Beware the Beast from Below

Beware The Beast From Below is the first episode of the first season of Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated.

Premise
After being jailed for solving a mystery, the gang stumbles upon yet another case: a slime mutant that lives underneath Crystal Cove is cocooning anyone who gets in its way. Despite being warned not to continue investigating by their parents and authority figures the gang attempt to solve the mystery anyway.

Synopsis
The gang congratulate each other after solving another mystery. Their celebration is cut short however, as Sheriff Stone locks them in a jail cell for interfering in police business. He says that he will call each of their parents whom he now has on speed dial.

Later, an uninterested Velma is giving a Spook Museum tour to some visitors to Crystal Cove. Velma starts to tell the visitors that all of the monsters were fake but her parents stop her. They don't want Velma to ruin the family business. The scene shifts again to the sewers. A group of sewer workers have knocked down a wall in the sewers and have discovered barrels of nuclear waste. They open it up and are attacked by the slime mutant.

The gang is riding the Mystery Machine around town when the slime mutant comes out of a manhole from the sewers. He starts to attack the van and rams his body into the Mystery Machine. The gang is able to escape the slime mutant and then finds a police investigation site. The police have found the bodies from the sewers. Fred steals a body and drives it over to the high school.

The gang disrupt Professor Raffalo's biology class and show him the body. Raffalo says that the body is covered in an organic cocoon. Daphne says that since the cocoon is organic, this might be the first time that they discovered a real monster in Crystal Cove. However he wants to do further tests to make sure. Scooby accidentally eats some of the cocoon. The gang leaves the high school and heads over to Fruitmeir's.

At Fruitmeir's the gang discovers that the cocoon tastes like Fruitmeir's dessert. They do more research on Franklin Fruitmeir and discover that he came to Crystal Cove six months ago. Meanwhile at the lab, Raffalo is attacked by the slime mutant. Shaggy and Scooby are asked to work at Fruitmeir's by the gang to keep a close eye on Fruitmeir.

After Fruitmeir leaves for the night, the gang looks around the restaurant. They find that there is an opening to the sewers. Daphne finds a mysterious locket in the sewers. They also discover a giant drill that is right above the Crystal Cove bank.

Fred decides to set up a trap. The Slime Mutant comes but the trap fails. All of the gang except Daphne get trapped in a cage that was meant for the Slime Mutant. The Slime Mutant chases Daphne up to the restaurant where he shoots slime at her and sticks her ankles to the door. The gang comes up just in time and shoots Fruitmeir's dessert at the Slime Mutant. The Slime Mutant becomes trapped to a wall.

Sheriff Stone arrives and the gang tells him that Fruitmeir is the Slime Mutant. The Sheriff says that the gang is wrong because Fruitmeir called the sheriff's office when the alarm went off in his restaurant. The Slime Mutant is unmasked and is Raffalo. Raffalo became the Slime Mutant so he could steal money from the bank to become rich.

Daphne asks Raffalo about the locket but he says that he has never seen it before. Later, the gang celebrates at K Ghoul. The phone rings and Shaggy expecting a song request, picks up the phone. The person on the other end of the line says that they should have left the locket in the sewers and that the mystery has just begun.

Villains

 * Slime Mutant/Emmanuel Raffalo

Locations

 * Crystal Cove
 * Crystal Cove Police Department
 * Crystal Cove Spook Museum
 * Jones mansion
 * Blake Mansion
 * Rogers Mansion
 * Crystal Cove Caves
 * Fruitmeir's
 * K-Ghoul

Notes/trivia

 * This is the series premiere of Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated.
 * While this is an origin to Mystery Inc., the series is a reboot outside of standard continuity. Any connection that can be made is intended as a homage and nothing more.
 * This was originally aired as a sneak peak on April 5, 2010; it officially aired 12 July 2010.
 * UK premiere date: 25th October, 2010.
 * Daphne's older sisters appear (in cameos) for the first time: Daisy, Dawn, Dorothy and Delilah.
 * Shaggy mentions that the night before he had fallen asleep watching a Vincent Van Ghoul movie, referencing the original incarnation of the character from The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo.
 * One of the tourists (voiced by Jeff Bennett) following Velma resembles Don Knotts. Don Knotts appeared as himself on The New Scooby-Doo Movies.
 * Franklin Fruitmeir was suspected to be the Slime Mutant; coincidentally, he has the same voice actor as the creature.
 * In the scene where the Slime Mutant corners Daphne by the door, the framing of their faces in the shot is an homage to Aliens 3 where the Alien corners Ripley.

Animation mistakes and/or technical glitches

 * None known.

Inconstitencies/continuity errors and/or goofs/oddities

 * None of the people in Velma's tour group are actually tourists. Either they all decided to move there afterwards or they all just happened to be new in town. It's also possible that they had just never taken it before. However, the two that talk are credited as tourists.

Home media

 * Scooby-Doo! Camp Scare DVD.
 * Scooby-Doo! Camp Scare Blu-ray Disc.
 * Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated: Season One, Volume 1 DVD released January 25, 2011.
 * Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated: The Complete Season 1 DVD set released October 8, 2013.