'Mortal Kombat 11' Director Shares Epic Shaggy Character Mockup

Okay, maybe there's a little more to this Shaggy thing than we thought. We reported a few days back about a groundswell of support for Scooby-Doo's Shaggy to join the Mortal Kombat 11 roster. And we told you about the game's director, Ed Boon, seemingly shutting the idea down on Twitter. But it seems Boon isn't ready to let the joke die just yet.

Late last night, on Jan. 31, Boon tweeted out a realistic-looking mockup of Shaggy as a Mortal Kombat 11 character. In the shot, he's delivering a pretty brutal knee to Mortal Kombat mainstay Scorpion, and in all honesty, he doesn't look half bad. He's decked out in the same green shirt and brown pants you'll find in the cartoons and movies, but true to the setting, his demeanor is more serious. He does not look like a fish out of water, as we speculated he might the other day. Instead, he looks like a man on a mission. 

Scorpion is now deeply regretting that "get over here."

While this seems like a lot of good-humored fun on Boon's part, and it's likely he's just participating in a community joke, the addition of Shaggy to Mortal Kombat 11 isn't completely impossible. As Twitter user @TheAssassin073 pointed out, NetherRealm Studios is a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. Warner Bros. is also publishing Mortal Kombat 11. And, as it turns out, Scooby-Doo is a Warner Bros. property. So if Ed Boon really, truly wanted to add Shaggy to the game — either as a main roster character, an unlockable character, or a DLC character — he could probably get on the horn with a colleague at Warner Bros. and make it happen.

Suddenly, the inclusion of Shaggy seems doable. And an idea that we all brushed off as insane just a few days ago doesn't seem that insane anymore.

If you missed how this whole Shaggy craze kicked off, here's a rundown.

It all started with a meme that first surfaced about a year ago called Ultra Instinct Shaggy. It remade the typically weak and unassuming character into a powerhouse, and according to Know Your Meme, mimicked "the 'ultra instinct' transformation of Goku from Dragon Ball Super." For reasons unknown, the meme came back with a vengeance at the start of 2019, leading hordes of internet users to create and share Ultra Instinct Shaggy art on Instagram and Reddit.

While all of this was happening, marketing for Mortal Kombat 11 started to ramp up. NetherRealm Studios posted trailers featuring many of the games fatalities, and former UFC fighter (and current professional wrestler) Ronda Rousey made news by joining the Mortal Kombat 11 cast as the voice of Sonya Blade. Further, the game started to get more coverage on news sites as outlets covered the game's character reveals and live stream events.

Eventually, the two worlds collided. A website called Woken News drew upon the popularity of both the Ultra Instinct Shaggy meme and Mortal Kombat 11, creating a Change.org petition demanding that NetherRealm Studios "Make Shaggy a DLC in Mortal Kombat 11." Game director Ed Boon saw the petition about a day later, sending a tweet that seemed to both acknowledge the idea while also dismissing it. And in the meantime, the petition — which we reported was at around 173,000 supporters on Jan. 29 — surpassed 283,000 supporters, with that number continuing to climb.

Again, maybe this is all just a lot of fun being had by Boon and the Mortal Kombat fan base. Or maybe, just maybe, the team at NetherRealm Studios is looking at a quarter of a million signatures on a petition and seeing a real demand for this once unlikely character.

We could feel much more confident ignoring the story if it were someone else. If an online petition popped up demanding that Mickey Mouse be added to Mortal Kombat 11, we could feel pretty good about saying, "No, that will never happen." But knowing that Shaggy is still on Ed Boon's mind — at least for comedy's sake — and seeing the link between Shaggy and Mortal Kombat 11 by way of Warner Bros., it's tough to say that Shaggy will never show up in the game.

It's improbable, but not impossible. And for at least 283,000 people, that's pretty good news.