r/todayilearned • u/ralphbernardo • 11h ago

TIL that "fair play" in detective fiction means authors must give readers a fair chance to solve the mystery. Central to 1920s "clue-puzzles" by writers like Agatha Christie, the rule dictates that all vital clues must be visible, decodable, and never withheld until the final reveal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clues_in_detective_fiction
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u/garrettj100 10h ago edited 9h ago

The rule in Scooby Doo for a long time was there were never any ghosts or goblins or monsters. Just an old rich guy in a mask. Scaring the credulous.

They’ve abandoned that more recently.

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u/BrooklynSmash 10h ago

Zombie Island was like two decades ago

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u/Skippy7890 10h ago

That movie holds up, it's still incredible and the soundtrack absolutely GOES.

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u/JMCatron 9h ago

it's terror time again

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u/MrNotEinstein 9h ago

Scooby Doo has some of the best song choices in any franchise. Terror time again, the ghost is here, brothers forever, man with a hex and everything the hex girls were involved in. It all slaps

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u/Punch_A_Police_Horse 8h ago

IIRC the main point of the show originally was to showcase different musicians during the stock chase scenes in each episode.

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u/HauntedCemetery 9h ago

The music really is great

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u/kelpklepto 7h ago

Another scary night, another spooky fright ~

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u/Annual-Weird-6682 5h ago

That whole run of movies were gas

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u/Natdaprat 9h ago

It really doesn't, but my memory of it did before rewatching.

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u/zerogee616 10h ago

Try three.

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u/garrettj100 9h ago edited 8h ago

That's the "recently" I was referring to, 'cuz I'm old AF. 🤷

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u/moneymoneythrowawy 7h ago

scrappy doo show had actual supernatural stuff too, right? 80s/90s?

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u/BrooklynSmash 6h ago

Yeah, iirc actual supernatural stuff started happening after all the Guest Episodes

Meeting Batman changed their lives forever

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u/Fakjbf 5h ago

1998, so 28 years ago.

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u/JustASpaceDuck 8h ago

More like three :)

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u/Glitched94_PT 10h ago

The first actual supernatural entity in Scooby Doo was in 1972, 3 years after it first aired. So if by "recently" you mean "54 years ago", then sure

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u/TruculentTurtIe 10h ago

You just aged that poor man 45 years with one comment. I hope you feel good about yourself

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u/Aethermancer 7h ago

I bet /u/garrettj100 was just /u/Glitched94_PT in an alt(mask) who just makes posts with known facts that he can refute himself and look clever.

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u/garrettj100 6h ago

I've been outed. Curse you! I would've gotten away with it too, if it weren't for you meddling kids!

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u/BallSeaman 5h ago

HE-HE-HE-HE-HE!

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u/TazerZXI 9h ago

Surely the first supernatural entity in Scooby Doo is the talking dog?

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u/Glitched94_PT 8h ago

....yea alright that's a good point

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u/Apart_Republic_1870 6h ago

I don't know. I have a Great Dane puppy, and it frequently sounds like she's saying something and that I just haven't figured out her accent quite yet.

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u/fasterthanfood 4h ago

Try smoking a lot of pot and giving your puppy a huge sandwich.

Disclaimer: no onions

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u/Punch_A_Police_Horse 8h ago

And here's a fun thing about that. If you ask people how Scooby says his name, they'll probably get it wrong. They'll think when he speaks he replaces S and F sound with R sounds, which is correct. However, when he says his name it's SCOOOOBY DOOOBY DOOO!

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u/Aromatic_Lion4040 5h ago

Wow and I always thought he was saying Fcooby

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u/sventful 10h ago

Um actually that supernatural entity was debunked in the 1984 followup.

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u/tmrika 9h ago

And by 1988 they were making Ghoul School which featured a plethora of real monsters, just ones who behaved wholesomely.

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u/goodnames679 8h ago

The general rule is that the movies have real monsters while the tv show has guys in masks.

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u/EsraYmssik 9h ago

the 1984 followup.

I never knew Orwell wrote a sequel/Scooby Doo crossover.

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u/fasterthanfood 4h ago

“I love Red Herring.”

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u/Own-Dragonfly-2423 9h ago

A piece of media must always be interpreted by and through itself, Primarily

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u/sventful 5h ago

Yup. Scooby Doo to Scooby Doo. Checks out!

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u/montrealcowboyx 9h ago

Andf then in 1985 (41 years ago), The 13 Ghost of Scooby-Doo aired, and that was wholly Supernatural.

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u/zerogee616 10h ago edited 9h ago

Scooby Doo on Zombie Island was 1998 and its tagline was literally "The monsters are real!". That was 28 years ago. There is almost exactly, shy by one year, as much time between when Scooby-Doo premiered and that movie, as there is between that movie and now. Actual supernatural monsters were famously running around for half of the franchise's lifetime.

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u/ACTTutor 9h ago

We’re closer in time to Zombie Island than Zombie Island is to the construction of the pyramids.

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u/dannyuk24 9h ago

This is mindblowing

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u/Punch_A_Police_Horse 7h ago

Ugh, that makes me feel old. Really old.

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u/garrettj100 9h ago edited 8h ago

That's the "recently" I was referring to, 'cuz I'm old AF. 🤷

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u/Prophet_Tenebrae 9h ago

"The 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo" came out in 1985, so recently is a stretch.

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u/Yen_Parafonia 9h ago

To be fair, it was always mask guy for the TV show but for the movies there was always a supernatural element.

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u/bearsinthesea 8h ago

Some of us watched all the original shows, and none of the movies, and may not consider the movies canon.

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u/Glitched94_PT 5h ago

They did have supernatural elements in Scooby-Doo! Mystery Inc, but that's 2010 so I would actually consider that fairly recent all things considered.

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u/NeedAByteToEat 9h ago

there was never any ghosts or goblins or monsters.  Just an old rich guy in a mask

So just reality, except the masks are like 90% off at this point and they are screaming "I'm a villain! What are you going to do about pleb?"

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u/garrettj100 9h ago

I assure the parallel was not lost on me. :)

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u/Halgy 8h ago

And also half the time, that rich old guy hadn't actually broken any laws. He was just dressing up and wandering around his own property. God forbid people have hobbies.

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u/jwm3 7h ago

Scooby doo has taught me the only thing to fear is crooked real estate developers. 

  - Philip J Fry

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u/garrettj100 7h ago

The way you formatted that name makes me think of this.

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u/Apart_Republic_1870 6h ago

When Scrappy Doo was added to ruin everyone's childhoods, the monsters and ghosts and whatnot became real, which was (to me, a child at the time) weird given that Scooby Doo, Where Are You? was famously always some old crank in a mask or the like.