The gang and The Three Stooges happen on an abandoned farming community at exactly the same time. Curly Joe, who has taken an interest in piloting, quickly gets a job as a cropduster. Can the gang find out who's behind the mysterious ghost of the Red Baron, or will they go down in flames?
This episode includes examples of the following tropes:
- Always Know a Pilot: The farming community has almost been abandoned thanks to the Red Baron's ghost flying around. The remaining farmer the group meets is desperate for someone to dust his crops. Combined with a more-impressive-than-usual aerial displayed (due to Scooby more than Curly), Curly gets the job.
- Big "NEVER!": The Three Stooges are enlisted as cropdusters. They resign after the Baron threatens them and the gang:Velma: (disappointedly) You sure you won't change your mind?Moe: Positive. Neither rain or snow or gloom of night could keep us from our mission...Larry: Or thunder and lightning and hail. But ghosts??Curly Joe: NEVER!!
- Chekhov's Gun:
- Velma notices a plant in the office wilting like some of the crops, despite having been fed with fertilizer. When she sees a bunch of weeds growing tall, it confirms her suspicions: the Baron's "ghost" swapped out weed-killer for the fertilizer, hoping to get the crop-dusting pilots to kill the crops.
- Shaggy finds the controls for the Baron's mini-plane during the episode and figures out how to use them with the idea of fighting plane with plane. It pays off later.
- The Con: The villain wanted to scare off all the pilots so he could sabotage the farmers by putting weed-killer into the crop-dusters. Then the farms would fail and would be forced to sell to him. Given that others wanted to expand a jet-plane field, he would have made lots of money selling the land to them.
- Crash Course Landing:
- The ghost of the Red Baron starts a plane while Velma is hiding in the cockpit, sending her aloft in a piece of machinery she doesn't know how to operate. She and Fred and Daphne (who are on the ground post) desperately try to communicate, but the plane (now with Scooby aboard with her) runs out of gas as it coasts to a stop after hitting a pond.
- At the end, the Three Stooges end up going up in a plane, only for Curly to realize that he left the comic book he consults when flying on the ground. Scooby ends up having to use the mini-plane that he and Shaggy commandeered from the week's villain to go after them and make sure they land safely.
- Distressed Damsel: Episode writer Norman Maurer (who also owned the rights to the Stooges at the time) liked getting Velma in a fix. In "Ghastly Ghost Town," she gets sent down into a deserted mine below the town; in this episode she is sent airborne in a biplane she doesn't know how to operate.
- Hoist by Their Own Petard: The Red Baron gets his mini-plane commandeered by Shaggy and Scooby, and his getaway fails when Fred blinds him with a cloud of the weed-killer he wanted to use on the crops, causing a crash.
- Literal-Minded: When Scooby, reading Curly's flying instructions, tells him "Down, down!", he crouches. Moe pulls him back up and tells him Scooby meant the plane.
- Red Herring: Mr. Terra, the airport's mechanic, is scary looking and grouchy, and warns the gang to leave the area. Daphne expected him to be the ghost of the Red Baron, but he wasn't.
- Red-plica Baron: The episode features a Villain of the Week masquerading as Richthofen's ghost, using a red-colored, old-fashioned flying suit and flying a Fokker airplane while attacking pilots.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: The crop-dusting pilot attacked by the Red Baron in the opening scene quits rather than go back up there after his narrow escape.
- Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere: Fred, Daphne, and Velma wind up locked in a room by the Baron's ghost while he goes to kill the crops. However, Shaggy and Scooby are in a room nearby and they join forces to escape.
- Shout-Out: When the villain gets captured, Shaggy quips, "Curses, Mr. Baron, foiled again!"
- You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Scooby is incredulous when Shaggy is revealed to not know that corn grows on a plant.
