A lot of the more divisive aspects of Velma aren't new - many were already done in previous installments.
- This isn't the first time Velma has been portrayed by (or as) a nonwhite person. She's previously been played by Hayley Kiyoko (who is of half-Japanese descent) in the Cartoon Network live-action films, The Mystery Begins (2009) and Curse of the Lake Monster (2010), and voiced by Latina Gina Rodriguez in 2020's SCOOB! The same also with Daphne being either non-white or mixed-race and portrayed by actors who are the same; in the live-action Daphne & Velma, she is played by mixed-race Sarah Jeffery.
- A Scooby-Doo spin-off without the titular Great Dane isn't new. The film Daphne & Velma was the first to lack the character, as it only focuses on the titular women in their pre-Mystery Inc. days, with Shaggy and Fred also not being present.
- Quite a few people are under the impression Velma changed Shaggy's name to Norville. Shaggy's real name being Norville has been an element of the franchise since A Pup Named Scooby-Doo in the late 1980s. This is just the first time it hasn't been treated as an unspoken Embarrassing First Name.
- This is not the first official piece of Scooby-Doo! media to be geared towards adult audiences. The characters appeared in the Supernatural crossover episode "ScoobyNatural", in which the Winchesters and Castiel are sent into the classic Where Are You series by a ghost and the bleed-over effect from "real life" causes it to become filled with murder, gore, and the gang getting badly injured by things they themselves note they usually bounce back from. The Scooby characters also made appearances in Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law over a decade prior to that, with Scooby and Shaggy being arrested for suspected drug use in one episode.
- Velma being slightly overweight goes back to the classic era of the franchise, with Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, where she was depicted as such. Velma only became slimmer after the franchise's revival in the late 1990s.
- This isn't the first time that Frank Welker hasn't been the voice of Fred in a television installment of the series. Welker was also replaced as Fred in A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, with him similarly having a Remake Cameo in the form of being Fred's uncle Eddie.
- This series' Velma is shown to be a Daria-esque Deadpan Snarker, which has rubbed some fans as an unusual characterization choice. While her snark intensity depends on the writer and series, interpretations starting from the 2000s have explored this side of her, along with her hard appeal to science and supernatural denial. Mystery Incorporated, in particular, has Velma as her most Daria-esque but mellows out over the course of the series.
- The premise of Mystery Inc. gang dealing with mass violence and killing had been done in the Scooby Apocalypse comics.
- The idea of a Scooby-Doo entry having Self-Referential Humor, Affectionate Parody, or playing around with Meta-Concepts of the franchise is as old as 1983's The New Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo Show, with every entry since also playing around with franchise staples to varying degrees.
- Viewers who watched the show have criticized it over the fact Velma, Fred, and Daphne have gone through Adaptational Jerkass. However, there have been quite a few adaptations in which the trio are depicted as much meaner than their usual baselines, the most notable being the first live-action film where they all spend a large portion arguing with one another, and Fred, in particular, is presented as being a narcissistic jock like his Velma incarnation.
- Velma and Daphne being former friends before Daphne became an alpha bitch was tackled much more seriously in the first Daphne and Velma YA novel, The Vanishing Girl, by Josephine Ruby.
