Rondo Hatton may have somewhat inspired The Creeper from Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? Hatton played a character named The Creeper in two different films, House of Horrors and The Brute Man. In these films, The Creeper was not a monster, but rather, a madman whose body was horrifyingly disfigured. In House of Horrors, The Creeper becomes the inspiration for an artist's sculpture, but when critics denigrate the artist's work, he has The Creeper murder them. The Brute Man continues a similar plotline, where The Creeper marauds around town committing brutal murders.

Before any more films could be made, Rondo Hatton died of a heart attack in 1946, at the young age of 51. Hatton did not live to see the reaction to his films, as they were released after he died. Unfortunately, the reception to both of these films was generally negative, with much criticism of Rondo Hatton's acting.

Thank you so much to Lance for suggesting this idea for a fun fact!

This very well may be the most surprising fun fact I've ever posted on here haha.

​I was shocked to find this out after my theme song ranking from last week, but apparently, the guy who sang the Shaggy & Scooby Doo Get a Clue! theme song, Mark Mothersbaugh, is also responsible for singing another hit that is likely well-known to most people. Mark is most famous for the lead singer of the band Devo, whose song "Whip It" was a huge hit in the 1980s. So yes, the guy who sung "Whip It" is the same person who sings the Shaggy & Scooby-Doo Get a Clue! theme song.

There have been six instances of Scooby-Doo referencing popular songs within a two-year span of their release.

At the end of "The Phantom of the Country Music Hall" from The New Scooby-Doo Movies, Shaggy and Scooby sing the lyrics "when you're hot, you're hot; when you're not, you're not." These lyrics are from Jerry Reed's song "When You're Hot, You're Hot," which was released in 1971 on the album of the same name.

Popular music was referenced twice in the 1980s. ​The New Scooby-Doo Mysteries had the monsters doing the dance to Michael Jackson's "Thriller," which had just been released in 1982 on the album of the same name. In the premiere episode of The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo, a vampire artist named Ghoulio sings his song "To All the Ghouls I've Loved Before." This song is a parody of the song "To All the Girls I've Loved Before" with the first verse being exactly the same (besides the fact that "ghouls" is substituted for "girls"). Although the song was recorded in 1975 by Willie Nelson, it didn't gain popularity until 1984 when a duet version featuring Julio Iglesias was released.

"I'd Do Anything" by Simple Plan was featured in "It's Mean, It's Green, It's the Mystery Machine" is featured in What's New, Scooby-Doo?. The song was released two days after the first episode of What's New, Scooby-Doo? premiered, and was included in the episode less than a month after its initial release. The song would go on to great success, charting at #51 on the Billboard Top 100 in the US, and #15 on U.S. pop radio. Later, their songs "The Worst Day Ever" and "You Don't Mean Anything" from their first studio album would also be featured in the episode "Simple Plan and the Invisible Madman."

The final instance of this is a bit of an odd one, but a song included in Scooby-Doo and the Monster of Mexico was utilized as a chase song, and was not made for the movie. That song is "¿A Donde Vas?" by Carolina Lao. The song was released the same year as the movie came out. Both this and Simple Plan have the likely explanation of being included in Scooby-Doo as a way to help promote their first albums, as that was a strategy frequently used by Warner Brothers Records back in the day (as Lindsay Pagano has mentioned in the fun fact she wrote for this blog).

In "Jeepers, It's the Jaguaro!", there is a scene in which Scooby runs into two gorillas. However, in real life, there are actually no gorillas or apes anywhere in the Amazon Rainforest. Gorillas and apes more commonly live in the continents of Asia and Africa (with the exception of being imported here for zoos).

Five of the Scooby-Doo theme songs share the exact same general rhythmic structure. The New Scooby-Doo Movies, The Scooby and Scrappy-Doo Show, The Richie Rich / Scooby-Doo Show, The Scooby & Scrappy-Doo Puppy Hour, and The New Scooby and Scrappy-Doo Show all have the same rhythm to them with a slightly different sound.

Thanks Drakosleuth for coming up with this fun fact!

The Mystery Machine is not present for four episodes of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?, three of those times being in the first eight episodes of the series. The van does not appear in "Hassle in the Castle," "Never Ape an Ape Man," "Foul Play in Funland" and "A Night of Fright Is No Delight."

Also, this is just a generic stock image I chose for this post, but looks like we've got another Sassy Fred moment from his facial expression there haha.

Apparently, Google bans users from creating an account with the username "scoobydoo@gmail.com." After reading this somewhere online, I attempted to do this as a test, and saw that it is indeed correct; Google won't let you create an account with that username. I tested it out and tried to create a couple other random accounts, and things like "bugsbunny@gmail.com," "homersimpson@gmail.com" and "daffyduck@gmail.com" are not allowed either. The reason for this is apparently because of copyright issues with popular characters, as Google could possibly get sued if someone were to use the account in an abusive way pretending to be a copyrighted character.

Also, as a very random addition, for some reason the question "why can't you cry in space?" accidentally popped up when I was researching this. Given that, I'm going to tell you why can't cry in space lol. Because there's no gravity, the tears don't go down, they just stick in your eye as a ball of liquid. Bet that wasn't what you expected to learn when reading this morning's fun fact, but it just goes to show you'll never know what you'll learn when checking the blog for the Monday fun facts haha.

Despite airing in 2003, "The San Franpsycho" is the only What's New, Scooby-Doo? season 2 episode to have a 2002 production date. Thanks to James for catching this neat little trivia tidbit!

The first Daphne & Velma novel states that Luna's real name is Kimberly Moss, and gives Dusk the real name of Muffy St. James. These were never official names given to them in any of the appearances they had in previous official Scooby media. These names appeared frequently in Scooby-Doo fanfiction stories, so frequently in fact that they have sort of been unofficially adopted for the characters. These names appear in numerous stories by different authors across many different fanfiction sites. At one point, these were listed as the characters' real names on Wikipedia, until they were removed in 2019 for being unsourced. I knew about these fan-created names in the fanfiction world, but it dawned on me after someone brought it up to me via email this weekend that many fans might not know where these names originated from.

So if these names aren't official, where did they come from? It seems they first derived from this 2009 blog post from Timothy Brennan, highlighting a very imaginative idea for a Hex Girls series featuring various special musical guest stars including Elvis and Jimi Hendrix.

The first piece of fanfiction to have included these names, at least of what I can find, is "Sanctuary" by an author named HiddenWitch from 2012.

Both Velma and her sister Madelyn (from Scooby-Doo! Abracadabra Doo)'s voice actresses were best known outside of Scooby for being on teen sitcoms. Mindy Cohn starred on The Facts of Life from 1979-1988. Danica McKellar, who voiced Velma's sister Madelyn, was best known for starring on The Wonder Years from 1988-1993.