Summary

• Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated introduced a continuous storyline and actual supernatural entities threatening the Mystery Inc. crew, a departure from its classic formula.
• Mystery Incorporated reveals Scooby-Doo as an Anunnaki, tying him to a cosmic horror lineage of interdimensional beings.
• Mystery Incorporated goes against the original cartoon's legacy by rejecting its main message: humans are always the real monsters.

Scooby-Doo is one of the most beloved talking dogs of pop culture, but few people know that one canonical origin story suggests Scooby-Doo is in fact an alien. Ever since its creation in 1969, the original cartoon series has been adapted to all sorts of mediums, including video games, movies, and books. Scooby-Doo is reportedly being adapted into a Netflix live-action series, hinting at a new background to the iconic Mystery Inc. crew. However, the series won't likely top Scooby-Doo's cosmic origin story.

Scooby-Doo is most commonly known for its classic one-episode formula, where Shaggy, Scooby, Velma, Daphne, and Fred set out to investigate a strange supernatural entity only to discover there was a real person behind the mask all along. Alternatively, there are many instances in which actual supernatural activity comes into play, but things take a genuinely weird turn in Scooby-Doo's 2010 series Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated, where Scooby-Doo's ability to speak relates him to Cthulhu-like cosmic entities.

Updated on May 16, 2024 by Arthur Goyaz: The Scooby Doo franchise remains beloved, and a new live-action series is coming. This article has been updated to include more information about Scooby Doo's potential origins and other adaptations, and it also has been updated to fit CBR's current formatting guidelines.

Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated Introduced A Continuous Storyline to the Scooby-Doo Series

Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated:

The strangest origin to date that Scooby has been given happened in the early 2010s iteration of the series, Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated, which ran for two seasons between 2010-13. The show was remarkable in the Scooby-Doo canon for one major reason: it was the first to ditch the solely episodic, "monster-of-the-week" formula used since its inception in 1969, opting to craft a closed, overarching story in-between the gang's usual cases.

This continuous narrative took the show into J.J Abrams-branded television territory, similar to serious mystery shows like Fringe and Alias, circling around a conspiracy at a place called Crystal Cove and an anonymous, masked figure called "Mr. E." The idea was to tie a new big mystery with the hidden history of Mystery Inc., a concept that started to repeat itself throughout time. In bringing in the concept of there being an "original" Mystery Inc. -- who have long since disappeared -- Mystery Incorporated replicated the way that DC Comics, among others, handled its transitional period from a Golden Age to a more modern approach, with the Justice Society of America being replaced by the Justice League.

Mystery Incorporated used its cultural touching points to fully ingratiate the franchise into the sci-fi/fantasy genre while trying to maintain some resemblance to the show's usual status quo. It plays homage to unexpectedly dark, adult-oriented fare like The Shining and A Nightmare on Elm Street and even the work of more cult creators like David Lynch and H.P Lovecraft, to the point Scooby-Doo receives a Cthulhu-esque origin story. This background storyline involves interdimensional, shapeshifting aliens, adding a cosmic horror appeal to an otherwise tamer cartoon series.

Scooby-Doo's is Revealed To Be an Alien in a Past Origin Story

Latest Scooby-Doo Movies:

In the 2010 Mystery Incorporated, Shaggy's beloved talking dog is far from one's average, hamburger-chomping dog: Scooby-Doo is actually an Anunnaki, a race of ancient creatures who can cross into our universe and take the forms of wise, talking animals. Mystery Incorporated explains that the first Mystery Inc. gang had their own secretly alien animal sidekick in the form of a sinister bird, Professor Pericles, and were tricked into liberating another Anunnaki being known only as the "Evil Entity" decades ago. The Entity is a Cthulhu-inspired instrument of cosmic destruction but, as usual, the Mystery Inc. gang defeats it using the power of friendship, with the occasional help of an ancient Egyptian spear.

Despite how weird it seems, the Anunnaki lore is genuinely interesting. The Mystery Inc. crew stumbles upon ancient scriptures of Babylonian mythology, which describe a planet from another dimension called Nibiru that passes on Earth from time to time. This event weakens the barriers between Nibiry and Earth, enabling the alien planet's inhabitants, the Anunnaki, to interact with humanity. Since Scooby-Doo's Anunnaki didn't have physical bodies, they used animals as their vessels and went on to become humanity's first gods.

This piece of mythology directly addresses the Egyptian gods, China's Monkey King, and the Aztec Quetzalcoatl, putting the unsuspecting, food-obsessed Scooby-Doo on the same level as these sacred entities: it's an origin story as funny as it is ambitious. In that sense, Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated suggests that not only Scooby but every talking animal in the Hanna-Barbera universe are descendants of the Anunnaki. The Anunnaki origin story to Scooby-Doo is also a clever nod to the original cartoon's iconic running gag, where every time someone referred to Scooby as a dog he would exclaim: "Dog? Where?"

How Scooby-Doo's Controversial Origin Story Goes Against the Franchise's Legacy

Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!:

Despite turning the show's fundamental premise on its head, Mystery Incorporated is well-liked by a lot of fans for its high-quality production, deep cuts into geek culture, and for elevating a cheap Saturday morning cartoon into its own grand mythology. There have been naysayers, though. Writing for The Guardian, Rick Pelley bemoaned the replacement of groovy, '70s-camp value with real horrors:

In a traditional half-hour escapade, the slime monster needs to turn out to be a jaded professor, not some transdimensional being. How are we supposed to sleep at night, Scoob? Zoinks!

There's an argument to be made that Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated holds up well as a standalone series, but there's no denying it goes against the franchise's legacy. No matter how repetitive the classic Scooby-Doo twists were, they never failed to deliver an effective message: humans are always the real monsters. The original cartoon managed to convey this message to children with a subtle approach: kids could go to sleep at night knowing that no vampires, witches, or ghosts would bother them while being aware that they shouldn't trust any stranger they meet. The idea of having Scooby originating from actual aliens goes against the main message the franchise had been cultivating all along.

To explore supernatural mysteries beyond the cartoon series, kids always had the Scooby-Doo direct-to-video animated movies to rely on: compelling sources of entertainment that, occasionally, introduced actual supernatural entities to introduce the Mystery Inc. crew to unfamiliar places. Mystery Incorporated wasn't the first to go against Scooby-Doo's iconic legacy but it certainly made the straight-up supernatural tropes more popular. An exciting multi-timeline theory involving Scooby-Doo helps fans find their way around a convoluted multiverse, but the ongoing implementation of a Hanna-Barbera shared universe makes things difficult to keep up.

The Future of Scooby-Doo Looks Bleak, But Netfllix's Live-Action Series Can Save It

Scooby-Doo Live-Action Adaptations So Far:

The Scooby-Doo franchise currently finds itself in a confusing place, to the point Scooby's cosmic origin story feels like just a casual distraction. As of now, the Scooby-Doo gang got to meet their rock 'n' roll idols; KISS, fight the terrors of Gotham City alongside Batman, and even haunt real supernatural entities alongside Dean and Sam Winchester. There's even a theory that the only reason supernatural beings started haunting the universe of Scooby-Doo in the first place is because the Winchester brothers brought these terrors into Scooby-Doo's world. After all, the Supernatural crossover episode recycles the plot of a Season 1 episode that aired in 1969, "A Night of Fright Is No Delight."

Suitably, Mystery Incorporated is very much a celebration of Hanna-Barbera's own wider history, pulling in legacy players from everything from Fred Flinstone to Yogi Bear, as well as classic Scooby-Doo villains like Miner 49er and The Black Knight. The 2020 animated movie Scoob! took this idea even further, introducing other human/dog duos -- Blue Falcon and Dyno-Mutt, Dick Dastardly and Muttley -- that acted as the first brick in building a Hanna-Barbera Cinematic Universe. However, it appears that, this time, the real villains aren't Machiavellian humans disguised as ghosts but rather entertainment companies obsessed with recycling their own content.

With the rise of cinematic universes, shared reboots, and ever-elastic content, Scooby-Doo becomes just another victim of the current state of the entertainment industry: beating a dead horse as long as the money is still coming in. As absurd as Scooby-Doo's alien dog origin story might have been, at least it had some bite, building up an innovative story. The Scooby-Doo franchise is now nothing but an uncontrollable crossover-generator, as seen in the latest Scooby-Doo films, but the announcement of Netflix's live-action series strikes fans as great news. It's the perfect opportunity to start anew with a fresh approach, perhaps adding a darker tone to the cases Mystery Inc. crew investigates while paying tribute to Scooby-Doo's legacy with its own creative voice.

Scooby-Doo's history of live-action movies isn't very encouraging, although the first two star-studded movies are revered as cult classics nowadays. Naturally, the TV format might be exactly what a Scooby-Doo live-action adaptation needed to work. Little is known about the Netflix project yet, but weighty names have joined the cast: the duo Josh Appelbaum and Scott Rosenberg, known for the Cowboy Bebop live-action series, are teaming up to write the scripts, while Riverdale producer Greg Berlanti steps in to oversee the project.