- Anvilicious: "Scooby Dude", the Very Special Episode about drugs:
- Audience-Coloring Adaptation:
- This is the show that started the tendency to regard Daphne and her family as extremely rich.
- This also started the trend of Mystery Inc. being from Coolsville.
- Broken Base:
- To this day, it remains disputed among fans over whether this continuity was a good show in its own right or an inferior Spin-Off Babies adaptation.
- Fred's characterization in the series. Did his retool into a Cloud Cuckoolander give some much needed life into the character's personality? Or did it go too far the other direction from Fred's more level-headed personality from the original series?
- Designated Villain: Parodied with Red Herring, who is always at the top of Fred's list of suspects for no good reason. Yes, he's The Bully, but you can't say Fred is being much better with his constant unjustified accusations.
- Ensemble Dark Horse: Red and Jenkins the butler tend to only get a few seconds of screen-time per appearance but remain two of the most memorable characters in the series.
- Fan-Preferred Couple: Fred and Red seems rather popular in some circles instead of Fred and Daphne.
- Foe Yay Shipping: There are a few circles that ship Fred and Red.
- Harsher in Hindsight:
- "Scooby Dude" was created to show why Drugs Are Bad. Years later, Carl Steven, Fred's voice actor, became a drug addict before he was found dead from a heroin overdose in 2011.
- Fred's parents are not seen in this show, unlike the rest of the gang's. This means nothing if you've seen the direct-to-video movie Scooby Doo! Pirates Ahoy! (where Fred's parents made an appearance and were shown to love and care for their son like good parents should), but Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated and Be Cool, Scooby-Doo! take the absence of Fred's father/parents to depressing levels: they're villains that also run around in monster costumes... or worse.
- Hilarious in Hindsight:
- The Ice Demon from "Snow Place Like Home" looks very similar to the Phantom Virus from Scooby-Doo and the Cyber Chase.
- Daphne being the one who tends to offer Shaggy and Scooby Scooby Snacks, when the Be Cool, Scooby-Doo! episode "Sorcerer Snack Scare" has her objecting to Fred convincing Shaggy and Scooby into risking their necks by offering them Sorcerer Snacks because she sees it as a form of bribery.
- "Dawn of the Spooky Shuttle Scuttle Scare" features a character named Mr. Sinclair... not to be confused with ANOTHER Mr. Sinclair.
- "Terror Thy Name Is Zombo" has Fred believing in a cotton candy monster from the National Exaggerator. Come Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, there really was one.
- B. J. Ward voices Velma's mother. Years later she would voice Velma herself in the late '90s to early 2000s, beginning with a guest appearance on Johnny Bravo and Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island.
- "Ghost Who's Coming to Dinner" has a scene where Freddie sees a real ghost, mistakes him for a guy in a mask, pulls his head clean off and freaks out. However, this real ghost is not the actual Monster of the Week. All this is Played for Laughs. The same thing happens again to Fred as an adult in Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island, except this time it is Played for Horror.
- Ho Yay: Fred and Red. Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated has made a few jokes about it by having some incidentals resemble Red during funny moments involving Fred. In one example, Fred is wrestling with a Red-lookalike at a college frat. When the gang finds them in a spooning-like position, he then mentions that they're going to teach him the "happy tapioca", which according to the Urban Dictionary, is a sex position.
- Jerkass Woobie: Red Herring, although he's clearly a jerk and bully to the gang, it's hard to not feel bad for him constantly being accused of crimes he did not commit. Though to be fair he has dressed up as a monster on at least four different occasions
- Just Here for Godzilla: Even when the mysteries and humor lose some of their appeal, the Awesome Music provides a reason to keep revisiting the show (or at least clips of it).
- Narrowed It Down to the Guy I Recognize: If there's a character in the episode voiced by Charlie Adler or Michael Bell, more often than not, they're the episode's culprit.
- Older Than They Think: The show's style of meta humor had already been starting to gestate in some previous Hanna-Barbera productions, most notably in Yogi's Treasure Hunt, a show that was very openly not taking itself seriously by its conclusion. However, it was this show that solidified that very style of humor due to shifting the zaniness of both the humor and animation into overdrive and parodying an episode formula that, by that point, was almost twenty years old and ripe for a fresher take on it.
- Short-Lived, Big Impact: The show only lasted a few years, but its brand of self-referential humor would have large impact on cartoons of the '90s, in particular the ones a lot of season 1's crew would move on to (Tiny Toon Adventures, Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain, and Freakazoid!).
- Strawman Has a Point: Fred accusing Red Herring in "The Computer Walks Among Us" is founded since Velma's robot embarrassed Red Herring at the contest by spraying him with a hose. Given Red Herring's Jerkass personality, it wouldn't be a stretch that he would want revenge.
- Surprisingly Improved Sequel: The show's uses of Better than a Bare Bulb, No Fourth Wall, and Rule of Funny make it a very different show that is seen by some as better than the original.
- Suspiciously Similar Song
- The "Here Comes The Ice Man" song from "Snow Place Like Home" bears some similarity to "My Boyfriend's Back" by the Angels.
- Compare the theme song from this show to the title song from Little Shop of Horrors, the movie version of which had come out only two years prior.
- They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The Denser and Wackier nature of the show and its self-parodying tone does lead to the show having detractors among series purists who prefer the more grounded plots and humor of more traditional Scooby-Doo! series and find the meta humor and zanier gags distracting. The characterization changes such as Fred being The Ditz instead of at least reasonably competent and the fact that the show is a Spin-Off Babies show to begin with are other common points of contention.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: "Scooby Dude" features a character named Al who introduces himself to Scooby and the gang as a former drug addict who opened up a beach skate park after he cleaned up following spending time in jail for his habits. This would have been a good way to show that people can break their addictions and clean up their lives after struggling with substance abuse, which would have given some nuance to the usual stock Drugs Are Bad plots common to this era of television. Alas, Al turns out to be the Monster of the Week and one of the two heads of the drug-smuggling ring at the center of the episode, turning the character into yet another stock "drug-dealer-peddling-drugs-to-people/kids" character and completely wasting the opportunity.
- Values Resonance:
- At the end of "The Schnook Who Took My Comic Book", the gang confronts Mr. Cashmore (one of the suspects who was ultimately proven innocent) about why he was hiding comic books in his car despite him claiming early on in the episode that he hated them. Mr. Cashmore confesses that he actually loves comic books, but is ashamed to admit it because he's a grown man. Rather than make fun of him for being into comic books despite being an adult as was common in the '80s and '90s, the gang assures him that adults reading comic books is no big deal, with their friend, Selma (also an adult), freely admitting that she still reads comic books too.
- Carol Colossal, the extremely successful and wealthy owner and CEO of a major toy company, is Ambiguously Brown. No one questions her competency—in fact, she clearly outclasses her white male competitors—and she has a white secretary as well. Later, Colossal buys ownership of the Coolsville Wrestling Federation; pro wrestling is often considered a "man's world," but she's just as skilled there as in her previous company. Seeing a BIPOC woman in a position of great power and wealth has remained relevant well into the 2020s, especially because the kids never once comment on her identity and treat her success as totally normal.
- "Lights...Camera...Monster" features Black female FBI agent Jane Thursday. In real life, the FBI did not hire its first Black female FBI agent until 1976; the show is implied to take place before then, meaning that the Pup Named Scooby-Doo universe was ahead of reality.
- Vindicated by History: This show was lambasted back in its day for its repetitive animation, formulaic nature and for contributing to the trend of "babyfication"note that was going on for cartoon franchises in the '80s. Nowadays it's fondly remembered for being the one of the first Scooby-Doo series to not take itself seriously by frequently lampshading and parodying the clichés and tropes of the original formula, paving the way for later incarnations.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/YMMV/APupNamedScoobyDoo
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