Velma Dinkley is a fictional character in the Scooby-Doo franchise. She is usually seen wearing a baggy orange turtleneck sweater, a short red pleated skirt (or in later episodes an A-line skirt, or sometimes shorts), knee socks, Mary Jane shoes, and a pair of black square glasses, which she frequently loses and cannot see without. During the winter, she sometimes wears high-heeled boots. She is seen as the "brains" of the group. Character description Throughout her various incarnations, Velma is usually portrayed as a highly intelligent, young, white woman with an interest in the sciences. She is also often portrayed as being very well-read on obscure fields such as Norse writing (as in the third Scooby-Doo series, The Scooby-Doo Show). Due to her intelligence and problem-solving abilities, Velma is typically the first one to solve the mystery and, like Sherlock Holmes and many other fictional detectives, often keeps her conclusions secret till the end of the story. Velma Dinkley was inspired by the brainy sweater girl Zelda Gilroy, as played by Sheila Kuehl, from the late 1950s/early 1960s American sitcom The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. A running gag in Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! and The New Scooby-Doo Movies is Velma's severe myopia and her ability to repeatedly lose her glasses (often the result of them falling off her face while she is being chased by a villain), saying "My glasses! I can't see without my glasses!" whenever she accidentally misplaces them. Another running gag occurs when other frightened characters leap into her arms. Velma is characterized as the most skeptical of the gang and is most likely to discount any paranormal explanations to their mysteries. This is particularly evident in the films Scooby-Doo! and the Curse of the 13th Ghost and Scooby-Doo! Return to Zombie Island, in which she discounts ghosts and zombies (which are real within the context of the franchise) that could not be unmasked by claiming they are hallucinations. Character background Like all of the Scooby-Doo kids, later ret-conned as Mystery Incorporated members, Velma has a differing personal backstory and origin in different series. In the original series Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, Velma is shown to attend the same high school as the rest of the gang (as stated in the inaugural episode "What a Night for a Knight"). However, by The New Scooby-Doo Movies, Velma is said to have graduated from a different high school