Trivia / Scooby-Doo (2002)

• Awesome, Dear Boy: According to the DVD Commentary, several of the music acts, including Shaggy (the reggae singer, not the character) and OutKast agreed to appear on the soundtrack because the name "Scooby Doo" was fun to sing.
• Blooper: Scooby pronounced hydrochronic as "hy-dro-ca-ro-nik" while Shaggy pronounced it as "hy-dro-clo-nik", making the latter say hydrocolonic.
• Cast the Runner-Up: Isla Fisher was considered for Daphne. She would eventually go on to portray Mary Jane in the film.
• Costume Backlash: Both Freddie Prinze Jr and Sarah Michelle Gellar hated their wardrobes for this film. The former hated wearing Fred's ascot, and the hair-bleaching process (see below). The latter just had to wear a wig, but she hated the go-go boots.
• Creator Backlash:
  • James Gunn later apologized for making Scrappy the villain of the film, especially upon realizing there were actual fans of the character.
  • Most of the cast have mixed feelings about the film. Freddie Prinze Jr. had low opinions on the wardrobe of Fred, specifically the ascot; he has since embraced having played in Scooby-Doo and pokes fun at it sometimes.. Sarah Michelle Gellar was once asked in an interview which of her films she would forbid her children from watching, I Know What You Did Last Summer or Cruel Intentions, and she chose this film. Linda Cardellini was also dissatisfied with the final cut, finding it too raunchy for a children's film. Matthew Lillard initially hated the film but eventually warmed up to it (his performance as Shaggy was consistently praised even amongst the critics who hated the rest of the film) and as a result led to him being able to voice Shaggy in future animated Scooby-Doo productions.
• Creator Couple: Fred and Daphne are played by Freddie Prinze Jr and Sarah Michelle Gellar who were engaged at the time (they got married a few months after the movie was released).
• Creator's Pest: James Gunn shares the fandom's hatred of Scrappy. He did apologise when he learned that some children were upset at Scrappy being the villain.
  There is a Scrappy, because he exists in the cartoon, so we have to acknowledge him. I hate Scrappy's guts. We all hate Scrappy's guts. Our whole goal was to destroy Scrappy forever.
• The Danza: Freddie Prinze Jr. plays Fred.
• Deleted Scene:
  • An alternate opening that began showing the animated counterparts dancing around to the theme song. The Luna Ghost would then kidnap Daphne and the sequence would shift to live-action.
  • Flashbacks when Fred, Velma and Daphne meet up at the airport. Fred would be shown giving a speech on his book tour to an uninterested audience. Velma would be at a support group, confess that she was a member of Mystery Inc and no one in the group would remember her. Daphne would be shown karate training but accidentally get herself stuck in a tree.
  • Velma, Fred and Daphne on a tour bus going around Spooky Island. This is where she'd meet her love interest, and he says "you've always been a chick?"
  • A really random sequence in Dead Mike's bar where Velma would get up on stage and start singing "Too Good To Be True" to mock Fred and Daphne. As she does this Mondevarious says "she does know that Bloody Skulls are non-alcoholic?" Although, given the true nature of Mondavarious, he could have been just trying to embarrass Velma by getting onlookers to think she acts this way when she isn't drunk.
  • Daphne encountering a possessed Velma in the girls' locker room, having a similar encounter to Shaggy and Scooby with the possessed Fred. Velma would be acting like a Valley Girl before turning on the Game Face. This is included in the novelization.
  • Shaggy witnesses Daphne's soul getting extracted and a demon possessing her - explaining why he knows to look for her head in the vat as well. This is also in the novelization.
  • A kiss was filmed between Daphne and Velma. During the scene where the souls keep swapping into the wrong body, Daphne and Velma's would keep getting in the wrong ones - so they decide to kiss to make sure they go in properly.
  • While Scooby is locked up in the cage, he fakes a heart attack to try and escape. The guard points out that he's done it eight times already.
• DVD Commentary: One by Charles Roven and Richard Suckle and one by Sarah Michelle Gellar, Linda Cardellini, Freddie Prinze Jr. and Matthew Lillard.
• Dyeing for Your Art:
  • Freddie Prinze Jr. bleached his brown hair blond, and had to shave his head after the dye ruined it.
  • Isla Fisher is a redhead and became blonde so audiences wouldn't confuse her for Daphne.
• Executive Veto: James Gunn said he wanted Velma to be a lesbian and for her to kiss Daphne but Executive Meddling insisted the movie be more "child friendly."
• Fake American:
  • The Scottish-born Australian Isla Fisher plays the American Mary Jane.
  • Brisbane-born Neil Fanning as Scooby-Doo.
• Fake Nationality:
  • Although Zarkos' nationality is not explicitly revealed, it is implied that he is Mexican (he is a luchador after all). His actor Sam Greco is not Mexican nor is he of Latino descent. He's an Australian of Italian descent.
• Gay Panic:
  • James Gunn revealed on Twitter that he had wanted to make Velma a lesbian, but that the studio had vetoed that — forcing him to make her Ambiguously Gay, then not giving her a love interest at all, and then giving her a boyfriend in the sequel.
  • In 2012, Matthew Lillard revealed on Reddit's Ask Me Anything that Fred was gay in the original cut and Freddie Prinze Jr. played him as such.
• Inspiration for the Work: James Gunn inspired his screenplay by Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
• Kids' Meal Toy: Dairy Queen had a set of six toys, as well as a Mystery Crunch Blizzard treat.
• Meme Acknowledgment: When asked about the Shaggy cast interview caption memes, Matthew Lillard merely stated "This is wrong." and "Who the hell... stop this nonsense.". Though given that he then links to r/BadassShaggy and found it hilarious, it would seem that he liked the interview memes.
• Missing Trailer Scene:
  • For the teaser trailer, it was made to look like a Batman sneak peak until you see Scooby's shadow with him saying, "Who? Me? Nah-uh!"
  • Velma, while drunk thought that Scooby-Doo means "Scooby-Poop".
  • Fred asks Scooby/actually Scrappy "Did somebody spike your dog bowl?"
• Orphaned Reference:
  • Right before she's kidnapped by the villains, Daphne is seen running out of a building and slamming the door shut. This is because of a cut scene that took place inside the girls' locker room - where Daphne encountered a possessed Velma and several other girls. They're who she was running from.
  • Shaggy knows to look for Daphne's soul in the pit after he's found Fred and Velma's. The reason is that he would originally stumble into a scene Daphne's soul being extracted from her body and a monster inhabiting it. This scene too was deleted.
  • Old Man Smithers/The Luna Ghost was originally meant to be the main villain of the movie. In the finished product, he only appears in the film's prologue, but the Luna Ghost was still featured prominently on the movie poster.
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends: For a long time, it was reported that Tim Curry was originally supposed to play Mondavarius, but turned it down after learning that Scrappy, a character he despised, was going to be in the movie. James Gunn has since stated that the story is completely false.
• Posthumous Credit: William Hanna, one of the executive producers for the film, died of throat cancer a year before the film's release.
• Production Posse: Composer David Newman and editor Kent Beyda previously worked together on the live-action Flintstones films. So did executive producers William Hanna and Joseph Barbera.
• Promoted Fanboy:
  • James Gunn was more than happy to write an adaptation of his favorite cartoon. Although this does bother some fans due to his not playing the material straight, that is a reminder there is more than one way to be a fan.
  • Linda Cardellini happily notes to have watched Scooby-Doo for many years even as she went away to college.
  • Isla Fisher is also a Scooby-Doo fan and looked forward to her first Hollywood role.
• Real-Life Relative: In the Latin Spanish dub:
  • Arturo Mercado voiced Scrappy-Doo and his son Arturo Mercado Jr. voiced Shaggy. Arturo Mercado is the first and most long-lived voice of Shaggy (playing him until 2015), so it's only fitting that his son would play Shaggy in this movie.
  • Daphne and Velma are voiced by real life sisters Xóchitl and Gaby Ugarte, respectively.
• Real Life Writes the Hairstyle: Sarah Michelle Gellar had to wear a red wig as Daphne, as she was still filming season six of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
• Reality Subtext:
  • Mondavarious' park is stated in the movie to be ten years old. At the time of the movie's release (2002), so was Cartoon Network.
  • Likewise, at the end, he mentions that Scrappy kidnapped him during an evil elf audition two years earlier. Casting for this movie would have begun in 2000.
• Role Reprise:
  • In the Latin American Spanish dub, Arturo Mercado once again reprised his role as Scrappy-Doo.
  • In the Brazilian Portuguese dub, Orlando Drummond and Mário Monjardim reprised their roles of Scooby and Shaggy, respectively, which they'd been playing since the first series (Monjardim stopped voicing him for a brief period in the 80's and Drummond voiced Scooby non-stop for 40 years!).
• Saved from Development Hell: Plans for a live-action film had started when producer Charles Roven bought the rights in 1994. By the end of the decade, the combined popularity of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, along with the addition of the script and updated digital animation led Warner Bros. (who inherited the rights from Turner Pictures after the Turner/Time Warner merger) to fast track production. In July 1998, it was reported that Mike Myers would be playing Shaggy and co-writing the script with Jay Kogan. The film was officially green-lit in 2000; production started in February 2001 and wrapped in June of that year.
• What Could Have Been: Has its own page.

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