When a passing car drops a violin case full of brand-new $20 bills, the gang tracks the phony money to a puppet theater filled with traps.
This episode contains examples of the following tropes:
- Briefcase Full of Money: Shaggy and Scooby stumble across a violin case while walking back from the pizza shop. They pick it up, expecting it to contain an instrument, only to find it full of Counterfeit Cash.
- Coat, Hat, Mask: The Phantom Puppeteer wears a hat and a cloak. It seems as though he may have thrown together the costume from pieces in the theater, because at one point Shaggy finds and puts on an identical outfit.
- Counterfeit Cash: The mystery starts when Shaggy and Scooby find a violin case full of counterfeit money (Shaggy estimates it is thousands of dollars' worth), leading the gang to the theater.
- End-of-Episode Silliness: Scooby-Doo dresses up in an elegant cape and top hat, posing like he’s a show's star.Velma: Like I said before, what a ham!
- In-Series Nickname: This is the first episode where Shaggy refers to Scooby-Doo as "Scoob," which quickly becomes a staple of the franchise.
- Monster of the Week: The Phantom Puppeteer.
- Ominous Pipe Organ: The Phantom Puppeteer is seen playing one of these at one point in the mystery. Then everything goes dark, and when the lights come back on, he's disappeared.
- Out-of-Genre Experience: This episode shakes up the formula a little. Instead of the gang investigating an area because of something spooky and discovering a crime, the gang determines the crime early on and goes undercover.
- Perverse Puppet: When the gang sneaks by Pietro supposedly sleeping, his marionette Johnny opens one eye to look after them. This is never explicitly explained, though Pietro does control Johnny at other points.
- Samus Is a Girl: The Puppet Master, who turns out to be male, tricks Scooby with a fake female poodle and later scares him with a witch puppet.
- Speak in Unison: As they're talking over the clues, the gang's human members all come to the same conclusion about what's going on within moments of each other and chorus, "Counterfeiters!"
- The So-Called Coward: Despite being cowardly, Scooby-Doo is still a fully-grown Great Dane, and can be pretty intimidating when angry, so the Phantom Puppeteer understandably flees in a panic when Scooby begins threateningly barking at him, and so the rest of the gang actually has to rescue the Phantom from Scooby.
- A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing: Pietro, seeming to be a harmless doorman for the puppet theater, turns out to actually be an evil puppet master that is the one behind the counterfeit operation, and had disguised as the Phantom Puppeteer to try and scare the gang away.
