These hilarious coincidences are found thanks to You Meddling Kids.
The franchise as a whole:
- In the Where Are You! episode "Foul Play at Funland", Shaggy and Scooby remark about Charlie the robot being like Superman. The next series, The New Scooby-Doo Movies, included Batman and Robin as guest stars. Eventually, Warner Bros. became the owners of both DC Comics and Scooby-Doo. Mystery Inc would team with Superman in comic books, and more than five decades since that episode first aired, Superman would be featured with Mystery Inc in animation for the first time.
- At the end of Scooby Doo! Pirates Ahoy, Fred's dad mentions they should give them a trip to the Himalayas for Fred's birthday next year, which Shaggy quickly passes on because he doesn't want to risk a run in with the Abominable Snowman. The next year's movie, Chill Out, Scooby-Doo! saw this happen as the main plot.
- The New Scooby-Doo Mysteries Halloween Episode "A Halloween Hassle at Dracula's Castle" saw Shaggy attend a costume party as a werewolf. Scooby-Doo! and the Reluctant Werewolf aired four years later.
- Casey Kasem's dispute over wanting Shaggy to be a vegetarian after he had to voice Shaggy in a commercial for Burger King is amusing now that Burger King now promotes a meatless vegetarian burger, and is one of the very few major fast food chains to do so.
- A mummy, on the Orient Express. Sorry, Doctor, Scooby did it first in the 1980s.
- The 2022 confirmation of Velma being lesbian after decades of her orientation being theorized, in light of the fact that the actress who plays her in the live action Scooby-Doo prequels is a real life lesbian.
- Going back much, much further; Velma was originally based on 60s sitcom character Zelda Gilroy. Zelda's actress, Sheila James Kuehl, publicly came out as lesbian around 1986 or earlier.
- Velma is featured as the brainiest and most intellectual character of the franchise. Sheila Kuehl, the former actress whose sitcom character was the inspiration for Velma, went on to successful careers first as an attorney, then a law professor, then a State Assemblywoman, then a State Senator, and then a County Supervisor. So then, fictional Velma and real-life Kuehl have ended up being a whole lot alike, with both becoming positive images of brilliance and being LBGT.
- In the mid-90s, Cartoon Network played a commercial parodying the beginning of Scream, featuring Daphne being called by a spooky voice that turns out to be Shaggy, asking for some popcorn. After Casey Kasem retired from voice acting, Matthew Lillard (who was one of the killers in the first Scream movie) took over as Shaggy's voice actor.
- The iconic, classic look of the Mystery Machine was actually a mix of late 60s Ford, Chevy, Dodge and Volkswagen vans, designed to avoid looking like any one particular manufacturer. By sheer accident, it looks almost exactly like the Russian UAZ-462 off-road van, produced continuously since 1965.
The first live-action film:
- The film has shared many similarities to Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) and not just the fact they were both written by James Gunn.
- Rocket/Groot and Scooby/Shaggy are seen by James Gunn as the heart and soul of both franchises.
- Fred and Starlord are the slick womanizing leaders that have a dance-off by the climax.
- Daphne and Gamora are badass women that know martial arts.
- Drax and Velma have the biggest vocabulary of the groups.
- A tropical location (Xandar/Spooky Island) is where the climax takes place.
- Speaking of Marvel, Shaggy says "I don't feel so good" after he ate the plastic sausages.
- In "Night of the Living Toys", a 1984 New Scooby-Doo Mysteries episode. A woman finds Scrappy cute and tries to put ribbons on him, and which he dislikes immensely. Later when she turns out to be the woman behind the mask, he states that he didn't trust her as soon as she tried to put ribbons on him. Live-Action Scrappy is the one who thinks of himself as cute, and he is the villain of this movie.
- Most of the Spooky Island demons are voiced by Jess Harnell and sound just like Crash Bandicoot. Harnell would voice the gaming icon since 2005.
- After Scrappy was revealed to be the villain, many Star Wars fans suspected that Jar Jar Binks is the main antagonist of the sequel trilogy. Turns out they were wrong. Funnier enough, Freddie Prinze Jr. and Sarah Michelle Gellar voiced Kannan Jarrus and the Seventh Sister from Star Wars Rebels with Prinze returning for a voice cameo in The Rise of Skywalker. There was also a Shaggy expy in the 2003 Star Wars: Clone Wars.
- Scrappy-Doo's One-Winged Angel form bears a strong resemblance to the giant dogs in Elden Ring.
