The artist who sings the chase song "Hong Kong Holiday" in What's New, Scooby-Doo's "Block Long Hong-Kong Terror," E.G. Daily, is also known as a voice actor for a few surprisingly famous cartoon characters. E.G. voiced one of the Powerpuff Girls, Buttercup, and is also the voice of Tommy Pickles on Rugrats.
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"Scooby in Wonderland" and "Scooby's Swiss Miss" from The Richie Rich / Scooby-Doo Hour featured character designs by Jack Kirby, who was the man that created several popular Marvel Comics superheroes, including Captain America, The Hulk, and the X-Men.
Decades later, a character from What's New Scooby-Doo? would be named as a reference to another character created by Jack Kirby in 1978. Dr. Armand Zola from "Uncle Scooby and Antarctica" was named to reference Arnim Zola, a Marvel villain created by Kirby, who transferred his mind into a robot body to preserve his consciousness. Arnim Zola has appeared in both the 2011 Captain America film and the sequel. The mirror doppelgänger scene that is seen in a number of Scooby-Doo episodes, including "Never Ape an Ape Man," "Mystery in Persia" and "A Scooby-Doo Valentine," is actually a trope that was made famous by a 1933 spy thriller. The film is a Marx Brothers' spy film, titled Duck Soup, which centers around spies trying to overthrow a newly appointed president of a country. You can watch the mirror scene that inspired the trope above.
Professor Pomfrit from "Big Appetite in Little Tokyo" (What's New, Scooby-Doo?) is a reference to Leander Pomfritt, teacher on one of the shows that inspired the Scooby-Doo franchise's creation, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. William Schallert, who had voiced Leander Pomfritt on Dobie Gillis, voiced Professor Pomfrit on this episode to further play into the reference.
Shaggy's name was not first revealed to be Norville until the post-Scrappy era of the franchise. "The Sludge Monster from the Earth's Core" from A Pup Named Scooby-Doo is the first episode where the name is ever used.
In "Now Museum, Now You Don't" from A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, the gang's teacher Ms. Takai tells the class that "konnichiwa" means "good morning" in Japanese. This is actually incorrect. "Konnichiwa" means "good afternoon," whereas the correct Japanese word for "good morning" is "ohayo.
While this is not technically a Scooby-Doo fun fact, it is somewhat related as it's about Mumbly from Laff-a-Lympics. I had originally thought that WB renamed Muttley just for Laff-a-Lympics; however, it was apparently more of a character evolution. Mumbly was originally named Mugger in the 1964 film Hey There, It's Yogi Bear, and was a circus dog. He also walked on all four legs in this film rather than his hind legs as he did in later appearances. In 1968, the version of Muttley that most of us are familiar with appeared in Wacky Races. He had brown fur in this series, rather than the white fur he had in Laff-a-Lympics. However, right before Laff-a-Lympics, Muttley was given his own show, The Mumbly Cartoon Show, and his character name was changed to Mumbly. This show also changed his fur from brown to white. This show also significantly changed Mumbly's personality, and he was not evil like we see in Laff-a-Lympics. Rather, in The Mumbly Cartoon Show, Mumbly was a private eye who fought crime with a human sidekick. Mumbly also had a brief cameo in the third episode of Dynomutt, Dog Wonder, where he meets Dynomutt for the first time.
On a separate note, I'll also throw in an extra little tidbit here that I learned while researching this fact. Apparently, John Stephenson's Mildew Wolf voice was intended to be him doing an impression of Paul Lynde, who was a famous comedy actor at the time. In "Invasion of the Scooby Snatchers" from The Richie Rich / Scooby-Doo Hour, the guys are on a show called That's Impossible. This show is a parody of a now-forgotten reality show that was airing at the time, called That's Incredible, which similarly highlighted oddities and dangerous stunts, as seen in the episode. It's also worth noting there is a typo in the sign saying the show's name, as can be seen in the image above. "That's" should have an apostrophe in it on the sign, but it does not.
You'll also notice from the image above that the shadows of Fred, Daphne and Velma still appear on the title card every season 1 episode for The Richie Rich / Scooby-Doo Hour, even though they are not in the series. In "A Night Louse at the White House" from The New Scooby-Doo Mysteries, the senators are said to be from a fictional country named Klopstokia. This country was actually not invented by the writers of this episode; it is a reference to the 1932 comedy film Million Dollar Legs, which had a similar plot to this episode involving spies.
A recent copy of a script from "The Warlock of Wimbledon" purchased by a frequent commenter on this blog, ScoobyDooUK, lists the warlock's name as "Amthos," rather than Anthos. It's unknown if this is an early version of the script, or we've actually been getting the name wrong all these years. Either option seems like it could be a possibility, as it's also mentioned in the script that the Devil Hound is black, when the final design used in the episode was a dark brown dog. Thanks to ScoobyDooUK for contributing the fun fact for this week!
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