* How come Jacques doesn't have a partial werecat transformation like Lena and Simone instead he just instantly transforms into his full cat-form.
** Maybe male werecats transform instantly unlike female werecats?
** Or he only wants to use his cat-form to fight physically, not to talk or utilize magic while doing so. So he just skips the intermediate stage and goes straight to combat mode.
* Am I the only one that kind of wished they showed a bit more of Jacques's backstory? Like, how he met Lena and Simone, why they decided to recruit him rather than drain him (he could've very easily betrayed them at some point, drained them of their life forces).
** Simone and Lena explain that they needed someone to help transport people to the island, and having a ferry made that a lot easier for them. Still doesn't explain how they met.
* Sort of in that same sense, I'm a little irritated that the fisherman served as little more than a red herring for what was really going on. I realize that that's standard Scooby-Doo formula (one or more person/people did it, another was good all along and their suspicious behavior was justified, and/or another was just acting normal if unpleasant) but it still felt like his scenes did little more than pad the movie.
** For that matter, why didn't Simone and Lena ever think of taking his life force? He's close enough to them for Scooby and Shaggy to have another encounter with him while on a picnic at the plantation.
*** More difficulty in detaining him? Unlike the Scooby gang and the previous tourists who were dependent on the ferry for transport to and from the island (one reason the gang doesn't leave immediately after seeing supposed proof of ghosts besides solving the zombie mystery is that the ferry isn't operating), Snakebite Scrubbs has his own boat allowing him to leave the island at will. From what we've seen of him, he appears to be an antisocial individual and not fond of company, he wouldn't go anywhere near Simone and Lena, preventing them for inviting him over to stay at their place until the harvest moon and possibly obtaining a personal item of his to use for a voodoo doll. Maybe this also explains why he never sees the zombies either. Since he's in less danger from being sacrificed and less likely to trust the cat girls than the gang, the zombies dont feel they need to warn him.
** Could be that they allow him to live ''because'' he's such an unpleasant neighbor that his presence ensures that ''other'' bayou folks keep their distance.
** Another possibility is that he was a trespasser, and they simply never knew that he was there, and/or Scruggs and Mojo had inhabited another part of the swamp during previous harvest moons. Still another possibility (albeit an unlikely one) was that he was a MoralityPet of Lena and Simone who they decided to spare for one reason or another (not that any obvious reason for that could be discerned from his screen time).
** It's overall just a combo of the above I'm sure. He's not trusting/friendly enough to just go with Simone and Lena if they approached him, he has his own transportation that could carry him away to safety if he saw the zombies or the werecats came for him unless Jacques had the foresight to find it and manage to sink it, he's not a criminal or otherwise would need to hide out deep on the island long enough for the werecats to entrap him like the Confederates and gangsters, he's only interested in Big Mona within the bayou so he couldn't be lured with riches (namely Morgan Moonscar's treasure), he's not like Beau where he has a job that required him to go deep in the island rather than staying in the coastline. All in all he'd be the hardest target to catch even if the werecats do know where he is.
*** And he provides a decoy. People come in and go missing, who is more likely to draw suspicion? The nice old man with the ferry, the two ladies living nicely together or the grouch who is openly hostile to people and even makes comments about letting gators eat them. They may have intended to scapegoat him if someone did investigate the disappearances, not realising they were already under suspicion and had someone there who had probably already informed his superiors it was unlikely to be Snakebite so in the event he did vanish, eyes would not fall on the fisherman unless the others were cleared.
* Did Simone and Lena always plan on draining Beau's life? Was it like with the spice traders, they served one purpose for a time, then when the harvest moon came they served another?
** They had a ready made voodoo doll of him along with the gang so I guess yes. The question is what would've happened afterwards if they had succeeded. [[spoiler: Since Beau turned out to be undercover cop and his disappearance would surely bring the FBI to their doorstop. It doesn't sound likely they would had been able to keep their life draining up.]]
** The bayou is a treacherous place. They could easily justify that he and the others had gotten lost somewhere in the swamp and disappeared, either down into the quicksand or eaten by the local alligators. It's practically a perfect cover for them.
*** Beau even being in the bayou means that his superiors suspected foul play was behind the disappearances. It's one thing for pirates or gangsters to go missing over centuries, it's another for modern day tourists (wealthy ones too going from how the fat woman zombie dressed) to go missing reliably and then not only does your man sent to investigate go missing but so do a celebrity (Daphne) and scientist (Velma). Killing off Beau and the Mystery Gang would be the ultimate excuse for the feds to do a serious investigation rather than just send one lone agent.
** The answer seems to be yes, and the explanation that these two aren't as adept with updated modern technology. The fact that the police are investigating the island's disappearances suggests Simone and Lena weren't as discreet as they could have been. Lena in particular thought it was a good idea to bring public figures to the island, not thinking that a TV reporter going missing would look ultra suspicious. Or they just didn't care about getting caught - since any police that show up would have an army of zombies and immortal were-cats to contend with.
* Why didn't Beau just tell Velma about the quicksand? I know he tried to stop her and she was all "Hey, let me go!" But he doesn't even say "Wait, stop!" or "Don't go that way!" or the more ambiguous "Hold it!" He just grabs her, and when she doesn't take kindly to being grabbed, he raises a huge rock over his head like he's about to kill her.
** In fact, he grabbed her twice, the first to interrogate her about her suspicions, and the second about the quicksand. After the first rough grab, it's no wonder Velma wasn't willing to tolerate the second time.
** It can be partially because of his acting like a jerk, and partially because he feared she wouldn't listen, given she's understandably suspicious of him.
* When insisting the zombies are the good guys, did they forget the backstory about how the pirates (who seem to make up the majority of the zombie horde) forced the townspeople to walk into the swamp where they were eaten alive? The pirates' rather ghastly crime is just conveniently forgotten.
** The gang was trying to get Scooby and Shaggy up to speed, so they gave them the [=CliffNotes=] version. The pirate zombies were only evil during their backstory, so there was no need to mention it.
** Considering they've spent a couple hundred years as freaking undead trying to deliberately scare people away so they don't also become zombies, I'd say they've earned forgiveness. For those who point out the magnitude of the pirates' crime, remember they became undead which means they had to die first, [[PayEvilUntoEvil so they were killed for crime]] and therefore have already paid for it.
** Or it's simply a "I'd rather have the zombies" argument.
** The gang could also consider it a "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" situation. Yeah, Moonscar and his pirates murdered all the other townsfolk, but you could argue that they paid that debt when Simone and Lena killed ''them'' in retribution. Even if the gang didn't consider them to otherwise be heroes, the point is more that ''they'' aren't the ones trying to drain their life force and turn them into zombies, too. Furthermore, not all of the zombies are the original pirates--there's also some Confederate soldiers, the spice traders, and more recent tourists ensnared just like the gang was who were completely unrelated to the original crime. (Also notice that it's one of the Confederates who appears as a ghost after Simone and Lena are finally defeated to personally thank them, rather than one of the pirates.)
** Velma might simply have forgotten that in the heat of the moment and was simply focused on what was happening right in front of her.
** We only have the villains' word for it that the pirates weren't ''provoked'' into wiping out the townsfolk. For all we know, the cat-worshipers might've tried to trick some of the pirates who'd stopped by to trade some of their loot into staying in town so they could sacrifice them, or ''actually'' tricked some into doing so and been called out for their crime when Moonscar's ship returned unexpectedly.
*** Victim blaming, much?
*** There may be an UnreliableNarrator due to either Lena and Simone forgetting what their fellows did to provoke it (been a long time and they haven't been thinking about that bit) or simply not being there when it happened but arriving when the pirates were attacking.
** There's also the fact that Lena and Simone, despite being initially victims of the pirates, don't seem to have retained that status in the present day. While they may have initially been grieving, miserable women who just lost everyone they cared about when it all started, by the present day they're clearly openly cunning, plotting, and vindictive towards their would-be victims about them becoming their next energy meals. Who went as far as to kill unrelated soldiers, plantation owners, and tourists just to continue their existence. Even drawing in an outsider into working for them by promising him to become conditionally immortal just like they were. Even at the cost of all the people it would take to sustain them. And they appear to hold no remorse for all the people they've killed to sustain this life they have. Only continued anger at a conflict which occurred at least two centuries prior.
** TL;DR - Lena and Simone have killed hundreds of people to sustain their immortality, regardless of motives. The zombies are trying to stop them from killing, and have been trying to warn the gang. Therefore the zombies ''are'' the good guys in this situation.
* On the note of the pirate zombies, after being turned why didn't the undead pirates try and get revenge on Lena and Simone? They showed they were rather lacking in morality at the time, outnumbered Lena and Simone around ten-to-one and they have swords and guns. While I understand Lena and Simone are tragic villains, from the undead pirates' POV, couldn't they have just swarmed Lena and Simone at the next harvest moon and killed them?
** If any of the zombies were capable of killing/harming/stopping Lena and Simone, they would have done it centuries ago.
** It's also possible they simply never had the chance, having not been able to find the ceremony, nor had rescuees as capable/lucky as the Scooby Gang.
** It might be that the zombies are incapable of killing them. The whole point of them draining energy from people was to continue living, to the point they turned to dust when they failed to complete it on time. Perhaps the opposite is true. As long as they were able to properly drain energy, they were incapable of actually dying by normal means.
** Considering that Simone and Lena had voodoo dolls for many of them while they were alive, perhaps they still worked on some level and allowed the were-cats to physically ''force'' the zombies back whenever any tried to attack them. Admittedly, this raises the question of why they wouldn't just use the voodoo dolls to keep the zombies from warning people, but in making their preparations for traps every Harvest Moon they might have been too busy for that.
*** They only had so much clay and they'd rather use it on the living.
** The zombies are slow-moving and only have basic motor functions. Lena, Simone and Jacques are hardy in human form and even more so when transformed.
** It's also possible that one of the conditions after a person's been zombified is that they cannot physically do anything to harm any of the werecats. The most we see them do is pile onto Jacques when he has Scooby and Shaggy captured, but they never do anything beyond trip him up for a few seconds.
* Here's something I don't think anyone's noticed until me. Why does Lena have a slight Southern accent when she's French and lives in Louisiana? I can maybe understand Tara Strong may have been unable to do a convincing French accent, but considering Ms. Lenoir kept her French accent for hundreds of years, and Jacques has a Creole French accent from being a native of the area, why is Lena's accent different? She's not like Jacques where she was brought on after they found out about the curse. She's shown in flashbacks as having arrived there at the same time as Lenoir. Then again, Tara Strong's Canadian, so wouldn't she know what a French Canadian accent sounds like and be able to imitate that accent at least?
** It could be that, while they were part of the same cat-worshiping cult, they weren't from the same part of the world--Simone could have ultimately originated in France while Lena was a more recent local convert, hence their respective accents. Alternatively, Simone has retained her original accent because she lived in isolation whereas Lena makes regular trips into the outside world and therefore interacts with people more frequently, gradually adopting her Southern accent as a result.
** According to Tara herself, Lena was supposed to have a Cajun accent, but Jim Cummings said her attempts just didn't sound convincing - so they went with general Louisiana instead. And they may have given Simone a French accent as a ShoutOut to Simone Simon - a French actress who played cinema's first were-cat in ''Film/CatPeople''.
** It would also work better for their cover if Lena changed her accent. She's meant to be the young girl hired to look after the house, so it would be better for her to blend in as much as possible. Simone just needs to seem like an eccentric old money heiress, while Lena needs to attract tourists.
* Why were French settlers in 1700's Lousiana worshipping a cat god and which one was it? Was it a South-American deity with their legends of werejaguars or was an Egyptian one like Bastet or Sekhmet?
** They worship the cat-god of The-Writers-Like-The-Irony-Of-Evil-Catpeople-Chasing-A-Dog-So-Let's-Make-One-Up.
*** Or because this movie started life as an episode of Swat KATS.
** A new one that will one day in the future seed life of the kat people on SWAT KATS. It leaves Earth because of its problems with Scooby.
** Simone and Lena could easily have been part of a cult with cat gods from their home country not associated with or inspired by another religion. Though they do use voodoo dolls, there's nothing to say that their religion was related specifically to voodoo either. They could have had something similar and took to naming them voodoo dolls after the fact, or they adopted the idea from their time living in the bayou and twisted the concept to their advantage and use with their magic.
** It's also only Velma who calls them voodoo dolls.
*** Could be a moment of ShownTheirWork. Dolls that work through sympathetic magic are not a part of traditional Voodoo; the tradition actually comes from the "hex dolls" of European and Colonial American witchcraft. And the time frame is close enough for the settlers to be part of the same phenomenon as the Salem Witch Trials.
** And the Native Americans worshipped cat deities like Mishipeshu, and many of the tribes' cultures are lost thanks to colonialism. So maybe the island had its own deity leftover from ancient times and the culture was wiped out when the islanders were, and Lena and Simone are the only ones left to keep it alive. Egyptian cat gods like Mafdet, Sekhmet and Bastet had cults worshipping just them for centuries too.
* Why were Simone’s cats watching Scooby and Shaggy eat in the Mystery Machine? Were they hungry and wanted Shaggy and Scooby to share their food?
** Simone could have a way of controlling or communicating with the cats and thus using them as her spies.
* Near the end, why were Simone’s cats surrounding Scooby meowing at him? Also, why were their eyes glowing?
** They probably wanted some of his food. As for the glowing? Either tapetum lucidum, or they're agents of the Cat God.
* I know this is a bit of an "edgelord" question to ask, but why don't Moonscar's pirates just simply kill the victims Simone and Lena lured to the island to deprive them of their needed life force? They didn't have any qualms with massacring an entire settlement while they were alive. Why would murdering those other victims before Simone and Lena could perform their sacrificial ritual be any different for those undead pirates?
** It's possible that they may have tried in the early years, but were unable to for a number of reasons (an inability to get close enough to the victims before Simone and Lena got to them, no longer being strong enough to kill a person, being outnumbered by the amount of settlers). Furthermore, as the years passed and more victims started to pile up, a lot of the newer zombies aren't likely to be on board with killing innocent people, so Moonscar's pirates would be outnumbered. It's possible that centuries of living as an undead zombie might have softened the pirates, but it might also be a degree of spite: "Your people weren't able to get away from me, and I wasn't able to get away from you, but I'll make sure the next one gets away."
*** Of course, even the more recent arrivals might be fine with the killing if it's a last resort.