It also reunites Frank Welker, Casey Kasem, Heather North and Nicole Jaffe from The New Scooby-Doo Movies, with the sole exception of Don Messick who passed away five years prior.
It is also the first film to be animated in the art style of What's New, Scooby-Doo?, which would last until Scooby-Doo! and the Samurai Sword.
We join Scooby and Mystery Inc. as they vacation in the land Down Under where they attend a music festival held at Vampire Rock. Unfortunately, a mystery rises when they learn a legendary Australian creature called the “Yowie Yahoo” is kidnapping musical acts and turning them into vampires. Masquerading as a heavy metal band, the gang must survive a trio of rock-and-roll vampires if they want to crack the mystery surrounding the legend of the vampire.
Tropes:
- Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: The "Gonna Go to the Rock Show" Good-Times Montage where the gang explores the outback includes bright orange kangaroos (intentionally resembling the stock kangaroo design Hanna-Barbera often used in The '70s, most notably the Laff-A-Lympics episode set in Australia) and a blue emu that looks more like an overgrown peacock.
- Arbitrary Skepticism: Despite the gang recalling having met the Hex Girls before, which happened in Scooby-Doo! and the Witch's Ghost (where Mystery, Inc. dealt with the real witch's ghost), Velma remains adamant that there are no real vampires. While the vampires of this film are revealed to be another "Scooby-Doo" Hoax, Velma's refusal to consider that vampires might actually exist is still pretty jarring.
- Art Shift: This movie marks the first change in the series. Starting here the films go for a flatter old-school revival art in the process departing from the darker shading and effects used previously, as an intentional homage to the original Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!. It also abandons the more modern Animesque cast designs used by the first four movies.
- Balloon Belly: Ironically Scooby and Shaggy are on the opposite end of this trope for once. During the first chase scene, they prepare a large pile of spaghetti with lots of garlic for one of the vampires chasing them, hoping it'll kill him. It doesn't work, as the vampire simply eats the large pile of spaghetti and is left satisfied and with a huge belly.
- Batman Cold Open: The Gang are introduced solving a mystery on the cruise ship on the way to Australia.
- Call-Back: The return of the Hex Girls from The Witch's Ghost. The gang mentions that they've met before, likely referring to the events of the movie.
- Chekhov's Skill: At a swimming pool Daphne does a cannonball dive and drenches Fred and Velma standing nearby. Later she cannonball cliffdives to escape a vampire and drenches a pack of dingoes that were menacing Shaggy and Scooby, which drives the pack away.
- Deadly Euphemism: Parodied. When asked what happened to the Bad Omens, something even Mystery Inc. couldn't figure out, Lightning Strikes says that they "sent them and Matt Marvelous on diving trips to the Great Barrier Reef." Stormy Weathers immediately clarifies that they were sent on actual diving trips, all expenses paid.
- Disqualification-Induced Victory: The gang ends up entering the music competition to figure what happened to the missing performers (including the Hex Girls, who were technically just the opening act for the festival and not actual competitors). By the end of the movie, Daniel Iliwara (the head of the Vampire Rock Music Festival) points out to the gang that since all the competitors except for them have left the festival, that makes them the winners by default.
- Faking the Dead: It turns out that Wildwind faked their own disappearances to increase their own mystique and further their careers. The whole "Vampires" thing and their disguises of Russell and the band Two Skinny Dudes were a means to get around the Vampire Rock festival's "no repeat bands" rule by kidnapping the other bands and bribing them to drop out so they could close out the festival in the place of the nonexistent Two Skinny Dudes, who would've won by default.
- Five-Man Band Concert: "The Hex Girls" are the backing singers while the main stars are "The Meddling Kids" (aka the Mystery Incorporated gang). They perform a rendition of the franchise's Theme Tune "Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?"
in a winner concert at the end of The Movie. The Smart Gal Velma is the singer and doesn't play any instrument, The Heart Daphne is on the keytar, Standardized Leader Fred is on the guitar, Lovable Coward Shaggy is on the bass, and Big Friendly Dog Scooby is on the drums because All Drummers Are Animals. Also, it's revealed Velma does like to sing, just not in front of so many people. - Foreshadowing: Scooby and Shaggy fail to kill a vampire by feeding it garlic, suggesting Our Vampires Are Different is in play. It's actually a sign the vampires are just humans in disguise.
- Good-Times Montage: The Scooby-Doo gang exploring the Outback, with the song "Gonna Go to the Rock Show" accompanying it.
- Head-Turning Beauty: Some Australian lifeguards take notice of Daphne in her bikini and start flirting with her, which makes Fred jealous.
- Informed Species: The dingos seen in the movie look more or nothing like the actual animals. They resemble cartoonishly monstrous versions of wolves more than anything else.
- Kangaroo Pouch Ride: Scooby-Doo tries doing this during the montage of the gang exploring the Outback, but the joey inside his mother's pouch pushes him out and lets out a Muttley-esque chuckle.
- Latex Perfection: This is how the Wildwind band members disguise themselves as Russell and the Two Skinny Dudes, which they then paint the vampire makeup over their latex masks.
- The Legend of X: The film has the subtitle Legend of the Vampire.
- Lighter and Softer: It's the first to return to the lighter tone than that of the previous four movies. It's especially noticeable with The Hex Girls. Their demeanors are lighter and Thorn was redesigned to be less "scary".
- Misplaced Wildlife: During the "Gonna Go to the Rock Show" Good-Times Montage, Scooby encounters what looks like a pair of bobcats, despite Australia not having any sort of native wild cats like a bobcat (just domestic cats and maybe a few panthers.)
- Ms. Fanservice: Daphne's seen in a bikini a couple of times, one of which is when she and the rest of the gang are hanging out at Bondi Beach in Sydney.
- Musical Nod: The movie brings back a lot of the soundtrack and sound effects from the older shows, which the franchise hasn't since repeated.
- Mythology Gag: The whole movie is basically one big homage to the original Scooby-Doo shows prior to 1979...
- In the opening sequence introducing the gang, several shots from the original 1969 opening are recreated.
- The Gang pose as a band to enter the contest as a ruse for their investigation, and one of the other bands' members snarkily asks who'd ever heard of a band with a dog in it. Early concepts for Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! depicted the Gang as a traveling rock group, with a bongo-playing sheepdog as their Team Pet.
- When Scooby and Shaggy encounter a shark swimming behind their surfboard, the shark biting the surfboard away is a reference to the intro to The Scooby-Doo Show with a shark biting away Scooby's water skis, complete with identical sound effect.
- The kangaroos Scooby-Doo and Shaggy try riding on as they explore the outback are designed exactly like the kangaroos from the Laff-A-Lympics episode set in Australia the teams race on.
- The scuba outfits Shaggy and Scooby briefly change into among learning the culprits sent the rest of the competing rock groups on a trip to the Great Barrier Reef are the same ones they wore in the classic episode "A Clue for Scooby-Doo."
- Much of Ted Nichols's original instrumental music cues are remade in a "modern" synthesized flavor, and many of the old Hanna-Barbera Stock Sound Effects are utilized; the later of which is rarely done in the direct-to-video Scooby-Doo movies.
- In the opening sequence
- Never Smile at a Crocodile: A crocodile turns up in Australia, where it tries, unsuccessfully, to eat Scooby.
- No-Sell: Scooby and Shaggy try to kill a vampire by feeding it garlic-laced spaghetti, but it doesn't kill him. In fact, he enjoys his large meal.
- Performance Anxiety: The gang ends up entering the Vampire Rock Music Festival's competition to get a better idea on figuring out what happened to the missing performers — their group is ultimately dubbed "The Meddling Kids" and Velma's made the lead singer of the group, which she complains about. When Daphne questions her on it, Velma explains that she loves singing but doesn't like to do it in front of so many people (claiming that she gets "stage fright", as she calls it).
- Race Lift: When the Hex Girls debuted in Scooby-Doo and the Witch's Ghost, Luna was Ambiguously Brown. Here, she has a much lighter complexion that matches Thorn and Dusk's skin.
- Revisiting the Roots: After the first four direct-to-video films featured Fred, Daphne, and Velma with redesigned looks and the gang encountering the real deals instead of just hoaxers, starting here those three are back to their classic designs and the mysteries always being just a "Scooby-Doo" Hoax (with occasional exceptions).
- Sadly Mythtaken: The Yowie Yahoo is actually the name of Australia's version of Bigfoot. The real vampire of Australia is the Yara-ma-yha-who, a small, hairy and red froglike imp with a huge head and octopus suction cups for fingers and toes, which prefers to live in fig trees.
- "Scooby-Doo" Hoax: The first film in the series to return to the original format with the monsters really being criminals in masks, with one of them also being an elaborate hologram projection.
- Vampires Hate Garlic: A chase sequence has Scooby and Shaggy try to get rid of the Dark Skull vampire by having him eat spaghetti topped with garlic salt. It doesn't work. Of course, he wasn't a real vampire to begin with.
- Villains Out Shopping: When chasing Scooby and Shaggy into a tent that serves Italian food, the Dark Skull vampire decides enjoy the spaghetti topped with garlic salt that the two served when disguised as a waiter and a chef.
- Weakened by the Light: In the end, the Yowie Yahoo is "defeated" when he's struck by the sunlight reflecting off Scooby's tag. Though this is explained as the monster just being a projection, which the light is negating, the projection still seems to make a show about being "destroyed".
- Wild Goose Chase: Wildwind knew right away that Mystery Inc. were their competition so they kidnapped the Hex Girls hoping the gang would go look for them which would make them miss their chance to be in the competition and allow the Two Skinny Dudes to be the winner by default.
