Summary

  • When MultiVersus was just a rumour, it was suggested that Shaggy was based on the popular Ultra Instinct memes.
  • That seemed to be the case when the game was revealed, but I asked game director Tony Huynh how it all happened.
  • Huynh was careful not to explicitly say Ultra Instinct, but it does seem to be the inspiration.

MultiVersus director Tony Huynh has revealed a little bit more about how Scooby Doo's Shaggy got into the game and revealed that he's at least a little inspired by the Ultra Instinct memes.

All the way back in late 2021, before MultiVersus was even officially announced, it was rumoured that Warner Bros. was working with NetherRealm on a platform fighter featuring a stable of WB characters, from Batman and Mad Max to Gandalf and Fred Flintstone. The leak also claimed that Shaggy would be in the game and was based on the Ultra Instinct memes that were going around at the time.

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Of course, a lot of those details ended up being false, such as NetherRealm working on the game and some of the characters (so far) not being on the roster, but it did get quite a lot right and, as we all know by now, MultiVersus is indeed very real. The thing that stuck out the most with that leak was the mention of Ultra Instinct Shaggy, which was so bizarre that it didn't seem like it could ever be real.

Flash forward to 2022 when MultiVersus was officially revealed, and it turned out that Shaggy was based on those memes, and had several moves that seemed at least a little inspired by Dragon Ball's Goku, including him doing the instant transmission pose when charged up. Of course, due to licensing, MultiVersus couldn't explicitly say it was inspired by the memes, but it certainly seemed like it.

I recently had the chance to chat with MultiVersus' director, Tony Huynh, about the game's upcoming Season 1 relaunch, which gave me the perfect chance to ask him about Shaggy's origins and if he was really inspired by Ultra Instinct. Huynh started by saying that Player First Games wants to make the concept of multiverses within MultiVersus clear and that there are different versions of each character that can show up.

"We want to make sure the player understands where the character is coming from and that we’re true to the original source of the material there. So, for us, you know, it was harder to make a gameplay hook that wasn’t that style for Shaggy. If you look at it from a development standpoint, this is a fighter and, let’s just call Shaggy “not a fighter”, it was easier for us to look at him one way."

Huynh then said that it was hard to make a gameplay hook for Shaggy since he's not a fighter, which meant that the version of him seen in the memes made for a perfect basis for a moveset. Huynh was careful not to say Ultra Instinct outright since it's obviously copyrighted by the owners of Dragon Ball, but his response made it clear that the team at least knew about the memes and took some energy from it.

And hey, it worked out well in the end, since it certainly drew a lot of eyes to MultiVersus from the moment that it was announced. So, win-win.

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