Western Animation / Be Cool, Scooby-Doo!

"Scooby and the gang are back! But not quite as we remember..."

The twelfth incarnation of the Scooby-Doo franchise, and a Lighter and Softer spin on the series, Be Cool, Scooby-Doo! concerns the gang as high school graduates. Other than that, it's still same ol', same ol': They come to a supposedly haunted destination, split up to investigate, hijinks and chases ensue until the culprit is eventually unmasked by those meddling kids. The main draw of this series is that, along with a different and more simplistic art style, there's more focus on comedy and character interaction of the cast in between the mysteries.

It premiered on Cartoon Network and Boomerang (alongside Wabbit: A Looney Tunes Production) on October 5, 2015. It was cancelled in 2018, ending with its Season 2 finale.

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This show provides examples of:

• 555: In the episode "American Goth", a sign posted at an abandoned building tells potential buyers to call 555-0198.
• Absurd Phobia: Fred insists he's not afraid of heights; he's afraid of widths.
• Accidental Hero: In "Where There's a Will, There's a Wraith", Scooby is included in a rich man's will for saving his life. It's eventually revealed that Scooby was just trying to get a piece of jerky from the man's pockets and the life-saving was accidental.
• Actor Allusion: Downplayed. Bayou Pierre, from "Saga of the Swamp Beast", is not the first cajun boatman Jim Cummings has played for Scooby-Doo.
• Actually Pretty Funny: Fred at first moans Daphne's attempts at stand-up comedy in "Kitchen Frightmare", but not long late he starts laughing at her jokes.
• Adaptational Jerkass: Fred, making him a Control Freak and an unmasking hog.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The episode "Me, Myself And AI." Shaggy even lampshades it ("What hath man wrought?!").
• The Alcatraz: The Vault. Even in a state of disrepair, it's still one of the most dangerous correctional facilities on the planet.
• Alternate Continuity: It's a new series, so it's pretty much set in its own continuity.
• Ambiguous Time Period: Parodied. "Scroogey Doo" states that the year as "1834-ish?", and seems to take place in that timeframe, but the Gang is still the same as they are.
• Animals Hate Her: Daphne seems to have done something to anger all sea life. It collectively gives her a Death Glare.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: This is mentioned at the start of the first episode in "Mystery 101":
  Velma: Okay, I believe there's a rational explanation for everything.
  Daphne: (pretending to be Scooby) Then explain me.
• Armor-Piercing Question: When Shaggy gets fed up with Fred accusing him of eating his tuna sandwich in "If You Can't Scooby-Doo The Time, Don't Scooby-Doo The Crime":
  Fred: Evidence doesn't lie!
  Shaggy: And friends do?
  Fred: (stammers, unable to think of a response)
• Artistic License – Animal Care: "Gremlin on a Plane", Shaggy should really tell Scooby eating chocolate could kill a dog.
• Art Shift:
  • In the chase sequence of "Me, Myself And AI," the gang and the renegade robot briefly become Charlie the Robot (from the 1969 episode "Foul Play In Funland") and the gang in their original 1969 designs.
  • Happens again in "If You Can't Scooby Doo The Time, Don't Scooby Doo The Crime." The series of X-rays that the Vault's guard takes of the gang briefly shows a linear design of the gang from 1969.
  • Pops up once more in "Into the Mouth of Madcap" when the gang (sans Velma) enter the Fun House. Fred describes this as "unsettling."
  • Occurs between the episodes themselves, as one of the animation studios (Snipple Animation) uses a more Flash-based animation style than the others.
• Author Tract: The episode "Silver Scream" comes off as an excuse to rant about everything wrong with modern cinema, which is made especially flagrant by the episode ending with the movie producer asking if he can still make terrible decisions.
• Bavarian Fire Drill: Invoked on occasion to bamboozle villains. For example, in "Grand Scam", Daphne pulls one on the "ghost", pretending to be a baseball umpire who has just called him out.
• Beehive Hairdo: In the episode where the gang visit Shaggy's grandma in Florida, one of her three friends Maude sports this.
• Big Eater:
  • Shaggy and Scooby, of course. Exaggerated in "All Paws On Deck."
  • In "Grand Scam", Shaggy is complimented on the fact he once ate up a baseball stadium's entire supply of hot dogs.
  • In "There Wolf", the gang drove Scooby to a vet hospital worried sick about him when he said he wasn't hungry, thinking he had some terrible sickness. When it was found out that he wasn't hungry because he was full, the gang is equally shocked.
• Big "NO!":
  • Daphne in “Mystery 101” when her puppet “sacrifices” itself so she can hold onto a rope.
  • Fred in "Gremlin On A Plane" when he finds out Daphne is piloting the Air Gigantica plane.
• Big "WHAT?!": The ending of "Vote for Velma":
  Velma: It would have been fun to declare martial law.
  Scooby: Scooby-Dooby- Wait, what??
• Blazing Inferno Hellfire Sauce: In "Saga of the Swamp Beast", Scooby and Shaggy's biggest joy upon visiting New Orleans are hot sauces. The hottest sauce given to the gang, The Grim ReaPepper, literally burns someone upon contact on its bottle and makes someone breath fire upon consumption. Later on, the gang meets Hermit Hank, a swamp resident. He has his own hot sauce that is named after a painful scream, and he calls it Hermit Hank's EEAAARRRRRRRRR! Hot Sauce.
• Blind Without 'Em: The blonde girl of Fred's "kid gang" in episode six is briefly shown to be unable to see without 'em. Velma's revealed to still have this as per the usual in "Night of The Upsetting Shorts" when she deliberately breaks her glasses in an attempt to not actually see said shorts. Only it backfires on her as she still needs to see properly and ends up getting another pair of glasses from a Crazy Cat Lady living in the retirement community the gang's visiting.
• Body Horror: Whenever the director on "Poodle Justice" is overtaken by despair, he literally folds his body up as he falls to the ground. That's not the body horror part; it's the accompanying sound effect of bones cracking that is.
• Braces of Orthodontic Overkill: An employee at Pizza O'Possum's has braces and headgear. In "Where There's a Will, There's a Wraith", Daphne puts on headgear when she pretends to be a little kid at a slumber party.
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs:
  • From "If You Can't Scooby-Doo The Time, Don't Scooby-Doo The Crime," the prison called the Vault is guarded by sharks. And laser cannons. And sharks with laser cannons.
  • In “I Scooby Dooby Do”, Shaggy says the only things he’s good at are running away, eating, and running away while eating.
  • In "Mysteries on the Disorient Express", a man and his wife try to find a cabin for themselves. The first one has noisy kids; the second one has a woman with the flu; the third one has a man playing a pan flute; and the fourth one has noisy kids playing pan flutes and flu-stricken parents.
• Brick Joke:
  • In "Omelettes Are Forever", as the Mystery Machine flies past an office building, there's a brief glimpse of the dancing janitor who appeared nine episodes earlier in "The Curse of Kaniaku".
  • In "Fright of Hand", the magic club owner complains about the gang's work and calls them meddling kids, and Daphne says it's too early to call them that. Once the true culprit is exposed, Daphne says now they officialy meddled.
• Bring My Brown Pants: In "Party Like It's 1899", Daphne states that she thinks she's "decreed" her pants when shocked by the Headless Count trying to kill her and Fred with a sword.
• Call-Back: The series reaches back towards the antagonists of the original Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! series with (so far, as of episode 2) the ghosts of Elias Kingston and Captain Cutler appearing.
  • The Daphne puppet from "Mystery 101" shows up fleetingly in "Me, Myself And AI."
  • The ghosts from "A Night Of Fright Is No Delight" return in "Where There's A Will There's A Wraith." Heck, the gang spending the night in a haunted mansion over the matter of a will is a Whole-Plot Reference to the original episode, and Fred at one point calls it a "night of fright".
  • From the same episode Velma carries the entire gang on her shoulders similar to several times she did it in the original series.
  • An updated version of the Spooky Space Kook appears in the intro, and in the episode "In Space."
  • In "Saga of the Swamp Beast" the gang finds Chomps the alligator with a class ring from Kingston University, the school Velma tried to get into in the first episode. Shaggy jokes that "Mitch the gas station guy is going to flip out," Mitch having attacked the university as a fake ghost because they wouldn't admit him.
• Captain Colorbeard: "The Curse of Half-Beard's Booty" features the ghost of a pirate named Half-Beard, so named because he couldn't grow hair on one half of his face.
• Captain Obvious: Lampshaded by Shaggy and Scooby in "Saga Of The Swamp Monster" after said creature accosts them:
  Velma: Where is this swamp monster?
  Shaggy, Scooby: In the swamp! Hence the name!!
• Cast as a Mask: In "In Space," the skull alien, voiced by Tony Todd, impersonates others using hologram technology in his helmet, and flawlessly mimics their voices, even when disguised as Scooby-Doo and Fred (both with the voice of Frank Welker) and Daphne (voiced by Grey DeLisle). And then the alien's true identity, Officer Soung, is voiced by Eric Bauza.
• Casting Gag:
  • In "Kitchen Frightmare" , Daphne wants to be a Stand-up comedienne, which her voice actress, Grey DeLisle Griffin, once was.
  • Daphne pretends to be a cat burglar in "Naughty Or Ice". You can connect the dots here.
  • In "Some Fred Time", the butler named Bellington is voiced by Robin Atkin Downes. He's had experience voicing one before.
  • In "American Goth", Shaggy's childhood friend Amelia is now a goth, and is voiced by Jessica DiCicco . This wouldn't be the only time she's voiced one .
  • "Protein Titans 2" once again has Scott Menville voicing a young, egotistical person in a high position of power. Though unlike Otto in that series, Junior here is more of a brat who, albeit reluctantly, acknowledges when people do a good job.
  • In "Worst In Show", the heiress named Harriet Vander-Grauff is voiced by Kari Wahlgren. This wouldn't be the only time she voiced a wealthy socialite, though Harriet is much nicer than her.
• Check, Please!: Said by Shaggy in "Where's A Will, Where's A Wrath."
• Chekhov's Gun: Daphne's weird quirk of the episode will usually come in handy by the end.
• Chekhov's Hobby: Daphne's weird quirk often takes the form of a hobby she's either just taken up (i.e. puppetry, mime) or has been apparently doing for a long time (i.e. music).
• Christmas Episode:
  • Spoofed in "Scary Christmas", in which Fred is adamant that Christmas-appropriate activities take place (Santa Claus, heartwarming orphans, etc.), but the mystery has absolutely nothing to do with Christmas.
  • "Scroogey Doo" is a retelling of A Christmas Carol where the three ghosts visiting Ebenezer Scrooge is actually a "Scooby-Doo" Hoax orchestrated by his doctor to try and convince him to change for the better. Fred, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy, and Scooby solve the mystery, only for their efforts to result in Scrooge refusing to change and being convinced that he'll never face repercussions for his miserly ways.
• Cloud Cuckoolander: This incarnation of Daphne, also a borderline The Ditz. She likes to narrate reality, has meaningful discussions through hand puppets of herself and her friends, plays up the drama of having to let her own hand puppet make the ultimate sacrifice while dangling from a rope from the 3rd floor of a building, and the gang had to "Daphne-proof" the Mystery Machine. Also had a thing for wearing beards and mustaches.
• Crazy Cat Lady: The gang encounters one in "Night of the Upsetting Shorts".
• Continuity Nod:
  • In "Sorcerer Snack Scare", Fred immediately removes puppets from Daphne's reach when she starts to fawn over them.
  • In fact, newer episodes would reminisce every gag Daphne has done in previous episodes.
  • Fred's odd fear of widths, established in the first episode, "Mystery 101", is referenced by Velma in the very next episode.
  • In "Saga of the Swamp Beast", one of the clues is a class ring from Kingston University, which the gang visited in the original episode.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: The female realtor in the Cold Open of "American Goth", who insists that she will be purchasing an abandoned hospital for lower than the original offer, and when the groundskeeper points out the hospital is in great shape for being one hundred years old, the realtor begins to openly demolish it and then using her newly "discovered" damages as justification for her lowered price. Then she puts her foot through a rotting floorboard and accidentally steps on the plant monster.
• Crazy-Prepared: Fred. In the opening episode, he uses his remote for the Mystery Machine to turn it into a ransacked wreck. Tires on cinderblocks, graffiti on the doors, broken windows, everything.
  Fred: The best security is looking like you don't need it.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Daphne's "Vampire" persona.
• Denser and Wackier: Granted, Scooby-Doo was usually silly and campy, but this takes it up to whole new levels.
• Deranged Animation: Here's the concept art for the human characters. Or just look at Scooby. Many have noted it sharing some similarities to Family Guy, Rick and Morty, and Johnny Test. Whether or not that means something...
• Deranged Park Ranger: In one episode, the Gang deals with a park ranger obsessed with rules (especially ridiculous and unlikely ones). After many warnings, he had them thrown in forest jail. It turns out he's one of the culprits, and had been enforcing the rules to get people out of the forest so he and his comrades would continue logging illegally.
• Didn't Think This Through: In "Kitchen Frightmare", after being told the yeti is scaring away waiters, Shaggy and Scooby decide to volunteer as waiters so that they can be around the food and not have to hunt the ghost. Not only are they constantly having to fight their hunger so they can serve the food to the customers, but they painted a target on their backs.
• Dirty Cop: Sheriff Boone, Ranger Mark and Officer Mike.
• Discouraging Concealment: Fred has a variety of modes for the Mystery Machine, including a dilapidated mode to keep it from being stolen because, as Fred says "The best security is looking like you don't need any."
• Double-Meaning Title: "Mystery 101" has the gang investigating at a university and it's the first episode of the first season, making it episode 101.
• Downer Ending:
  • "Be Quiet, Scooby Doo" ends on an uncharacteristically depressing note where Velma accidentally causes Crystal Canopy to be destroyed.
  • "Scroogey Doo" ends with Ebenezer Scrooge convinced that he doesn't need to change his miserly ways thanks to the gang interfering with his doctor's "Scooby-Doo" Hoax and hammers in the point that Scrooge would've reformed had the gang not meddled with his situation.
• Drama Bomb Finale: The two-part series finale, "Professor Huh?", whose eponymous villain is so tricky that not only do the laws of physics occasionally stop working at his behest, he out-bamboozles Shaggy and Scooby in the middle of their own skit. As a bonus, he happens to be Fred's father.
• Dress-Up Episode: "Party Like It's 1899", which features the gang attending a costume party that re-enacts a famous murder mystery that took place within the mansion years ago.
• Driving Stick: The car the gang uses in "Ghost in The Mystery Machine" to escape from their now-possessed van. Which is unfortunate for Fred:
  Fred: stick shift? What is this, 1974? I can't drive stick.
• Dumbass Has a Point: Daphne comments during an attempt at stand-up comedy that they always solve the crimes while the Police Are Useless as if people are just waiting for the gang to solve crimes instead of call 911.
• Eat the Camera
  • Done with quite a few villains on this show.
  • At the end of "Kitchen Nightmare", Scooby-Doo does this.
• "Eureka!" Moment: The gang has lots of these when it comes to figuring out the culprit.
• Everyone Hates Mimes: The trope is Zig-Zagged in the episode "There Wolf", where Daphne's quirk of the week is attempting to make it easier to solve the mystery by dressing and acting like a mime. The rest of the group are displeased by this and attempt to ignore her before Daphne's mime act ends up helping solve the mystery, causing them to begrudgingly agree that Daphne's pretending to be a mime saved the day. The episode's criminal is also established as having a paranoiac fear of mimes because of an incident involving mimes that happened to his parents.
• Everything is Big in Texas: "Gremlin on a Plane" features the world's biggest airplane, which is owned by a Texan.
• Evil Brit: Bellington, Bradwick Harverall, Dr. Buggsley and Dillingsley.
• Exposition:
  • Velma will usually go into a detailed spiel of whatever myth or history is behind the episode's phantom (often with illustrations).
  • In "Area 51 Adjacent," Velma and Daphne have conflicting expositions about the origins of Area 51—Velma against the theory of aliens existing, Daphne for it.
  • Zig-Zagged in "Kitchen Frightmare". Subverted when Velma attempts to explain why a yeti is attacking a restaurant in the middle of summer (with each attempt to find a logical explanation driving her closer to the edge of a breakdown), but played straight when she explains the criminals's motive at the end.
• Failed Attempt at Scaring: The Halloween Witch finds Fred calmly waiting for her, and when she tries to scare him, he actively yawns. She tries to approach him, only for a pair of Zombie Velmas (one of them Daphne dressing as Velma since Velma won't celebrate Halloween) jump at her out of a pile of leaves, scaring the witch. Fred says it best.
• Fake Relationship: In "Night of the Upsetting Shorts", Daphne pretends to be Shaggy's girlfriend when they're around Shaggy's grandmother and the other women at the retirement home.
• Fan Disservice: "Night of the Upsetting Shorts" gets its name from the titular shorts Fred wears throughout. Which the general reaction to them, and at the end of the episode his underwear, from everyone else is one of shock and horror. Velma even spends half the episode Blind Without 'Em as a result of her deliberately breaking her glasses on the ground upon setting eyes on them.
• Free-Handed Performer: Velma doesn't play an instrument, so she is forced to do expository lyrics for the group's undercover band, Mystery Machine.
• Finishing Each Other's Sentences: Ruby and Trudy Lutz. At least one of them is so used to it that, when they're away from each other, she only says fragmented sentences and takes some time to remember her sister isn't around to finish them.
• Gagging on Your Words: Shaggy takes the initiative on "Grand Scam", but has trouble saying "We've got a mystery to solve".
• Game Master: Lady Pipi Wuthering, who runs the Annual Monster Mystery Party. Not quite a Killer Game Master, but remarkably controlling. She has players removed at will according to the story of her game, ignoring whether or not they care to be removed, and repeatedly sabotages Freddy whenever he behaves more competently than his character, Bumbling Constable Jerry. She fails repeatedly to rein in her bizarre husband, Lord Randolph, however.
• Game of Nerds: In "Grand Scam", Velma initially writes the whole enterprise of baseball off until someone says the magic word: statistics. In fact, baseball stats are used to prove that the ghost of a Baseball player isn't real - when the ghost attacked the gang he hit 4 balls out of 20 at the group but the player's batting average was 0.382 so he should've been capable of hitting 8 balls. The culprit's average is 0.193.
• Gilligan Cut: In "Area 51 Adjacent," the gang is held at gunpoint by Area 53 guards who think they may be aliens. Fred says he'll explain everything and it'll be okay. Cut immediately to the gang in handcuffs and chains in the back of a military police van.
• Girl Posse: A senior citizen variation in "Night of the Upsetting Shorts", with Grammy Roger's three competitive friends.
• Girlish Pigtails: Daphne sports these in "Where There's A Will There's A Wraith" , as well as dental headgear.
• Girls with Moustaches: Daphne wears a fake beard throughout "Poodle Justice", which makes an effective Chekhov's Gun when it collects samples from the gargoyle attacking the crew.
• Goth: Shaggy's childhood friend Amelia and Amelia's parents in "American Goth".
• Greek Chorus: Daphne likes to narrate reality in "Game of Chicken".
• Halloween Episode: The aptly titled "Halloween", where the gang investigate a witch terrorizing towns to make them cancel Halloween.
• Heh Heh, You Said "X": In "The Curse of Half-Beard's Booty", Scooby and Shaggy laugh at the mention of Half-Beard's "booty" before Daphne explains to them that in that context "booty" means "treasure".
• Heist Clash: This trope gets Played for Laughs in the episode "Mysteries on the Disorient Express", where eight separate masked villains attempt to steal the same microchip.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Parodied in "Mystery 101": when Daphne is about to let go of a rope because she can't get a grip with her puppet of herself on her hand, she declares that the puppet must sacrifice itself. After a melodramatic sequence of the puppet falling in slow-motion, it cuts to it anti-climatically landing on a tree at normal speed. Complete with One-Woman Wail.
• Hidden Depths: "Screama Donna" reveals that Shaggy, Scooby, and Daphne have prior experience playing guitar, bass, and piano respectively. Fred also becomes an Instant Expert at the drums.
• Hidden Villain: The perp behind the monster costume in "If You Can't Scooby-Doo The Time, Don't Scooby-Doo The Crime" was actually innocent. He was falsely imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit and assumed the ghost of "Stealin' Stan" so he could get the evidence he needed to clear himself from the warden's office. The warden himself kept the evidence hidden so Stan could never escape and have the prison's no-escape record intact.
• Horror Hates a Rulebreaker: The episode "Doo Not Disturb" has a hotel haunted by the ghost of the hotel manager's deceased strict mother, who stalks those who violate the very peculiar rules placed on signs around the hotel. It's a "Scooby-Doo" Hoax, of course, perpetrated by the hotel manager's disowned Evil Twin who didn't want to run the place the same way their mother did. It turns out he wants a hostile takeover, literally, of the old hotel in spite of his success with another hotel he started on his own by scaring the guests to make it go under.
• Humongous Mecha: The Mystery Machine now has a Giant Robot Mode, which Fred used to combat the monster in "Giant Problem", which was also a giant robot.
• Hypocrite: In "Renn Scare", King Avery is such a stickler for historical accuracy at the Renaissance fair that he admonishes anyone who has a cell phone on them. At the end of the episode, he turns out to have a cell phone himself that he answers as soon as he gets a call on it and isn't called out for not practicing what he preaches.
• I Do Not Like Green Eggs and Ham: Subverted. After Shaggy and Scooby spend an entire episode dodging a very persistent chef trying to get them to try Crubeens and Farl, they finally give in and have a bite, and it turns out that they really don't like it after all.
• Innocently Insensitive: In episode "Game of Chicken" where Scooby gets upset at Shaggy and spent the rest of the episode ignoring him and trying to become best buds with each other member of the gang, just for calling him "His dog", which implies that this makes Scooby feels like a slave.
• Instrumental Theme Tune
• Irony: In "Be Quiet Scooby Doo" Velma is determined to protect the Crystal Canopy halfway through the episode, only to accidentally cause its destruction at the end of the episode.
• Karma Houdini: The two scarecrow ghosts in "Eating Crow". Each one is revealed to be the other's victim and they agree not to press charges against each other.
• Lampshade Hanging: A big one is hung in "Where There's A Will, There's A Wraith" when Velma asks where the idea of everyone piling on top of her when the gang makes a getaway from a ghost ever got started. It has started to take its toll on her.
• Land Shark: "Some Fred Time" features Dorsal Foot, a striped shark with legs and scythe-like claws, as its main antagonist.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
  • A Running Gag in "Poodle Justice" features the director constantly questioning the gang's actions, such as a shot holding on Fred and Velma's knowing smirk. Or when the scene transitioned to illustrate Velma's exposition on the history of gargoyles.
  • In "Mystery 101", Daphne makes a metafictional gag when Velma, once again, expresses her skepticism of the supernatural, noting there's a "rational explanation" for everything. Daphne responds to this by producing a puppet of Scooby Doo himself and asking, in an imitation of his voice, "How do you explain me?" Not only does this address an ongoing bit of irony (that Velma seems to have no issue accepting a talking dog), it also could be seen as a nod to Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated in which a reason is actually given for Scooby being able to talk.
• Lighter and Softer: Definitely, compared to its Darker and Edgier predecessor. Its focus on having jokes and slapstick involved with the mystery becoming front and center compared to the mystery itself, coupled with the Running Gag involving Daphne's different quirks, possibly makes this show even more comedic than most iterations.
• Line-of-Sight Alias: Spoofed, along with most other things. Fred has just announced that the group is a band in order to solve a mystery and help save a theater. When asked for a name, he looks to the street sign and sees that they're on Maroon & 5th. He dismisses that and then sees Tim Beedles Cafe. Then an "Elect Roland Stone" billboard. Finally he settles on his van and declares that they're "The Mystery Machine."
• Ludd Was Right: Constantly invoked by Daphne in "Me, Myself, and AI" but ultimately subverted, with a lampshade on how it wasn't technology itself that was bad but how a person willfully misused it—much to Daphne's disgruntlement.
• MacGuffin: "Mysteries on the Disorient Express" has the culprits be international spies trying to steal a mysterious computer chip hidden in a flower Scooby put in a hat. The conductor directly refuses to elaborate why this chip is so important, only stating that the heroes have helped the free world rest easy tonight.
• Magic Skirt: Velma in "Where There's A Will, There's A Wraith." Completely upside down and her pleated skirt stays where it is.
• Miniature Senior Citizens: In the episode where the gang visit Shaggy's grandma in Florida, one of her three friends Maude is the short one.
• Miranda Rights: Upon being arrested by the clown police for breaking the cardinal code of clownhood, a Monster Clown is told he has the right to remain silent should he choose to be tried as a mime.
• Money Fetish: In "Sorcerer Snacks Scare", Beverly is seen bathing in money. Daphne comments that it cannot be called "money bath" when one uses fifty-dollar bills.
• Monster Clown: "Into the Mouth of Madcap" has the gang investigate an amusement park being menaced by Madcap the Killer Clown.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The Mystery Machine once again turns into a submarine, but unlike last time it did, it was reality instead of a holodeck-like game.
  • In "Party Like It's 1888", it revealed that like in A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, Daphne comes from an incredible wealth family.
  • In "Trading Chases", the tour guide thinks the red leprechauns are behind everything, the same way Fred believed Red Herring is behind everything.
  • This series isn't the first time that Shaggy gets a brain and spine for one mystery.
  • Mystery Inc. also had to deal with two renegade robots in two different series.
  • Velma is still afraid of clowns, as she was in What's New, Scooby-Doo?. Just like then, an episode with a Monster Clown centers around her being too scared to take part in the mystery.
  • Velma is scared about singing in front of an audience despite being a good singer, just like in Scooby-Doo! and the Legend of the Vampire.
  • "Where There's a Will, There's a Wraith" features the same premise and villain as the original series' episode "A Night of Fright is No Delight" (from way back in 1969). In addition, Beauregard Sanders is renamed "William Lutz". Bill Lutz is one of the writers who worked on the 1969 episode.
  • "Sorceror Snack Scare" indicates that this is how Scooby Snacks as a bribe for Shaggy and Scooby to do dangerous things got started. Lampshaded by Scooby and Shaggy.
    Shaggy: Like, can you believe it? Fred's going to give us Scooby Snacks to do stuff we always have to do anyway!
    Scooby: Yeah! Hehehehe, sucker!
  • "Saga of the Swamp Beast" featured a laconic alligator named Chomps that its owner claims to be a crack crime buster. In 1979, Hanna-Barbera made a live-action movie called C.H.O.M.P.S., about a robotic crime busting dog.
  • Daphne's "vampire" persona from "Saga of the Swamp Beast" isn't her first brush with vampirism. In an episode of Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo titled "I Left My Neck In San Fransisco", Daphne is mistaken for a vampire by Shaggy, Scooby, and Scrappy. And in an episode of What's New, Scooby-Doo?, Daphne offers to play a vampire bride in the Hex Girls' music video. She also pretended to be a vampire in a comic based on A Pup Named Scooby-Doo and frightened the gang to practice for a school play.
  • In the episode where the gang hunts down Sobek in a museum of history, one little boy asks Fred if he's 50 years old. Not quite, but that's roughly how long the Fred Jones character (and the franchise) are — the first episode premiered in 1969.
  • Someone asks Scooby if he's actually an alien or something, to which Scooby answers that he's pretty sure he isn't. Mystery Incorporated explained that Talking Animals exist because their ancestors were possessed by Eldritch Abomination alien gods.
  • In "Mystery 101", Daphne actually points out the hypocrisy of Velma refusing to believe in ghosts and the supernatural, yet accepting without question the presence of a talking dog.
  • In "Be Quiet, Scooby-Doo!", the gang goes to an underground cave full of crystals called Crystal Canopy. Crystal Cove was the main setting of Mystery Incorporated, which was believed to be named for the crystals found in its underground caves.
  • In the Dia de Los Muertos episode, the town they go to is run by a mayor who straight-ups says that they use the local legend of El Bandito to attract tourists and says that it's probably not a true story but asks the Gang to not say anything anyways, which can bring to mind Mayor Jones's desire to turn Crystal Cove into a tourist trap based on local supernatural stories in Mystery Incorporated.
  • At the end of "Omelettes Are Forever", the head of the secret services asks the gang for their help to save the universe again.
  • In "Ghost in the Mystery Machine", the gang pretended to be cavepeople mannequins to hide, which Shaggy also did in the beginning of Scooby-Doo! and the Witch's Ghost. Velma also wore a loincloth (pretending to be Jane) in an episode of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!. And similar to Mystery Incorporated, the ending reveals that they're being watched by an unknown party.
  • "Naughty or Ice" has the gang deal with a frozen caveman that was thawed out, just like in a Scooby-Doo, Where Are You episode.
  • In "Worst in Show", Shaggy and Velma swap character traits (Shaggy enjoys reading and Velma enjoys eating), similar to the What's New, Scooby-Doo? episode "A Terrifying Round with a Menacing Clown" where Shaggy takes over as leader (because he wants to win the golf tournament) and Velma as the scaredy-cat who hangs with Scooby and prefers eating (because of the monster-of-the-week).
  • The 2-part series finale "Professor Huh" has a similar twist to the Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated season 1 finale, what with Fred's father also being a villain. They do differ in that Donald Jones willingly doing a Heel-Face Turn while Mayor Jones only did so when the universe reset.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In "Scroogey Doo" the criminal points out that if the gang hadn't interfered, Ebeneezer Scrooge would be out doing good in the world, thus ruining Scrooge's chance for redemption. This results in the gang being booed at the end.
• Noodle Incident: While never properly explained^note Daphne assumes it's because, at least for dolphins, she owed them some money, Daphne apparently did something that royally cheesed off all of sea life, to the point where every sea animal in the general area gives her a simultaneous Death Glare.
• Not Evil, Just Misunderstood: Played for Laughs in "American Goth" when the gang encounters Shaggy's childhood friend and discover her to have become a goth. Her dark and moody fashion sense tricks the gang into believing she's some kind of monster, which ends with Fred begrudgingly putting away his vampire-killing tools when it turns out she's not.
  Scooby: How do we defeat it?
  • Even funnier is when Shaggy becomes concerned on what her parents think that she became a Goth, it turns out her parents are happy because they're Goths too and are proud their daughter has taken after them!
• Not Me This Time: The subplot of "If You Can't Scooby-Doo The Time, Don't Scooby-Doo The Crime" has Fred accusing Shaggy of stealing and eating his tuna sandwich, utilizing Insane Troll Logic as evidence, while Shaggy repeatedly says it wasn't him. It turns out it was Daphne.
• Odd Name Out: In "Scroogey Doo", Bob Cratchit has six sons and only one of them isn't named Tim (he is named Greg).
• Oireland: Averted in "Giant Problem". The cast actually does a good job of not mixing Scottish and Irish accents, and any Flanderization of Irish culture is justified as having been due to an American company trying to open a theme park.
• Only Sane Man: Fred and Velma take turns holding the Sanity Ball throughout the series for whenever it would better fit the gag. Starting with "Sorceror Snack Scare", Daphne increasingly gets in on the act.
• Omniglot: In "Giant Problems," Velma says she speaks two dozen languages, but Irish Gaelic eludes her comprehension. Even English spoken with an Irish accent completely stumps her. She has Scooby translate for her. She's also fluent in snowboarder, according to "Be Cold, Scooby Doo".
• Once per Episode:
  • Daphne displays a quirk that will play some sort of role in the episode proper, such as her use of hand puppets in the pilot. Fred duly lampshades this in "Trading Chases."
  • Shaggy and Scooby will trick the monster with costumes and a clever use of reverse psychology. This will usually be followed by the monster roaring or screaming in rage after they realize they've been duped.
  • There's a chase sequence accompanied by a rock song.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Lampshaded to hell and back in "Grand Scam", when Shaggy takes the initiative to solve the mystery that threatens the Gypsy Moths, his favorite baseball team. He's very self-aware of it, too. And it unnerves Scooby.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Shaggy in "Party Like It's 1899." The gang is at a Victorian-era themed party where a mystery is being staged and all the guests have to act as the character they are dressed. Shaggy is a wacky chimney sweep.
• Overly Long Gag:
  • At the end of "Be Quiet Scooby-Doo!" Velma accidentally destroys the Crystal Canopy, and there's a series of shattering noises that continues for a full 40 seconds as all the characters repeatedly wince and cover their ears.
  • In "Poodle Justice",Scooby-Doo comes to Lady Annabelle only to blurt out a weird sound while pointing his index finger for 20 seconds whilst the gang fights and gets scared by the villain.
• Pac Man Fever: In "Pizza O'Possum's", Velma talks about the video addiction she had as a child. The flashback takes place during the seventh generation of video games, but the game she plays looks like an Atari game.
• Perky Goth: In "American Goth," Shaggy's childhood friend Amelia is a goth girl with an unfailingly kind and sunny disposition. The same is true of her parents. For the most part, her friends are Large Hams who only pretend to be stereotypical goths.
• Powder Trail: How the Lutz mansion is destroyed in "When There's a Will, There's a Wraith".
• Reasonable Authority Figure: They exist, but they're either unhelpful or the niceness is just an act.
  • Parodied in "Game of Chicken" with the unnamed Park Ranger, who is easily convinced into letting Scooby be in the park without a leash, lets the Gang go into the Zatari Caverns to look for Fred's friend Chuck after they explain why they're there, and lets the Gang keep going when he tells them to turn back when Fred points out they still haven't found Chuck. He notes that he's probably very bad at his job. He's also not the culprit, suggesting he had no ulterior motive for letting Mystery Inc. into the cave in the first place.
• Record Needle Scratch: A rare diegetic example in "The Curse of Kaniaku". Scooby & Shaggy visit a restaurant in Tokyo which has traditional Japanese music playing on a gramophone behind the counter for ambience. The chef stops the music abruptly when Shaggy says something that shocks and offends him.
• Recursive Reality: In "Mystery 101", Daphne's puppet of herself has its own Daphne puppet, which has its own puppet, and so on.
• Recycled In Space: Spoofed in-universe with the appropriately-titled episode "In Space."
• Reformed, but Rejected: Stealin' Stan tried to turn away from his criminal career after he was initially released from prison, but was quickly accused and jailed for a theft he didn't commit based on flimsy evidence.
• Rhymes on a Dime: She struggles with it at first, but when the chips are down and the team is glum, Daphne perfectly crafts some rhyming cheers to boost her friends' spirits in her new role as a mystery mascot.
  • The castle cook in "Giant Problems" and Shaggy and Scooby go into this a la Dr. Seuss' "Green Eggs And Ham."
• Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense:
  • In "In Space", Daphne says her mother thinks night is dark because someone puts a big blanket between Earth and the Sun.
  • In "Naughty or Ice", Daphne says her family's partial ownership of the fancy ice hotel happened because her great-grandfather was so afraid the Government would freeze his assets he decided to "freeze" them first by investing on the hotel.
• Running Gag:
  • Expect Daphne to pull out one in every episode, much to her partners' dismay.
    • And expect her gags to be called out in later episodes too. Notably her love of puppetry and her fake beard.
  • Velma giving a lengthy explanation, complete with visuals to demonstrate.
• Sassy Black Woman: In the episode where the gang visit Shaggy's grandma in Florida, one of her three friends is this.
• Scooby Stack: One occurs in the first episode, along with all five of Daphne's puppets...somehow.
• Scout-Out: In "The Norse Case Scenario", Daphne dresses up as a Nature Ranger.
• Self-Deprecation: "Into the Mouth of Madcap" has a scene where Fred, Scooby, Shaggy, and Daphne look into a funhouse mirror where their reflections resemble their depictions in the original 1969 cartoon. They comment being creeped out by these reflections and express how good it is that they don't actually look like that.
• Shout-Out:
  • In "Trading Chases", there's a shot of a banner falling in front of a dinosaur skeleton, which parodies a similar shot at the end of Jurassic Park.
  • In "Where There's a Will, There's a Wraith" Daphne attempts to play Charades with the others, acting out scenes from Star Wars (but they're unable to guess it). The haunted place where they're spending the night belongs to the Lutz Family.
  • In "If You Can't Scooby-Doo the Time, Don't Scooby-Doo the Crime," the chase scene features a moving-staircase setpiece that simultaneously references the Harry Potter movies and the works of M. C. Escher.
  • In "Giant Problems" Fred dresses up as a knight, telling Velma "If you're hunting a giant of legend, you use weapons of legend." A moment later, when the gang sees the giant for the first time, Daphne's reaction is "We're going to need some bigger weapons of legend."
  • "Giant Problems": Fred converting the Mystery Machine into a giant mecha with the van on top could be a shout out to Megas XLR.
    • Possibly a Hilarious in Hindsight, considering that Cartoon Network once ran this promo.
  • In "Disorient Express", there was, among other monsters, a ''Mummy On the Orient Express''
  • In "Saga of the Swamp Beast", Shaggy refers to the titular beast as a "swampy marsh monster", a reference to Jeff "Swampy" Marsh, one of the co-creators of Phineas and Ferb.
• Shown Their Work:
  • In "All Paws on Deck", Fred correctly points out that shark attacks on humans are rare.
  • "Trading Chases" points out that alligators have an overbite while crocodiles have interlocking teeth.
• Show With In A Show: "Poodle Justice"
• Silence Is Golden: The episode "Be Quiet, Scooby-Doo!", where the gang has to keep quiet while inside the Crystal Canopy to keep it from being destroyed.
• Silver Fox: In the episode where the gang visit Shaggy's grandma in Florida, one of her three friends is this. She has short white hair.
• Skewed Priorities:
  • In "Kitchen Nightmare" Velma is so focused on trying to figure out why a yeti would be attacking a cheese restaurant that she ignores all clues unrelated to the yeti.
  • In "Gremlin On A Plane" she is so used to the formula of "catch the monster, unmask him and give the exposition" that she gives it while they are in a plane falling from the sky, and gets annoyed at everyone for being too busy fearing for their lives to follow along.
• Slapstick: Proving that it knows no gender, Velma - and Daphne to a lesser extent - are more prone to suffering Amusing Injuries than in previous series of Scooby-Doo. Velma quips this after wiping out on her skis in "Be Cold, Scooby-Doo":
  Velma: Fortunately, the horrible cold is numbing the terrible pain.
• Something Only They Would Say: In season 2 episode 37 "In Space" have Fred excited the Mystery Gang is in space. As a result, he adds the expression "In Space" to many comments. And when he's about to get crush along with the Space Kook who's using his face, the gang tried to grab the real one. But confuse which is the real deal, he immediately says:
  Fred: "I'm the real Fred! IN SPACE!"
  Everyone: (deadpan) "That's the real Fred."
• Spider People: The Monster of the Week in "Greece is the Word" is Arachne, depicted as a centaur-esque creature with a woman's torso attached to a spider's body.
• Stable Time Loop: "In Space" has the Trust no one sign, written by Shaggy and Scooby's future selves.
• Start My Own: In "Doo Not Disturb", after Jack and Josh Stanley inherited the Good Sons Inn from their mother, Josh didn't want to run the place the same way he did and, unable to convince his brother to see things his way, forfeited his share and started a rival hotel named Castaway Resort Hotel. In spite of his success, Josh still wanted the now renamed Good Son Inn to the point he dressed himself as his mother's ghost to scare away Jack's guests.
• Stupid Evil: In ''Me, Myself and A.I.", when the robot is finally downed and caught, the gang then get the man in charge of the place, head scientist and police together to begin the usual perp arrest and clues breakdown. The problem? The perp, Mallory, had absolutely no reason to stick around in the building at that point, and is sitting behind a secret wall like five feet away from the gathering still typing away at a computer instead of getting out of there. This leads to Velma unveiling her with no effort and Mallory being cuffed in seconds with no resistance.
• Stock Sound Effects: Despite being a Scooby-Doo show, almost none of Hanna-Barbera's famous sound effects are heard (with the exception of the classic H-B "teeth chattering" sound effect), most likely due to going for more of a Family Guy-esque feel with the series. (Ironically, its sister show Wabbit: A Looney Tunes Production has many H-B sound effects, despite being a Looney Tunes series!) You have to wonder if the sound editors have things backwards...
  • Consider than when Bill Hendricks re-opened the WB cartoon studio in 1967, the cartoons that came out under Alex Lovy and Robert McKimson were dotted with Hanna-Barbera sound effects while Warner Bros. cartoon sound effects started popping up on H-B shows as early as 1972.
• Suck E. Cheese's: "Pizza O'Possum's" in its' self-titled episode. Shaggy is a big fan of the place, and is dismayed to learn a haywire animatronic mascot is haunting the place.
• Swapped Roles: In "Worst in Show", Velma is the one devouring everything in sight after trying junk food for the first time, while Shaggy is totally absorbed in a book and can't put it down. Granted, it's a book about food, but still.
• Take That!: "Protein Titans 2" opens with a young and obnoxious executive boasting about an update to the older Protein Titans to an older and particularly unimpressed audience sounds not too dissimilar to the reaction to Teen Titans Go!.
• Talking Is a Free Action: Averted in "Giant Problems". Fred starts talking about his giant robot modification when the Giant attacks, knocking them to the ground.
• Title Drop: In "Worst in Show", Scooby said it would "be cool" to be earn the other show dogs' respect.
• Two-Faced: The ghost of Half-Beard from "The Curse of Half-Beard's Booty" fittingly enough is skeletal on the half of his body that doesn't have a beard.
• Unfortunate Names: Dorsal Foot, the shark monster in "Some Fred Time". Scooby and Shaggy find themselves giggling over how lame a name it is even after previously escaping the monster and it's even pointed out how silly it sounds. However, nobody is able to joke about it in the monster's face when he starts chasing them.
• The Unreveal: In "All Paws On Deck", Velma begins to tell the story of why she can't swim, but she's cut off by Fred because they have no time until the Mystery Machine fills with water and they all drown.
• Vanity License Plate: In "Ghost in the Mystery Machine", the heroes need a new vehicle and Daphne gives them one with a license plate that reads "EATMYDST".
• Villainous Harlequin: "Renn Scare" involves the West Farmville Renaissance Faire being terrorized by the ghost of William the Silly AKA the Jester.
• Villain Teleportation: Usually a clue that there's more than one culprit.
• Vomit Discretion Shot: Shaggy and Scooby vomit offscreen at the end of "Giant Problems" after they finally try crubeens and farl.
• Wicked Pretentious: Violet Oberon of "Vote Velma" makes herself seem upset with being the only artist of Littlefield, even though Velma notes how blatant it is with her art as well as not being good (one of her paintings is just a key taped to the wall). It turns out she's the ghost, wanting to make sure nobody funds the arts so that she's the only artist in town to make money.
• With Friends Like These...:
  • The others seemed unwittingly determined to undermine Velma's efforts to enter Kingston College in the premiere episode, much as she entreats them to not.
  • "Screama Donna": Shaggy and Scooby try to convince the ghost to go after Fred instead, realizing too late that it's Fred they're talking to. He is not amused.
• Would You Do It For A Scooby Snack?: Unsurprisingly, the answer is yes, yes they would. This series actually offers an Internal Deconstruction of the series staple, where Daphne points out this method is blackmail/manipulation. Scooby and Shaggy are kept from something they love and are given it in exchange for scary, dangerous tasks they would otherwise never do. However, it is Reconstructed at the end, where Shaggy and Scooby reveal that they're the ones manipulating everyone else. They purposely played up their willingness to be bribed with snacks because they knew they would have gotten forced to do all that dangerous stuff anyway, so they figured they might as well get paid in snacks for it.
• Yet Another Christmas Carol: In "Scroogey Doo", the ghosts not only visit Scrooge as usual but they also visit Velma to make her regret joining the gang. It turns out the ghosts were a hoax pulled by Scrooge's doctor, who wanted to make his hypochondriac patient spend money on Tiny Tim's health. The doctor hypnotized Scrooge and Velma with tricks he learned from someone named Gubmuh Hab. That and a mirror trick induced Scrooge into saying the famous expression "Bah, humbug". The doctor comments that, if not for the meddling kids, Scrooge would have reformed. Scrooge declares he's not changing since he'll never face consequences for his greed.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: The prologue of "Mysteries on the Disorient Express" features a woman having this kind of reaction when the fourth cabin she looks into has a combination of the problems she and her husband found at the previous three.
• You Meddling Kids: The classic phrase is lampshaded in "Be Quiet, Scooby-Doo!", when the villain admits that "meddling" is something of an archaic term. One villain even admits that there was no chance of them getting away with the crime.
  • They are four usually ways to parodying this one: 1) Having it be interrupted ("Mystery 101" & "Poodle Justice), 2) appearing in an odd place ("All Paws On Deck"), 3) Having the one of the gang say it ("Be Quiet, Scooby-Doo" or "Area 52 Adjacent"), or 4) Pull the Mad Libs Catch Phrase from the previous series ("Party Like It's 1889" & "Me, Myself, And AI.") The show usually goes for number 4.
  • Velma has to cue the perp in "Gremlin On A Plane" to say it.

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