FILM · 2002 · USA
Scooby-Doo
70 archived facts 6 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
47 Interesting Facts About Scooby-Doo
- #003
Neil Fanning was on the film set every day to perform Scooby's dialogue so the actors would have someone to interact with. This led to him and Matthew Lillard becoming close friends, since they had to be very creative to make Shaggy and Scooby's friendship convincing (because Lillard was acting opposite nothing but Fanning's off-screen voice).
- #004
When Daphne tries to assign Shaggy and Scooby to explore the castle with her, Shaggy objects. He says: "Like, Scoob and I don't do castles. Because castles have paintings and suits of armor with eyes that watch you; you think it's a statue and there's a guy inside who follows you every time you turn around!" Everything Shaggy describes happened in What a Night for a Knight (1969), the first Scooby-Doo cartoon to air.
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According to Sarah Michelle Gellar, the original script included a scene with a joke about Fred's (Freddie Prinze Jr.) sexuality. She said, "Daphne and Fred were fighting and then I yelled at him, 'And that ascot makes you look gay!' And I slam the door and they cut it." In fact, Gellar found that particular scene so funny that it became the reason she signed on to the film in the first place.
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The film was initially conceived, similarly to Josie and the Pussycats (2001), as a loving parody of the original cartoon rather than a direct adaptation, a much raunchier creation compared to the cartoons (also a Hanna-Barbera production). After that film failed, this one was reworked to be tamer and more family-friendly. Even so, the final cut still pushes the PG rating quite hard. In Australia, however, it received only a "G" rating.
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When Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002) was released in cinemas, Scooby-Doo was one of several films whose trailer it showed. It was reported that many people (especially Harry Potter fans who were not Scooby-Doo fans) paid for the film but left after the trailer was shown. (This was before many people watched film trailers online.)
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Co-writer James Gunn said that Velma was explicitly gay in the original script, but the studio kept watering the script down and eventually dropped it during rewrites. One of the executives explained that this was because she was not gay in the cartoon, so there was no need to add it to this adaptation.
- #043
Freddie Prinze Jr. and Sarah Michelle Gellar had previously appeared together in I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997); Matthew Lillard appeared in Scream (1996), and Gellar in Scream 2 (1997), both written entirely by Kevin Williamson. Lillard and Prinze also appeared together in Wing Commander (1999) and She's All That (1999), in which Gellar also appeared.
- #044
Other characters from the show, such as Mr. Wickles and Old Hank, were planned to appear, along with Josie and the Pussycats appearing as a band at the party, a lifeless Speed Buggy in the parking lot, The Jetsons playing on TV, and William Hanna and Joseph Barbera making small appearances at the end as the university's deans, praising Mystery Inc. for saving the school.
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The kitchen in the Spooky Island castle where Shaggy and Scooby hold their burping/farting contest is the same kitchen where the brainwashing training video was filmed. This explains why a camera is present in the kitchen, and when Shaggy notices it he says, "lights, camera, action. Huh Scoob."
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The film's story takes place ten years after the events of the various animated adventures both Scooby-Doos had with Mystery Incorporated. It serves as a live-action continuation in which Mystery Inc. was originally shown in the cartoons as a young group of "meddling kids," but the film portrayals show them past their college years, with all four matured and modernized as young adults.
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Arturo Mercado once again reprised the role of Scrappy-Doo in the Latin American Spanish dub. In the Brazilian Portuguese dub, Orlando Drummond and Mário Monjardim reprised the roles of Scooby and Shaggy that they had played since the original series (Monjardim briefly stopped voicing him in the '80s, and Drummond voiced Scooby continuously for 40 years!).
