A Clue for Scooby Doo

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**A Clue for Scooby Doo** is the 2nd episode of *Liam Says Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!*.

## Plot

Mysterious glowing footprints appear along the shore of Rocky Point Beach. As a wave washes them out, a mysterious glowing diver slowly disappears back into the sea. The Gang arrive at Rocky Point Beach soon after and begin cooking hot dogs and dancing while Scooby goes surfing. He begins paddling along the sea when he runs into a mysterious object. Reaching into the water and pulling it up, he sees the glowing diver. Scooby quickly dashes back to shore and tackles Shaggy, telling the gang about the ghost. They all catch sight of the diver, prompting Shaggy to run and hide behind a rock inside of a beach umbrella. The rest of the gang catch up with him and Velma convinces Shaggy to come out of the umbrella. Shaggy hesitates to do so after seeing the ghost, and the rest of the gang watch as the ghost again disappears back into the sea.

They head to the Malt Shop the next night and read a news article about a yacht vanishing off the coast and how the sheriff and coast guard are baffled by ships repeatedly disappearing. A man named Ebenezer Shark is mentioned in the article because he blames the disappearances on the ghost of Captain Cutler. Daphne wonders whether the diver they saw could have been Cutler's ghost.

The gang pay a visit to Ebenezer Shark himself at his home. Shark tells them that Captain Cutler died when his yacht sank into the Graveyard of Ships, and that his ghost is back for revenge to steal yachts from the marina. Scooby falls into a hole where he discovers a diving suit, which he mistakes for being the ghost. It falls on him and he growls again and again until he gets the gang's attention. Ebenezer Shark tells him that he found his old diving suit and suggests that the gang visit Captain Cutler's wife in her lighthouse home if they want more answers.

The gang split up to cover more ground: Fred and Daphne keep an eye on Ebenezer Shark, while Velma, Shaggy and Scooby go up to the lighthouse and visit Captain Cutler's wife. There, they find she practices witchcraft, and they find mysterious cans, one of them containing hyena laughs. While looking at a book with Velma, Shaggy is frightened by Captain Cutler's wife greeting him, in turn frightening Scooby. Velma asks her about seeing Cutler, and she answers by claiming responsibility for bring him back from the grave with her witchcraft. Mrs. Cutler adds that if she had known he'd take his revenge, she would've been kept down in his "watery grave."

Velma, Shaggy, and Scooby leave the lighthouse and find a clue: glowing seaweed, which Shaggy briefly mistakes for being the ghost due to it appearing to move by itself. They follow it towards a drainpipe and tell Scooby to go in. Scooby tries passing himself off as being too fat with a shirt of pillows to fit in the pipe, but Velma doesn't buy it and convinces him to change his mind with a Scooby Snack. Scooby goes in the pipe and manages to retrieve the glowing seaweed from a mouse that was making it appear to move on its own.

The gang meet up and discuss the seaweed they found, determining that it's only found in the Graveyard of Ships. Concluding that the ghost himself could be found there, they take a boat to the Graveyard of Ships. Shaggy initially finds a bottle with a note in it, but it turns out to only read, "No deposit, no return." The gang see a boat moving with no one aboard and the motor not running and decide to follow it until it disappears behind a cove. Having reached a dead end and finding no trace of the ship, they turn around and head back to the Graveyard of Ships.

The four teens are ready to dive into the water to look for clues, but Scooby is hesitant to do so and goes high up on a wrecked ship. Shaggy decides to get him down and does so successfully but gets caught on some rope with Scooby and they plummet down towards to ocean floor. Scooby lands in an old barrel, but Shaggy crashes through one of the ships. The gang begin swimming and split up: Shaggy and Scooby cover one side of the wreck site while Fred, Daphne and Velma cover the other.

Fred, Daphne, and Velma discover a body inside the cabin of a wrecked yacht, which they theorize might be Captain Cutler until Fred reveals that the diving suit is old-fashioned and has been underwater for at least 100 years. The Ghost of Captain Cutler locks the trio inside the cabin and runs off, leaving them unable to get out. Shaggy and Scooby spot the ghost heading towards them. Scooby inflates his diving suit and Shaggy punctures it, sending Scooby hurtling towards the ghost to trip him up. After tripping the ghost, Scooby's suit catches on a ship's steering wheel and sends him in the opposite direction. He crashes through another wrecked ship and ends up in a room where several scuba tanks are being stored. Scooby realizes he's found a clue and quickly swims out of the room.

As Shaggy wonders where Scooby is, Scooby slams through a door which, in turn, slams into Shaggy. Scooby tells him that he's found a clue, but they are quickly chased away by the ghost. They go onto a old wrecked ship where Shaggy tries to fire a cannon at the ghost, but he remembers that matches don't work underwater and he can't light the fuse. The duo begin swimming away from the ghost again and hide on the fronts of two separate wrecked ships. After scaring off a fish threatening to give them away, Scooby again sees the ghost and the duo again swim away just as the ghost tries to grab Scooby. The duo crash through the door to the cabin where Fred, Daphne, and Velma have been trapped, freeing them. Scooby and Shaggy tell them about seeing the ghost and Scooby brings up that he has found a clue. He leads the gang to the room inside the wrecked ship that contains all of the scuba tanks he'd found earlier.

Fred discovers glowing footprints and the gang decide to follow them, but they find the prints dead end at the side of a cliff. Shaggy sits down on a rock to rest, accidentally triggering a switch that opens a secret entrance in the side of the cliff. The gang swim through it and end up in an underground cave, where they discover dozens of the missing yachts that vanished into the cove.

The gang make a trap for the ghost, intending to spray the it with sudsy water, making him slip, and land in a net. They start sounding a ship bells, whistles, and sirens to lure Cutler's Ghost to the trap. The plan doesn't work correctly when Fred and Daphne can't hang onto the hose spraying the soapy water, but they still catch the ghost when Scooby gets sudsed, lands in a boat that accidentally starts, and ends up crashing into the Ghost of Captain Cutler. The ghost is unmasked as a man whose identity is unknown until Shaggy recognizes him and uses some seaweed to imitate a beard. Everyone instantly recognizes him as Captain Cutler.

The gang review the case back at the Malt Shop, reading the newspaper story about their involvement in the mystery. They determine that Cutler faked his death so that he and his wife could steal the yachts from the marina and blame it on his ghost. They would repaint the ships so they couldn't be recognized and then sell the stolen vessels with no one the wiser. Cutler had been storing extra scuba tanks in the Graveyard of Ships when the gang saw him on the beach, and the glowing seaweed gave his suit its ghostly glow. With Fred, Daphne, Velma, and Shaggy distracted by the conversation, Scooby inexplicably drinks everyone's malts simultaneously, stunning the gang and prompting Daphne to wonder how he did it aloud. Scooby's only reply is a wink.

## Characters

### Main

* Mystery Inc.
	+ Liam Hammerfield
	+ Scooby-Doo
	+ Shaggy Rogers
	+ Justin Blystone
	+ Dora Márquez
	+ Naiya
	+ Alana
	+ Emma
	+ Kate
	+ Pablo
	+ Janina
	+ Lilo and Stitch
	+ After-School Tea Time
	+ Nodoka Manabe
	+ Sawako Yamanaka
	+ Veronica Sands
	+ Kyle S. Williams
	+ Ashley "Alexa" Maselan ngunit Determinado
	+ Fred Jones
	+ Daphne Blake
	+ Velma Dinkley

### Villain(s)

* The Ghost of Captain Cutler/Captain Cutler
* Ms. Cutler

## Transcript

*Main article: A Clue for Scooby Doo/Transcript*
## Trivia

* The scene of Shaggy roasting the hot dogs is essentially re-used in *Decoy for a Dognapper*, only with the addition of Velma.
* The model sheet of the Ghost of Captain Cutler refers to him as just "Ghost Diver".
* The Ghost of Captain Cutler was unique as it was the person disguised as his own ghost. He is also unique as the only villain that Shaggy figures out before Velma, as it was he who realized who it was.
* Present-day incarnations refer to the Ghost of Captain Cutler as Captain Cutler's Ghost.
* The Ghost of Captain Cutler seems to have inspired other non-related ghostly deepsea divers such as the Ghost of Monsoon Max from the Scholastic novel *Scooby-Doo! and the Deep-Sea Diver* in the *Scooby-Doo Mysteries* series.
* The sea diver ghost's roar came from the "Abominable Snowman" sketch of Stan Freberg's 1957 CBS radio show.
* Shaggy's first toy was a garbage disposal, although this was likely a joke.
* Mrs. Cutler is much more frightening in the storyboards (mostly due to the fact that she's more ugly and creepy, than just old and creepy).
* This episode was one of four *Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!* episodes, (the other three being *Hassle in the Castle*, *Jeepers, It's the Creeper*, and *The Backstage Rage*), that were selected for the 1998 VHS *Scooby-Doo's Greatest Mysteries* by being voted "Most Popular" by the fans.
* As an homage, the scuba diving suits in the DTV *Scooby-Doo! and the Legend of the Vampire* are identical to the ones in this episode.
* If the diver's corpse found by the Gang has been down there for hundred years that would mean the corpse has been down there since 1869.
* While everyone else's names were revealed in the previous episode , Fred's name is revealed in this episode.
* The title card for this episode and the previous one are different than the ones in the rest of the series; both show the monster while the rest show the gang running with the title floating above them.
* Although aired as the second episode, this was produced as the third. Any time Warner Home Video releases the series in order from the first episode, they almost always have *A Clue for Scooby Doo* and *Hassle in the Castle* in production order instead of air date order. Of course, nothing is lost because there's no continuity, but the fact that they usually have a play all option and are aired in the opposite order might be a problem for some. This does not apply to the UK, however.
* Warner Home Video hyphenates the episode title as *A Clue for Scooby-Doo*.
* The following snippets from this episode can be seen in the first season's opening and closing sequences. However, there are some differences:
	+ The Ghost of Captain Cutler rising from the water from the front, but with ship wreckage surrounding him. This is replaced in the Season 2 intro theme by an extreme zoom in on The Creeper on a plain blue background.
	+ Scooby screaming "Yipe!" as the diving suit falls on him, only he's set in a room in some castle/fortress.
	+ Scooby snickering at the end of the episode, also set somewhere in a castle/fortress, although this went on to be reused in the second season's sequences.
	+ Scooby holding Shaggy after the two are frightened by Mrs. Cutler's greeting, is set in a room in the Kingston Mansion. This also went on to be used in the second season's sequences.
	+ Fred turning his head to face right after saying "Diving suit", zoomed in and with him blinking both eyes after his head is fully turned, again set somewhere in a castle/fortress. This went on to be reused in some later episodes, and this snippet was also reused in the second season's sequences.

* The opening and closing titles for this and the previous episode, boasted different theme music composed by Hoyt Curtin, with a spooky feisty tune which is an extension of the sub-main title theme, complete with intro, bridge and close. From the third episode on, the theme song was now a composition by Ted Nichols, following lyrics written by David Mook and Ben Raleigh. The original theme was unheard for many years until the show's resurrection on USA's *Cartoon Express* in 1990 and was heard during its run on Cartoon Network, until Turner decided to remaster all the episodes in 1998. The DVD releases use the standard theme music.
	+ A rescored, slightly extended rendition of the opening title was reused as stock background music for the season 2 episodes *Mystery Mask Mix-Up* and *Jeepers, It's the Creeper*.

### Miscellaneous

* Disguises: While not exactly disguises, Shaggy and Scooby pretend to be ship figureheads.
* Scooby Snacks bribe: 1.
* "Zoinks" count: 5.
* "Ruh-roh" count: 2.

### Cultural references

* Velma's line, "veeeeery interesting!", was a catchphrase coined by Arte Johnson on the sketch series, *Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In* which, at the time of the episode's production, was one of the most popular TV series in the US.
* Mrs. Cutler greets Shaggy and Scooby with "Good eveeeeeening!", which was Alfred Hitchcock's famous opening line from his long-running showcase series *Alfred Hitchcock Presents*. The phrase was also uttered by Alfred Brickrock, a parody of Hitchcock featured in an episode of the earlier Hanna-Barbera series *The Flintstones*.

### Adaptations

* This episode was adapted in 1970, for Gold Key Comics' *Scooby Doo... Where Are You!* #4, calling it *The Ghostly Sea Diver*.
	+ Ebenezer Shark's home is said to be located in Rocky Point Fishermen's Village.
* In 1999, Landoll's published *A Clue for Scooby-Doo!* in their *Cartoon Network Storybook* series.
* In 2008, the first story of DC Comics' *Scooby-Doo* #135 is a retelling of this episode, called *Those Meddling Kids*, but from Captain Cutler/Ghost of Captain Cutler's point of view.
* In the 2004 live-action film *Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed*, the gang is now adults and have achieved celebrity stardom in their hometown, where they have donated the costume to the Coolsonian Criminology Museum. It's later brought to life by Professor Jonathan Jacobo who's out for revenge against the gang. In this incarnation, it's called Captain Cutler's Ghost and now carries a harpoon spear.
* In 2009, another live-action continuity, this time *Scooby-Doo! The Mystery Begins*, sees them coming together to save their school from the Specter. After this mystery is solved, they really don't have any need to stay together (because they didn't really have anything in common to begin with), but Velma has heard some strange going-ons at the Coolsville Museum (solidifying their friendship), which into turn leads to other mysteries such as the Ghost of Captain Cutler.
* In the continuity of the 2010 *Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated* TV series, the gang now live in Crystal Cove where the monsters they have revealed to be just costumes have been put on display (including Captain Cutler's Ghost) at Velma's parents' tourist attraction, Crystal Cove Spook Museum. It features many of the early monsters the standard continuity gang had faced, only in this series it was localized to one place.
* The opening of the *Be Cool, Scooby-Doo!* episode, *Game of Chicken* is a reimagining of this episode, aired in 2015.
* Capstone adapted this as *Scooby-Doo! A States of Matter Mystery: Revenge from a Watery Grave* in 2016.

Template:Liam Says Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!