Not long ago the idea of MultiVersus was not really taken very seriously. The thought that Warner Bros. would be stepping into the fighting genre with a game combining many of its properties seemed like a crazy video game rumor.
Well that rumor is a rumor no more: MultiVersus is indeed a thing. Taking the form of a platform fighter with many of Warner Bros. most popular characters stepping into the ring, it will be an immediate competitor with Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl, Brawlhalla, and others like them. Even more bonkers than the roster are some of the moves they are bringing to the table.
The cast of MultiVersus is certainly diverse, ranging from Arya Stark to Tom & Jerry and every level of serious or wacky in between. One of the stranger additions is Shaggy from Scooby-Doo. This seems odd until seeing the moveset they gave Shaggy: he can power up in a manner very similar to, but no doubt legally distinct from, Goku's Super Saiyan and Ultra Instinct forms, with the correct auras and everything.
To anyone who finds this strange, the origin of these moves is not a Scooby-Doo/Dragon Ball Z crossover, but the internet. A sequence in a more recent Scooby-Doo film shows Shaggy taking on a bar full of bikers, and from this was born a meme about Shaggy being super powerful on a level comparable with Dragon Ball Z's Goku. It became so widespread that Warner Bros. paid homage to it in a recent animation, and now it seems these powers are being cannonized in MultiVersus at least.
The "Super Shaggy" meme became really popular, with Shaggy's power levels reaching absurd heights, typically blowing up a planet with 10% of his power, so it makes sense that Warner Bros. wants to capitalize on it. Shaggy was already being modded into Super Smash Bros., so putting him in a platform fighter just makes sense.
Of course, the moment a corporation adopts a meme for its own use is usually the moment that the meme dies for good. If Warner Bros. wants this to work, it will still have to put out a legitimately good platform fighter, or all that teasing from Ed Boon will come to nothing. There's a lot of good will riding on MultiVersus now, as fans are not quick to forgive a soured meme.
MultiVersus is coming to PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S in 2022.