Velma from Scooby-Doo will no longer call the cops on folks in MultiVersus

polygon.com:

Velma is the smartest and most put-together member of the Scooby-Doo gang. And while she can’t see a thing without her glasses, she’s absolutely the most likely member of the squad to solve any given mystery. However, in MultiVersus, the Super Smash Bros.-like fighting game filled with Warner Bros. characters, she’s a total narc — or, rather, she was.

One of the strangest aspects of Velma’s character in MultiVersus was her ability to summon the fuzz after solving a mystery (which simply involved collecting clues around the arena). A police car would then roll up on Velma’s victim, throw them in back seat, and attempt to drive them off the stage. Is that a funny idea in concept? Of course it is. Is it funny in practice to watch a cop car roll up and start wreaking havoc in the year 2022 in a game with Black characters, including real-world people like LeBron James? Not so much.

In America, police distrust is at an all-time high, with some cops finally facing punishments for criminal actions committed on duty, and many more getting away with obvious abuses of power because they wear the badge. It’s clear now to many Americans — although this has long been obvious to marginalized and oppressed folks in this country — that the police are not the “good guys” they are depicted as in shows like Scooby-Doo.

It’s with that slow but steady cultural shift in mind that some MultiVersus players winced at the choice to have Velma call the cops — a small group of fans even started an online petition to remove the cops from Velma’s ability, and replace it with the Mystery Machine. And that’s exactly what Player First Games did.

In Thursday's patch, the notes included this bit about Velma’s passive ability: “Instead of calling the