My Theory About Scooby Doo

So I’ve recently started watching Scooby-Doo: Mystery Incorporated in the afternoons. To be honest, I was a little bit unsure about it at first. I thought it might just be another of many Scooby-Doo remakes, something I’ve been wary of ever since those horrible live action movies. That, and without that cheesy 80’s charm and bad animation that I’m so accustomed to, Scooby-Doo really isn’t the same.

But that’s not what this post is about.

This post is actually about a theory I’m developing about Mystery Incorporated (and I guess the rest of the Scooby-Doo cartoons);

The whole about Scooby-Doo; Mystery Incorporated (and not just this latest Scooby-Doo series), is that the gang go around solving supernatural mysteries, and that one of their members is a talking dog. Sorry, I’m not telling you anything new here. Everyone knows this about Scooby-Doo. It’s what the cartoons are all about. But my theory kind of centres around the point that Scooby-Doo talks.

Now, it’s been awhile since I’ve seen any of the older cartoons, so my memory of them is a little vague and I can’t say anything about them for certain (feel free to leave any comments about them below if you can remember much about them). So for the most part, this theory is based on Mystery Incorporated. Simply because I can’t remember how much Scooby-Doo talks in the older cartoons. In Mystery Incorporated, Scooby-Doo talks just like a normal person (if a little bit more growly), and everyone talks to him just like he’s a normal person.

So far I haven’t seen another animal character in the series that does that.

Since it’s a well-known fact that Shaggy is a stoner, I simply just figured that Scooby-Doo talking was just Shaggy hallucinating. Except, like I said, everybody talks to Scooby-Doo, and he to them. Not just Shaggy. But it did get me thinking; the talking dog, the supernatural mysteries that the gang are always solving, that fact that his dad appears to be ashamed of Shaggy?

What if none of it is real? What if it’s all a figment of Shaggy’s drug addled mind? What if Shaggy has had a mental break down, and everything that happens in Mystery Incorporated are just Shaggy’s hallucinations?

That would explain why Scooby-Doo can talk to people and no one thinks it’s odd.

It would also explain why the gang always seems to find themselves in the middle of supernatural mysteries all the time even though they don’t seem to go out of their way to find them. That would also be why Shaggy is always so scared of everything all the time; somewhere in his subconscious he knows that what’s happening is wrong and unnatural. But he is unable to do anything about it. That’s why he’s always running and hiding; he wants to escape the madness. Daphne, Fred and Velma are just manifestations of his subconscious created to protect him from the worst of his hallucinations. That would also probably explain why those monsters always turn out to be people in costumes. It’s his subconscious protecting him from the worst of his hallucinations.

Scooby Doo, and the rest of the Mystery Incorporated gang are just figments of Shaggy's imagination for the purpose of protecting himself from his own mind.

Either that, or Scooby-Doo is a reality altering, shape shifting trickster, and only we can see his real form!

Peace out!

Fox

Update: As I was posting this I was watching Where Walks Aphrodite with Professor Pericles, who is in fact an owl. An evil owl nonetheless! This doesn't change my theory at all, but I thought I should let you know that I have seen another animal who is just like Scooby Doo.