There are a lot of incredible Scooby-Doo villains out there, but there are also a lot of terrible villains. If you enjoy the classic person-in-a-mask format, I suppose you could fill the list from purely Scrappy shorts, but I tried to limit the amount of ones I pulled from the Scrappy shorts. While I don't particularly enjoy villains like Nazrat of the Jungle or the Strongman, I feel there were some costumes in other episodes that were far worse.

We're going to switch it around this time and do the worst list first, and I will post the best list soon.

10. Rankor
There are a lot of options that I debated putting here, and I hate to put such a cool-looking villain here. However, Rankor (from "Coast-to-Ghost") looks certainly do not match his behavior. He is one of the dumbest villains in the history of the franchise IMO. He inexplicably reports to some random monster club that couldn't have been too high-level given Weerd and Bogel are trying to get into it. Even worse, he goes into the Demon Chest by his own free will, and actually thanks the gang as they capture him by exclaiming "Thanks, you guys are real pals!" Given this is supposedly one of the 13 most horrible ghosts in the world, the bar for that title can't be too high lol.

9. Skeleton
I do have a soft spot for this one because it's so bad that it's kinda funny, but the Skeleton from "The Spooky Fog" is one of the most low-effort Scooby-Doo villains you'll find lol. Not only is it obvious that it's just a guy wearing a cheap suit with bones painted on it, the skeleton's movements are not scary or menacing in any way. In his first appearance in the gif above, it looks like he's just taking his evening stroll through the cemetery lol.

8. Ghost of Juan Carlos
I feel bad having this on here, because I do really like the episode, but I have always found the Ghost of Juan Carlos from "Don't Go Near the Fortress of Fear" to be really bad. He looks like just a normal guy in a general's outfit. In fact, I'd go as far as to argue there's nothing really ghostly about him at all.

7. Carnival Owner
This will be the first of five villains from the Scrappy shorts. A consistent problem you'll notice that I have with the Scrappy shorts is that I feel Shaggy, Scooby and Scrappy sometimes act like jerks who do something really rude to somebody else, then take no responsibility. I don't like how the carnival owner was made to be the villain, when the guys were the ones that screwed up and ate all the profits, then ran rather than apologize or pay for what they ate.

6. Chef
I don't find the chef from "Scooby Gumbo" to be well-written in the slightest. He's not even really a villain, technically, he's just a guy with strict rules about animals that the guys antagonize.

5. Carl and Tony
Besides the fact that "Ransom of Scooby Chief" leads us into the Scrappy short era, which I didn't care for, I just feel like they're not great villains in general. Rather than menacing or forceful like I feel like would have been good with a kidnapper plot, they just come off kind of whiney and annoying to me.

4. Doctor
I think we can all agree that the doctor from "Scrappy's Birthday" was just a flat-out bad villain lol. The idea of a doctor becoming so enraged that he chases visitors around the hospital is completely ridiculous.

3. Museum Guard
The reason the Museum Guard from "Scooby Dooby Guru" is here is due to the fact that his whole character is just one bad stereotype after another. I've gone into detail in my least favorite episodes/films list about how awful some of the stereotypes this character is written with are, notably the fact that he jumps on a random elephant and chases the gang around town, as well as the awful Indian voice impression that the voice actor does.

2. McGurk Brothers
Unless the McGurk Brothers from "Hoedown Showdown" are intended as a meta-reference to how stereotypes are bad, these are hands-down some of the worst Scooby-Doo villains I've ever seen. Basically their entire personalities are just bad stereotypes of hillbillies. The fact that their feud with Shaggy's family is that one of them wants to date Shaggy's cousin, but she's not interested because he doesn't take baths, is quite possibly the worst villain motive of the entire franchise lol.

1. Sheet Ghost
For me, the Sheet Ghost from "Haunted House Hang-Up" is hands down the worst Scooby-Doo villain we've ever had. The fact that the sheet he's wearing is so short that you can clearly see his human legs and arms is ridiculous and funny. It's clear he put very little effort into his costume lol.

During The New Scooby-Doo Mysteries theme song, during the second scene where all the monsters from "A Halloween Hassle at Dracula's Castle" do the Thriller, for a split second, Medusa appears next to the werewolf before the camera shifts the other direction. This likely means that they were originally planning to include a female monster in an early draft of the episode. This is confirmed by an animation cel from the intro including Medusa's design, which was recently sold on eBay, bought by a frequent commenter on the blog, ScoobyDooUK, who inspired this fun fact idea.

I've tallied up the votes from Week 1 of our setting polls for Where Are You, and here are our final results! Our winner, "A Night of Fright Is No Delight," moves on to the final Winner's Circle poll! 

A Night of Fright Is No Delight - 13
Foul Play in Funland - 8
What the Hex Going On? - 7
Spooky Space Kook - 6
Haunted House Hang-Up - 6
Mystery Mask Mix-Up - 5
Which Witch Is Which? - 4
What a Night for a Knight - 3
​A Gaggle of Galloping Ghosts - 3
Don't Fool with a Phantom - 3
Hassle in the Castle - 2
Decoy for a Dognapper - 2
The Backstage Rage - 2
Go Away Ghost Ship - 2
Scooby-Doo and a Mummy, Too! - 1
That's Snow Ghost - 1
Jeepers, It's the Creeper! - 1
A Tiki Scare Is No Fair - 1
Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Werewolf - 1

0 votes: A Clue for Scooby-Doo, Mine Your Own Business, Never Ape an Ape Man, Bedlam in the Big Top, Nowhere to Hyde, and Scooby's Night with a Frozen Fright

Yes, you read the title correctly. In a shocking turn of events, Scooby-Doo and Krypto Too! was suddenly leaked in full online today. I'm imagining what may have happened is that Mystery Pups getting its distribution cancelled after the show was deep in development was the final straw for somebody at WB, and they leaked the film. Either way, this is very surprising news and a first in the 54 years of the franchise.

To be entirely honest, I wasn't particularly sure whether I should post this review or not since I am unsure if there'd be any issue with discussing an unreleased movie. However, I've heard some other folks in the fandom have created videos and even posted clips from the leak online, so I assume it's okay to simply talk about the film even if it hasn't been released. Just to be safe though, I want to provide a disclaimer that all information from this post comes from my good friend, Johnny. I would never, ever watch an unreleased film and when my friend Johnny told me that he had, I gave him a hefty scolding about the dangers of watching non-official content (but only after he told me a detailed summary of the entire film) lol. (Seriously though, if anyone who worked on the film happens to be reading this and has an issue with me talking about a film that was not released, please feel free to let me know and I'll be happy to take this article down immediately if it poses any issue)

Scooby-Doo and Krypto Too! was a great film, and I would argue that this is how a crossover should be done. In most crossovers, the guest star is coming into Scooby's universe, so it was neat that this film felt like the gang was going into Superman's universe. The film follows the gang trying to rescue the Justice League, after the appearance of a golden ghost. The Legion of Doom is also here, meaning there are quite a few villains of the film. Most of them don't show up a lot, but notably Scooby thinks Solomon Grundy is The Creeper, and Fred has a crush on Harley Quinn. I found it interesting that Fraphne was more heavily implied here than in any other movie other than Stage Fright. It's still kind of an unspoken thing between them, but Fred has a lot of jealousy over Daphne's former love interest, Jimmy Jones, and Daphne seems to acknowledge that Fred is jealous.

I am not really a big DC fan personally, so I do not know a lot about that universe other than I've seen the recent films, and plan to see Shazam when it comes out. Despite that, I thought the film was still appealing even to someone who does not have a lot of familiarity with DC. The scenes with the gang in the Daily Planet were nice, and it was interesting to see the gang's interactions with some of the heroes and villains.

Krypto was the star of the film for me. Despite not talking, he was such a cute character and his friendship with Scooby was adorable. The film framed the gang as knowing all the other heroes and villains, yet they did not know Krypto which I was surprised by. There's a brief aside from Daphne where she says "we know Batman," which seems to be a reference either to the current line of comics, or their previous times meeting Batman in the episodes and films. I particularly thought Krypto shined during the scene with a "Kitchen of Superfriends," which is a holographic room that manifests whatever you say. It was cool to see him save the day and come to the rescue, even when Shaggy and Scooby were unable to.

Lex Luthor and Rex Luthor (his dog lol) were perhaps the most notable and interesting characters here. It's referenced that Lex was former president of the United States, which I know is canon from the DC universe. There's sort of an odd joke made where Lex brags about how much power he has as president, and Velma says "but you didn't win the popular vote!", which oddly felt like a reference to the recent political landscape haha. There's a gag where Lex Luthor keeps getting lost, and to be entirely honest, that was the only part of the movie that wasn't great. The joke wasn't really even that funny the first time, so I don't know why they needed to keep going back to it. Compared to Velma's humor though, literally anything would be an improvement, so it didn't bother me that much.

Another improvement over past movies is that I didn't feel hit over the head with references. I don't know what it was like for those who are familiar with DC, but I found the few that they included to be cute, like the "Challenge of the Superfries" restaurant and the smoke spelling "happy birthday Second Robin!" when Fred activated Batman's belt. Speaking of which, Batman is nowhere to be found in this film, and even the Justice League is not in any part of the film until the last five minutes. Only Superman and Wonder Woman speak, and the rest have non-speaking roles. It becomes kind of funny at the end, as during the final moment of the movie, Scooby says his catchphrase and Krypto barks, while The Flash just randomly stands there smiling, not saying anything lol. 

I have a few other random comments that I wrote down, the first of those being that the Scooby Snax box design from Cyber Chase is used in this film, I believe for the first time in 20+ years, which was a really interesting touch. Fred's catchphrase "Hold the phone" is seemingly gone (thankfully, I never liked that tbh), as there's a joke mid-way through the film where all the gang says their catchphrases and Fred just says "run!" I liked the chase song quite a bit. One oddly funny bit in the film that was among my favorites is when Scooby asks "Shaggy, are we strays?" after Velma says Krypto is probably a stray, and Shaggy gets the most serious look in his eyes and flatly says "yep" lol.

I won't go too much into this bit as not to ruin anything about the ending, but the twist at the end was fun. I admit I kinda saw part of it coming, but there were still parts that were surprising, and I didn't expect the gold ghost to be who it was. It was really fascinating how the gang gives the explanation of the ghost being "swamp gas" to Lex; it almost felt like it was mocking Return to Zombie Island for Velma giving that explanation, as "swamp gas" seems so oddly specific, and they weren't even in a swamp.

Overall, I really liked how this movie felt like a shared universe between the Justice League and Scooby-Doo, and neither one overshadowed the other. In fact, I feel like the Justice League being absent for all but the last five minutes, and giving focus to the side characters like Lois Lane and Lex Luthor, allowed the mystery to develop in a more natural way where it did not feel like the guest star was out of place or dominating the episode, like it sometimes did in Guess Who. The film felt quite cinematic and I have to say I really enjoyed this. I'd probably rank it at #26 in my movie rankings, above Chill Out but below Pirates Ahoy.

It's such a shame this will likely never be released, and it's even more of a bummer to think about the fact that the only thing coming up right now seems to be Velma season 2. It's very weird to think that a finished film like this is just going to float out there in the abyss, never seeing the light of day, but today has probably been one of the most action-packed days in the franchise between Mystery Pups losing its distribution rights and an unreleased Scooby-Doo movie getting leaked for the first time ever on the same day. It will be a weird road forward, and I wish I would have better appreciated the plethora of Scooby media we got in 2021 given we ended up going in a direction with barely any Scooby content last year, and it's increasingly looking like the same this year. However, I'm hopeful we can get back to a spot where we are getting at least one DTV a year, and have some Scooby content on the horizon.

Some very sad news today from Roger Eschbacher, one of the writers for Scooby-Doo and the Mystery Pups. Roger posted on his Twitter account that he received word from a colleague on the show, and HBO Max has told them they are no longer interested in distributing the show. This means that unless they are able to get the show picked up by another network or streaming service, the show is cancelled. Roger ended his tweet on a hopeful note, saying he remains hopeful that the show will be picked up by another distributor.

For their 100th anniversary, Warner Brothers is releasing a special DVD set featuring 10 Scooby-Doo films. This will be the biggest multi-feature Scooby-Doo film set to date. The set will release on April 11, 2023, one week after their 100th anniversary on April 4. The set features the two James Gunn live action films, as well as all of the 2018-2021 films (with the exception of Daphne & Velma​). It will be priced at $39.96, and the set will have a total of four discs. The set is now available for pre-order on Amazon.

Here is the movie listing:
Scooby-Doo
Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed
Scooby-Doo & Batman: The Brave and the Bold
Scooby-Doo and the Gourmet Ghost
Scooby-Doo and the Curse of the 13th Ghost
Scooby-Doo! Return to Zombie Island
SCOOB!
Happy Halloween, Scooby-Doo!
Scooby-Doo! The Sword and the Scoob
Scooby-Doo and Courage the Cowardly Dog: Straight Outta Nowhere

In the 2002 console game Night of 100 Frights, the creators of the game messed up on a detail of the most classic villains in Scooby history. The Monster Gallery credits the Giggling Green Ghost to be from "A Bicycle Built for Boo," despite that it is obviously from "A Night of Fright Is No Delight."

It's time to determine what the best settings in the franchise are with another poll series! Since many episodes have the gang going to multiple places, I decided to have the options be episodes rather than settings to keep it at a manageable amount of options. I debated about having it be one season per poll, but since there are 15 series, I think it makes more sense to just go by series rather than having this poll series go on for a full year lol.

​Last week's poll was a fun one to see the results from! 23 people said they watched Scooby daily, 17 people watch several times a week, 13 people watch weekly, 11 people watch monthly, 7 people watch every couple of months, 6 people watch biweekly, and 6 people watch yearly. Thankfully, nobody voted never haha.

It appears there has been a leak as some images from Mystery Pups have appeared on the Internet and are now all over social media. The leak is an image of the gang's designs. I personally think they look quite good! Thanks to Scoobyverse, Scooby_News16 and JustMeJordanW for sharing this info!

As I mentioned in the previous top 10 settings article, I didn't think "Worst Settings" would make a good companion article for this, since I can't think of any instances where I disliked an episode based on the setting alone. So instead of that, I used an idea suggested by Matt, a regular commenter on the blog, and decided to pick out 10 episodes where I feel the setting is great, but isn't talked about very often. It was genuinely pretty tough to try to condense my list into just 10, but it was a fun challenge nonetheless. I don't have an order for these, as I don't really have a sense for which of these settings are more underrated than another. I feel all of these are underrated.

Theater of Doom
I mentioned this one in the comments but it was not mentioned in the actual post. I honestly think the episode in general is very underrated. I love how atmospheric the episode is in the sense all 22 minutes either takes place on the tiny stage, or in the creepy backstage-like basement. Having such a focus location greatly enhanced the plot and the creepiness of the mystery, and I don't think this episode gets enough recognition for that.

The Exterminator
In general, I think The New Scooby-Doo Movies is underrated for its settings as a whole, but this is one of the episodes that really stands out to me for its setting. It's not talked about much as a haunted house episode, but the creepy house on the hill makes a great haunted house. I also particularly like the inclusion of the paintings. The fact that several of the paintings and statues (like the bird with the piggy bank, for example) can suddenly move and grab you at any time makes the setting even more spooky and disturbing.

Scooby-Doo, Where's the Crew?
I don't hear this one talked about very much, but the ship's setting is so dark and terrifying. I would argue that this episode is as dark as any of the season 2 episodes. The gang being trapped on a ship lost at sea with three ghouls is really creepy, since there's literally no way they can escape. The atmosphere of the whole episode feels really dark in a way that not a lot of Scooby episodes do.

Scooby's Peep Hole Pandemonium
For an episode that has a very odd title, it has a really good setting; arguably the best of any of the 7 or 11-minute shorts. In comparison to the other series, it's not among the all-time best settings in the franchise, but I like how reminiscent this feels of a classic Scooby-Doo haunted house. The way this episode is able to do that despite the very different tone of the series from the 1960s and 1970s is definitely notable, and deserves more recognition than it gets.

The Hand of Horror
On that same subject, "The Hand of Horror" is another underrated setting. The Von Gizmo Estate presents another example of a setting feeling very atmospheric and being developed very well despite the short runtime.

The Weird Winds of Winona
This is another underrated The New Scooby-Doo Movies setting. The fact that this town is completely abandoned makes it feel foreboding, both at the farmer's house and the town hall. Admittedly, the short bit we get in the caves at the end of the episode isn't anything special, since this series seems to overuse caves a bit in my opinion, but the other two settings aren't talked about enough IMO.

Night on Haunted Mountain
I don't really know if "underrated" is the right word to describe this setting, but I never really hear anyone talk about this setting. The gang venturing up the mountain feels quite ominous, and the old ship remains have a very creepy vibe to them. I especially like the bit at the end with the El Aguirre's ghost showing up. I honestly wish he would have gotten his own episode, because his design is so amazing!

The Ghostly Creep from the Deep
This is the second-to-last New Scooby-Doo Movies that will appear here. I really like the setting of the old inn here. The fact that it is abandoned and in the middle of a swamp obviously enhances the setting quite a bit, but I also like the level of detail put into the outside of the inn. The inn looks very run-down and like it hasn't been used in years, which bumps this up a couple levels further in its spooky factor.

The Frickert Fracas
This episode is underrated in general, but I feel like a large part of that is the setting. Maude Frickert's farm has a very dark, spooky feel to it, and it's very challenging to do that with a simplistic setting like a farm IMO. The fact that most of the episode takes place at night adds to the creepiness of it, since the gang is walking around in the dark in a cornfield, where anything could jump out at them at any time. The farm itself is done in a very atmospheric way that really pulls you in, unlike "The Ghost of the Red Baron" a few episodes later, which kinda falls flat in comparison. This episode did an amazing job of using the farm to its full potential.

The Beast Is Awake in Bottomless Lake
I notice that the settings I like best create a dark and foreboding atmosphere, and this is one where I feel it's done really well. Similarly to "The Weird Winds of Winona," the town being basically abandoned and the whole thing taking place at night creates an atmosphere with a creepy vibe. Moreover, the Beast appearing seemingly everywhere amps up the terror even further, which I love. Also, this doesn't factor into my feelings on the setting, but it never fails to amuse me that Canada puts up a cheap wooden sign that says "Welcome to Canada" at the border. No other tourist information or a fancy sign at all, just a little wooden sign haha.

It was tough to condense my list into ten settings, but I hope you enjoyed reading this list! If you have any settings that you feel are underrated, I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments!