Scooby Doo General

From what I can tell, more people are at least willing to defend or admit that they like Scrappy.

So far the only Scooby Doo work that acknowledges Scrappy’s existence and treat him like a lovable character was the DC Comic Scooby Apocalypse. And I’m definitely sure thats not consider an official Scooby Doo property/continuity.

Scrappy is a good example of the flaw behind the concept of The Scrappy in the first place. Sometimes it's a character that really can't be liked, but sometimes it's something just becomes a standard hatedom in time.

Literally the only thing keeping the joke about Scrappy being awful going is the fact that people are keeping it going: the audience who hated Scrappy hasn't been the target audience in decades, and the target audience of today has no idea who the character even is, let alone why they should think he's awful beyond being told he's awful. Nobody's in on the joke any more.

Even worse, Scrappy is hated in large part because he changed things, which is not something audiences beyond the one first introduced to him have any context for, so there's really just one group of fans who gets it. That's why Scrappy got a bit more popular in the 90's, where pretty much all of his appearances - good and bad - got rerun simultaneously, and 13 Ghosts and Ghoul School and such were on tv all the time. And it's one of the many related reasons why the first live action movie was released to a lot of confusion among people who weren't specifically in on the joke (that's a problem with the live action movie in general. It was made specifically for people who were familiar with certain in-jokes, if you don't read marijuana gags into Shaggy and Scooby, or useless gags from Daphne - which people familiar with 13 Ghosts wouldn't - or idiot gags from Fred, which on the flipside are only relevant to people who saw it post-A Pup Named Scooby Doo, a lot of the humor won't make sense).

See also, Aquaman. The joke that Aquaman sucks comes from people who remember him from a cartoon series from the 60's, but has remained current for decades despite making increasingly less sense because it's a meme and people won't let the joke die. Scrappy's pretty much the same way.

For a while, I've felt the best way to deal with Scrappy is to simply reinvent him as something that works in the dynamic a little better, and probably just make him a recurring or guest character rather than a constant thing. It's not like he's a difficult character to improve. Redefining the tagalong character into a much more likeable form is, like a defining thing in this era of animation.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Nov 8th 2018 at 8:34:53 AM

As mentioned, Scrappy is pretty much Poochie turned real life. Companies don't want to waste time ironing out the flaws in their products, they want to tell their audience they get them and can give them what they want.

x2 Funny enough I have some pretty basic ideas I have for Scrappy if I create my own Scooby Doo series. Basically he will have that whole Learoy Jenkins personality like how everybody who hates the character see him as. But in the episode itself there is a reason to it; he is the runt of the litter who had low self esteem about himself. That is until he heard stories of his Uncle Scooby, who himself is a runt of the litter, fighting many ghosts and monsters with the other Mystery Inc which convinces Scrappy that runts can do anything and view Scooby as an amazing hero ala All Might. So you can already guess what kind of plot the episode will entail: Scooby tried desperately to live up to a lie as to not disappoint his nephew while doing the usual mystery which would entail danger upon all the gang. It will end with Scrappy learning the truth that not only ghost and monsters aren't real but also that Scooby fabricated a lot of the stories. Scooby disclose to Scrappy to why he lied and feels guilt for doing it deserving whatever scorn from the puppy, only for Scrappy to reassure Scooby that he doesn't hate his uncle and still find to be the bravest uncle he ever have (especially after how Scooby save Scrappy, when he idiotically got himself captured by the monster of the week). And future episode featuring Scrappy will have the character act more reasonably on mysteries and try to outwit the bad guy instead of fighting them head on.

So yeah, it is pretty easy to reintroduce the character and make him tolerable. Espeically with good laced Freudian Excuse and a dash of Character Development.

In fact, didn't the ratings increase for a while when Scrappy was introduced?

Another thing. How are they going to explain where Fred and Velma were during the 13 Ghosts?

Ok, maybe "troll" is a little extreme a description when it comes to denying Shaggy/Daphne fans a bone, some of the films tend to throw it under a bus in favour of Fred/Daphne but not everything in the most recent media has done so.

The movie Music of the Vampire for example has a few cute moments between them while they're performing one of the musical numbers.

I was also directed to an episode of "Be Cool Scooby Doo", where Daphne pretends to be Shaggy's girlfriend to help him save face with his grandmother...but Daphne winds up enjoying the role way too much, and it even starts to unnerve Shaggy when the dangers start escalating and he needs her to focus on getting them out of a scrape ("Knock it off Blake!") she just responds with a mischievous smile.

So maybe this movie will surprise me with their interactions, who knows.

Wow, Maurice LaMarche does an amazing Vincent Price.

He kinda always has.

He's been doing it since the days of Animaniacs hasn't he?

He's to Vincent Price what Matthew Lillard is to Casey Kasem.

I'm 100% for this; it's interesting that they're finally getting around to recognizing 13 Ghosts. The show has always been interesting me (sadly, the idea is better then the execution; there's a lot of problems with the show that really bog it down for me), and this wrap up will probably be very satisfying (in a way the original show never really could).

I wonder if after this one, they'll make Shaggy a Werewolf again and force him to race against other Monsters for Dracula's amusement, while the rest of the gang attempt to cure him and defeat Dracula? That'd be fun too.

I really, really want a Ghoul School throwback at some point. Besides 13 Ghosts, it's probably the most cult classic Scooby Doo installment there is.

Maybe we can get Gigi back. From what I've seen, she's not hated like Scrappy or Flim Flam.

Judging from the comments on the trailer on Youtube, there seem to be people concerned they'll put "SCRAPPY ND FLIM FALM SUK LOLZ" into the movie itself.

To be fair, that's exactly what the franchise did the last time either of them were referenced. But at the same time, the team that made Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated is very different from the team that's making this and has made the rest of the recent animated movies.

The animated movies have been a lot better at having a little fun at classic stuff's expense, but also playing them straight without treating them like they're stupid. They remind me of Batman: The Brave and the Bold that way.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Nov 10th 2018 at 9:36:39 AM

I've been noticing a backlash against the Take That, Scrappy! trope as too mean-spirited in general recently. Like, when a novel revealed the post-Revenge of the Sith fate of Jar Jar Binks (his political career flamed out, he was shipped back to Naboo in disgrace, never to ditch the label of "the guy that killed democracy," and by the time the Empire falls he's a miserable old hobo street clown), people thought it was way too much.

That's why it should happen.

The only way to make people stop hating a character to do something to them far crueler than killing them.

Jar Jar and Scrappy prove it.

I want to see Fred and Velma react to all the silly little adventures Shaggy and Scooby (and Scrappy) went on.

Like the two literally knowing the offspring of Dracula and Frankenstein.

If I recall, the only person who had a problem with this was Moviebob and even then he hadn't actually read the novel. Everyone else seemed to like it including Jar Jar's actor, Ahmed Best.

It kinda feels like a cheap way out though, rather than trying to give the character substance and try to make them legitimately likeable, they just get on the bandwagon of ripping on the character and making them even more of an out of place gag.

It's bizarre how on the mark that Poochie episode was about this type of writing. Completely destroying the quality of the show just to desperately panda to the audience with what they think they want.

Edited by Psi001 on Nov 11th 2018 at 2:05:06 PM

Scrappy was apparently fairly popular in his first season, he started to become annoying when he started taking spotlight from other characters completely

Either way, he is kinda Scapegoat for "What went wrong" rather than the actual reason

The 13th Ghost. Great idea, but I only remember there being 11 ghosts in the original series, because there was one episode that didn't deal with a ghost from the chest, but a bunch of ghosts on a ship. The chest got opened, and a tornado monster emerged, but I don't know what the hell that was supposed to be, and they didn't catch any new demon, just the crew of the ship. So unless the crew of ghosts was actually an escaped demon then I think the count should only be 11.

Apparently the writer of the film counted that ship and its ghosts as among the 13 Ghosts.

Edited by Etheru on Nov 19th 2018 at 3:17:10 AM

In a way, that's a brilliant way to handle the 12th ghost issue.

Thank you, writer guy. Another childhood bugbear put to rest.

Looks like Shaggy is becoming quite the memetic badass.