13 Facts About 'Scooby-Doo' That Make Us Say 'Zoinks!'

Frank Welker is one of the most prolific voice actors in the history of animation, with as many as 850 credits to his name. Welker started voicing Fred on Scooby-Doo from the outset and, after the voice actor for the titular character (Don Messick) perished, took on voicing the big dog, too. 

Welker was only 23 years old when he started voicing Fred Jones in 1969 and, although the show had some brief hiatuses from airing, has remained a constant as the man who drives the Mystery Machine. Welker takes joy in the fact that, over the decades, "Fred was the only one who had a license... As long as nobody took the van away from me, that gave me four-wheel power."

When Welker auditioned for Scooby-Doo, however, he wasn't trying for the role of Fred. Welker, rather, wanted to voice Shaggy - which ultimately went to Casey Kasem. Kasem actually auditioned for Fred but, when the voices were finally assigned, the two men had been swapped. Welker explained:

I really liked Shaggy, and tried to have fun with that, and I know Casey wanted to do Fred because he wasn't really comfortable doing that kind of goofy Shaggy part. But then Joe [Barbera] [switched us], and Casey came up with that crazy, wonderful voice for Shaggy.

Joe said that Fred was the all-American hero type and that I should just do my own voice. I was like, "I never saw myself as the hero type, but OK!"... I’m kind of a comedian goofball, so it was a little bit hard being restricted, but I was just happy to be a part of the [group].

Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? debuted on television in 1969 and has had many names and versions for decades. Through the years and in the many new and reshaped Scooby shows and movies, Shaggy and Scooby were the only characters present at every step. 

Scooby-Doo's longevity once earned it the distinction of the longest-running animated series. In 2004, Scooby-Doo became the longest-running animated comedy, according to Guinness World Records.

Scooby-Doo no longer holds that title. Currently, the longest-running animated series in the Western world is The Simpsons, while Sazae-San from Japan ran continuously from 1969 to 2020.

The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis was a sitcom that aired from 1959 to 1963. Dwayne Hackman played the titular role, one of many teenage characters presenting stories about their lives from their own points of view - rather than those of adults.

Other characters included Maynard G. Krebs (played by Bob Denver), Thalia Menniger (played by Tuesday Weld), and Zelda Gilroy (played by Sheila James Kuehl). Together, Dobie, Maynard, Thalia, and Zelda were prototypes for Fred, Shaggy, Daphne, and Velma, respectively.

As Scooby-Doo went through different stages of development, the would-be names of the characters came to fruition - as did the name of the show itself. At first, Scooby-Doo was called Mysteries Five and W-Who's S-S-Scared? but the latter was determined to be too frightening for a children's show. In the end, they decided to name the show after the dog they'd worked into the mystery-solving group, Scooby-Doo. 

Every member of the original group of Scooby-Doo mystery solvers has a full name, but Shaggy is the only human who goes by a nickname. While his given name is Norville Rogers, his characterization as a shaggy-haired, "like"-saying, cowardly food hound earns him an appropriate descriptor.

Fred Jones takes his first name from that of television executive Fred Silverman, while Daphne's last name is Blake and Velma's is Dinkley.

Even Scooby has a full name - Scoobert. Arguably, "Doo" is his last name. 

Scooby's distinct way of speaking - using "Rs" in place of and in addition to existing words and syllables - is called rhotic replacement. The speech impediment didn't have a name until 2014 but is a derivation of a phonetic feature known as rhoticization. According to speech pathologist Dr. Steven Long: 

I would refer to [Scooby’s disorder] as a phonological as opposed to a phonetic disorder in that he shows a pattern of substituting and adding sounds in his speech rather than just distorting sounds... Scooby's error pattern doesn't have a specific name, at least not one that we commonly use in clinical practice.

This means there's no official clinical term, essentially because what Scooby does when he talks isn't found in humans. That said, Scooby's speech pattern does have its own designation.

Frank Sinatra's 1966 song "Strangers in the Night" closes with a somewhat bungled phrase, one that inspired the name of an equally klutzy dog. Sinatra riffs "scooby dooby doo," which inspired the moniker for the lovable mystery-solving canine.

According to television executive Fred Silverman, who had an idea for a show about teenage mystery solvers, he heard the music while on a plane and it made him think of making their dog a key character:

[A]nd as we’re landing... Frank Sinatra comes on, and I hear him say, "scooby-dooby-doo." That’s it, we’ll take the dog - we’ll call it Scooby-Doo.

Silverman made it happen and Scooby-Doo was born. Moreover, Scoob even references his namesake in a scene in Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters unleashed, where he karaokes the Sinatra tune with Shaggy.