Western Animation / Scooby-Doo! Legend of the Phantosaur

Scooby-Doo meets Jurassic Park

The sixteenth Scooby-Doo Direct to Video film. With Dinosaurs! And the beginnings of Ultra Instinct Shaggy.

When it is discovered that Shaggy has a condition that causes a Heroic BSoD with every scare, the gang decides to take him somewhere relaxing, La Serena Spa, the least haunted town on Earth. Of course, it would be boring if nothing happened but relaxation, so a giant ghost dinosaur is thrown in to shake things up. This strikes Shaggy into one of his break downs, so Mr. Hubbley, the owner of the spa, decides to take matters into his own hands with a little bit of hypnotism. Every time Shaggy hears the keyword, he is filled with uncontrollable bravery. The only problem is, Mr. Hubbley forgets the keyword. And to make matters worse, Shaggy accidentally hears it and goes all out on a biker gang at a G-Rated Pub, and agrees to race their leader on a motorcycle down Dead Man's Curve.

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This film provides examples of the following Tropes:

• Absurd Phobia: Somehow, Shaggy is terrified of papier mache.
• Accidental Misnaming: Mr. Hubley often gets Shaggy's name wrong, calling him Scabby, Spanky, Saggy, Snacky and Snappy, in that order. He finally remembers his name when un-hypnotizing him at the end of the film. He also calls Fred "Frank", Daphne "Dani", and Velma "Veronica"
• Acid-Trip Dimension: A rather trippy one occurs while Mr. Hubley is hypnotizing Shaggy.
• Angst Coma: Shaggy goes catatonic during the first Phantosaur attack. When he's snapped out of it, he remembers nothing. It leads Mr. Hubley to implant a trigger to turn him brave.
• Artistic License – Paleontology:
  • The Velociraptor are not only JP-styled with scaly skin, but also sport horns. Well, at least they were just costumes.
  • It gets worse; namely when Velma identifies the skeleton of a 20-foot-long theropod as a JUVENILE Dilophosaurus. And Winsor, a PALEONTOLOGIST, only corrects her about a mistake about its finger bones.
  • Dr. Svankmajer identifies a bone as belonging to Massospondylus... when the bone is question is larger than the entire animal.
  • Velma identifies the supposed Velociraptor tracks as belonging to "Dromosaurus theopod, of the Mongoline species" which is... complete and utter gibberish. She should have said it was a dromaeosaurid theropod of the Mongolioensis species.
  • The Allosaurus preserved in crystal (itself a bizarre example of this) is HUGE, looking more like a Saurophaganax. It's also missing its brow horns in a few shots and has pronated wrists.
• Artistic License – Physics: Shaggy basically defies gravity by biking straight up a mountain to gain the momentum needed to jump that chasm. Tropes Are Tools, however, because it's cool as hell.
• Art Shift: The opening credits have a simplified, almost chibi form of the gang running around a haunted castle that seems to loosely recount the pre-mystery mystery.
• Badass Bookworm: As it turns out, Winsor's computer animation classes came in handy when it came to creating the Phantosaur.
• Bad Guy Bar: An all-you-can-eat restaurant full of angry bikers, specifically. Doesn't stop Shaggy from wiping the floor with them.
• Badass Biker: In this movie, we learn that Daphne is one. She's had experience driving motorcycles ever since she was a young girl.
  Fred: Isn't it illegal for a five-year old to ride a motorcycle?
  Daphne: Yeah, but how was I supposed to know? I was only five.
• Better than a Bare Bulb: Like the two before it, this movie is very lampshade heavy and full of gags while still playing the Scooby-Doo formula and characters straight, making it (and the other movies) a kind of Reconstruction.
• Big Eater: Shaggy and Scooby just wouldn't be Shaggy and Scooby without voracious appetites.
• Black Bead Eyes: Everybody. At one point, Velma says that she thinks Winsor's eyes are the color of sea foam green by moonlight. Cue a picture of Winsor on Velma's phone with black eyes.
• Brick Joke: Mr. Hubley never gets Shaggy's name right. The only time he finally does say it right is when he accidentally hypnotizes the whole gang to believe they're all Shaggy.
• Bungled Hypnotism: Mr. Hubley's hypnosis technique for Shaggy to make him brave is so strong, he ends up hypnotizing himself as well. According to him, this always happens. Furthermore, it means he forgets the trigger word to turn Shaggy brave. At the end, he messes it up again by hypnotizing the whole gang.
• Busman's Holiday: The gang goes to La Serena to help Fred get some extra credit in science and to let Shaggy spend time somewhere non-frightening. Naturally, that's exactly when a ghost dinosaur shows up.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Mr. Hubley. For one, he mistakes the food replicas Scooby and Shaggy make of themselves for the real Scooby and Shaggy.
• The Comically Serious: Shaggy becomes this whenever he's in Badass mode. No, his iconic nasally, puberty-crack voice does not change when delivering lines like the following:
  Shaggy: (to the biker threatening him) This can go two ways, punk. One: you walk away. Two: I walk on your face.
• Completely Off-Topic Report: Fred comes to join the others depressed about their science teacher rejecting his project, despite it demonstrating all three of Newton's laws of motion. It was a booby trap.
• Continuity Nod: Freddy's Jerkass GPS returns from Abracadabra Doo. This time he gets them to their intended destination without nearly getting them killed in the process.
• Covers Always Lie: The Phantosaur doesn't drool green... Or is that...? Ew!
• Crisis Catch And Carry: Scooby grabs the catatonic Shaggy to get him away from the Phantosaur.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: As Fred points out in the movie, hypnosis can't make a person do something they wouldn't (or couldn't) do without it, meaning Shaggy is fully capable of wiping the floor with a biker gang, he's just too frightened and peace-loving to fight back normally.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Shaggy vs. bar full of bikers. Poor bastards never had a chance. invoked
• Deadpan Snarker: Daphne, somewhat surprisingly. Velma in some moments, though she spends a lot of the movie too lovestruck to make quips.
  Freddy: I think we may have this one wrapped up!
  Daphne: Not yet. You still haven't caught anyone in a net.
• Defeat Equals Friendship: After the initial beatdown, the head biker challenges Shaggy to a race through various "Dead Man's" roads. Shaggy saves him from falling down a cliff face when his bike goes out of control. When he later loses that race, he helps out Mystery Incorporated when the town is attacked by dinosaurs. He and his gang also spend the night camping outside the cave's entrance, expecting Shaggy would escape.
• Dinosaurs Are Dragons: The Fiery Phantosaur breathes fire. Also, the velociraptors have horns.
• Disc-One Final Boss: Ms. Deitch and Mr. Babbit are revealed to be behind the Phantosaur, using it to scare everyone away from the dig site so they could mine for silver thought to be hidden there. The gang lampshades how that mystery was much shorter than their usual ones and head on their way... then another Phantosaur (on fire) shows up.
• Does Not Like Spam: Velma and Winsor both state that they dislike salmon eggs.
• Doppelgänger Dating: Winsor is essentially a male version of Velma, from his bowl cut hair to his geeky interests to his dislike of salmon eggs. He even lampshades it, saying that she's like his clone.
• Dramatic Irony: Mr. Hubley ends up forgetting the trigger word "bad" which makes Shaggy brave and return to normal, yet the audience already knows, and the gang doesn't realize it until later in the movie.
• Dude, Not Funny!: Played With. When Scooby first sees the Phantosaur, he describes it to Shaggy. Seeing how scared it makes Shaggy and remembering his panic disorder, Scooby tries to play it off as a joke, leading Shaggy to say these words.
• Exact Words:
  • When he asks Daphne if she photoshopped Scooby's rescue dog card, she immediately says no. A beat later, she admits that Velma did instead.
  • The doctor forbids Shaggy to get into the Mystery Machine. What does Fred do? He paints over the letters to create the Mustard Machine.
• Fanservice Cover: Pretty women in bikinis appear on the La Serena Spa pamphlet.
• Fish Eyes: Shakey Joe has weird-looking eyes that aren't looking in the same direction.
• Foreshadowing: When Velma's on her date with Winsor, he really doesn't want to talk about the Phantosaur attacks.
• Funny Background Event:
  • Scooby provides these as usual. The bit where he gets hyped up on coffee even drags the rest of the gang into it.
  • Fred and Daphne are in the foreground trying to figure out what to do next, not realizing that they keep saying the codeword that switches Shaggy into "brave mode." Meanwhile, Scooby tries to figure out what the word is from what they're saying by repeating the words they say (with Fred and Daphne occasionally thinking he's responding to them), and manages to guess every word except for the right one.
  • As the dinosaurs are rampaging through the town, as it happens the town's movie theater is showing a double bill of Valley of the Gwangi and Beast from 20,000 Fathoms.
• Geeky Turn-On: Velma and Winsor instantly become attracted to one another when they discuss dinosaur fossils at the dig. It deepens after they get into a discussion about glasses.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: Shaggy uses one of the bikers, who he's put in an arm lock, to smack around the others.
• Heroic BSoD: Every time Shaggy gets scared, he goes into a breakdown.
• Heroism Incentive: Scooby Snacks yet again. Scooby actually uses one to wake Shaggy from his coma via aroma therapy.
• Hypno Fool: Mr. Hubley's hypnosis on Shaggy causes him to turn into a tough badass whenever he hears the word "bad".
• Hypno Pendulum: Mr. Hubley's equipment is much different than swinging a pocket watch in front of your face. Until an actual pendulum appears. The word that Shaggy needs to hear to turn into a serious badass happens to be "bad", but Scooby doesn't realize this until later.
• "I Can't Look!" Gesture: Scooby hides his face in his paws when Shaggy, in "brave" mode, threatens the leader of the biker gang who has him by the collar. It's unwarranted.
• Improbable Age: While it's quickly pointed out that it was photoshopped, for Scooby's Rescue Dog card to have been issued in 1969 as it claimed, Scooby would have to be at least 42 years old, an age which no Great Dane (or even dog in general) has come close to reaching.
• In Medias Res: The movie starts just after a mystery had already been solved, and the gang recounts what happened.
• It Must Be Mine!: While excavating, Dr. Svankmajer found an Allosaurus preserved in crystal. She wanted it more than anything and she and Winsor created the fiery Phantosaur to scare everyone away.
• Klatchian Coffee: Scooby becomes incredibly hyperactive after lapping up the coffee Shakey Joe mistakenly poured into his dog dish.
• Know When to Fold Them: During the fight with the biker thugs, one mook is thrown away and briefly knocked out by falling cans. When he comes to and is ready to charge in again, he freezes upon seeing that the entire gang is downed and groaning, while Shaggy just cracks his knuckles... after a moment of sweating, said mook promptly knocks himself out.
  Brave!Shaggy: Good call.
• Large Ham: Brave Shaggy, as lampshaded by Fred.
  "Is that part of the 'brave' thing? That you say weird stuff that sounds like movie lines?"
• Lampshade Hanging: This film is very lampshade heavy even as it simultaneously plays things completely straight. In addition to others already pointed out on this page, there's this:
  Freddy: I think we may have this one wrapped up!
  Daphne: Not yet. You still haven't caught anyone in a net.
  Freddy: True.
  • At around the hour mark of a ninety-minute movie, the gang has already caught one group of criminals.
  Daphne: Usually this takes a lot longer.
  • Also, the bit lampshading the villains' habit of confessing after being caught.
  "Can you shut him up? I'm trying to confess over here!"
• The Legend of X: The film's subtitle "Legend of the Phantosaur".
• Let's Get Dangerous!: When Shaggy is in brave mode, he shows himself capable of some insane feats of badassery. Eventually, he manages to work up the courage to do it without the hypnosis.
• Loophole Abuse: Shaggy is forbidden to ride in the Mystery Machine by the doctor, so Fred paints over the word "mystery" to make it read "mustard", resulting in a rather odd name for the van: the Mustard Machine.
• Love at First Sight: Velma and Winsor fall head over heels pretty much the moment they lay eyes on each other, especially Velma. Winsor at least needed a short conversation before it really kicked in.
• Like Is, Like, a Comma: Shaggy as usual.
  Shaggy: I think I'm going to, like, like this place.
• Love Makes You Dumb: Love causing a person to have their feelings cloud their ability to think rationally is played straight with Velma - it gets to the point where she can't even form full sentences once she sees Winsor.
• Mind-Control Eyes: Shaggy's eyes briefly turn into spirals as a result of Mr. Hubley's hypnosis, every time he becomes brave or returns to normal upon hearing the word "bad".
• My Instincts Are Showing: Scooby-Doo finds a dinosaur bone, which just so happens to be extremely rare. After Professor Svankmajer thanks him for it, he just buries it again.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The starter mystery that opens the film is at a haunted house that looks just like the one in the title sequence of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! and includes the screeching bats flying past.
  • Winsor's car has a bumper sticker that says "Been to Camp City", a reference to a location in the previous film "Camp Scare".
• Nerds Are Sexy: One can say this about Professor Svankmajer. Winsor and Velma definitely think so, about each other.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • Daphne turns the paint-stripper back on, and forgets to turn it off, causing the mines to explode and trapping everyone underground.
  • Daphne also accidentally says Shaggy's code word while he's in the middle of his plan to get them out of the collapsing caverns. This results in him shivering while clinging to a rock.
  • The ending, where Shaggy has his hypnosis undone, only for everyone else in the gang to believe they're Shaggy, too. Even Scooby.
  • Also the instance where Scooby-Doo finds a rare dinosaur bone, and Svankmajor and Winsor are going crazy about it. Once they move on, Scooby buries it again.
• Oblivious Guilt Slinging: Velma compliments Winsor for his courage in getting Dr. Svankmajer to safety during the Phantosaur attack. He isn't happy which makes sense after learning that he was helping Dr. Svankmayer make a second Phantosaur so that they could take a preserved Allosaurus for themselves.
• Out of Character: Velma, after falling in love with Winsor. She initially had little interest in solving the mystery. But she's more or less back in character when she learns of Winsor's involvement.
• Overly Long Scream: Shaggy is screaming endlessly for almost three hours by the time the movie starts, after getting spooked out during a mystery at a haunted house. He manages to stop when the doctor tells him to because, as he says, "people listen to doctors."
• Playing with Fire: The Phantasaur breathes fire.
• Police Are Useless: The cops that show up when the Fiery Phantosaur attacks town aren't much of a help. Of course, as usual, they show up at the end to cart off Professor Svankmajer and Winsor to prison.
• Ramming Always Works: Fred sideswipes the significantly bigger Phantosaur with the Mystery Machine as it's about to bite down on Scooby. The impact knocks the dinosaur off a cliff.
• Raptor Attack: The second-half of the film has several (to the point where the film almost feels like an unofficial Jurassic Park sequel). It turns out the raptors were the graduate students using stolen outfits from the dinosaur exhibit, though one wonders why they have horns.
• Recognition Failure: In a way. Mr. Hubley never gets Shaggy's name right.
• Rule of Cool: Brave Shaggy. In real life, hypnosis doesn't instantly turn you into a badass, (something Fred points out), but who cares when we get to see Shaggy beating up an entire gang of bikersinvoked and dropping one-liners like a pro?
• Running Gag: Scooby spends the entire movie guessing random words to find Shaggy's codeword, usually way off base. When he finally does figure it out, nobody can understand what he's saying.
• Schrödinger's Canon: Again, regarding whether or not the post-2010 movies take place in the same canon as Mystery Incorporated.
  • The gang is stated to still be attending high school and presumably still live in their hometown, just like in Mystery Incorporated. However, the classroom in Fred's flashback doesn't look like the classrooms in Crystal Cove High, and the town doesn't greatly resemble Crystal Cove. Though given the ending of Mystery Incorporated, their different appearances can be chalked up to the universe reset, but a problem with that argument is that the gang leaves Crystal Cove for college after the reset.
• "Scooby-Doo" Hoax: Mr. Hubley lampshades the basic formula when he's talking about how he couldn't get more land to make the spa bigger.
  Mr. Hubley: Waddya gonna do? Dress up as some monster and scare everyone away?
• Shout-Out:
  • At one point, Shaggy refers to his brave side as the other guy.
  • The raptor chase goes into the resort's kitchen and Mr. Hubley hides in a metal cabinet, like with Tim and Lex.
• Shown Their Work: Fred points out the fact that hypnosis cannot make a person do something they normally wouldn't. This means that everything Shaggy does when hypnotized is a part of his personality.
• Slippery Skid: The gang trips up the raptors with a jar of marbles.
• Snake Pit: When the main characters are trying to escape the mines when they are about to blow up, they find a pit of snakes they have to cross.
• Spear Counterpart: Seriously, would you believe Winsor is not part of Velma's family tree?
• Stern Teacher: Fred's teacher says that since he helped recover the greatest dinosaur find in history, he'll bump his grade up to a C-. Daphne asks what he'd have to do for an A.
• The Stinger: After the credits end, it cuts to the Mystery Machine wearing a giant Shaggy wig with the GPS complaining that if it had hands, it'd get rid of said wig.
• Take My Hand!: Velma tries to jump from a fallen stalactite to the ledge where the others are waiting. She falls short, but luckily, she's close enough for Shaggy to grab her hand.
• This Is Going to Suck: The restaurant proprietress reacts this way thrice. First after seeing how much Shaggy and Scooby eat, then when the bikers enter, and when Shaggy's hot dog mishap riles them.
• Toilet Humor / Urine Trouble: When Shaggy is threatened by the bikers.
  Shaggy: And there goes the bladder.
• Took a Level in Badass: Shaggy whenever his hypnosis kicks in. And when the cave is collapsing and his hypnosis gets turned off, he finally summons the courage to save the day.
• Trigger Phrase: Saying the word "bad" in front of Shaggy will turn him brave and fearless as part of his hypnosis. Saying it again returns him to normal.
• Walk Into Camera Obstruction: With Scooby and a ghost elephant during the opening credits when the gang is being chased by ghost animals.
• Wham Line:
  • Played with. When Shaggy is turned back into his regular self, he tells Fred that if he's going to jump to the ledge, he needs a movie line to say before he does it. They eventually end up with "When you say jump, I say 'How high?' ".
  • Played for Laughs at the ending. It doesn't take long to figure out that something went wrong with Mr. Hubley re-hypnotizing Shaggy into no longer having a bravery trigger phrase and just being his usual self again.
  Shaggy, Fred, Velma, Daphne, Scooby: Zoinks! Did it, like, work?
  Mr. Hubley: Oh, my.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: The mine snakes (which congregate in groups of thousands) cause Velma to freeze up for just long enough that she can't get across the makeshift stalactite bridge with the others.
• Wild Take: Scooby makes several of these after drinking coffee for the first time.

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