Western Animation / Scooby Doo! Pirates Ahoy!

"A storm has shown its face to you today, so don't delay.
It's time for hiding and dividing from the fury and the sound.
And cutting like a knife the wind is howling and the growling
of the thunder's there to plunder and to swallow up the ground."

The tenth feature in the Scooby-Doo Direct-to-Video Film Series, Scooby-Doo! Pirates Ahoy! was produced by Warner Bros. Animation, featuring pirate ghosts in an attempt to cash in on the then-current pirate trend started by Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.

For Fred's birthday, his parents take him on a mystery cruise, but accidentally end up solving all of the mysteries staged by the crew in order to keep the passengers entertained. However, can they solve the mystery of that mysterious castaway over there?

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Scooby-Doo! Pirates Ahoy! provides examples of the following Tropes:

• A Day in the Limelight: For Fred, as his family figure heavily into the plot.
• All Part of the Show: In a sense. The Scooby Gang starts the plot on a mystery cruise, where the captain and the organizer set up every "Scooby-Doo" Hoax in the book to stump them but get seen through every time. Unfortunately, they end up so desensitized that when a real mystery falls into their laps, they don't initially believe it. Indeed, Daphne promises the captain they'll stay out of this one.
• Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: Fred’s mom and dad (especially his mom) embarrass him in front of his friends by treating him as if he's still a little kid.
• Bedlah Babe: Velma dresses up as a harem girl for a costume party.
• The Bermuda Triangle: The film takes place at the Bermuda Triangle.
• Blinding Camera Flash: A Running Gag in the film involves whenever Fred's parents snap a photo with their camera, the flash temporarily blinds the photo subject for a few seconds.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: All the pirates are actually hypnotized people except Skunkbeard's first mate, Mr Mysterio, who actually did all the hypnotizing.
• Butt Biter: The bite itself is just offscreen, but during the "That's the Way We Go" number, Scooby chomps down on the rear of one of the pirate ghosts, causing him to fall off the ship while clutching his rear in pain.
• Captain Colorbeard: The main villain of the film is a pirate ghost named Captain Skunkbeard.
• Chekhov's Gag: During floor entertainment at the costume party, Mr. Mysterio tries to hypnotize Scooby and Shaggy. Instead, he makes everyone else cluck like a chicken. Velma figures out that Mr. Mysterio actually hypnotized everyone else on purpose to turn them into Skunkbeard's crew, and had done the same to Rupert's men.
• Continuity Nod: Daphne, Velma, and Fred's outfits at the costume party (Cat Girl, Bedlah Babe, and cowboy respectively) are the exact same ones they each wore in seperate episodes of What's New, Scooby-Doo?, which concluded the same year Pirates Ahoy! was released.
• Cutting the Knot: When the pirates have them tied up, Daphne starts using her credit card to cut the ropes. Scooby realizes what she's doing, and bites at the ones she's loosened. This frees everyone.
• Dick Dastardly Stops to Cheat: It's likely that Rupert would have helped Wellington if the latter had asked politely for his navigational skills. Instead, Skunkbeard attacked Rupert's ship and nearly murdered him due to the fact that Rupert slipped away and ended up in the ocean.
• The Dog Was the Mastermind: Skunkbeard/Wellington was a (figurative) puppet of the first-mate/Mysterio the whole time.
• Dramatic Unmask: Played with when it comes to Scooby Doo's usual hoax unmask. When they unmask Skunkbeard, they assume Wellington is one of their basic bad guys - pretending to be a supernatural pirate in order to get some kind of treasure. Then it turns out he really thinks he's the reincarnation of a famous pirate. The gang is initially nonplussed, and the real unmask turns out to be his first mate.
• Even the Dog Is Ashamed: Scooby voices his disapproval at Shaggy's reluctance in confronting the ghost pirates, since they captured Fred's parents.
• Extremely Protective Child: Fred takes on pirates to rescue his parents. He actually does well at first, so that two have to sneak up from behind to grab his mother and father. Afterwards, he chases after the pirate ship to rescue them, and ends up fighting the pirates on their own vessel.
• Foreshadowing: The Mythology Gag cameos become hints to what the gang will uncover during the mystery. Like the Captain Cutler Ghost, the pirates have a hidden base inside a cavern and store a salvaged shipwreck there; and the real villain behind everything is a professional master hypnotist, like the Ghost Clown.
• Good Parents: Peggy and Skip are shown to be loving parents Fred, despite sometimes embarrassing him. Fred has just as much love for his parents in return and will go out of his way to save them after being abducted by Skunkbeard and the Ghost Pirates.
• Ghost Pirates: The main antagonists are ghostly pirates.
• Ghost Ship: Captain Skunkbeard has his own ghostly ship.
• Hidden Depths: It turns out that Fred is a good fencer. He manages to fend off several pirates with a stolen sword and tosses one to his dad. Mr. Jones doesn't get to show off, but he's familiar with Flynning.
• Hostage-Handler Huddle: The Big Bad and his crew attempt to capture Rupert Garcia hoping to make use of his skills as an astrocartographer. But then end up capturing Fred’s dad, so he proves unable to aid them, so his crew huddle up and brainstorm how to punish Rupert:
  Captain: Buckoes, what should we do to the lily-livered landlubber who stands in my... in our way to greatness?
  Crew Member One: Keelhaul him.
  Crew Member Two: Tar and feather him.
  Fred’s Dad: Let him go.
• Hypno Fool: Mysterio was hypnotizing everybody into acting as the pirates, and convinced Wellington, likely with some hypnotism, that he was the reincarnation of a pirate many years ago, and could use the meteor to travel back in time.
• Improvised Weapon: Fred uses a deck chair to knock out a pirate during the initial raid on the cruise. Velma makes great use of shuffleboard pieces to trip two up.
• Instant Mystery, Just Delete Scene: Mr. Mysterio implanting a hypnotic command to make everyone act like pirates goes unseen, presumably because it would spoil the identity of the main villain.
• I Will Find You: After the pirates kidnap his parents, Fred yells after them that he'll rescue them.
• Latex Perfection: Not just the pirate ghosts, where the crooks and everyone that was hypnotized were wearing pretty good full-head rubber skull masks made up to look ghostly, but for some of the "mysteries" that are part of the cruise early on, such as Captain Crothers wearing a latex skull mask at one point while sticking his rubbery head through a hole in a dining table and platter to scare passengers.
• Living MacGuffin: It's revealed that Rupert is one for the pirates due to being an astro-cartographer. They attacked his ship in an attempt to coerce him to navigate through the stars for them.
• Mass Hypnosis: When it's revealed that the missing people are Captain Crothers' crew, Daphne is shocked that everyone on the cruise ship was in on the villains' scheme, but Velma realizes that they were actually all hypnotized into acting like pirates by Mr. Mysterio during his performance.
• Mythology Gag: The "villains" in the mystery games that the cruise puts on and are all quickly unmasked by the gang (to the mounting frustration of the ship's crew and the other passengers), are cameos of villains from Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! — the Ghost of Captain Cutler, the Ghost Clown, and the unnamed werewolf (from the "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Werewolf?" episode).
• No Sense of Direction: While tied to the mast, Mr. Jones explains that the pirates thought he was Rupert, and wanted him to navigate the star chart. Fred is confused, saying his father couldn't find his way to the bathroom. His dad apparently told the same thing to the pirates.
• Not Me This Time: After solving all of the cruise's mysteries and getting complaints from the other guests, the Scooby gang decided not to try and solve any new mystery. So when a supposed new mystery comes in, the gang compliments the ship crew for pulling an intricate new mystery, despite the crew's confusion and insistence that this wasn't part of the act.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: From what we hear, Rupert was the only member of his crew to not end up kidnapped or hypnotized by Mr. Mysterio. He also survived for days in the ocean until the captain rescued him.
• Parental Sexuality Squick: Fred's mom gushes over how cute his dad is in his "castaway" costume, and Fred's dad calls her his "pinchable passion fruit" while going in for a kiss. It disgusts Fred.
• Parent Service: Daphne's legs propped up on The Mystery Machine's dashboard while she paints her toenails, and later she and Velma dressed as a Cat Girl and a Bedlah Babe respectively in the costume ball, are clearly to provide fanservice for older viewers.
• A Pirate 400 Years Too Late: The ghost pirate Wellington was convinced that he was the reincarnation of a famous pirate years in the past, and thought that he could use the meteor to travel back in time.
• "Scooby-Doo" Hoax: Mr. Mysterio hypnotized everyone so that he could steal the meteor, which is pure gold.
• Sequel Hook: At the end when Fred's parents decide to go on a trip to the Himalayas next year, Shaggy protests, saying he wouldn't want an encounter with the Abominable Snowman. That's just what happens in the next movie Chill Out, Scooby-Doo!.
• Sherlock Scan: At one point, the Gang are asked to figure out where a guy's watch is after singlehandedly solving all of the mysteries on the ship and manage to perfectly guess where the man's watch is just from guessing what likely happened.
• Shout-Out:
  • Close Encounters of the Third Kind popularized the idea of the five Navy airplanes disappearing over the Triangle because they were taken by UFOs, as shown during the opening credit sequence.
  • Of course, the cruise ship would happen to be named "Poseidon".
  • The Scooby-Dooby Doors chase on the pirate ship, with Captain Skunkbeard trying to chase Scooby and Shaggy, is entirely done in the way Yosemite Sam (as a pirate) had tried chasing Bugs Bunny in a couple of their cartoons, and also ends with getting shot by a cannon hidden behind one door.
  • The villain is a hypnotist/illusionist named Mysterio.
• Shown Their Work: The TBF Avengers of Flight 19 and the USS Cyclops were accurately rendered.
• Spanner in the Works: Rupert avoiding getting captured by the villains, and later Mr. Jones wearing Rupert's clothes therefore causing the villains to mistake him for Rupert, caused the villains' plans to be delayed and Mystery Inc to get personally involved.
• Spoiler Cover: The region 2 dvd mentions that Fred’s Mom gets turned into a pirate.
• Standard Female Grab Area: Gender Inverted. Sally the pirate holds Rupert this way when Skunkbeard figures out he is the real astro-cartographer. He doesn't dare fight back because she also has a sword at his throat.
• Stealth Pun: Shaggy and Scooby dress in a double-headed chicken suit for the costume party. During the pirates' attack, one severs the heads of the suit, barely missing Shaggy and Scooby's heads as they pull them down into the costume's body. The two race around frantically in the suit for a few minutes before shedding it. In other words, they were running around like chickens with their heads cut off.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • A mystery cruise targeted towards normal tourists are not particularly challenging for a group of expert mystery solvers, as a result the gang go through a week's worth of mysteries in 2 days.
  • Fred and his dad, Skip, engage in some Flynning to fend off Sea Salt Sally the Pirate, showing off their swords. She just shoots off the swords.
• Tickle Torture: At the climax, Mysterio tries to stop Scooby from dropping the meteor back to the ocean. When his tail brushes his sides, Mysterio laughs and Scooby tickles him into submission. He also threateningly wiggles his paws to tickle Mysterio again if he doesn't break his hypnosis on everyone.
• Watch Out for That Tree!: Fred tries to rescue his parents by swinging down to ambush the pirates. He misses, and runs into the boat's walls instead.
• Wholesome Crossdresser: Scooby-Doo and Shaggy try dressing like Velma and Daphne respectively as their costumes to get into the costume party.
• Wink "Ding!": After rescuing Fred's parents with remote-controlled kit planes, Velma and Scooby wink to each other, accompanied by xylophone "clink" sounds.

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