The ship captain from "Ship of Ghouls" truly was one of the 13 ghosts and not just another ghost the gang ended up capturing with the Chest of Demons.
- Aside from Tim Sheridan, writer of Scooby-Doo! and the Curse of the 13th Ghost, pretty much confirming that the ghost captain counted as one of the ghosts from the Chest of Demons, here is an explanation for how a ghost who was imprisoned in the Chest of Demons since ancient times could be leader of a crew that perished 50 years ago: Even when the Queen Myrtle sank, he was still a ghost then and had actually impersonated a human captain the first time to lure people to death and make them his minions after they became ghosts.
- The new origin allows us plenty of ways to wiggle him in there. Obviously he had to have been out 50 years ago before the series to commit that act, but we don't know how much time it took Vincent and Mortifer to catch them the second round. The captain being one whose MO is to kill people at sea would be a rather difficult one to track down if he doesn't come after you directly. So we can assume he was probably bagged close to the end of Mortifer and Vincent's run. This gives us still enough time for them to have been locked up for a while before Scooby opened it. Mind you, time in HB-land may not always be as static as ours but in Broad Strokes this is totally feasible.
- Speaking of the ghost captain and him being one of the 13, for those wondering why the escaped entity of ghosts turned on him, it's entirely possible it was actually just adding him to it, being the entity of the captured ghosts and all. "No, not us, we're on your side!" "That you are, so you're coming with us."
- It might also be possible the captain ghost was knowingly misleading the other ghosts into thinking he wasn't one of them?
Bogel and Weerd are the ghosts of Harry and Marv from Home Alone.
It would explain their personalities as well as why they are evil.Vincent Van Ghoul sends Bogel and Weerd to Transylvania, where they become Crunch and Brunch.
"Horror-Scoope Scoob" was an elaborate ruse to catch Zimbulu
At the beginning of the episode they mention they need Boris' help to catch a ghost that is eluding them, and they open the show claiming they will do so on air but never really draw attention to it. The whole stuff about Boris stealing the chest was planned from the start to trick Zimbulu into impersonating Tallulah. Zimbulu never actually got all the power in the universe as that was all a con too. Bogel and Weerd are the ghosts of Crunch and Brunch
They either get killed in a freak accident or Dracula finally loses it and kills them. They become Bogel and Weerd in the afterlife as both have similar personalities and characteristics. Bogel and Weerd were victims of a hate crime
They were gay lovers. Bogel has a high pitched voice and they bicker like an old married couple. It would make sense. The Bad Future from "It's A Wonderful Scoob" was a hallucination designed to scare Scooby back home.
Taken from the Alternative Character Interpretation. Vincent Van Ghoul doesn't seem to be above pulling that kind of a stunt; he's not gonna let a little thing like screwing with Scooby's emotions get between him and saving the world. And Scooby is only one of the two who can get the demons back into the chest.- And if that didn't convince you, remember that the whole point of Vincent Van Ghoul needing to fetch Scooby in the first place was because they were about to be crushed by time slime's contraption. Had they lived long enough to see the bad future, then Vincent Van Ghoul would not have needed to show Scooby the bad future at all.
- Stray observations that aren't exactly ironclad evidance, but nonetheless add to the theory: Vincent, to the best of this troper's memory, doesn't have the ability to see into the future. Yet while he's showing Scooby all these horrific things, his cold, professional facade doesn't even crack, not even at seeing Flim Flam serving one of his enemy's and going by Slimex. And how does he know exactly where to show Scooby? Easy, he didn't: All he needed to know what would be the biggest motivator for Scooby to defeat time slime.
- Shaggy being the last rebel on earth doesn't make sense, no matter how you look at it. If you interpret it as Time-Slime letting Shaggy run free just to toy with him, well, aside from Shaggy actually being capable of defeating time-slime and directly contradicting with the motives, Time-Slime is shown actively hunting Shaggy down, and since Shaggy isn't exactly a Future Badass, this is not a hard thing to do, yet Time-Slime takes the time to personally surround him and make a ceremony of it. If you interpret him actually treating Shaggy as a serious threat, why not do it sooner? Why wait? He was able to catch Shaggy pretty easily (and everyone else except Scooby besides) in the present.
Flim Flam is a girl.
OK, bear with me here: the townsfolk seem pretty old fashioned, so it's not a stretch to see where Flim-Flam would see that an orphaned little boy would be able to get away with A LOT more than an orphaned little girl. Or maybe they just automatically assumed that the mischievous, androgynous-looking child had to be a boy right off the bat, and Flim Flam just decided that telling them otherwise wasn't worth her time. And even then the townsfolk seem pretty sick of "him". As for the gang, either Flim-Flam never really felt the need to clarify she wasn't a he, or she found the idea of being mistaken for a boy amusing. While Curse of the Thirteenth Ghost shows Flim Flam as a grown man, it's pretty obvious that takes place in an AU, so that can be discounted.- Alternately, Flim Flam was originally intended to be a girl to add more females to the cast.
Vincent Van Ghoul's involvement in the series was all a convoluted ploy to give Flim-Flam a family.
He influenced Shaggy and Daphne's minds to trick them into letting Scooby navigate and then influenced Scooby into specifically setting them off course to the Himalayas. Scrappy's about Flim-Flam's age, so let them run around together enough to form a bond to get Flim-Flam with everyone else. He actually could get rid of the 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo any time he darn likes, but he needs them to capture them so that Flim-Flam can become Fire-forged friends in their times of trial. From there, all he has to do is sit back and subtly intervene as needed. Vincent Van Ghoul is actually a form of fae
He fits the bill perfectly with his Blue-and-Orange Morality, capricious personality, hair-trigger temper, and magical powers. Vincent Van Ghoul is the thirteenth ghost and always was intended to be.
If so, then the part at the end of the theme song where Scooby closes the chest in relief before he looks up in terror as Vincent laughs darkly would be a terrific bit of foreshadowing. Now, on with the theory. This WMG suggests that the ghosts actually were never in the chest of demons when the series began. The demon's "escape" was just an illusion, created by Vincent Van Ghoul; who is actually the weakest ghost, only capable of illusions and some mild suggestive powers, and is sending the gang to catch the other demons so he can be more powerful and tricks the gang into doing so by first causing them to believe that the demons were in the chest, to begin with, that they are beholden to go on a quest to restore them to their holding place, and finally, that he is their friend so that they don't capture him, leaving him the only remaining demon and thus the most powerful.
Bogel and Weerd's status as guardians seems to throw a wrench into this, although they are clearly not the brightest bulbs and it seems plausible that they could be easily swayed to believe the lies about the chest through the power of suggestion, or they are just very sloppily formed constructs and their dimwittedness is a result of it.
Now, as for proof, the whole set up is incredibly fishy: Why leave a chest of demons in an abandoned old castle, so that Bogel and Weerd can trick people into unleashing thirteen terrors into the world?
But most condemning is the utterly self-sabotaging rule that says: "The only person who can seal the chest are the ones who open it". Beg pardon: What? Why would-No! What if someone opened it and the demons killed the person? Then nobody could put the demons back! What if the person was seriously mentally or physically disabled? What if, as is actually a point of drama in at least one episode, what if the opener was another demon who would have no reason to fix what he started? Good excuse for the heroes to go on a quest, bad idea for the peace and prosperity of the world.
But great for roping in unsuspecting souls to capture your competition for you...trick them into opening it. Trick them into thinking the world's doomed. Scare them into "cleaning their mess".Now it seems like a world catastrophe of this scale would be significantly more...urgent to Vincent Van Ghoul's supposed associates.Bt no, not only do they allow 5 ordinary mortals shepherded by an incredibly unreliable warlock whose powers always unfailingly short circuit when they needed them most, nobody seems to even recognize Vincent Van Ghoul...except for the other demons.They seem very familiar with Van Ghoul.And they aren't really acting as if they just were freed from a chest. Maldor in particular, who is about his daily business as though not a day has passed.Nekara even tries to seduce Vincent Van Ghoul, which, granted, is sort what she does, but it still bizarrely brazen for a supposed arch-enemy.This theory also suggests that the episodes are out of chronological order.The Sea Captain is the last episode of the series, and the reason why Van Ghouldoesn't tip them off to it and there's no "this is the twelfth ghost we're looking for" is becauseVincent knows that he won't need them after number twelve is gotten and so is counting on them to be experienced enough to nab it but not to escape the shipwreck. Hence neatly getting rid of his accomplices and leaving him as the most powerful of the thirteen left.
- Would have loved that to be brought into the Curse of the 13th ghost movie.
- This idea is very neat, unfortunately the show definitely doesn't support the idea; Van Ghoul is shown to be very powerful a lot of the time, and has friends within the general wizarding community (as shown in the Mirror Ghost, Seductress and TV host episodes). If he were the weakest of the 13 Ghosts he couldn't do half of the things he does (barring massive power creep which we don't really see), and the wizarding community would know to stay away from him. (Also, I believe the first episode has it that it was the Townsfolk who hid the Chest in the castle, not Vincent, but I could be wrong there.)
Bogel and Weerd died while trying to recapture the ghosts
It could possibly explain them getting the gang to open the chest. It's revenge. It could in turn mean that they are trying to either have the same fate happen to Scooby. Vincent Van Ghoul is the reincarnation of Professor Ratigan.
Both characters are voiced by Vincent Price, plus Vincent occasionally wears an outfit vaguely similar to Ratigan's. My theory is that one of the good forces of Disney (either The Blue Fairy or the Three Good Fairies) decided to give Ratti a second chance, but on the condition that he do good rather than evil. Ratigan agrees to this, and thus becomes Vincent. However, although he is good now, he still has a mischievous streak. The 13 Ghosts Is a Moniker
While there are, or were, 13 terrible ghosts, "The 13 Ghosts" refers to a gang founded by these 13 that the worst ghosts could join. There's already signs of this in the Show; when Rankor is trying to join a different gang of ghosts, but is still one of the 13 Ghosts. It would also explain how some of the Ghosts, like the Ship Ghosts, could be the 13 Ghosts but be directly against the canon of the chest. Bogel and Weerd also want to join the 13 Ghosts. This would also explain how there could be a Season 2 if the show became a runaway success. Flimflam is Vincent's unacknowledged son
Okay. Hear me out, Flimflam seems to have no family to speak of, common for his archetype, but it's noticeable that he was already Vincent's errand boy well before he meets the rest of the gang, and gets away with a lot of things none of the other gang can - including calling him "Vinnie", messing with the crystal ball, and borrowing his carpet. Then there's the episode with Nekara, when the gang crashes the wedding with Daphne pretending to be Vincent's wife and the rest kids - Shaggy, and the Doos aren't convincing, but when Flimflam strolls in, Vincent looks right at him while asking: "Son?" - and despite being mind-controlled into thinking he's in love with Nekara, he's shown to be more or less in his facilities otherwise.So basically, Vincent either had seriously loved Flimflam's mother or had a fling, but being a Warlock it's a May–December Romance and leaves before realizing she's pregnant, something happens to her while Flimflam's pretty young and he has to fend for himself. Vincent (magic or recognizing a strong resemblance to the kid's mom) finds him and suspects they're related. Why not acknowledge him? Vincent is a very powerful warlock with a LOT of enemies, and Flimflam doesn't seem to have inherited any Warlocky-ness (notably he doesn't get influenced by Nekara's charm gaze), so if he acknowledges that he has a kid, he's putting the crosshairs on Flimflam, but he isn't about to just abandon him, so he hires the boy as a way of keeping him close enough to protect him without raising suspicion, and essentially lets him get away with more things out of a sense of guilt for not being able to be a proper dad.
