Ghostbusters/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Non Sequitur Scene: The dream sequence in the first film, remnant of a cut scene that appears in its entirety in the novelization.
  • Complete Monster: Ivo Shandor, the main antagonist of the video game spinoff, "performed a lot of unnecessary surgery", plotted The End of the World as We Know It, attempted to sacrifice his granddaughter to himself so he could become a god, and kidnapped and tortured a juvenile sloar.
    • Also Vigo, the Big Bad of Ghostbusters 2, was a bloodthirsty tyrant with a fondness for torture and genocide. In the afterlife, of course, he hasn't got much better, and attempts to kill a newborn infant's spirit so that he can be reborn in it's physical body.
    • In the 2016 reboot of Ghostbusters, Rowan North is an intellectual ghost expert who despises humanity due to it not recognizing his "genius" and treating him like dirt his whole life. Deciding humanity should be purged, Rowan begins unleashing ghosts at various highly-populated locations, where they attack and nearly kill many people. After becoming a ghost, Rowan possesses the Ghostbusters' secretary, Kevin, and uses him to thrash two police officers and unleash his ghost army onto New York. While his ghosts wreak havoc across the city, Rowan first tries to kill Kevin, then transforms into a humongous monster in an attempt to kill the Ghostbusters, at which point he plans to lead his ghost army in butchering any and all humans across the world. Subverting a Freudian Excuse by targeting humanity as a whole and taking sadistic pleasure while doing so, Rowan stood out as a vile misanthrope who darkened this film in every one of his appearances.
  • Crowning Moment of Funny: Has its own page.
  • Crowning Music of Awesome:
    • The theme song is nearly as beloved as the franchise that spawned it.
    • "Higher and Higher." A literal example as it actually electrocutes the Statue of Liberty's crown.
    • The Elmer Bernstein score. Dana's theme is especially powerful besides the Lincoln Center theme (which sounds like a waltz).
  • Cult Classic: The first film anyway.
  • Demonic Spiders:
    • In the 2009 game, those cherubs. THE CHERUBS!
    • The black slime golems are worthy runners-up, considering you fight two of them in cramped locales while being blasted by venom crawlers.
    • Toss all possessor ghosts into the pile: not only do you have to remove them from their human hosts before actually busting them, but they can also turn the other Ghostbusters against you as easily as they do any other human. Expect a lot of running and sliming to keep yourself alive.
    • There's the Grave Golems that make the Black Slime Golems look like patsies.
  • Ear Worm: If there's some damn song / runnin' through your head / who ya gonna call?
  • Evil Is Sexy The Spider Witch. You wouldn't have guessed from her slashed mouth with fangs,unless you're into that, but in life she was a bizarre yet attractive woman. This was her main way of attracting her victims.
  • Fetish Fuel: For nerds, Fiery Redhead secretaries, possession, and lots and lots of slime. Invoked in the movies when Ray, during a ghostbusting montage, has a dream about a sexy ghost (which actually happened in the original script and the Novelization).
  • Goddamned Bats: In the Library level of the game, you constantly get attacked by bats, but not just any bats, book bats. The presence and, in later levels, commonness of "little destroyable ghosts" is a commonly-stated strike against the game.
  • Harmless Villain: Vigo becomes this in the Ghostbusters videogame. The best he can do is insult you and try and make you feel uncomfortable.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: Peter Mac Nicol (Janosz Poha) would later play an art curator who was forced to host Mr/Bean. Harris Yulin (the judge from the second film) was the owner of the museum!
  • It's the Same, Now It Sucks: One of the key points of criticism about the second movie is that it's in many ways a repeat of the first.
  • Memetic Mutation: Any reference to "crossing the streams", "Who You Gonna Call??", "This man has no dick", and many, many more. Notably, before the first film came out, "slime" had no verb form.
  • Memetic Outfit: The Ghostbusters uniform is still a standard of fancy-dress parties over twenty years later.
  • Most Wonderful Sound:
    • The proton pack startup sound. You know the one; the one you just heard in your mind upon reading that.
    • Also, the distinctive siren of Ecto-1, though more for nostalgia than the actual merits of the siren.
  • Nightmare Fuel: Despite being a comedy at its heart, there are still plenty of genuinely scary moments in the movies. The new game has its moments as well. In the movies, bonus points go to the phantom librarian, the zombie cabdriver, the two electric-chair victims, the heads on spikes in the Sinister Subway, the museum boss dressed as a phantom nanny who spirits Oscar away, Vigo's eyes shifting at the beginning of No. 2...
  • Sequelitis: The second movie is generally considered much weaker than the first, and something of a pale imitation at that.
  • Soundtrack Dissonance: The "monster movie"-style music that plays during Stay Puft Marshmallow Man's entrance is (intentionally?) Played for Laughs when juxtaposed with Mr. Stay Puft's smiling face. However, he does turn to face the Ghostbusters a few minutes later...
  • Special Effects Failure:
    • In Ghostbusters II, the mechanism that makes the toaster dance is clearly visible.
    • Towards the end of the first movie, a rather large rock harmlessly bounces off of a police barricade instead of crushing it.
  • That One Achievement: "Nice Shootin’, Tex!" Complete the game with less than $100,000 in property damage. How hard could that be? For reference, it's possible to rack up that much on some individual levels.
  • That One Boss: Most people tend to agree that Azetlor at the end of the Public Library in the Xbox 360 version of the game is ridiculously tough to beat, especially on Professional difficulty. He can move fast, has attacks that can drop you, Egon, and Ray in several hits, has some of the highest health in the game, and can summon Book Bats to help him. You need to move fast and continue reviving your teammates if you intend to survive The Collector.
  • Uncanny Valley: The realistic version of the game on the Play Station 3 and 360 renders most of the characters fairly close to the way the actors looked in the movies. While it is still somewhat stylized, there are more than a few moments that look almost life-like.
    • The Wii version avoids this somewhat since, as a much less graphically powerful console, the game was tweaked to look more cartoonish, with character designs more in keeping with The Real Ghostbusters.
  • Values Dissonance: In the beginning of the original movie, Venkman going half-assed through an experiment simply so he might romance his female subject.
  • Villain Decay:
    • Vigo the Carpathian, the Big Bad of Ghostbusters II, is reduced to nothing more than his painting in the game, unable to do much of anything except talk. To add insult to injury, the painting is owned by the guys who beat him—the Ghostbusters.
    • The game also made Stay Puft much weaker than before, to the point the player character can take him on. It's actually stated in the game that Gozer's second manifestation as Stay Puft was much weaker than the first.
  • Visual Effects of Awesome: The films have aged very gracefully over the years. The proton pack streams in particular look about as good now as they would with modern CGI effects. And not to forget Stay Puft. The only thing that has dated somewhat is the stop-motion of the terror dogs, but they are still scary.