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The franchise as a whole:

  • Acting for Two:
    • In The New Scooby-Doo Movies, Casey Kasem voices both Shaggy and Robin. His impersonation of Burt Ward is good enough that it's not immediately obvious. He also did it in The Haunted Showboat, voicing both Shaggy and Alexander from Josie and the Pussycats, sounding almost identical, which was lampshaded.
    • Scooby with Scrappy after Don Messick took over Scrappy's voice from Lennie Weinrib.
    • From Witch's Ghost to Cyber Chase, Scooby and Shaggy were both voiced by Scott Innes. Since Scooby and Shaggy share most scenes, that's quite an accomplishment.
    • Since 2002, Frank Welker has been the voice of Fred and Scooby.
    • In the European French dub, ever since the late 90's, Scooby and Shaggy have been voiced by Éric Missoffe. There are some exceptions where Missoffe only voiced Scooby, such as the live-action movies and Shaggy & Scooby-Doo Get A Clue! (although he also voiced Uncle Albert in the latter, playing this trope straight in that case). Oddly enough, he voiced both Scooby and Matthew Lillard during their cameo in Looney Tunes: Back in Action, while Shaggy was voiced by Boris Rehlinger (who voiced Lillard as Shaggy in the theatrical live-action movies) during that same cameo.
  • Adored by the Network:
    • For CBS and ABC: Where Are You? originally aired alongside two other new Hanna-Barbera series, Dastardly & Muttley in Their Flying Machines and The Perils of Penelope Pitstop in the fall of 1969. By 1970, Where Are You? proved to be such a ratings success for CBS that it was the only one of the three to be renewed for a second (admittedly smaller because of a time crunch) season. The 1971 reruns continued to excel with audiences, forcing the network to ask for a brand-new Scooby-based series. When The New Movies finally ended, CBS was content to keep the reruns going without producing more episodes, but executives at ABC were reportedly excited to take the franchise off CBS's hands if it meant producing more content to attract Scooby's fanbase. By 1976, the series made the Channel Hop, and was at home with ABC for the next fifteen years.
    • Some iterations of Scooby-Doo used to air on Cartoon Network every day. In recent years, the selection has been limited and only a movie would air on Cartoon Network every once in a while rather than an iteration. Despite this, Boomerang continued to air Where Are You? very frequently although with several breaks and sometimes aired either a Tom and Jerry movie or a Scooby-Doo movie every week.
  • Approval of God: An example relating to Memetic Mutation: Despite initially expressing confusion at the meme at first, Shaggy's current voice actor Matthew Lillard has voiced his approval of Shaggy's runaway status as a Memetic Badass.
  • Ascended Fanon: It was a common joke among fans that in the original series, when the gang would "split up" into groups to "snoop around", Daphne and Fred secretly snuck off to have sex. In the actual series, however, the gang's interpersonal relationships were strictly platonic.
  • Ascended Meme: Ultra Instinct Shaggy became an ascended meme in an animation bumper.
  • Beam Me Up, Scotty!:
    • Velma is notorious for always losing her glasses. The same goes for Daphne getting kidnapped, it really didn't occur that often enough to be her recurring character trait in the original series.
    • Lampshaded in the Johnny Bravo crossover episode "Bravo Dooby Doo" after Velma and Johnny both grope for their displaced eyewear:
      Velma: My glasses! I can't see without my glasses!
      Johnny: My glasses! I can't be seen without my glasses!
    • "Old Man Jenkins" has become the term for the stereotypical Scooby villain. While there was a suspicious old man named Mr. Jenkins in one episode of the original series, he was ultimately innocent. This is most likely the result of a lot of people who grew up with both Scooby-Doo and SpongeBob SquarePants (which does have a recurring character named Old Man Jenkins) getting their wires crossed.
  • The Cast Showoff:
    • The gang themselves, but most notably Velma in the movie Scooby-Doo and the Legend of the Vampire where they pose as contestants in the rock show contest (as The Meddling Kids) and eventually win by default. Velma sings the Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! theme, which is really sung by Krystal Harris.
    • All five members of the gang and some of the other characters sing throughout the 2012 made-for-video feature Scooby-Doo: Music of the Vampire.
  • Channel Hop: From CBS to ABC in 1976. NBC may even count, as Dynomutt, Dog Wonder was paired up with Godzilla for an hour-long show in 1981 on that network and the Scooby gang's appearances in Dynomutt were subsequently aired.
  • Creator Backlash:
    • Joe Ruby and Ken Spears hated Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated, feeling that it missed the point of the characters and was too dark and cynical, whereas Scooby-Doo is supposed to be fun. Some other writers seem to agree, as a few of the Direct-to-DVD films have jokes at the series' expense — that is, unless you see it as Trolling Creator/Self-Deprecation, given that some of the crew for Mystery Incorporated returned for some of these films, including showrunners Spike Brandt and Tony Cervone.
    • Reportedly, Scott Innes, the voice of Scooby and Shaggy in pre-What's New? works, isn't fond of Mystery Incorporated either.
    • Jon Colton Barry one of the head writers for Be Cool, Scooby-Doo! let out a little in his online rant and inadvertently caused some blowback. One of his insults was towards how the new writers took one of the episodes back to corny '70's humor instead of their modern comedy approach. On one hand, it was clearly an issue for him due to the Troubled Production of the series, though it was also a shot not well received by some of the staff and fans.
    • Nicole Jaffe didn't think her performance as Velma in Legend of the Vampire and Monster of Mexico lived up to her performance in the original series, feeling that her voice had changed too much.
  • Creator's Pest:
    • The reason we never saw Fred and Daphne look for clues together in the early days was due to the writers finding them boring. According to writer Charles M. Howell, while Daphne was brought back for The New Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo Show and The New Scooby-Doo Mysteries, the writers simply didn't know what to do with Fred, despite having Frank Welker onboard.
    • Surprisingly averted for Scrappy Doo for the most part. In 2020, Casper Kelly of The Scooby-Doo Project stated that many writers did not actually hate Scrappy, implying that it was a meme and mandate. That said, Joe Ruby and Ken Spears seemed to have a less than positive view on the character. The co-founder of Ruby-Spears enterprises said, "Everyone was upset", though was unclear about whether this concerned business reasons (they had started their own company two years earlier) or personal creative reasons (considering that if Scooby had been canceled, then the last slot would have hit their show instead), starting when, in 1979, it looked a pilot of theirs would be renewed over Scooby's. Mark Evanier was hired impromptu to write Scrappy-Doo into a new pilot to renew interest in Scooby. As a result, Scooby was renewed over theirs, which was upsetting for them.
      • When Archie gained the rights to Hanna-Barbera in 1995, both Bill Vallely and Mike Kirschenbaum, two writers for the series, both acknowledged that Scrappy was hated, and even attempted to remake his personality in response to that, according to Kirschenbaum, but "the animosity was too great" and Scrappy got the boot from the series midway.
    • Tom Ruegger hated Flim-Flam from The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo so much it made him appreciate Scrappy.
    It's a lot easier to love Scooby than it is to love Scrappy. But I don't have the problem with Scrappy that I have heard expressed by others. I suspect this is because I wasn't watching Scooby from the beginning, but rather, I came in and started catching up quite a while (a couple of years) after Scrappy had made his debut. Hey, they'd been messing with Scooby's cast for years! Scooby Dum. All those nasty celebrity cameo Scooby movies. I dislike those things more than I dislike Scrappy. And, for what it's worth, at least Scrappy brings some energy to the table. He actually does have a personality, even though many find it obnoxious. Freddy Jones is almost devoid of personality. So, since I tend to love the characters with whom I work, I can say that I learned to love Scrappy, despite all his limitations.
  • Cross-Dressing Voices: Susan Blu as Flim-Flam.
  • The Danza: Vincent van Ghoul was voiced by Vincent Price.
  • Edited for Syndication:
    • Footage from Act II of the very first episode, "What a Night for a Knight", is missing. It's where the gang is outside the museum as Fred is unable to open the rear door. He gets a ladder out of the Mystery Machine (which must be dimensionally transcendental to hold a ladder) and volunteers Shaggy to climb up and go in through a window high above.
      Shaggy: Why me?
      Fred: Because that's a small window and you're the thinnest.
    • In the first season of The New Scooby-Doo Movies, scenes running roughly a minute and a half were made but not used until season 2. The scenes never showed up in syndication, CN/Boomerang airings or DVD releases. Among the scenes were Jonathan Winters flipping a coin with Shaggy to see who would go up to the grist mill window ("The Frickert Fracas"), and Scooby trying to get the kids' attention to tell them he found a secret passage out of Moody Manor ("Guess Who's Knott Coming to Dinner").
    • In the 1970-71 season, a minute of footage from season 1 episodes of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! were cut to make room for CBS's "In the Know" interstitials. ("In the Know" were 2½-minute educational capsules hosted by Josie and the Pussycats. It would be replaced the next season with CBS's long-running interstitial series In the News.)
  • Follow the Leader: Scooby inspired many shows to follow its lead, most from Hanna-Barbera itself and some from Ruby-Spears (the sibling studio founded by the two guys who helped create many of the former).
  • Keep Circulating the Tapes: While most of the shows were released on DVD, there are a couple of omissions on the complete release side. One should note episodes of these series are very much still being released in random sets and online.
    • For several years, nine of the 24 episodes of The New Scooby-Doo Movies weren't available either, due to having to get clearance by the guest celebrities or their estates if they died. Eight of those nine were finally released in 2019, fourteen years after the original DVD release; the lone exception was "Wednesday is Missing", AKA "Scooby-Doo Meets the Addams Family".
    • The New Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo Show and The New Scooby-Doo Mysteries have yet to be released complete on DVD. The latter had eight episodes missing on DVD until 2019, when an "(Almost) Complete Collection" was released on Blu-ray, missing only "Wednesday is Missing," due to legal issues.
    • Thankfully(!) averted via digital releases. Every iteration of Scooby-Doo has been distributed for digital download on various platforms, from the oft-rereleased first two seasons of Where Are You!, to the more obscure years of Scooby Doo and Scrappy Doo, to the final holdover episodes of A Pup Named Scooby-Doo. As mentioned above, "Wednesday is Missing" remains the only episode unavailable outside of unauthorized Internet copies.
  • Kids' Meal Toy: Has been featured at various fast-food chains such as McDonald's, Sonic, Arby's, and Wendy's. Wendy's in particular loves making toys of the direct-to-DVD movies.
  • Money, Dear Boy: Nicole Jaffe (the original voice of Velma) had this to say about working on the show:
    Nicole Jaffe: In those days, I wanted to be Daniel Day-Lewis, Emma Thompson. I was not interested in being in voice-over. I needed to make a living and wasn't doing anything else at the moment. [With Scooby-Doo], I didn't think I was doing something iconic. It was like getting a soap opera when you wanted to be in a Scorsese film. I thought it was like a drive-by[...]I thought this was a stepping stone to paying my rent and I would go off and do greater things.
  • The Other Darrin: The voices have gone through a large roundabout over the years.
    • Daphne was the first character to be recast. Her original voice actress, Stefanianna Christopherson, left the show before the end of the first season of the original series (17 episodes) to move to New York to get married, and opted not to reprise her role for the second season. The role was recast with Heather North (the then roommate of Nicole Jaffe, the voice of Velma). North continued to voice Daphne in all media until 1998 (with the exception of A Pup Named Scooby-Doo from 1988-91, where she was voiced by Kellie Martin) when the character was recast again, this time with Mary Kay Bergman. Bergman suddenly passed away in 1999, after voicing Daphne for 3 direct-to-video movies. Since then, Grey Griffin has voiced Daphne in all media (except for two DTV movies in 2002-2003 in which Heather North briefly returned).
    • Velma was originally Nicole Jaffe up until the 1976 series, The Scooby-Doo Show in which she declined to reprise her role, and the character went to Pat Stevens, who voiced Velma throughout the entire run of that show, as well as in the Scooby Goes Hollywood movie, her appearances in Dynomutt, Dog Wonder, and the first 11 episodes of Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo. Velma then had a bizarre recasting with Marla Frumkin, who gained a very notorious reception among fans because of her very awkward line delivery. Frumkin played Velma in the last four episodes of that series and two cameos throughout the 80's. From 1988 to 1991, Velma was voiced on A Pup Named Scooby-Doo by Christina Lange. When Velma appeared in her normal form again in 1997, BJ Ward took over the role, and voiced Velma in all media until 2002 when Nicole Jaffe assumed the role again for two DTV movies, and from 2002-2015, Mindy Cohn voiced Velma in pretty much all other media (doing a Nicole Jaffe impression). Cohn was later nominated for an Emmy for her voicework as Velma in 2005. Stephanie D'Albruzzo voiced Velma in the 2013 direct-to-video puppet feature Scooby-Doo! Adventures: The Mystery Map. In the latest TV series Be Cool, Scooby-Doo!, Velma is voiced by Kate Micucci of Garfunkel and Oates and Steven Universe fame, who has since taken on the role of Velma full time.
    • Shaggy was Casey Kasem for years until he quit the role in 1998 after refusing to voice the character in a Burger King commercial (Kasem was an avid vegetarian). Billy West briefly voiced Shaggy for Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island before the role was recast again in 1999 with Scott Innes. Kasem returned to voice Shaggy in 2002, and continued to voice him until his retirement in 2009 (though Scott Menville briefly played the character in Shaggy & Scooby-Doo Get A Clue! when Kasem played Shaggy's uncle). Since then, Matthew Lillard (who played Shaggy in the two live-action theatrical Scooby Doo movies) has been the voice of Shaggy.
    • As for Scooby-Doo himself, he was voiced by the late great Don Messick until his retirement in 1996. Hadley Kay briefly took over the role for ads, commercials, and his guest appearances on Johnny Bravo in 1997. Scott Innes then took over the role in 1998, and voiced Scooby in all media until 2002 when Frank Welker was cast. Welker has been the official voice of Scooby ever since (with the exception of the theatrical live action films released from 2002-04 where he was voiced by Neil Fanning).
    • Scrappy's original voice actor, Lennie Weinribnote , left the franchise over pay concerns shortly after the original incarnation of Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo, and was replaced with Don Messick in pretty much all media until the character was written off the franchise. When Scrappy re-appeared in later media such as a commercial for Cartoon Network (in which he grumbles about how little respect he gets at the studio), and his role as a villain in the live-action movie, Scrappy has been voiced by Scott Innes.
    • SCOOB! went with a Celebrity Voice Actor cast. While Scooby is still voiced by Frank Welker, Zac Efron voices Fred, Amanda Seyfried voices Daphne, Will Forte voices Shaggy, and Gina Rodriguez voices Velma. Both Lillard and Griffin were thrown off by this announcement, similar to the original voice actors' of The Powerpuff Girls being recast for the reboot.
    • Vincent Van Ghoul was voiced by Vincent Price in The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo and later by Maurice LaMarche for his cameo in Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated and then in Scooby-Doo! and the Curse of the 13th Ghost due to Price's passing in 1993.
  • Pet Fad Starter: Scooby may be the deliberate antithesis of the "ideal" Great Dane, but he's the reason why many people want one anyway.
  • Popularity Polynomial: While never fully unpopular, the show did have a doldrum in the 1990s. Through the 70s and 80s, new Scooby-Doo shows kept being made becaue it was consistantly a top choice of focus groups of 6-11 year-old kids. Since its revival in the late 90s, it is fueled both by being popular with kids and a strong source of nostalgia for Gen-Xers who grew up on the show, as well as Millennials who grew up on the reruns.
  • Referenced by...: Has its own page.
  • Role Reprise: With the exception of A Pup Named Scooby-Doo (Carl Stevens played a 10-year-old Fred) and the Live-Action films, Frank Welker has always been the voice of Fred, and is the only character to have the same voice actor throughout the entire series' fifty year run.note  He still sounds basically the same too.
    • And since 2002 (except the 2 live action theatrical Scooby-Doo films), Frank Welker is the voice of Scooby-Doo.
      • Welker did reprise his role as Scooby but not Fred for the 2020 animated film SCOOB!, making it the first Scooby-Doo entry (besides the live action Scooby-Doo films and the 1980s animated series A Pup Named Scooby-Doo) to have Fred voiced by a different voice actor that isn't Frank Welker.
  • Screwed by the Network:
    • When CBS brought Where Are You! back in 1974 after a two-year hiatus, Hanna-Barbera wanted to make new episodes. But CBS felt they could get just as much mileage, if not more, from repeats. CBS would cancel Scooby on August 7, 1976, a full month before the new season began. A week later, Scooby (which moved to ABC a month later) was replaced on CBS with Clue Club.
    • The Channel Hop to ABC was quite sudden. In the spring of 1976, Joe Barbera was at lunch with ABC head of children's programming Michael Eisner. During the course of conversation, Joe sheepishly said "CBS is cancelling Scooby-Doo, would you be interested in him?" Eisner's eyes popped wide open and he exclaimed "When can I have him?!" Thus started ten-year continuous run on ABC for Scooby. Since then, Barbera and Eisner (who migrated to Disney) would be in communication as "Scooby" and "Mickey."
    • The 2022 feature Scoob!: Holiday Haunt (a sequel to 2020's SCOOB!) was set for a Christmas release on HBO Max. It was ultimately cancelled and turned into a tax write-off after the merger of parent company WarnerMedia and Discovery, which prompted the discontinuation of animated fare left and right. Several other Scooby-Doo! projects (such as a Hex Girls-focused movie and the kindergarten series Scooby-Doo! and the Mystery Pups) were also victims of the Warner/Discovery content purge, with Scooby-Doo! and Krypto, Too! initially rumored to have met the same fate before it eventually got a release date.
  • Similarly Named Works: "Roller Ghoster Ride", the unused Either/Or Title of the Pup episode "Terror, Thy Name Is Zombo", is also the title of a What's New episode. "Wrestle Maniacs" is also a title of an episode of both series.
  • Tie-In Cereal: Scooby-Doo had "Cinnamon Marshmallow Scooby-Doo!" cereal from 2002 to 2008. In 2013, it came back as Scooby-Doo Cereal. There was also the short lived Berry Bones.
  • Wag the Director: Casey Kasem was a staunch vegetarian, and only agreed to play Shaggy so long as the Big Eater never ate meat. He refused to play the character any more after being forced to voice him for a 1997 Burger King commercial, at which point Billy West filled in to complete Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island, making it the only time West voiced him. Scott Innes (who also provided the voice of Scooby after Don Messick's death until Frank Welker took over) took the reigns as Shaggy for the next few years. Kasem was eventually lured back in 2002 for What's New, Scooby-Doo? when the creators agreed to make Shaggy a vegetarian. Of course, following Kasem's retirement in 2009, all bets are now off.
    • Another example was how this show came to be. The Action for Children's Television and other parents' watchdog groups were getting riled up over violence in the media in the aftermath of the contemporary unrest in American society of the late 1960s. With the Civil Rights Movement, Cold War and Vietnam War reaching into American homes alongside the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Presidential candidate Robert Francis Kennedy; parents demanded a cleanup of childrens television. This led to the cancellations of classic Hanna-Barbera action cartoons such as Jonny Quest and The Fantastic Four (1967) for ABC; Super President, Birdman, The Galaxy Trio and Young Samson and Goliath for NBC; Space Ghost and Dino-Boy, Shazzan, Moby Dick and Mighty Mightor for CBS. In order to appease the parents groups, Hanna-Barbera made Scooby-Doo and the Mystery Inc. gang run away and try to avoid most if not all forms of fighting so they would not come under fire again like they did back in the 60s.
  • What Could Have Been:
    • Hanna and Barbera reflected in a later interview that the show was originally just going to be about "a group of teenagers solving crimes", but "we threw in a dog, and he turned out to be the star of the show".
    • The dog was originally a sheepdog named Too Much, but The Archie Show (which was also on CBS) already had Hot Dog, Jughead's pet sheepdog. An H-B staffer raised Great Danes as a hobby, so they made the dog a Great Dane. Fred Silverman chose the name Scooby-Doo after the scatting in one of his favorite Frank Sinatra tunes, "Strangers In The Night".
    • In its developmental stage as "Mysteries Five", there were originally five kids who, in a knockoff of The Archie Show, played rock music as well as solved mysteries. Their names were Geoff, Mike, Kelly, Linda, and W.W. (as well as their bongo-playing sheepdog, Too Much). Allegedly, Geoff and Mike were melded to become Fred (originally Ronnie but renamed after CBS programming head Fred Silverman), Kelly became Daphne, Linda became Velma and W.W. became Shaggy.
    • However, Linda's last name was Blake, and an old sketch shows one of the girls holding hands with a child who looks nothing like Shaggy. Another source claims that Mike Andrews was Shaggy's original name. Either way, the original plot stated that there would be five humans and a dog, which throws the above story into some doubt.
    • In the original pitch, Velma and Shaggy were siblings. (Provided that Linda is indeed the proto-Velma and W.W. was the proto Shaggy) It showed in the debut episode, "What a Night for a Knight", as Velma has Shaggy's cough medicine at hand, and in "Decoy for a Dognapper", Shaggy keeps a spare pair of glasses for Velma.
    • There were several ideas for Scrappy-Doo: Whether he was going to be owned by Daphne's niece, whether he would be a Silent Bob, etc.

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