This article is about the standard continuity Mystery Inc. For other incarnations, see Mystery Incorporated (disambiguation).

“ Of course it's haunted. Like, when do we ever go to a place that is not haunted? ” —Shaggy Rogers, Scooby-Doo! Stage Fright

Mystery Incorporated,[1][2] often shortened to Mystery Inc.,[3][4] are an amateur crime-solving group of friends. Their mystery solving began as preadolescents in the city of Coolsville, and eventually across the globe.

Contents show]

Members

Former members

Associates

For a complete list of Mystery Inc.'s associates, look here.

History

Animated history

Apocryphal

Comic history

Novel history

Video game history

Appearances

Origin of name

In 1969, they were simply known as "the gang," with the designation of a proper name first appeared in 1973, on an LP called Scooby Doo and the Snowmen Mystery, when they were referred to as Mystery Incorporated. In 1977, the Peter Pan read-a-long books called them both Mystery Incorporated and Mystery Inc., also the same year, comics published by Marvel Comics referred to them as Mystery Inc.

In 1988, when the gang appeared in the A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, they were called the Scooby-Doo Detective Agency, "borrowed" from the team name used in The New Scooby and Scrappy Doo Show and The New Scooby-Doo Mysteries (which had Scrappy-Doo, but largely no Fred or Velma).

Finally in 1998, they were officially recognized in animated form for the first direct-to-video film, Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island, as Mystery Inc. Following on from that, in the fourth film, Scooby-Doo and the Cyber Chase, they were both called Mystery Inc. and the Mystery Gang. They are rarely called Mystery Inc. in animated form, with a seeming general avoidance from writers to ever attempt to use it, instead opting to just call them the Scooby Gang or the Scooby-Doo Gang. Since 2013, however, "Mystery Incorporated" is randomly used in DTVs, beginning with Scooby-Doo! Mask of the Blue Falcon. This may be largely down to its heavy use in the unrelated TV series, Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated, airing from 2010-2013. It was also used in the unrelated live-action films Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (in 2004) and Scooby-Doo! Curse of the Lake Monster (on TV in 2010, and 2011 on DVD).

Conversely, "Mystery Inc." has been in regular use by Scholastic and DC Comics.

Notes/trivia

The gang appeared as a cameo in the Warner Bros. Animation-produced Duck Dodgers episode Surf the Stars, during the surf contest between Dodgers and Crusher.

See also