Scoob! director on those big end credit characters: 'They're ready to come in at any time'

Scoob! is packed with enough Hanna-Barbera characters to make you exclaim "Jeepers!", but as director Tony Cervone told SYFY WIRE last week, there were even more of them in an earlier version of the film. While we didn't want to divulge too much during our initial interview with the director, it's high time we discussed who exactly got axed from the finished product.

According to Cervone, the unused Hanna-Barbera creations are the ones we see during the colorful end credits set to the chill stylings of Lennon Stella and Charlie Puth: Jabberjaw; Dr. Benton C. Quest; Atom Ant ("It's kind of an updated Atom Ant, but yes, it's [him]," the director says. "He's just got four arms now. It's a big-budget CG movie, we can give him four arms."); and Great Grape Ape (we checked the news chyron at the bottom of the screen, it's not Magilla Gorilla).

Getting to see all of them, however briefly, made us squeal with child-like delight, and what's more, they could show up in a future film.

"They're on the bench, they're ready to come in at any time if we need them to," Cervone says. "I consider those end credits as a continuation of the story. They're there. They're in the universe and they're there to be explored. I don't know what's next, but I do feel like we've established a really rich universe that can go in a lot of different directions."

And just think of who else is out there: the Flinstones, the Jetsons, Josie and the Pussycats, Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound, Top Cat, the Great Gazoo, the Banana Splits, Snagglepuss, Quick Draw McGraw, Squiddly Diddly, Magilla Gorilla, Dee Dee Skyes, the original Blue Falcon, and more. Plus, Dick Dastardly (Jason Isaacs) is on the loose again, as the end credits show Muttley busting him out of the hoosegow. If you're raring to return to this ripe animated mythos, don't worry. Cervone teased that we may not even have to wait until Scoob! 2.

"I think a lot of these characters are strong enough that I want to spend more time with them," he says. "I want to spend more time with Captain Caveman [Tracy Morgan]. I think he's great. I want to see where Dynomutt [Ken Jeong] and Blue Falcon [Mark Wahlberg] go next. They're different now, [and] I wanna see what that next adventure's like. It'd be fun to do a bunch of little things rather than one giant thing. But yes, definitely — there are definitely more stories out there to be told."

Credit: Warner Bros.

The fan service during the end credits is just one small sliver of all the easter eggs hidden throughout Scoob! In the opening minutes of the movie, for example, we see a young Shaggy (Iain Armitage) standing in front of a Venice Beach snack stand called "Casey's Creations." That storefront's name can only be a nod to Casey Kasem, who voiced Shaggy for over three decades.

"I personally added a lot of easter eggs, and so did everyone else. Easter eggs were open to anyone who had a good idea, and we almost put all of them in," the director reveals. "If I ever did a commentary track, it'd be like, 'In this scene, this is from this, and that's from that, and this is from that.' Almost on a shot-by-shot basis, there are a ridiculous amount of easter eggs in this movie. But I think that shows how much people love this stuff and love these properties."

Credit: Warner Bros.

Other winks to the audience include a Hex Girls poster at the Romanian arcade (a reference to 1999's Scooby-Doo! and the Witch's Ghost) and Takamoto Bowl, the bowling alley where Scooby (Frank Welker) and Shaggy (Will Forte) go to blow off steam after Simon Cowell banishes them from the rest of Mystery, Inc. Iwao Takamoto was the animator who originally designed Scooby, Atom Ant, Astro of The Jetsons, and Penelope Pitstop of Wacky Races.

"People from all walks of production added easter eggs to this movie, and we loved adding every single one of them in. The ones I like the most are [the] easter eggs about the people who created these shows," Cervone says. "Like all of the voice actors' names are mentioned; the original cast are mentioned somewhere; Hanna and Barbera are in it; Ruby and Spears are in it; Iwao Takamoto's in it. We tried to get as many things in as we could, so I'm proud of that. We made this movie, in a lot of ways, for those people."

Scoob! is now available to rent/purchase on digital and VOD.