The Scooby-Doo Multiverse
This started with me trying to place Scooby-Doo in the Television Crossover Universe. Once the Horror Crossover Encyclopedia was completed, it was clear that there was more than one reality with Scooby-Doo in existence. My current work with the Cartoon Crossover Encyclopedia has further led me to that conclusion.
Recently, Ivan and I recorded our first episode of the new Random Fandom podcast which focused on Scooby-Doo Team-Up, and this inspired Ivan and I to work on the Five Scoobies Project. Over the next few weeks or months, Ivan and I will be working on separate timelines for the various Scooby Universes. This post will be the linking station to find all the other posts.
RF Episode 1: Scooby-Doo Team-Up
THE ORIGINAL SATURDAY MORNING TIMELINE
THE SCOOBY/YOGI/LAFF-A-LYMPICS TIMELINE
This is the timeline the TVCU Crew had traditionally identified as the Looniverse but the Cartoon Crossover Encyclopedia will identify as the Cartoon Universe. This timeline will be covered in depth in the upcoming Cartoon Crossover Encyclopedia by Robert E. Wronski, Jr. but you can find a preview here.
THE NEW MILLENNIUM SCOOBY-DOO ANIMATED MOVIES TIMELINE
THE LIVE ACTION SCOOBY-DOO TIMELINE
THE MYSTERY, INCORPORATED TIMELINE
This has become a separate timeline which can be found here. It currently only covers the first season and further updates will be coming soon.
THE SCOOBY-DOO TEAM-UP TIMELINE
This timeline was recently added to the website, inspired by the discussion in episode 1 of the Random Fandom Podcast. It will be further updated when we pick up the conversation again on the podcast next month. You can read it here.
Other Timelines
There are of course more timelines. But these are covered in a single picture or a single story. Scooby-Doo Team-Up shows many variant Scoobies throughout the multiverse. Both the Horror Crossover Encyclopedia and the Cartoon Crossover Encyclopedia also demonstrate other versions of Scooby that exist in various other realities, including the ANNO DRACULA UNIVERSE, THE LEGO UNIVERSE, THE ROBOT CHICKEN UNIVERSE, ETC, ETC....
As a point of interest, accordian star Frank Yankovic and accordian star "Weird" Al Yankovic are not actually related.
ReplyDeleteLuckily, Weird Al started making songs in high school back in 1979, so this could be as early as 1980. Really, I see no reason to think this crossover could not have happened in the 80s; the episode made no contention that the adventure took place in the same year as the original Scooby Doo / Batman crossover, IIRC.
One episode of A PUP NAMED SCOOBY DOO had an attack by a bear that wore a hat and tie, but was quite savage and did not speak. Clearly intended by the animators as a sight-gag only, this may be the TVCU counterpart of the Looniverse's Yogi Bear.
ReplyDeleteAlso, the tv special SCOOBY DOO GOES HOLLYWOOD claims that Shaggy was already a teenager when he got a newborn pup from a pet store and named it Scooby Doo. As this is contradictory to everything that shows relatives of Scooby to have similar names, it should not be considered canon to the rest of the timeline. For that matter, this special gave clips of several different movies that Scooby and Shaggy tried to pitch to a Hollywood studio. Since every fiction is real SOMEWHERE, these all represent alternate reality versions of Scooby Doo. It's been over 30 years since I've seen the show, but I distinctly recall THE SOUND OF SCOOBY, SUPER-SCOOBY, and SCOOBY'S ANGELS being among the rejected scripts.
For the upcoming Cartoon Crossover Encyclopedia, I'm considering A PUP NAMED SCOOBY-DOO to be a separate timeline from the main Scooby series.
DeleteOddly, I found no reference to JAY AND SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK. Sure, the Mystery, Inc. gang the eponymous duo encountered MAY have just been drug-induced hallucinations, but the gang still must have been influential enough to have inspired the hallucination, so it ought to wattant inclusion.
ReplyDeleteFun Fact: "The Frickert Fracas" episode not only had Jonothan Winters as a guest star, it also featured Winter's fictional character Ma Frickert, bringing this Sketchlandia resident into the TVCU.
ReplyDeleteActually, I can't believe it but Jay and Silent Bob slipped my mind, though I do consider it a hallucination since at the end, Jay wakes up still on the same bench he was when he first saw the van. Incidentally, I consider Jay and Silent Bob and their films (which would include the Scream series) as part of the DC Universe because Jay and Silent Bob were both interviewed on their reaction to the death of Superman in Newstime's memorial issue. They have no connection to the TVCU, which is kind of good, since Shermer, Illinois is in the TVCU. (There's also a Shermer in the Bongo Universe.)
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, you may be right about the placement of the Brave and the Bold episode. I've always thought Frank and Al were related. But now your suggested placement makes sense, as it seems like Weird Al was just starting out.
ReplyDeleteAdmittedly there were some contradictions between the various series and movies in continuity and I did my best to reconcile them, but at some point I felt some things I'd just have to ignore as liberties taken by the directors and writers as I tried to be as all-inclusive as I could be.
In the new SDMI shaggys father is Shaggys original voice actor. So is he currently an incarnation?
ReplyDeleteNo. I don't subscribe to same actor theory. Besides which, many times original actors come back to play the relatives of newer versions of those characters.
ReplyDeleteBTW,several sources officially state that the kid characters in Scooby-doo are the same as the kids in the earlier Doby Gillis series (also a DC cominc book). This information is included in the Wikipedia. Fred is Doby, shaggy is Maynard, and Daphne is Thalia (Tuesday Weld in redheaded mode)
ReplyDeleteSo the characters are that much older and were having adventures without Scooby at the time, or else Scooby was there and being ignored by everybody else because he was "Just a dog". And Scrappy is some sort of dwarfish dogheaded humanoid, not a dog at all, and communicates by easily-understood speech. He must be only fictive kin to Scooby.
I notice some pretty severe discrepancies between this version of Mystery, Inc. and the version as stated by Dennis Power, but I suspect that he has erred in some of his assertions. No disrespect intended.
Keep up the good work, Best Wishes, Dale D.
I don't write a Dennis Power blog. I adapt those articles of his that have been referenced in Win Scott Eckert's Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World and only those articles.
ReplyDeleteI understand that the Scooby Gang were inspired by the characters from Dobie Gillis, but considering Dobie's reunion specials, and the Scooby prequels, I cannot accept conflating them.
Scooby Doo is a mutant dog, and so is the rest of his family. Some are more highly mutated than others. Scrappy wasn't even a puppy. His growth was stunted by a problem with his pituitary gland.
And I apologize if I sounded harsh in my response, but nowhere in the title nor descripton of my blog does it say my blog is about the Wold Newton Universe, yet people are always critizing me for not conforming to the established WNU articles. I write about a crossover universe, and that crossover universe just happens to pull in Wold Newton elements, but I also have things way outside the bounds of Wold Newtonry, like Muppets, the Looniverse, the Super Friends, ect., ect.
ReplyDeleteI love reading about the Wold Newton Universe, but I don't enjoy confining my imagination to other people's rules, and thus I do my own thing. The Televison Crossover Universe is not the Wold Newton Universe, but they are indeed "cousins" within the same Omniverse.
Oh, I quite understood that and indeed my own operational univers differs significantly from standard WN in several respects, it only uses WN as a takeoff point and then I work my own stuff in. If you saw my recent posting on "More Background..." you will have seen that my own series in Prehistoric times is greatly more extensive than the standard WN version. There are several points in which the two connect up, and it just so happens I had independantly invented Ollu and Buzsla from Dennis Power, back in the 1970s (some of the connections are fairly obvious but Power made the package much more easily understood and absorbed)
ReplyDeleteOf course I did not use the names Olly+Lou and Bud+Stan, but that is by the by.
I was merely wondering about the Dobies/Scoobies angle in this case. As you already know, our tastes differ on several points and actually, this is one of those points. I was not criticizing but merely asking for a clarification.
And yes I said that Scrappy had a putitary condition. I said he was a "Dwarf" which is the conventional way of saying the same thing.
Have yourself a good Easter and keep up the good work!
Best Wishes, Dale D.
I see that the chronology has been amended to make the Dobie Gillis gang a separate part of the continuity placed at the start. That satisfies my thoughts on the subject and works both continuities together while avoiding the problems you mentioned. I thank you for that.
ReplyDeleteYou can thank the writers of Scooby-Doo, Mystery, Incorporated for writing in a previous incarnation of Mystery, Inc. that operated at the same time as Johnny Quest, allowing me that opportunity to make the connection in way that's based on more substantive evidence. And I'm very happy about it, since the Scooby gang is indeed inspired by the classic show, which had no previous connections to the TVCU as far as I know.
ReplyDeleteI never heard that story about 'Diagnosis Murder' and the Dick Van Dyke episode of 'Scooby Doo'. Oh, if only......
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