Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


These things about Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated are subjective - not everybody will agree with them all.

  • Accidental Innuendo:
    • Traps Illustrated, if you know what the word trap can also mean.
    • From episode 11: "Nothing says I love you like 200 ft. of parachute cord and a cargo net!" Looks like Freddy is also into bondage.
    • In the first few episodes of Season 2 Daphne goes on and on about how she found a "real man," one who isn't obsessed with traps over her. Comedy gold.
  • Alternative Character Interpretation: Mayor Jones: is he a Complete Monster, or did years of Becoming the Mask leave him with some affection for his "adopted" son? Did he save Fred's life because he cared, or because he feared the wrath of Brad and Judy?
    • It's finally answered in Season Two - and it's the latter. Raising the child he kidnapped as his own helped bring out some of the good in Mayor Jones that was in Sitting Room limbo, and knowledge of his genuine love for Fred is precisely why he seemed to hope Fred would die on one of his mysteries: he knew that his Papa Wolf instinct towards Fred would be his undoing, which turns out to be the case when he feels compelled to save Fred's life when he's in danger a few feet away from him. While the actual Mayor Jones ends up becoming a hardened criminal in jail, Sitting Room Mayor Jones admits to Fred that he is proud of him and that being his father had actually always been the best part of his life. In the new reality that ends up being created at the end of the series, Jones is a teacher and coach of Fred's, but still views him with fatherly affection. This is why Fred chooses to go by "Fred Jones" rather than Fred Chiles: he sees "Mayor Dad" as the only true father he ever had.
  • And the Fandom Rejoiced: When Derrick J. Wyatt was announced as the lead character designer, the fandom went BOOM.
    • Character announcements for the Hex Girls and Vincent Van Ghoul caused a lot of love from the audience, more specifically with the latter.
    • What about episode 14? There were 4 old Hanna-Barbera shows teaming up! (Speed Buggy, Jabberjaw, Captain Caveman and Funky Phantom)!
    • Oh it gets BETTER. The Jonny Quest team is coming up, and Jonny's original voice actor is gonna be voicing Brad Chiles! And Blue Falcon and Dynomutt's gonna come back also!
    • Season 2 is gonna come in Summer 2012! HOORAY!!!!
  • Awesome Music: Trap. Of. Love.
  • Badass Decay: Mr. E's actions never quite stop being threatening or competent, (with the exception of one instance of being Out-Gambitted) but you have to admit knowing he's a whiny slob who's grotesquely overweight and actually plays his background keytar music doesn't do a whole lot for his air of menace, and it gets particularly bad when he ends up being personally intimidated by a confrontational Shaggy at one point. Lewis Black's typically comedic delivery at times may add to this.
  • Base Breaker: Scooby and Velma. Some sympathize more with Scooby than Velma in the "love triangle" with Shaggy, while some sympathize more with Velma.
    • The new look of the Hex Girls is very divisive, as well.
  • Cargo Ship: Fred and traps. Seriously, he can't walk past a net or a cage without swooning over it.
  • Complete Monster: The Nibiru Entity, the series story's Bigger Bad and THE most evil villain in Scooby Doo history. So evil that his very existence is responsible for every bad thing and every villain on the show. We only see him in the series finale, and he spends his screen time in the last episode literally eating and killing every cast member left who's not the main Mystery Inc. group, all for the sake of feeding his power-lust and bringing about the apocalypse, which he wishes to then repeat throughout the entire universe. His agent, Big Bad Professor Pericles, was in fact turned into a sociopath by him.
    • To elaborate on that: As an Annunaki descendant, Perciles was easily corruptible by Nibiru, but since he has a genius intellect, he was most aware of his "master" and thus the most in-tune with him in terms of evil and power-lust. When we see the "better sides" of the curses' victims who are sealed off in the Sitting Room, Pericles is absent: this bird was literally born to be bad, but waited on his chance to act on that badness. His laundry list of crimes include betraying his own friends by working with Mayor Jones on the Freak of Crystal Cove hoax, haunting and attacking Jones in his home in order to steal his disc piece, murdering Ed Machine, building an army of killer robots to unleash on his enemies, murdering Cassidy Williams, aiding Mr. E in trying to blow Mystery Inc. up with a bomb, talking Brad and Judy into betraying their son (putting them down an irrevocable path of darkness and madness), taking control of Destroido Co's research labs in order to create skeletal cattle spliced with Bee and Piranha DNA that devour and kill many Destroido employees and then unleashing an entire herd of these on Crystal Cove in order to devour it, abusing his old friend Mr. E and then having cobra venom injected into his spine so that he wouldn't turn against him, having Brad and Judy undergo plastic surgery in a scheme to Mind Rape the gang into giving up their disc pieces, having populated areas of Crystal Cove leveled to the ground and then forcing it's citizens into slave labor to find the gate to where the treasure is, using his robot army to suppress the citizens and planning to massacre them all once they'd served their purpose, ordering one of his robots to gun down a teenage girl with a machine gun, and finally he deliberately asks the Nibiru Entity if he can be his vessel, intending to use the Entity's power to destroy and dominate the earth, not knowing that the Entity would actually eat him from the inside and take over his body. When reality changes after the Entity's destruction, we see Pericles as Ricky's company's mascot with a completely different persona that what he had in the Nibiru reality, meaning his identity was so tied to the Entity that in a reality where the Entity never existed, he's cut from quite a different cloth.
    • To put this in a non-spoiler way, when your level and methods of being a Complete Monster actually retroactively absolve all of the other villains in the show (even the Big Bad), you know you're bad.
  • Continuity Lock Out: As the show progresses and all the plot points and backstory are piled on about the questions about the Conquistadors and the original Mystery Incorporated, it becomes rather unfriendly to newer viewers regardless of the Previously On segments. The show's ending, however, at 52 episodes and 2 seasons, may mitigate this. It is nonetheless a lot better in one sitting.
  • Creepy Awesome: Professor Pericles. Creepy? Oh yeah. Awesome? Udo Kier makes it so.
  • Ear Worm: The "Dance in my Pants" song in episode 7.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse:
    • Professor Pericles, by virtue of being a genuinely creepy and brilliant counterpart to Scooby Doo. And for being voiced by the one and only Udo Kier.
    • Marcy "Hot Dog Water" Fleach due to being the gang's Sixth Ranger and especially all of her Les Yay with Velma.
    • Alice May, mainly for the reason stated below.
    • Not to mention, Harlan Ellison for fairly obvious reasons.
    • And Sheriff Bronson Stone, particularly for his expanded role and Character Development in Season Two.
  • Evil Is Sexy: Alice May, especially as Obliteratix in episode 25.
  • Fan Nickname: As it turns out, Nibiru is not the name of the thing inside the sarcophagus seen with the cursed treasure. Nibiru is the name of a certain time when the thing's homeworld and Earth are able to interact with one another. The thing is known merely as the evil entity of Nibiru, or "the Nibiru Entity."
  • Funny Aneurysm Moment: A lot of Mayor Jones' "wacky" moments from early in the season become this after seeing the finale...
  • Growing the Beard: The handling of the romance and overall plot seems to get better around the second half of season 1. It all came together in the mind-blowing season finale, which was followed by an even better second season.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
    • In "The Shrieking Madness", Shaggy reacts unfavorably to the vegan burgers being served. Funny because Casey Kasem was rumored to have insisted that Shaggy become a vegetarian in order to bring him more in line with Kasem's vegan diet.
    • Matthew Lillard becoming the new voice of Shaggy despite being threatened by the animated Shaggy and Scooby in Looney Tunes: Back in Action for his performance in the first live action movie.
    • In "Pawn of Shadows" we find out that a song based on Hatecraft's work is popular in Japan. The opening song of Nyaruko: Crawling with Love (an anime inspired by the work of Lovecraft) would later win an Animation Kobe.
  • Ho Yay:
    • When discussing plans for after High School, Fred implies that he and Shaggy will be rooming together, but actually asks if Shaggy prefers cotton or linen bedsheets.
    • When Scooby realizes that Shaggy's relationship with Velma is serious, he acts just like a jilted lover.

Scooby: Are you... cheating on me?

    • And when they're too caught up in a happy reunion to run from a Killer Robot dog, Velma tells them "Let's go, lovebirds."
    • Fred's dad's old fraternity Mu Gamma Tau only seem to be interested in working out and wrestling... a lot.
    • Daphne gets some with Thorn of the Hex Girls in episode 7.

Thorn: I'm a good look for you, Daphne.

    • Episode 11 - Sheila Altoonian and Elizabeth Blake.
    • Episode 14 - The Principal and Angel Dynamite.
    • Episode 16 - When Aphrodite casts her love spell, everyone seems to fall for a member of the opposite sex...except Mayor Jones and Sheriff Stone, who are seen dancing together in the streets. Not to mention all the little dates they seem to go on...
    • Episode 20 - Velma and Amy the mermaid.
    • Episode 22 gives us Dr. Rick Spartan and his assistant Charles/Cachinga. They argue like an old married couple, but the minute Rick is seriously injured, Charles is rushing to his side, worried sick. Of course, Rick is married and his wife's love for him is the reason she dressed up like the Headless Horror to begin with, to try to convince him to live a normal, non-adventuring life, but it only plays down the Ho Yay a little.
    • Episode 24: Night Ranger collects magazines with men in what Daphne calls "mankinis."
    • Mayor Jones and Sheriff Stone really do enjoy hanging out together...
    • In episode three, Rung Ladderton and Fred comment on each other's ascots... and then swap saying how good they look on each other.
    • There is word that Hot Dog Water returns to take Daphne's place, and it will be alluded that she and Velma possibly had a "relationship."
  • Jerkass Woobie: Velma. You can't help but feel sorry for her when Shaggy picks Scooby over her.
    • Feel more sorry for her; she's all alone now that the gang's split up. Oh and remember...she's being blamed for it.
      • Subverted in episode 27. Velma--in disguise--springs Shaggy and Scooby and locates Fred. But Daphne has moved on.
    • Sheriff Stone can fall into this territory too, especially in "Dead Justice", "All Fear the Freak", "Web of the Dreamweaver", and "The Gates Of Gloom."
    • Danny Darrow when he was a child; he and his family go crazy with greed after finding a piece of the planespheric disc, and their house sinks underground where he's forced to live out his life (about 75 years), obsessed over the piece, while he and his family grow old, and they all die. A run in with the original mystery inc. leads him to set traps all over the house, and he almost kills the current ones with them, and later with a fire poker. In one scene, the gang sets a trap, and Scooby lures him in while pretending to be his mother, he responds with a genuine hopeful smile and says "Mommy, you came back to me?" Despite knowing that she died years ago.
    • The members of the original Mystery Incorporated who are not named Professor Pericles. Ricky Owens, Brad Chiles, Judy Reeves, and Cassidy Williams: they were all just like the current gang once, but the curse drove them apart and made them fall so far.
  • Les Yay: The first season had open animosity between Velma and Hotdog Water. The stated reason was because they were simply scientific rivals, though many fans interpreted it as a Foe Yay situation. By season two the writers seem to have adopted this theory, or at least deliberately played with it. The most obvious sign is that, when Hotdog Water replaces Daphne briefly in the opening sequence, she's seen cuddling a photograph of Velma.
  • Magnificent Bastard: Professor Pericles has been getting there since he first appeared, but probably cemented when he turned out to be a Monster of the Week haunting Mayor Jones to get his part of the disc, using Fred's own traps against him, and actually succeeded in getting away with it thanks to a well-timed booby trap after the gang catch him.
    • In fact, nearly every episode he shows up in, he gets exactly what he wants, usually at the expense of the gang. "The Wrath of Krampus" was the first time he's suffered a defeat. And that was because the entire town and Rouge Gallery were in on the Batman Gambit.
  • Magnum Opus: In the wide range of Scooby-Doo TV Series, fans and critics alike hold this one in high regard over the others. Is also one for Mitch Watson and Victor Cook.
  • Memetic Sex Goddess: Velma and Daphne both.
    • Hot Dog Water and Alice May also have their fans who hold them in this regard.
  • Moral Event Horizon:
    • For Mr. E, or ( his "associate" Ed Machine if it was his idea) The Alice May plot involved terrorizing, kidnapping, and imprisoning an innocent young man for several days, all just to get an old yearbook to the gang.
      • E himself officially crosses it in Season Two when he attempts to have the gang blown up with a bomb in the episode "Scare Bear." Fortunately, he ends his life (in the old reality) coming back from over it via a Heroic Sacrifice.
    • For Mayor Jones, asking the kids to come to the Cicada Festival; he says he has a plan to protect them. He actually wants photos of them being overwhelmed by swarms of bugs for tourism purposes. Consider that one of said kids is his own son.
      • And he gets worse: How about kidnapping a baby from people he knew -- people he forced to leave town none the less -- and fed him lie after lie as he grew up. Oh, and he's the Freak of Crystal Cove, and thus is the cause of EVERY SINGLE THING that happened to the original and current Mystery Inc.
    • Pericles gets a couple in the finale too. Besides helping Mayor Jones ruin his friends lives for the sake of the treasure, he murders Ed Machine, Mr. E's assistant. Of course, he actually tops himself next season when he murders Cassidy Williams.
      • In the last half of the series, he keeps going and going AND GOING right over the Horizon. Unleashing the horrible herd on Crystal Cove to devour everyone and everything, abusing Ricky to the point of threatening his life, leveling the entire town to the ground in order to force it's citizens into slave labor for him, ordering for every man, woman, and child of the town to be massacred by his robots just to keep them quiet after they'd served their purpose, having his robot gun down Hot Dog Water, a teenage girl, in cold blood, and willingly accepting the Nibiru Entity inside of him so that he can destroy and dominate the world - there were no lengths this psycho parrot would NOT go to in order to get what he wanted!
    • Fred's real parents, Brad and Judy, cross it when they fire a missile at a helicopter that the gang, their son included, are on in an attempt to kill them. And then they rat out Mr. E to Pericles. And then they get plastic surgery so that Brad looks like his own son while Judy looks like an older version of her son's girlfriend as part of a scheme to Mind Rape their son into revealing to them the planespheric disc's location. And if any hope for them to come back over from this remained, they assist Pericles in murdering Hot Dog Water, with no remorse whatsoever. Thank goodness the Brad and Judy of the new reality aren't nearly as depraved.
    • Not only does the Nibiru Entity spend the last episode killing everyone in Crystal Cove as he brings about the apocalypse, but as the one behind the curse, he is the literal black hole that causes the Moral Event Horizon. All the above characters' moments? They can all be absolved because this bastard is the thing that drove them to it!
    • Of course, all of these MEH crossings ultimately ceased to exist in the end.
  • Nightmare Retardant: The Nibiru entity is terrifying for the most part, it's initial appearance is.....not. Thankfully it doesn't stay in that form for very long, and it's new look is a complete 180 in frightening.
  • Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: This series has done this for Fred. He used to be the Trope Namer for Standardized Leader (aka 1-Dimensional Leader). This show's interpretation of the character is arguably the most popular incarnation of the character yet.
    • Velma was rescued in the second half of Season One when she finally started focusing on other things beside trying to make Shaggy choose between her and Scooby, and became more sympathetic and much less mean-spirited and bitchy because of it.
    • Mayor Fred Jones Sr. was rescued twice. People hated him for being a Jerkass who put profit and his career ahead of his child's safety. The first time he was rescued he was revealed to be the Freak of Crystal Cove, the first season's Big Bad, meaning that one was supposed to dislike him, and he fell into Love to Hate as a truly nasty Knight of Cerebus, and a Hate Sink prior to The Reveal. He was rescued again when it was revealed that he's a better fit for a parent for Fred than his biological ones; Brad and Judy, whose greed exceeded the mayor's due to them being more closely connected to the curse. His best part's reconciliation with Fred and his later Cosmic Retconned self pulls him from being hated.
  • Romantic Plot Tumor: Nearly every episode involves the Shaggy-Velma and/or Fred-Daphne relationships and the angst that accompanies it. Although they're thankfully usually sub-plots for the mysteries, it still gets rather tiring after a while.
  • The Scrappy: Fred's father, Mayor Jones. More concerned about keeping Crystal Cove a tourist attraction than stopping attacks on the victims. Even when the victim is his own son and his friends. Of course, it helps that he's SUPPOSED to be an unlikeable Jerkass, unlike, well, Scrappy.
  • Surprisingly Improved Sequel: Considering all the Scooby-Doo stuff that was coming out after What's New, Scooby-Doo? ended.
  • Tear Jerker: The end of season one was utterly heartbreaking. Fred's whole life has been a lie, he leaves Crystal Cove and the group he worked so hard for and cared so much about to find his real parents. Hate or love his "father", there's enough sadness in his voice to wonder if he's regretful as well. Fred ends his engagement with Daphne so she's had her heartbroken. Shaggy and Scooby are separated - Shaggy to a military school and Scooby to "a farm"... which horrifically implies death. Velma has to deal with the fact her decision to keep Angel's identity a secret was part of the reason the team has broken up. Even the Sheriff gets some sympathy, after Jones Sr reveals everything he cries, knowing that a) everything was a lie, b) the second person on his hero list was a criminal and a liar, and c) he has to be the one to arrest him, also considering the crimes (kidnapping, etc) it's hard to predict when he'll get out of prison (if at all). He's probably the only friend the Sheriff has...
    • The season 2 premiere. Fred's plan failed because Daphne's no longer in the team. Hell, Daphne has decided to move on even though Fred postponed the wedding, meaning that he'd come back. The town's in ruins, The Bad Guy Wins...and did I mention this is the season 2 premiere?!
    • The series finale. It's a Kill Em All ending that gets averted when time resets due to the Entity's death and reality changes so that it's a world where the Entity and the curse never existed. Everything's brighter, happier, and downright perfect...but not for the Mystery Inc. gang since they're the only ones who remember the previous reality, making living in this one awkward for them. Thankfully Harlan Ellison saves the day with a video message and the story ends on an upbeat note.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks: While the show is considered very good by a lot of people, a very large amount of old school Scooby Doo fans hate it because of things like ditching the name "Coolsville", focusing more on relationships than mysteries, and not having Scooby Snax.
  • What an Idiot!:
    • Anyone who tries to scare people away in a town where hauntings are a tourist attraction. That's just asking for paranormal enthusiasts to get too close.
      • Then again, that also means that the local authorities are reluctant to stop you if you dress like a monster.
    • Also, "the slime monster" might have gotten away with it, too, if he hadn't staged an attack in broad daylight!
      • The intention might have been to lead someone to trapped victims who needed medical help.
    • The whole gang still not having realized the gaping hole in Alice May's Daddy's Little Villain con by the time of her reappearance.
    • Season 2, Episode 9: While leaving fake evidence at Dougal McGuines' house was a somewhat smart move on Gary's part, leaving his own yearbook with his name in it and trying to frame a person that would give the gang evidence was not.
    • Brad and Judy aren't too bright. Their whole reasoning behind their Face Heel Turn is to protect Fred from seeking the treasure and becoming corrupted. And thus the predictable outcome to this plan happens: THEY become corrupted and end up so obsessed with the treasure that they forget all about the son they were supposed to be protecting and willingly hurt him in order to get to the treasure.
  • What Do You Mean It's for Kids?: This show is surprisingly darker, violent, gorier and scarier than the previous shows have (threats to kill the gang have occurred, stuff blows up, people get injured, etc.) yet it was rated TV-Y7-FV! Ironically, its sister show The Looney Tunes Show was rated TV-PG, yet is much tamer.
  • The Woobie: Fred. Fred. and Fred. Episode 26 revealed that he was taken away from his real parents as a baby by the mayor and he's leaving to find them. But deep down you can feel him sob and choke because all this time he's lived a big lie.
    • Don't forget Daphne. She was waiting to marry Fred but Fred has stated that the engagement is off and that Mystery Inc. is Dead. She's last seen crying that everything has just fell apart.
      • Fred gets it worse in the season 2 premiere. Daphne's moved on, the plan failed, The Bad Guy Wins, oh, and he's been living as a hobo for a while now...someone give him a hug.
      • And then he gets betrayed by his real parents, who become even worse than his fake father. Ouch.
    • Hot Dog Water gets this treatment in Season Two. She goes through so much trouble, even a REALLY PAINFUL DEATH for the sake of Velma and her friends.
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