizabeth falls into the ocean, the medallion (which she was wearing) send out a signal to the cursed pirates, finally giving them a bearing. When they attack that night, Pintel and Ragetti lead a raiding party to the governor's mansion, hoping to find some pretty bits of shine. They happen to come across a girl who has the last piece of gold, and they take her to Barbossa under the protection of parley. As Elizabeth begins negotiating with them, Barbossa realizes that she's of the perfect age to be Bootstrap's child, and so he asks for a name. She claims it's Turner, essentially confirming it in Barbossa's mind. So, they sail off to Isla de Muerta with the intent of returning the last piece of gold and using the blood of "Miss Turner" to end the curse. Well, she's not actually a Turner, and they really need Will's blood, but we all know how it goes from there.


So...yeah. It's all very complicated, and I don't blame anyone for being confused by it. Ted and Terry (the writers) had to explain it to me and my friends many, many times before it all clicked. I apologize if my explanation only confused some people more, but I'd be happy to answer any questions. One of the results of having no life is that I have plenty of time to ponder this sort of thing and find out answers.


EDIT: Heh. That's what I get for trying to be extensive (nice word for long-winded). Tur already answered. Oh well; Tur's is basically a summary of mine, minus the rabbit trails.

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^ By me and my SS *squiggle hugs*

That everyone who took gold has to give their blood is a canon fact. As Tur said, Barbossa confirms that with his speech in Isla de Muerta:

Barbossa- "Who among us has paid the blood sacrifice owed to the heathen gods?"
Crew- *shout*
Barbossa- "And whose blood is yet to be paid?"
Crew- "HERS!" (thinking that Elizabeth's blood is Bootstrap's, of course)

My explanation of that bit wasn't just my own speculation; that's how the writers have explained it. It doesn't have to be your hand (Barbossa was going to cut Will's throat), but it does have to be your blood.

Okay, I think I get it now. Everyone who took a peice of gold from the chest has to give their blood. By the time of CotBP, the rest of the crew gave their blood, all that was left was Turner's. So in the end, Jack had to give his Blood bcs he took a peice. He throws it to Will, who also cut his hand. That's when the curse was lifted. If Jack hadn't thrown it to Will the curse couldn't have been lifted.
Got it...I think...

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^Set by Esteleth

Oh, I see now. xD Thanks PotC. Geez, I love these writers. That's one of the best storyline that Disney's sprouted in a long time.

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^ By me and my SS *squiggle hugs*

Heh, so then why are we, probably 52910538 fans loving the storyline?

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^ By me and my SS *squiggle hugs*

Bingo.

And aye, I love Ted and Terry. Mostly Terry (because he's usually the one who takes time to talk to fans like me who like to dissect every little plot and subplot to its fullest extent), but Ted rocks hardcore too. They're definitely geniuses.

yes. that's right P. took.....and johnny's fan....

but just to clear the last little bit up, just to say it and keep those few from still wondering....though by doing that i may just confuse everyone again....but...

will cut his hand not because he had the piece (because as we've pointed out, just being given the piece doesn't make u cursed) but because his father needed to give blood, so, if they can have his father, they take his son....it needed to be turner blood no matter who it came from....and actually, i was under the impresion that they found out they were curse before they threw bootsrap overboard because in the story pintel and ragetii are telling they say that bootstrap said " you deserve to be curse, and remain curse"...that's Y he send off the piece to will.....that's when bootstrap desided to stand up to everyone.....am i right?

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I didn't include that in my explanation for the sake of simplicity, but aye. They found out about the curse before they sent Bootstrap to the depths, but they didn't find out about the blood until after the fact. ("'Course, it was only after that we found out we needed 'is blood to lift th' curse.")

Okay! I got it!
Thanks for clearing that up! I was always confused!

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