The Real Ghostbusters/Trivia


 * Acting for Two: Of the main characters, Frank Welker voiced both Ray and Slimer. Welker would also voice a number of antagonists, such as the Bogeyman, Sandman and Samhain. Maurice LaMarche also voiced a number of roles too. Lorenzo Music also voiced Peter's dad, with Dave Coulier taking over later. And since Laura Summer (who originally played Janine) is the only voice actress credited, she may well have played every female role in the series until she was replaced by Kath Soucie.
 * Actor Allusion:
 * In the episode "Victor the Happy Ghost", Peter refers to The Bob Newhart Show as his favorite TV show. Lorenzo Music co-created the series.
 * In the episode "Jailbusters", the ghostly judge is voiced by James Avery.
 * The episode "Ghostbuster of the Year" (an episode long Citizen Kane reference) seems to have been produced solely to showcase Maurice La Marche's impersonation of Orson Welles.
 * The Danza: In the Slimer! short "The Not-So-Great Outdoors", Rob Paulsen plays a rabbit named Robby.
 * Executive Meddling: ABC hired a consulting firm called Q5 to evaluate its entire Saturday morning lineup in hopes that they could "fix" the shows to make them more broadly appealing and get better ratings. The Real Ghostbusters came under scrutiny, even though it was already a runaway hit. According to J. Michael Straczynski, the head writer at the time, Q5 didn't do any audience research or focus testing but demanded changes based on what they themselves believed would made a cartoon successful. Janine was changed to be more feminine and meek, and received round glasses because her pointy ones could scare children. More changes were forced upon the writing staff starting with Season 3. The Junior Ghostbusters, a group of recurring child characters, were added. More focus was placed on Slimer, who spun off into his own (doomed) cartoon in Season 4. The consultants also wanted fixed roles for the four main characters with Egon as "The Brain", Ray as "The Hands", Peter as "The Mouth" and Winston as "The Driver" (the racist implications of which Straczynski and the writing team rightly called Q5 out for). This was enough to make Straczynski leave his position after Season 3 (though he wrote some later scripts for the show as a free-lance writer).
 * Hey, It's That Voice!: Quoth X-Entertainment: "If you're new to the show, it'll take awhile for you to stop expecting lasagna jokes [from Peter, who is voiced by Lorenzo Music in the early half of the show's run]."
 * It becomes Hilarious in Hindsight because in 2004, a live-action Garfield movie would be released. In that film, Garfield is voiced by Bill Murray, who played Peter Venkman in the Ghostbusters movie.
 * Kath Soucie played the post-Chickification Janine. It was one of her earliest roles.
 * The original Janine was voiced by Laura Summer, who would reuse the voice for Patamon.
 * Maurice LaMarche played Egon. Hey, Egon, what do you wanna do tonight?
 * Frank Welker pulled double-duty as Ray and Slimer.
 * The Slimer! shorts featured Cree Summer as Chilly Cooper, an ice cream truck driver who befriends Slimer.
 * The Other Darrin: After the syndicated episodes, Dave Coulier replaced Lorenzo Music as Peter, and Kath Soucie replaced Laura Summer as Janine. A season later, Arsenio Hall left for his talk show and was replaced by Buster Jones.
 * In the second season, whenever the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man appeared, Frank Welker handled any vocal effects. In Season 3's episode "Sticky Business", John Stocker took over the role. Later in Season 5's episode "Partners in Slime", Welker again voiced the character for a brief cameo.
 * Out of Order: Comparing the syndicated episode premiere dates and the DVD ordering, one can see a multitude of differences. Due to its stand-alone nature, this would've hardly been noticeable for the series, except for two major examples:
 * "Cold Cash and Hot Water" premiered before both "Venkman's Ghost Repellers" and "The Spirit of Aunt Lois"... despite those two formally introducing Peter's dad and Doctor Basingame, respectively ("Cold Cash and Hot Water" even references Basingame's bogus seance at Aunt Lois' house).
 * "Slimer, Is That You?" and "Transylvanian Homesick Blues" features a weird example. The former was produced as part of the syndicated package and the latter for ABC. However, the two were somehow flipped, with "Slimer, Is That You?" premiereing September 26, 1987 on ABC and "Transylvanian Homesick Blues" December 11, 1987 in syndication (the last premiere episode in the syndication run, no less). It's largely noticeable due to the different voices for Peter and Janine (though the latter maintained her original design in both episodes).
 * Promoted Fanboy: A number of people involved at the start of production were fans of the movie. Maurice LaMarche is one such example.
 * Recycled: the Series: Of Ghostbusters. Humorously enough, the show treats The Movie as a movie version of the series.
 * Talking to Himself: Frank Welker (Ray, Slimer, sometimes also voices ghosts... he's pretty much a Man of a Thousand Voices) and Maurice La Marche (Egon, and the Umpire in the episode "Night Game").
 * What Could Have Been:
 * Filmation was in talks to animate this series. If they had, at the very least, their show never would've happened.
 * Ernie Hudson (Winston in the movies) auditioned for his character.