Western Animation / Scooby-Doo! Stage Fright

"Opening night, and you're ready to go
Ticket in your pocket to a sold-out show
Outside, the limousines are lining up in a row
Tonight, you're gonna have some fun
But there's a rumor going round
There's a phantom inside
A shadow and a mask as a cunning disguise
So if you hear a cackle find a place you can hide
'Cause tonight he wants to have some fun."

Scooby-Doo! Stage Fright is the 21st title in the made-for-video Scooby-Doo series. It was due out August 20, 2013, but had its television debut on Cartoon Network on August 10, 2013.

Fred and Daphne are finalists on a show called "Talent Star", which is being telecast from an opera house in Chicago, currently haunted by a vengeful Phantom. The suspects include a pint-sized singer with over-pushy stage parents, a magician, and a garish, ferocious diva.

Scooby-Doo! Stage Fright provides examples of:

• Affectionate Parody: Of The Phantom of the Opera—the monster of this movie is "The Phantom", who wants Christine, a singer, to win the talent contest. See Shout-Out for more details.
• Age-Inappropriate Art: Chrissy, a preteen at most, goes everywhere in opera gloves and a strapless dress and sings a love ballad that threatens violence on a homewrecker. Lampshaded by the gang:
  Velma: For a girl her age, that song seems a little... incredibly inappropriate.
  Fred: Yeah.
  Daphne: Very incredibly.
• Anguished Declaration of Love: The night before the contest, Daphne goes on a melodramatic rant to Velma about her feelings for Fred and her inability to tell him. Velma isn't surprised, but she tries to be supportive.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: The original phantom of The '70s would cause chaos and destruction and eventually began starting fires, but it wasn't until he broke the disco ball that the opera hall was shut down.
• The Artifact: Mel Richmond gripes about the fashion of the Disco Age before realizing Fred and Daphne are wearing exactly that.
• Asshole Victim: Lotte, one of the contestants, is the first victim of the Phantom's sabotage and the first one who has to resign from the show as a result. But she's also an Ax-Crazy, viciously competitive, Jerkass diva, who made a young fan cry with no shred of guilt, terrified Shaggy and Scooby, and yelled that she was gonna sue everyone afterwards.
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Shaggy and Scooby's task to go to the library and research the Opera House is suddenly detoured by... PIZZA!
• Bat Scare: The gang disturbs a big flock of roosting bats while exploring the sewer tunnels.
• Berate and Switch: A non-verbal example; when Shaggy and Scooby finish the pizza, they look up to see the staff covered in cheese and looking irritated...and then they burst into applause.
• Better than a Bare Bulb: Everything gets lampshaded in this movie. Fred and Daphne's relationship, Scooby & the Gang's frequent run-ins with ghosts, who makes better live bait... the list goes on.
• Blatant Lies: When Daphne confesses her love for Fred, Velma tries to pretend she's surprised but puts no effort into it. Daphne's too upset to notice.
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: The Prima Donna Chrissy Damon is the Blonde to her father and mother's Brunette and Redhead respectively.
• Brick Joke:
  • Velma mentions her decidedly niche hopes to see the Soap Diamond, only to earn herself a bunch of odd looks. Dewey Ottoman, one of the phantoms, is after exactly that gem.
  • After beating and catching one of the phantoms, an officer offers to drive the gang back to the show, stating he had bet $50 on Fred and Daphne to win. When the two throw the contest and the last phantom is caught, that same officer angrily tells the pair they owe him fifty bucks.
  • Velma repeatedly chastises Daphne for not talking to Fred about her feelings. During the credits, it turns out that Shaggy and Scooby have been having the same problem with Fred.
• Bruiser with a Soft Center: The security guard, a heavily muscled and intimidating guy, coos over Scooby and tries to tickle him under the chin when Shaggy disguises him as a baby.
• Busman's Holiday: Once again, the gang is trying to do something unrelated to mysteries when a ghost pops up and they have to unmask him. This time, the gang just goes with it - it even gets a lampshade at a few points.
• Car Chase: The gang gets into a car chase with the Phantom. It's massive.
• Casting Gag: The large security guard isn't the only bumbling authority figure played by Kevin Michael Richardson.
• Character Catchphrase: Brick Pimiento's "Fantastic!"
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • Fred plays a piece he wrote himself in the beginning, and Daphne later reveals to Velma that she wrote a song to the music based on her feelings for him. They use it in the tiebreaker match.
  • Shaggy and Scooby try to impress Brick Pimiento with an act including a bunch of corny jokes. Fred and Daphne tell the same jokes when they decide to throw the competition in Emma's favor.
  • Shaggy and Scooby smell lemon when they first run into the Phantom. When they run into another and don't smell lemon, it tips the audience off that there are multiple Phantoms. When they run into Dewey Ottoman and smell the same scent, it tips them off that Dewey is one of the Phantoms.
• "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: The original Phantom, who inspired the current Phantom, isolated himself from society and eventually went on his rampage because he believed he was too deformed to be accepted. Turns out he's only owned a funhouse mirror and doesn't look that bad.
• Darker and Edgier: The film includes a villain trying to knock Fred off a catwalk, kill him with an acetylene torch, and a scene where a body is seen hanging in the shadows, invoking an image of murder by hanging before the lights reveal that it's just a magician hung up by his harness and still very much alive. Scooby and Shaggy are also chased by the Phantom as he brandishes a meat cleaver.
• Didn't Think This Through: Dewey Ottoman didn't think to take off his headset when stealing the Soap Diamond, much less wear a mask when wearing a Phantom costume.
• Driver Faces Passenger: When Fred starts playing a song he wrote himself, Shaggy (who's driving) turns around to say he likes it. Fred instantly yells at him to get his eyes back on the road.
• Establishing Character Moment:
  • Dewey Ottoman's slightly neurotic obsession with cleanliness is on display from the very beginning. He mops up the footprints and wheel marks after people and complains about the stage trash can.
    Dewey: The garbage in this trash can is filthy. I want this garbage cleaned at once!
  • Lotte's grand entrance into the pizza joint, looking for Shaggy and Scooby. Before getting down to business, she spends a few minutes signing autographs, and by signing them, we mean carving the letters of her name into an old man's tongue.
  • Velma's preliminary investigation of the contestants allows her to meet them and see The Gimmick of each performance in sequence.
• Everyone Can See It: Everyone who bothers to notice automatically pins Daphne and Fred as a couple. The thing is, Fred doesn't notice... despite being in love with her.
• Evil Sounds Deep: The Phantom comes complete with a deep voice and magnificent, hooting Evil Laugh.
• Expy: Multiple characters are based directly on originals from The Phantom of the Opera.
  • The Phantom, naturally enough, is a carbon copy of his namesake. The original even calls himself "The Phantom of the Opera".
  • Chrissie is a riff on Christine, the singer with whom the Phantom is obsessed. Rather than being an orphan reminded of her father by the phantom, Chrissie's dad is the phantom or at least one of the men who took the role.
  • Lotte is pretty much just La Carlotta with even more attitude—the Phantom even does the "change the throat spray" trick from the 2004 movie. (Lotte is actually pronounced "Lotta").
  • Emma might be one to Lindsey Stirling, being a small brown-haired female violinist with a showy stage presence.
• Every Pizza Is Pepperoni: Shaggy and Scooby go to town on an extremely large pizza (they had to move tables because the one they were sitting at was smaller than the pizza); it's covered in pepperoni.
• Faint in Shock: Dewey Ottoman keeps passing out when the Phantom is mentioned.
• Fanservice: When the group gathers to discuss possible suspects in their hotel room, Daphne happens to be posed cutely on the bed. Shortly after there's a scene of the girls in bedclothes, with Velma in just an oversized t-shirt and socks and Daphne in straight-up lingerie.
• Feminine Leg Swish: When the guys are going to their own room for the night, Daphne begins swishing her legs back and forth as she makes eye contact with Fred, who tells her he'll see her in the morning. She sighs contentedly as she lay her head down on the bed, repeating Fred's words while continuing to swish her legs with the femininity of a girl in love. Also serves as Leg Focus and mild Fanservice for the film.
• Femme Fatalons: Lotte has very long nails. She can pierce walls with them and carve her name into Shaggy's shirt and Scooby's fur.
• Foil: Chrissy, the Spoiled Brat singer with not one but two Stage Parents, and Emma, the sweetheart violinist with folksy folks who are hoping to win the cash prize to save their farm. For such blatant, obvious contrasts, the movie does a good job restraining itself by never actually having them interact (except when Chrissy is briefly caught giving Emma a Death Glare).
• Forehead of Doom: Chrissy has a high forehead and is not very friendly.
• Foreshadowing:
  • The techie in the control booth cries out "He's everywhere!" when asked to report the Phantom's location from the closed-circuit cameras. There are four costumed Phantoms, plus a fifth who manifests only via the AV equipment.
  • Also, Velma casually mentions the Soap Diamond on display at the local museum in the first scene after the Cold Open. Stealing it turns out to be one of the Phantoms motive.
  • Neat Freak Dewey Ottomon expresses so much fear of the Phantom that the mere mention of his name causes him to have a fainting spell... except for the late-night incident at the hotel when he was too busy freaking out over Scooby-Doo and his germs to even bother caring about the Phantom right in front of him. Later that same night, he even takes it on himself to clean the mess the Phantom left - all of the Phantoms work to his advantage and any of them getting caught hurts his plan.
  • Brick Pimiento sounds incredibly nervous when Shaggy and Scooby apologize for knocking him over, saying they thought he was the Phantom. He actually is one of them.
• Freudian Slip: Daphne does not hide her love for Fred very well.
  Daphne (after Fred plays his song): Wow, Fred, that's beautiful. I really like you. It. I like it. Not you. I mean, I like you, but... uh... like your song?
  Fred (chipper): Thanks!
• Gambit Pileup: The Phantom may be causing chaos, but he's not the only one making a profit from the panic. There are four phantoms actively attacking the show at the same time, each with their crisscrossing objectives and entrance into the plot. It gets a little confusing as to who is doing what and when - and in a stroke of Fridge Brilliance it muddles the plot enough that the audience (expecting one Phantom) doesn't know who to latch their suspicions onto.
  • The first and possibly "main" Phantom to appear was Crissy's father, who was out to sabotage the other contestants so that Crissy would win. This is the "CHRISTINE MUST WIN" Phantom.
  • The other main Phantom is Dewey Ottoman, who moonlights as a high-profile thief and is using the whole thing as a cover so he can steal a diamond while the cops are distracted. This is the lemon-scented Phantom.
  • Mel Richmond is attempting to burn down the Opera House to collect the insurance and get rid of the drain on his finances. Notably, he only started doing this well after the first two Phantoms began their sprees (if not the very scene he was caught) and was merely using the opportunity to avoid suspicion.
  • Brick Pimiento was the last Phantom to be rounded up; he was exploiting the attacks to raise hype for the show and can be presumed to be the cause of the Phantom's command of the cameras. He's guilty of abetting criminals at the very least by exaggerating their effects and hindering the police. Like Mel, he seemed to have been using the opportunity, so he started later.
• Genre Throwback: This movie embraces a fair bit of the milieu of the 80s Scooby-Doo, abounding with literature references, Ship Tease, and character gimmicks.
• The Gimmick: In a cast full of talent contestants, everybody's got one, even the Neat Freak stage manager, Dewey Ottoman, who is a Gentleman Thief hunting down cleanliness-themed objects, like the Ammonia Lisa, the Sponge of Turin, and lately the Soap Diamond.
• The Guards Must Be Crazy: The Opera House's security guards trip over their own feet, and are so incompetent that they're ultimately forced to bring the police in to deal with it. Exactly as one of the Phantoms planned.
• Grumpy Old Man: The night of the show, Shaggy dresses Scooby up as an older man to sneak him into the opera house. He then instructs him on how to behave, even using the phrase "these kids today".
• Honor Before Reason: Fred and Daphne win the contest through many votes, but they choose to throw the contest on behalf of a sweet little girl who was a contestant, a violin prodigy. Fred and Daphne's score gets drastically reduced when they start telling corny jokes. Justified, if Emma, the little girl, won the contest she could save her parents' farm with the prize. Fred and Daphne however couldn't think of a reason for needing the money... nor did they think to merely give Emma the money after they won it themselves.
• Informed Ability: Lotte is framed as one of the biggest competitors in the contest for her singing ability, but thanks to the phantom she never gets a chance to show it off.
• Kansas City Shuffle: Shaggy's and Scooby's increasingly elaborate attempts to get past the security guard.
  • The guard catches Shaggy wheeling a large instrument case into the theater, which Shaggy insists is just a bass, and demands to see the inside. The case does carry an instrument; Scooby is hiding behind the case.
  • In the middle of a chase, the guard thinks he has Shag n' Scoob when he sees what looks like a tail and human legs in a rack of clothes. It turns out to be just a belt and shoes; Shaggy and Scooby were hiding in the ceiling above the rack.
• Kick the Dog: Lotte Lavoie refuses to give a fangirl an autograph because of her poor fashion sense and is remorseless while watching her run off in tears.
  Lotte: Yeah, yeah, you better run!
• Know When to Fold 'Em: Waldo decides to leave once the phantom sabotages his act while he's performing and encourages the others to leave as well. Girl-O-Saurus Rex soon follows after their instruments get sabotaged.
• Lampshade Hanging:
  • Shaggy gets a great instance of this when told that there are rumors about the Opera House being haunted.
    Shaggy: (casually) Of course it's haunted. When do we ever go anywhere that is not haunted?
  • Also, coupled with a bit of Bat Deduction (that would make a lot of sense if it wasn't untrue) when Daphne asks about their habit of running into ghosts everywhere they go.
    Daphne: Fred, why do ghosts and monsters show up wherever we go? Is it something about us?
    Fred: (as if it's obvious) No, this happens to everyone.
    Daphne: What?
    Fred: It would just be too much of a coincidence if it just happened to us, so logically everyone must run into ghosts and monsters all the time.
• Laugh of Love: Daphne gets very giggly when Fred picks her to go investigate the opera house with him.
• Legacy Character: The original Phantom bedeviled the Opera House back during its "disco hall" phase in the '70s. The new one has made a few modifications to the original tuxedo. Though they meet the original Phantom at some point, the slew of Phantoms these days are pulling Copycat Crimes for various reasons.
• Less Embarrassing Term: Girl-o-saurus Rex call Waldo the short ventriloquist "adorable". Waldo has a better term.
  Waldo: I am not adorable. I am hot.
  Nancy: You know, he kind of is.
• Literal Metaphor: While Girl-o-saurus Rex is watching Waldo perform, Cathy says he's on fire. One of the others agrees, thinking she means the act is great. She means the dummy is ablaze.
• Little Miss Snarker: Downplayed with Emma, who has a very subtle strain of snark that you have to pay attention to notice.
  Fred: Wow, Emma, you do make better bait than us!
• Masking the Deformity: Subverted. When the gang tracks down the Phantom in the sewers beneath the opera house, he dramatically rants about how he's needed to hide all his life to conceal his hideous face. Then he yanks off his mask... to reveal a completely normal-looking guy. It turns out that his only mirror growing up was one from a fun house, and he never saw his face in any mirrors when he went out thanks to wearing a mask.
• Mega Meal Challenge: When Shaggy asks for a pizza bigger than the extra-extra-large, the waitress says it's not on the menu and he and Scooby have to sign a liability disclaimer in case they die. She also has to move them because their table isn't big enough to hold it. The pizza has to be wheeled out using signals like an airplane and is long enough to cover a humongous table. Shaggy and Scooby polish it off in seconds, wowing the staff.
• Minnesota Nice: Emma and her parents, though Emma's accent is more subtle than her parents' accents.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Fred and Daphne's decades-long status as Implied Love Interests appears here as a Running Gag in which Daphne is in love with Fred, but while Everyone Can See It, she Cannot Spit It Out. Fred is the same way with her.
  • Daphne's sleepwear is similar to the lingerie she wore in an episode of Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated.
  • Nearly everything that isn't a Phantom of the Opera Shout-Out can be found in an old Hanna-Barbera You Meddling Kids series.
    • Emma Gale serves as the younger Tagalong Kid.
    • Girl-O-Saurus Rex is a girl band, and while classic Scooby-Doo wasn't a Band Toon, Hanna-Barbera produced several Band Toons with a similar formula.
    • Waldo's gimmick of having a little person in a ventriloquist act was used on at least two other shows.
    • The Great Pauldini is both the incompetent magician seen in Scooby before and named after a writer (also done before). Further, one of Paul Dini's early freelance writing credits was The New Scooby-Doo Mysteries episode "A Halloween Hassle in Dracula's Castle", which was loaded with classic monster parodies. On top of all that, Paul Dini is married to Real Life magician Misty Lee.
• Nice Girl: Emma loves everybody, is extremely kind, very sportsman-like (especially in contrast to the other contestants), makes instant friends with Fred and Daphne, and even seems to be rooting for them at some points. She and her folks are such incredibly good people that the viewer seems almost expected to think it's an act and one of them is the Phantom, especially after we find out that they need to win the competition to pay off their debts. It isn't. They are that good.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: For all her insistence that Daphne confess her feelings to Fred, Velma is the one who interrupts with news of yet another mystery when Daphne finally gets up the nerve.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Emma Gale is a showy stunt-violinist and brunette, just like America's Got Talent performer Lindsey Stirling.
• No Name Given: The members of Girl-o-Saurus Rex are named Cathy, Nancy, Donna, and Amy... but you'd be forgiven for not knowing that; the only time they're named is when one of the girls gets snippy with Cathy for being too much of a Genki Girl.
• Not so Dire: The gang arrives after hearing Colette scream to find a human shape hanging from the catwalk. However, when Fred turns the lights on, it turns out that the shape is the Great Pauldini, suspended in his harness after being pushed from the catwalk, and very much unharmed.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: Except for Brick, the various Phantoms are some of the most dangerous villains in the franchise and go to extreme lengths to succeed.
  • Christine's father is willing to poison a singer, set fire to a dummy while the ventriloquist was using it, and destroy instruments just to let his daughter win. However, he had no reason to try to murder Shaggy and Scooby at the hotel and nearly succeeded if Fred hadn't intervened.
  • Dewey is the most dangerous of the phantoms, thanks in part due to being an actual criminal. His obsession with the Soap Diamond reaches a head when he chases the gang in a car chase and could've killed innocents in what could be called vehicular manslaughter.
  • In his only scene as the Phantom Mel is shown to be willing to set the opera on fire with people still in it, not to mention attempting to kill Fred with a blowtorch. It's also implied that he pushed Pauldini off a catwalk and left him hanging in midair.
  • While he's one of the good guys in the present, Steve (the original phantom) forced the opera (which was turned into a disco at the time) to close after his antics became too destructive. He admits that he isn't proud of this since people could have been seriously hurt.
• Not-So-Innocent Whistle: The security guard who keeps trying to keep Scooby out starts whistling while pretending he and Shaggy gave him the slip. Then he yanks back the clothing he thinks they're hiding in.
• No Wrong Answers Except That One: When Shaggy and Scooby initially catch Brick Pimiento to show him the juggling act they've been practicing, Brick says that he's lived his life by two principles: 1) All talent deserves to be recognized and 2) Juggling is an exception to the first rule.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Downplayed. Dewey Ottoman does hate germs and filth, but he's not the swooning wimp he pretends to be, not by a long shot.
• Obvious Trap: Fred and Daphne's original plan to catch the Phantom, where they practically started to sing that they would be "going to sleep in their dressing room". The only real reaction they got was from a nearby janitor, who kindly informed them that no one cared.
• Not With the Safety On, You Won't: A non-gun example: Shaggy grabs a fire extinguisher to put out the curtains the Phantom set ablaze, but it won't work. Then Scooby flips the safety switch, and the foam blasts out so hard it almost knocks Shaggy over.
• Only Sane Man: Velma among the gang, as usual. Waldo and Emma are among the contestants.
• Perky Goth: Cathy, the green-haired member of Girl-o-Saurus Rex. The other members are pretty perky as well but are a little bit better at hiding it. Slightly.
  Cathy: (high pitched giggle) Omigosh. We are so metal!
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Inverted. There's no real team, but the performers gathering for the talent show are quite the odd group. You have Fred and Daphne, of course; Chrissy, preteen diva and the Phantom's Favorite; Emma, preteen violinist with just a smidge of attitude; and Lotte Lavoie, a violently competitive, more experienced diva who Shaggy declares is "scarier than the Phantom." And then you have The Great Pauldini, the bombastic and slightly disorganized magician; Waldo, the ventriloquist who sits on his dummy's lap; and Girl-o-Saurus Rex, the country heavy metal band that tries a little too hard to prove how metal it is.
  Velma: A lemon-scented ghost would fit right in with this crowd.
• Reasonable Authority Figure:
  • The hotel desk clerk politely attempts to tell off the more affluent Damons for shoving their way past Velma when they check-in and only relents when Velma tells him it isn't worth the hassle.
  • The Chicago cops take Dewey's pleas for extra security seriously, although Dewey was playing them to divert security away from the Soap Diamond, and are generally polite and professional with the gang in the climax.
• Redemption Equals Death: Subverted; the original Phantom terrorized the opera house back when it was a disco, even setting fires and breaking the disco ball to chase everyone away. However, in modern times, he's a peaceful guy. After the gang makes friends with him, he swings in to save Fred from one of his copycats, ultimately resulting in the two and the catwalk they landed on crashing to the stage. Seeing his reflection in a paint-spattered mirror, he thinks he's dying, but Daphne corrects him.
• Red Herring: Played with, as it turns out there are at least four phantoms running around each with their reason for donning the costume and terrorizing the show, which includes nearly every obvious suspect and one who wasn't so obvious. Only one of them turns out to be harmless (well at least in this decade anyway).
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: When the gang is brainstorming suspects, Daphne suggests Dewey Ottoman, on the grounds that "he's creepy." Fred asks if he has a motive, and Daphne claims that "creepy" is a motive. Dewey does end up being one of the Phantoms, but his motives are tangentially related to "creepiness"; he's trying to steal a cleanliness-related treasure, the Soap Diamond.
• Rule of Three: Invoked by Dewey as one of his robbery motives.
  "Three's a collection! Two is just bookends."
• Running Gag:
  • Daphne poorly hides being in love with Fred, at which Velma rolls her eyes. Culminates in an entire scene of Daphne being melodramatic and Velma being a mix of supportive and sarcastic.
  • Shaggy and Scooby attempting to wow Brick Pimiento with a lame act. Brick initially makes the mistake of encouraging them, then starts calling security.
  • Shaggy and Scooby's inventive ways of sneaking Scooby past the security guard.
  • Multiple times, the unmasking of an apprehended Phantom is immediately followed by the un-corseting of said Phantom, not all of which were as slender as the supposed ghost.
• Scary Black Man: The main security guard is an aggressive black man.
• "Scooby-Doo" Hoax: Inverted and played straight. Two Phantoms aren't trying to scare people away from the opera house, but are either a) trying to misdirect the police's attention in a Batman Gambit so that they're all watching the Opera House at the time of his diamond heist or b) trying to get publicity for the show and actually attract people. The original Phantom, way back in the '70s, was attempting to do this, however (and succeeded).
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Waldo outright walks out on the show after the Phantom sets his dummy on fire while he's using it. Girl-o-Saurus Rex follows him out when their instruments are sabotaged, and The Great Pauldini follows suit a few hours later after getting trapped in his harness for hours.
• Serenade Your Lover: Daphne confesses to Velma that she wrote a song explaining how she feels about Fred, but every time she thinks about performing it, she feels as though she's going to vomit, faint, or both. She manages it in the tiebreaker round, making it double as a lyrical love confession. Unfortunately, given that it was on-stage as part of the tiebreaker round, Fred isn't sure whether she meant it or it was part of the act.
• Sheep in Sheep's Clothing: This is what Emma Gale and her family turn out to be. They were introduced as genuinely nice people but were thought to be involved in the phantom attacks to get the prize money for their farm, and acted a little strangely at times. Nope. They are that nice.
• Ship Tease: There are numerous jokes about Fred and Daphne's relationship throughout the movie, including one scene where they get mistaken for a couple by the opera house's owner. Daphne gets very flustered.
• Shout-Out:
  • As an Affectionate Parody of The Phantom of the Opera, there are naturally many nods to the original.
    • The movie is set in an opera house haunted by a phantom whose presence is all too often accompanied by an Ominous Pipe Organ and who is obsessed with a singer named Christine.
    • The original phantom's most iconic act of destruction was to drop a ceiling decoration, albeit a disco ball rather than a chandelier this time.
    • One of Christine's rivals gets sabotaged via contaminated throat spray and ends up losing her voice.
    • The hanging body off the catwalk, which thankfully was the magician Pauldini who had gotten stuck in a harness and couldn’t get loose, darkly parodies the Phantom’s murder of Buquet the stagehand.
    • The original phantom was rumored to be hideously deformed and is so convinced of it that he lives in the sewer away from the world. Turns out, he's only ever seen himself through a funhouse mirror—he's not that ugly.
  • Back in The '70s, the opera house was used as a disco, a nod to another Phantom.
  • There's a big nod to Gaston Leroux's other works; the most famous Joseph Rouletabille story had a culprit who had multiple identities and disappeared in plain sight.
  • In an act of Parental Bonus, two girls in the movie are named after Colette Gale, the authoress of a pornographic adaptation of Phantom of the Opera.
  • During a car chase with the Phantom, Scooby ends up clinging to the front of his car. Then he runs through the car to jump onto another vehicle behind (the Mystery Machine). The villain can't react in time and rams into a truck which gets something unclean all over him.
• Skewed Priorities: When Phantom Mel gives the standard You Meddling Kids speech, the African American security guard who's been trying to keep out Scooby gets distracted by the mention of a dog. He drops the attempted arsonist/murderer to go after Scooby.
• Speak in Unison: While Fred is driving himself nuts trying to interpret Daphne's behavior during the tiebreaker round, the exasperated Shaggy and Scooby yell at him in unison to just talk to her.
• Spoiled Brat: Chrissy is a young child and very unpleasant.
• Stage Mom: Both of Chrissy's parents, who are narcissistic, loud, pushy, and do everything they can to facilitate Chrissy's success. Exaggerated to the point of sociopathy when they discuss that the Phantom wants Chrissy to win. Especially given that this particular Phantom is Chrissy's dad.
  Chrissy's Mom: We've got a genuine psychopath on our side! Score!
• Stating the Simple Solution: Velma, Shaggy, and Scooby offer the obvious solution to Daphne and Fred (respectively) confessing their (obvious) romantic feelings for each other — they should tell the other.
• Stealth Pun: The Phantom's true identity. More specifically the phantom who wants to steal the Soap Diamond — he's a straight-up Phantom Thief.
• Strange Minds Think Alike: Shaggy and Scooby's advice to Fred regarding the latter's feelings for Daphne is the same Velma gave Daphne about Daphne's feelings for Fred.
• Super-Stoic Shopkeeper: The waitress at the pizza joint where Shaggy and Scooby detour.
  Shaggy: Gimme eat!
  Waitress: Right this way, sir.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial:
  • Brick Pimiento concludes his self-introduction with, "...and there's definitely no ghost."
  • When he mentions the gang catching the Phantoms, he says they got "every last one." There's still one left.
• Sword Cane: At one point the Phantom wields a sword-featherduster.
• Take That!:
  • The trend continues, in comparison to the teen romance melodrama in the recent TV show, this movie goes out of its way to turning the romance back into a subplot that goes back into being a Will They or Won't They? by the end credits. Though since a great number of crew members from the show returned to make this, an alternative interpretation is that this is a case of Decon-Recon Switch or Self-Deprecation.
  • In-universe, during his act, Waldo asks Hafnagel if he's an actor or a dummy. Hafnagel can't see a difference.
• Tender Tomboyishness, Foul Femininity: Between the two young girls competing in the talent show: Emma Gale is a polite, soft-spoken and overall kind farmer girl dressed in a shirt, jeans and sneakers while Christine "Chrissy" Damon is a self-absorbed, spoiled diva dressed in an Age-Inappropriate Dress and isn’t hesitant on insulting other people.
• Terrified of Germs: Mr. Ottoman, the guy in charge of the competition. Turns out to be what gives him away as one of the Phantoms. The lemon scent that Shaggy and Scooby picked up during their encounter with the Phantom was probably his hand sanitizer.
• Took a Level in Badass:
  • Shaggy is a downplayed version of this trope. His cowardliness is much less noticeable here than in most other parts of the franchise as he is putting himself in danger to help get things done and keep others safe. He's also more competent in this movie as he goes out of the way to do things himself without having to be told or bribed with Scooby snacks. He even figures out the second Phantom's identity and goals on his own.
  • By association Scooby, as his and Shaggy's fearfulness go hand in hand.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: The little diva girl Chrissy… and her song, "Homewrecker". She spends the whole movie in a strapless dress and opera gloves, and she's not even a teenager. She's also gleeful when the Phantom tells her that he'll destroy all the other contestants if necessary for her to win and is more irritated over her dad (the first Phantom) being stupid enough to get caught than that one of her parents was arrested.
• Tuckerization: The stage magician is called "The Great Pauldini."
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: Daphne confides to Velma that the time spent with Fred preparing and rehearsing their song for the talent show has made her fall in love with him, but she doesn't have the nerve to tell him upfront, at which point Velma advises her to do something about it. This culminates in a gag during the end credits where it's revealed Fred has been confiding reciprocal feelings to Shaggy and Scooby.
• Wolverine Claws: Lotte brandishes her footlong fingernails like weapons and can stab and carve through walls with them. She occasionally uses them to sign her name into others' clothes and flesh.
• World-Weary Waitress: Shaggy and Scooby go to a pizzeria in Chicago, where they encounter a World Weary Waitress. They state they want to take part in an eating challenge. The waitress tells them she'll have to move them to another table. When they ask why, she delivers the reply with a flat, uninterested tone saying, "Because your pizza is bigger than this table." She does actually show a moment of incredulity when Shaggy and Scooby actually finish off the massive pizza.
• Wrestler in All of Us: Fred ends up putting "The Phantom" in a full-nelson as "The Phantom" is unmasked.
• Writing Around Trademarks:
  • "Talent Star" is a spoof of American Idol, and there are other shows like "America's Got Singing'', "Sing or Die", and "Singity Sing-Song Sing."
  • Velma uses the "Giggle" search engine to look for information while the gang stays at Chicago's famous "Canard" hotel (in real life, the Drake Hotel).^note "Canard" is French for "duck", while "Drake" is English for the adult male of the species.
  • Brick Pimiento considers aloud leaking security footage of the phantom to Whotube.

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