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- Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?
- CBS
The Best Scooby-Doo Episodes That Make Us Want To Hop In The Mystery Machine
Scooby Doo is a classic TV show that's been around since 1969. With all that history, it's hard to know where to start. If you want to get in a mystery solving mood but don't have the time to watch every single episode, never fear, because we've compiled a list of some of the best Scooby Doo TV episodes that have ever aired.
From early mysteries about ghosts who are secretly embezzling business owners to Batman crossovers, there are a lot of amazing episodes to choose from.
- 1120 VOTES
A Night of Fright Is No Delight
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- Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?
- CBS
Series: Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?
Season # & Episode #: Episode 1, Season 16
Unmasking The Mystery: When a millionaire named Beauregard Sanders passes away, he leaves a portion of his riches to Scooby Doo, a dog who he considers a hero. But in order to get the money, Scooby has to stay the night at his mansion. When the gang settles in, they realize that the mansion is haunted by two green ghosts. Ultimately, they learn that the ghosts aren't ghosts--they're lawyers who wanted to keep the old man's inheritance for themselves. Stereotypically speaking, lawyers aren't particularly trustworthy, but this goes above and beyond.
Notable Hijinks: While Velma is running away from the ghost, she stops to pick up a ringing phone. Then she manages to distract the ghost and catch up with her friends by handing them the phone. Also, just before that, Shaggy and Scooby try to fight off the ghost using wine corks.
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- 2122 VOTES
A Gaggle Of Galloping Ghosts
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- Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?
- CBS
Series: Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?
Season # & Episode #: Season 1, Episode 11
Unmasking The Mystery: While heading to the Franken Castle, the gang consults with a fortune teller who tells them that they'll meet their doom if they continue. They ignore this and continue towards the castle. Once on the grounds, they encounter Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, and Wolfman. When they find an earring on a tapestry carried by Dracula that's identical to the one the fortune teller was wearing, they realize that they're all the same person - "Big Bob" Oakley. Bob is wanted in seven states, and he's been using his costumes to keep everyone out of the castle so that he can search for jewels he plans to steal. Seems like a lot of effort when he could have just used one costume to the same effect.
Notable Hijinks: This episode is the origin of the “meddling kids” phrase, although the word “meddling” isn't actually used. Bob says "Yes, I'd have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for these blasted kids and their dog!" after being caught.
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- 394 VOTES
What A Night For A Knight
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- Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?
- CBS
Series: Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?
Season # & Episode #: Season 1, Episode 1
Unmasking The Mystery: The gang finds a suit of armor that was supposed to be delivered to a museum by Professor Hyde White. With White nowhere in sight, they do the guy a favor and return the suit to the museum. There, they meet the museum's curator, Mr. Wickles, who tells them that the suit comes to life when the moon is full. This tuns out not to be true. Actually, Mr. Wickles got inside the suit so that he could kidnap Professor Hyde and have someone else to blame. Why would he want to do that? So that Hyde wouldn't find out that he was stealing paintings from the museum and replacing them with forgeries.
Notable Hijinks: This is the first episode of the entire series, so everything that happens happens for the first time. But this episode has one enduring gag that will show up over and over again throughout the series - Velma losing her glasses.
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- 4110 VOTES
Which Witch Is Which?
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- Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?
- CBS
Series: Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?
Season # & Episode #: Season 1, Episode 13
Unmasking The Mystery: While coming back from a fishing trip that yields no fish, the gang ends up in a swamp. There, they see what appears to be a witch and a zombie. They encounter two men - Zeke and Zeb - who claim that they saw the witch conjuring up the zombie in the swamp using voodoo magic. Naturally, they're a little freaked out, but they decide to investigate. After dealing with a series of complicated traps and finding several suspicious tools, they ultimately learn that Zeke and Zeb were disguising themselves as these supernatural creatures in order to scare people away from the swamp. Why? Because they stole an armored truck then lost it in the swamp and needed time to find it again.
Notable Hijinks: Shaggy and Scooby dressing up like a witch was hilarious. Shaggy had a mop of his head and Scooby trailed behind him under a blanket, making them look like a bizarre centaur. Needless to say, they weren't fooling anyone.
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- 590 VOTES
Hassle At The Castle
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- Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?
- CBS
Series: Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?
Season # & Episode #: Season 1, Episode 3
Unmasking The Mystery: This story features one of the more benign villains. Bluestone the Great, a magician who dresses up like a ghost and uses various magic tricks to make Vasquez Castle appear haunted, isn't really trying to hurt anyone. Instead, he's just trying to keep people out of the castle so that he can search for the Vasquez treasure that was left behind by a pirate in the 1600s. The gang, not really that experienced in mystery solving yet, actually thinks that the house is haunted, but it's just a series of magic tricks.
Notable Hijinks: Stressed out from the whole haunted house thing, Shaggy wishes that he had a ham sandwich to help him chill out. A ham sandwich appears seemingly out of nowhere. Shaggy concludes that his imagination is running wild, so he asks his imagination to cut the ham sandwich in half. The sandwich is cut in half, but with an axe. Shaggy and Scooby bolt, but then Shaggy heads backs back for the sandwich. Real or imaginary, he's not one to leave food behind.
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- 670 VOTES
The Dynamic Scooby-Doo Affair
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- The New Scooby-Doo Movies
- CBS
Series: The New Scooby-Doo Movies
Season # & Episode #: Season 1, Episode 2
Unmasking The Mystery: Calling all Batman fans - if you haven't watched this episode of Scooby Doo, you need to add it to your to-watch list. The episode features a mystery solved by both the Scooby Doo crew and Batman and Robin. They're investigating a crashed plane that seems to be delivering a suspicious item. It turns out to be part of a business that produces counterfeit money. While both Penguin and the Joker from Batman are involved, the real mastermind is Mrs. Baker, a seemingly innocent old lady who in reality is willing to risk other people's lives to keep her business afloat.
Notable Hijinks: This episode marks the first appearance of the word “Jinkies” which would later become Velma's catchphrase. However, Velma's not the one who says it here. Instead, that honor goes to Shaggy.
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- 787 VOTES
Bedlam In The Bigtop
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- Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?
- CBS
Series: Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?
Season # & Episode #: Season 1, Episode 10
Unmasking The Mystery: A circus is supposedly being haunted by the ghost of a clown who hypnotizes people with a golden coin. This sends some members of the circus packing, which is what alerts the gang to the whole situation. After getting hypnotized repeatedly, the gang ultimately discovers that the culprit is a hypnotist who used to work with the circus but got fired. Now, he's clowning around to try and get revenge.
Notable Hijinks: Whether it's Scooby getting carried away by balloons, Shaggy being hypnotized into being a lion tamer, or Daphne unicycling up an elephant's trunk, the gang engaging with the actual circus is pretty funny.
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- 887 VOTES
Go Away Ghost Ship
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- Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?
- CBS
Series: Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?
Season # & Episode #: Season 1, Episode 14
Unmasking The Mystery: The ghost of the pirate Redbeard has allegedly been raiding freight trains belonging to C.M. Magnus, so the gang decides to figure out what's going on. For a while it does seem as though they've found a ghost, but it turns out that the fog effect was created by buckets of dry ice. The “ghost” was actually Magnus himself. He was stealing from his own freighters in order to sell the goods and keep his company from going bankrupt. Seems like applying for a business loan or something would have been a more straightforward way to deal with that, but this is more fun.
Notable Hijinks: At the end of the episode, Scooby demonstrates how the dry ice is used to create fog. He cuts a circle in the fog and then eats it like a donut. How is that possible? Nobody knows, but it's not like Scooby is obligated to obey the laws of reality.
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- 9100 VOTES
Foul Play In Funland
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- Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?
- CBS
Series: Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?
Season # & Episode #: Season 1, Episode 8
Unmasking The Mystery: When the gang notices that an amusement park that's not supposed to open for weeks is up and running, they decide to investigate. Even though there's no one around, they're still able to order food and play games. They catch sight of a strange man who looks like a robot and try to track him down. Partway through their investigation the carnival goes haywire. The food stalls spit out massive amounts of food and the rides run backwards. Ultimately, they learn that the strange man is a robot who was created to look after the park while the caretaker, Mr. Jenkins was gone. His sister, Ms. Jenkins, sabotaged the robot using a magnet because she didn't want children around it.
This one is interesting because the person causing problems isn't a bad person - Sarah means well, she just went about it in a less-than-ideal way.
Notable Hijinks: Watching the carnival go nuts is pretty fun - especially when Scooby and Shaggy try to grab as many hotdogs as possible.
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- 1095 VOTES
Jeepers It's The Creeper
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- Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?
- CBS
Series: Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?
Season # & Episode #: Season 2, Episode 3
Unmasking The Mystery: While on their way to a school dance, the gang has an encounter with a bank guard who has been attacked. They learn from the bank's president that this attack was orchestrated by someone called the Creeper, a ghost who has been regularly robbing the bank by moving through walls. The gang first encounter the Creeper while cleaning up after the school dance. After running away, they end up encountering an old hermit living in the woods who they think could be the Creeper - but it turns out that he just really wants to cook for strangers, whether they like it or not. The real Creeper is actually the bank president, who has been robbing his own bank and invented to Creeper to throw off the scent. Surely there are easier ways to embezzle money than that?
Notable Hijinks: This isn't about the episode itself, but here's an interesting bit of trivia: the world's first computer virus - which was created a year after the episode aired - was named after the Creeper.
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- 1174 VOTES
The Harum Scarum Sanitarium
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- The Scooby-Doo Show
- ABC
Series: The Scooby-Doo Show
Season # & Episode #: Season 1, Episode 7
Unmasking The Mystery: During a vacation to Niagara Falls, the gang discovers a seemingly abandoned mental asylum. A border patrol officer named Officer Oldfield warns them not to go any further because the asylum is haunted by the Ghost of Dr. Coffin. They intend to listen, but a misleading sign sends them to the asylum anyway.
Suspicious happenings, like ambulances coming and going at weird times, tip them off that something weird is going on. They soon learn that the “patients” in the ambulances are actually stolen gold melted into the shape of people and wearing wigs so that they can be smuggled across the border. The Ghost of Doctor Coffin is actually Officer Oldfield, who wanted to keep anyone from figuring out his con.
Notable Hijinks: At one point Scooby puts on one of the wigs that are used to create fake patients. Shaggy thinks that Scooby is an actual woman. This was the first instance of the gag that would be repeated in multiple episodes.
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- 1262 VOTES
The Vampire Strikes Back
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- What's New, Scooby-Doo?
- Kids' WB
Series: What's New, Scooby-Doo?
Season # & Episode #: Season 2, Episode7
Unmasking The Mystery: The gang heads to a spooky castle in order to watch the Hex Girls film a music video. When they get there, the band is breaking up because of a vampire that's causing chaos. This turns out not to be the work of an actual vampire, but of a pair of brothers who are trying to ruin the shoot because the castle used to belong to their family but was sold for commercial reasons. Real estate like that is hard to come by, so it's not surprising that they'd do anything to get it back.
Notable Hijinks: Daphne dresses up like a vampire bride in order to lure the vampire towards her, but this accomplishes nothing because Shaggy and Scooby, who were on the roof trying to capture a bat that they think is Freddy, fall on top of her.
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- 1355 VOTES
Mummy Scares Best
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- What's New, Scooby-Doo?
- Kids' WB
Series: What's New, Scooby-Doo?
Season # & Episode #: Season 2, Episode 2
Unmasking The Mystery: While the gang and Melbourne O'Reilly are an archaeological dig together in Egypt, they meet the Mummy of Pharaoh Scamses, a mummy who hypnotizes tourists into becoming obedient zombies. While trying to uncover the mummy's true identity, they also have to worry about being zombified themselves. In the end, they discover that the mummy and zombies were a distraction from the fact that an underground network of pipes was siphoning water away from one town in order to bring it to another one as part of a money-making scheme.
Notable Hijinks: Nearly everyone besides Shaggy and Scooby winds up being zombified. Scooby is able to turn them back to normal by yelling “relp!” - meaning “help!" This turns out to be the pronunciation for an ancient hieroglyph that breaks hypnotic trances.
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- 1480 VOTES
Scooby's Night With A Frozen Fright
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- Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?
- CBS
Series: Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?
Season # & Episode #: Season 2, Episode 4
Unmasking The Mystery: While fishing, Shaggy catches what appears to be a caveman frozen in a block of ice. The gang takes the caveman to the local aquarium. When they leave and then return, they discover that the ice has melted and the caveman is roaming free. After several attempts to either escape from or unmask the caveman, they discover that it's not really a caveman at all, but Professor Wayne from the aquarium. He hoped to pretend that the rampaging caveman had gotten rid of both himself and Professor Ingstrom so that he could come back later and take credit for Ingstrom's invention, a Marine Life communicator.
Notable Hijinks: Shaggy's line “Am I glad he's frozen in there and that we're out here" became the source of a popular meme.
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- 1546 VOTES
I Left My Neck In San Franscico
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- Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo
- ABC
Series: Scooby-Doo And Scrappy-Doo
Season # & Episode #: Season 1, Episode 10
Unmasking The Mystery: During this episode, a series of coincidences cause Shaggy and Scooby to believe that the vampire that they discover while touring Alcatraz Prison is actually Daphne. Daphne, of course, is no vampire - she's just absent while the vampire is present because she's sick and needs to rest. The real culprit is Lefty Callahan, a who not only disguised herself as a tourist named Mrs. Cornell, but who also disguised herself as a vampire. Why do all this? She wanted to get ahold of some jewels that she'd previously stolen.
Notable Hijinks: To ward off vampires, Shaggy, Scooby and Scrappy all chow down on a garlic pizza. This is supposed to make their breath so garlicky that no vampire could stand to get near them. If there were a real vampire in this episode, it might have worked!
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- 1648 VOTES
The Creeping Creatures
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- Scooby Doo! Mystery Incorporated
- Cartoon Network
Series: Scooby Doo! Mystery Incorporated
Season # & Episode #: Season 1, Episode 2
Unmasking The Mystery: The gang hasn't run into a mystery to solve for a while, so they head over to Gatorsburg, a town that used to make money selling alligator skin products but has since been abandoned as there were no more gators to skin. But there are three gator-like monsters scaring people out of town. The gang is forced to stay at a hotel for the night because the engine of the Mystery Machine is stolen. But they're not exactly welcome - the hotel proprietors seem to want them out as quickly as possible. The reason for this turns out to be that the town's only remaining residents have been dressing up like gators to scare people away so that they can maintain their counterfeit gator skin business.
Notable Hijinks: When the gang calls their parents to pick them up from Gatorsburg, they all have ridiculous excuses not to do it. Velma's mom is busy watching a horse race - she has to do it now because Venus is in retrograde. Daphne's mother can't go out after dark, but she can totally let her teenage daughter do the same. Fred's dad has already set his chair to the recline position, so he's not getting up. Shaggy's parents are busy painting portraits of each other. It's probably best that Shaggy's not around for that one.
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- 1740 VOTES
The People vs. Fred Jones
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- Be Cool, Scooby Doo!
- Cartoon Network
Series: Be Cool, Scooby Doo!
Season # & Episode #: Season 1, Episode 26
Unmasking The Mystery: This episode has a different set-up from many of the others, which is part of what makes it stand out. Fred has been accused of being the villain behind every case he's ever solved, with one case in particular at the forefront: the Toxic Mutant who has been terrorizing Safety Springs. After a court case that involves Daphne acting as Fred's lawyer because she somehow got a law degree from a video game, it's revealed that the real Toxic Mutant was actually Dayton Knight, who was trying to keep everyone out of Safety Springs so that he could sell off expensive items people left when they fled due to a nuclear accident. Knight also happened to be the person accusing Fred of wrong-doing, so that's two counts of being toxic.
Notable Hijinks: Everything about Daphne getting a law degree through a video game was hilarious - especially when Velma calls it “Super Lawrio Brothers.”
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- 1846 VOTES
Elementary, My Dear Shaggy
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- Scooby Doo And Guess Who
- Boomerang
Series: Scooby Doo And Guess Who
Season # & Episode #: Season 1, Episode 4
Unmasking The Mystery: While touring some allegedly haunted locales in London, the gang encounters the Screaming Skulls of London, a group of glowing, ghostly skulls. Ultimately, they discover that the skulls aren't real - they're lights made from a vehicle owned by guards at the Tower of London who are hoping to make off with the crown jewel. Aside from the setting, this seems like a typical Scooby Doo adventure, but what makes this episode really stand out is the fact that they're assisted by a Sherlock Holmes impersonator who may or may not really believe that he's the famous detective.
Notable Hijinks: The episode features Canadian voice actor Ian James Corlett as Crackpot Sherlock.
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