In Scooby-Doo, Where Are You Now! around the 20:15 mark, there is an interesting piece of concept art. When they are showing the Black Knight's model sheet, on the left, another production material is briefly shown reading "Scooby-Doo and the Curious Case of the Blue Falcon." Since this project was never made, it's unclear if it was an early title for Mask of the Blue Falcon, an early name for one of the 1970s crossovers, or some entirely different project that was never made. Kudos to Juan for spotting this Easter Egg!

Building off of Fun Fact #221, in addition to the 50th anniversary, several other milestone anniversaries for the franchise occur on Friday the 13th. The fifth anniversary in 1974, the 100th anniversary in 2069, and the 500th anniversary in 2469 all land on Friday the 13th.

Thanks to Dszazstin for coming up with this week's fun fact!

Besides being the site's anniversary tomorrow, 10 years ago on September 29 marks when the first fun fact was posted, and 5 years ago yesterday (September 1) was the anniversary of the first weekly poll being posted. Given this, I was in the mood to do sort of a meta, stats-based fun fact for this week. I thought it would be fun to see which episode/film has won the most weekly polls in the five years that they've been happening on the blog.

I went back through all the weekly poll results and tabulated how many times each episode won. Note that I only included polls where episodes are the options. I did not include the "favorite villain" polls that we did in 2020 in these stats since people were voting on just the villains rather than the actual episodes. Since I went through all of the old results, I decided to include the stats for the top 5 places.

Both Witch's Ghost and "A Night of Fright Is No Delight" have won six polls each, which puts them both in first place! Our second place was also a tie between "Happy Birthday, Scooby-Doo!" and "The Loch Ness Mess." Each of those episodes won five polls.

Our third through fifth place winners are even bigger ties between multiple options, so here are the lists:

3rd place (won four polls)
Vampire Bats and Scaredy Cats
Boo Brothers
Zombie Island
Scooby-Doo! Monsters Unleashed
Come Undone
I Put a Hex on You!

4th place (won three polls)
A Gaggle of Galloping Ghosts
Wedding Bell Boos
Cyber Chase
Camp Scare
Doo Not Disturb

5th place (won two polls)
What a Night for a Knight
Foul Play in Funland
​Go Away Ghost Ship
Haunted House Hang-Up
The Headless Horseman of Halloween
Hang in There, Scooby-Doo!
A Fit Night Out for Bats
The Nutcracker Scoob
Wanted Cheddar Alive
The Scooby-Doo Project
A Terrifying Round with a Menacing Metallic Clown
Loch Ness Monster
Pirates Ahoy
Mystery of the Missing Mystery Solvers
Mask of the Blue Falcon
WrestleMania Mystery
Beach Beastie
Shaggy's Showdown
Brave and the Bold
Happy Halloween
Trick or Treat

The first Scooby Snacks box shown in the franchise is in "Scooby-Doo and a Mummy, Too!" Contrary to the colorful design that the box eventually had, the first Scooby Snacks box is depicted as a pale blue color simply reading "Scooby Snacks" in normal print.

This week's fun fact was discussed a bit last year in the comments section, so I'm aware that some people are already familiar with it. However, I thought it was worth still doing a fun fact about it, since my impression is that many fans still aren't aware of this.

Alan Smithee from Return to Zombie Island is a reference to an in-joke amongst screenwriters who want to disown their work. The term was coined in 1968, and was first officially credited in the 1969 movie Death of a Gunfighter. During the filming, the lead actor Richard Widmark did not feel director Robert Totten was fit for the job, and he was shortly replaced by Don Siegel. Both Totten and Siegel were dissatisfied with the film in the end, and felt that the film's plot had gotten muddled to the point where it didn't represent either of their creative visions. As a solution to this, they suggested crediting the film's director as a fake name, "Al Smith." However, the name was already in use, so they chose a less common name, Alan Smithee.

The name became an in-joke amongst writers, and was used for several dozen films in the 1980s and 1990s, as well as a few in later decades. You can check out the full list of films credited to Alan Smithee on the Wikipedia article.

In the case of Return to Zombie Island, producer Jim Krieg is not a fan of supernatural villains within Scooby-Doo, because he feels the franchise should stick to the person-in-a-mask formula. Since Alan Smithee directed Zombie Teenagers and the Island of Doom in the film, this is a likely implication that this is a reference to Krieg's desire to disavow the original Zombie Island film, due to it not fitting his idea of what he believes the Scooby-Doo formula should be.

In "Scooby Dude" from A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, Scooby's rubber ducky has the exact same design as the one that appears in almost every episode of The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo. It's not officially confirmed whether or not it is a direct reference, but since both shows were written by Tom Ruegger, there's a possibility that it may have been a reference. Thanks to Juan for contributing this week's fun fact!

Scooby-Doo has a surprising connection to Robert F. Kennedy's assassination in 1968. In 1966, Hanna-Barbera had nine action cartoons airing on network television, including shows like The Adventures of Superman and Space Ghost and Dino Boy. The cartoons had a considerable amount of violence, and most of the plots involved bad guys getting beaten up by the heroes. Hanna-Barbera's cartoons continued to have a lot of fantasy violence throughout the next couple of years, with Joe Barbera even noting that he felt those type of action cartoons were the best way to ensure they stayed on the cutting edge of children's entertainment.

In 1968, following the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, these cartoons led to outrage by a number of parental groups, citing that the cartoons were too violent at a sensitive time for America. It's also worth nothing when Kennedy was alive, he'd worked with the FCC to help reform children's television and make it less violent. This was essentially a turning point for Hanna-Barbera to change their style of cartoons, particularly after the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence called for children's cartoons to become less violent following the assassination.

Following the commission's statement, the networks all made statements that they'd be working with the cartoon companies to reduce the amount of violence in children's cartoons. The very next year, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! aired for the first time, featuring a group of average teens and their dog who had the appeal of being expert mystery-solvers, rather than focusing on more violent action-adventure style plots.

One of the early concept art posters for Scooby-Doo! Abracadabra Doo was designed by Eric Semones in 2008. Semones was involved with the franchise as far back as Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?, after he'd applied for a job with Hanna-Barbera in 1966 following the conclusion of his time in the Navy. When creating this poster for Abracadabra Doo, Semones attempted to capture the same atmosphere and brush texture that the original Where Are You series had. This info was found on Keyframemagazine.com, and I'd recommend reading the full article if you have the time, as there are a lot of super interesting facts about the franchise's background designers and artists.

Thanks to Juan for sharing this article and background painting with me!

A few episodes of Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated and Be Cool, Scooby-Doo! had the wrong titles listed by TV providers. These include:

• "Escape from Mystery Manor" was shown by many international TV providers at the time as "Escape from Mystery Island"
• "Grim Judgment" was misspelled as "Grim Judgement" by TV providers
• "Theater of Doom" was advertised on Cartoon Network's site back in the day as "Theater of the Doomed"
• "Sorcerer Snacks Scare" was sent to TV providers as "Sorcerer Snack Scare"

The last three errors can still be seen if you attempt to Google the title (even if you Google the correct titles, Google will show the incorrect title). In terms of the first one, I don't have a source other than my own memory of it being misadvertised; however, a bit of digging on the ScoobyAddicts forum does show this post from March 30, 2011, before the episode aired.

In "Aliens Among Us" from Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated, the coordinates given for the grave in Gatorsburg are "34 11 15N, 118 20 46W." Typing the address into Google Earth shows that in real life, these coordinates geolocate to 3300 West Pacific Avenue in Burbank, California. This is the address of a Warner Brothers studio, which can be found on the studio's official website here. 

Series producer and head writer Mitch Watson also clarified in an interview from the Unmasked History of Scooby-Doo podcast that the coordinates are Sam Register's office, and that it was an intentional Easter egg they hoped fans would uncover (Thanks to Ed for the link).