According to Maxwell Atoms' blog, Scooby-Doo! The Sword and the Scoob was originally planned to be the end of the Curse of the 13th Ghost/Return to Zombie Island trilogy. However, this was changed for an unknown reason.
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Elsa Frankenteen from Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School was named after Elsa Sullivan Winchester, the first-ever actress who played the Bride of Frankenstein.
"The Vampire Strikes Back" from What's New, Scooby-Doo? had a special WB Halloween "Unsolved Mystery" promotion attached to the episode. As the episode aired on October 18, 2003, viewers were asked to go on KidsWB's website to guess the culprit. Anyone who correctly guessed would be entered in a sweepstakes to win a free copy of Scooby-Doo! Night of 100 Frights for X-Box. Six winners were chosen, five of them winning a copy of the game. The remaining winner was given the grand prize, which was a copy of the game and a free X-Box.
I am not clear whether or not the villain was revealed the same day, or if they didn't air the ending of the episode until the next week when the winner was revealed on October 25, 2003. The press release for this special promotion from 2003 can be found here. An early alternate storyboard animatic of the opening credits for Moon Monster Madness reveals that the film was originally titled Scooby-Doo and the Space Menace in early stages of production. You can watch the storyboard animatic of the alternate opening on the Vimeo page for the writer and director of the film, Paul McEvoy.
Scooby-Doo! Unmasked has a special feature of concept art for the game, which is unlocked from the beginning of the game. One of the pieces of concept art reveals the culprit, which means it is possible to accidentally stumble on the game's major twist before even playing the game. Thanks to Ed for coming up with this fun fact!
Both Velma and Madelyn's voice actresses were huge child TV stars back in the 1980s. Mindy Cohn played Natalie on The Facts of Life and Danica McKellar, who voiced Madelyn, played Winnie, the love interest of the main character on The Wonder Years.
Following up with this fun fact from July 31, Shaggy's real name Norville was created by Tom Ruegger in reference to Oliver Norvell Hardy (of Laurel and Hardy), according to a tweet he made.
Although Hanna-Barbera's decline was one reason why Scooby content went into a lull after 1991, another lesser-discussed reason is a cultural shift with Saturday morning cartoons. networks phasing out cartoons on Saturday mornings due to governmental legislation. In 1990, the United States Congress passed the Children's Television Act, which required networks to broadcast at least three hours per week of educational content. This caused networks to begin shifting gears with how they approached Saturday mornings. In 1992, NBC got rid of Saturday morning cartoons and aired only live-action shows with "after school special" types of lessons, such as Saved by the Bell. Other networks didn't follow suit right away, but all switched their formats within the next decade. CBS changed to educational programming on Saturday mornings in 1997, and ABC extended the hours of their morning news show and got rid of cartoons in the early 2000s (airing the required three hours of educational programming at another time).
In a sense, this shift was natural with the creation of television networks targeted towards kids, such as Cartoon Network, Disney Channel and Nickelodeon. Saturday morning cartoons were originally created because there were no networks airing only children's content, but as channels specifically for cartoons were created, there was less need to have designated time for cartoons on otherwise adult-oriented networks. Of course, Hanna-Barbera's decline was the main reason for the lack of Scooby content following 1991, but arguably, the cultural shift is another small part of the reason that no new Scooby-Doo shows aired for a while after A Pup Named Scooby-Doo concluded. You can read more information on the larger cultural shift behind getting rid of Saturday morning cartoons in this article. John Stephenson was famous for voicing a number of miscellaneous Hanna-Barbera characters, including 70+ characters and monsters in a number of classic Scooby-Doo episodes from 1969-1985 (and even voiced a few in What's New, Scooby-Doo?) John's last ever role before his death was voicing the sheriff in Scooby-Doo Abracadabra Doo, which is particularly special considering he voiced a number of sheriffs in early episodes of Scooby-Doo.
In "The Headless Horseman of Halloween" from The Scooby-Doo Show, there is an ironic animation error given the villain switches people's heads. In one shot, Scooby-Doo and Scooby-Dum's heads are switched on the wrong bodies! Thanks to ScoobyDooUK for coming up with this week's fun fact!
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