Trivia / Filmation's Ghostbusters

• Acting for Two:
  • In the live action series, Larry Storch as Spenser and the Al Capone Expy in the first episode. They even dressed the same.
  • The cartoon really got a lot of mileage out of its small number of voice actors:
    • Pat Fraley: Jake Jr., Jake Sr., Ghost Buggy, Skelescope, and Scared Stiff
    • Peter Cullen: Eddie Jr., Eddie Sr., Brat-A-Rat, and Haunter
    • Susan Blu: Jessica Wray, Futura, Belfry, and Time Hopper
    • Lou Scheimer: Tracy, Sir Tran In the live actiuon series me Why
• California Doubling: The 1975 series episode "The Dummy's Revenge" has Spenser, Kong and Tracy entering a building lobby to check someone's contact information. That lobby was actually the foyer of the Filmation building!
• Creator Cameo: Filmation founder Lou Scheimer as Zero in the live-action series and several voices in the animated series. Tracy, Fib Face and Ansabone are but three examples.
• Cross-Dressing Voices: Susan Blu as Belfry and Erika Scheimer as Jessica's nephew Corky.
• Marth Debuted in "Smash Bros.": At least outside the U.S., since the animated sequel was broadcast overseas, while the original live-action TV series prequel was never exported anywhere, with the sole known exception of Mexico.
• Playing Against Type: Peter Cullen plays the hero’s sidekick and a supporting villain. He does get to use his Optimus Prime voice in an episode where Eddie gets superpowers.
• Reality Subtext: The episode "Statue of Liberty" revolves around the newly-restored Statue of Liberty, which Americans had celebrated in real life that past July. (The episode aired in September 1986, just two months after "Liberty Weekend.")
• Recycled Script:
  • Becomes really obvious when the same villain pulls off the same plot in two consecutive episodes, at least in the Netflix playlist order.
  • The Inside a Computer System episode "Cyman's Revenge" is very similar to the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983) episode "Day of the Machines".
  • There's a sequence in the episode "Statue of Liberty" in which The Ghostbusters go up a reeeeeally long flight of stairs in pursuit of Mysteria. Mysteria catches up to Eddie and surrounds him with mist. Eddie falls, and Tracy uses the Ghost Gummer to catch him in the nick of time. The sequence was reused in a later episode, replacing Mysteria with a generic orange ghost.
• Referenced by...: The Funday Pawpet Show: In this clip at about 10:05, the opening credits run as Poink explains the series to Yappy. Oddly enough the music is the Ray Parker Jr. movie/Real Ghostbusters theme...and it fits in with the animation like a glove.
• Serendipity Writes the Plot: A different actor was originally meant to play Tracy. After he had an disagreement with Filmnation surrounding royalties though, he ended up walking out alongside his gorilla suit. With only three days left until filming was supposed to start, the crew was desperate to find another actor and Bob Burns got the role primarily because he already owned a suit.
• The Other Darrin: In the 1975 series Jake Kong Sr. was played by Forrest Tucker and Eddie Spencer Sr. was Larry Storch but in the 1986 series and probably due to the passing of Forrest Tucker, Jake Sr. is voiced by Pat Fraley and Eddie Sr. is voiced by Peter Cullen.
• What Could Have Been:
  • In the original "series bible" (the document which lays out the vision of the series), the moronic Airhead was described as working for the Ghostbusters while serving Prime Evil — in other words, a mole. This gave his incompetence a very interesting angle, but in the finished series, he was just a moron.
  • According to the show's wiki, Filmation was planning a Spin-Off called Batz featuring Belfry's family, with the episode "Whither Why" as a Poorly Disguised Pilot.
    • In her original design, Futura was an African-American with long, light-brown hair, and Jessica Wray originally had blonde hair.
    • Prime Evil was originally designed to resemble Mumm-Ra, while Scared Stiff was originally conceived as more of a "walking fridge" robot and Mysteria originally had a human appearance and a long red dress.
    • Tex-Hex from Bravestarr was originally meant to be a Ghostbusters villain. Lou Scheimer took one look at his character-sketch and decided that he should be a Big Bad in his own right.
    • The original 1975 series did very well; it came in second for ratings, right behind another Filmation live-action show, The Shazam/Isis Hour. A second season could have been done but Filmation cancelled it instead to concentrate on the aforementioned show.^note Which they came to regret as Shazam/Isis ratings dipped sharply in the following season.
  • Apparently, there were plans for an Animated Adaptation of the original '75 series, with artwork dating as early as 1982! One can only conjecture that Filmation shelved this idea in favor of a more profitable project.
• Bizarrely, if you combine the Real Ghostbusters song with the Filmation intro, they match perfectly. Combining the intro of The Real Ghostbusters with the Filmation music isn't quite the same, but it still comes very close.
  • Most likely the animators were told to time the intro animation to the Ray Parker Jr. music just in case a last minute agreement with Columbia Pictures (or case handed down in court) allowed them to use it.

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