The Mastermind is Gone 

Luke Durling 

08/26/2026 

To many people. the character pictured above means nothing, especially in the pantheon of who played him. 

This is The Mastermind. The main villain of the Scooby Doo: Night of 100 Frights video game.

This was what was probably my first experience with Tim Curry, something that wouldn’t be apparent until a second playthrough later on. 

I hated The Mastermind. 

The Mastermind was a smug, conniving challenge that seemed insurmountable to my younger gamer mind. Yet, there was an almost earnestness to his smugness, a sheer sense of confidence that made him slick, sneaky, even cool. It was impossible to truly hate a specter with such confidence in himself being larger than life that he truly was larger than life.

That is what made Tim Curry legendary. He believe in making his characters what he was, larger than life, death, and the universe itself, because that was what he was.

I beat The Mastermind. It gave me satisfaction, but with the culprit behind the sheen being so much shallower than the faux persona portrayed by a man who spun silk with his tongue, I felt a pang of disappointment. I didn’t want to expose a persona, I wanted the persona to be real. Turns out it was, just in the man who made him The Mastermind to begin with.

The Mastermind was gone, and it was bittersweet.

I can’t imagine a better way to describe how I feel now than those words.

The Mastermind is gone.