‘Ultra Instinct’ Shaggy was an early, obvious pick for WB’s MultiVersus, creators say

polygon.com:

Warner Bros.’ take on the platform fighter — a Super Smash Bros.-like game starring Batman, Bugs Bunny, Arya Stark, et al. — has a long list of potential fighters to choose from. But Shaggy, specifically the heavily memed “Ultra Instinct” version of the Scooby-Doo slacker, was an obvious and early choice for MultiVersus, its creators say.

Chris White, chief technical officer and co-founder at developer Player First Games, told Polygon that Shaggy’s inclusion in MultiVersus, specifically his Dragon Ball-inspired form, was always part of the plan.

“That was one of the very first decisions that we made, even when the game was in very early concept phase,” White said. “In very early discussions of what characters we’d want to bring to the table, we were looking at a Change.org petition that had just a crazy number of signatures on it. It was very community driven — to see Shaggy in a fighting game.”

White noted the origins of Ultra Instinct Shaggy, which derived from the 2011 animated movie Scooby-Doo! Legend of the Phantosaur, in which Shaggy single-handedly beats up a biker gang, and when Dragon Ball’s Goku first reached Ultra Instinct form in the Dragon Ball Super anime. More than 380,000 Change.org petitioners later lobbied Warner Bros. and Mortal Kombat developer NetherRealm Studios to put Ultra Instinct Shaggy in Mortal Kombat 11. While that didn’t come to pass, Shaggy did make a memorable cameo in an animated MK movie, Mortal Kombat Legends: Battle of the Realms.

“From our minds, there was almost no convincing at all needed to happen,” White said. “We just kind of said, like, ‘We think we should do this. The community would love it.’ And there was no pushback [from Warner Bros.] at all on that. Everybody was very