What Could Have Been / Ghostbusters

Early Concept Art for the Terror Dogs in Ghostbusters

Movies

Ghostbusters

• John Belushi was the first choice for the role of Peter Venkman before Bill Murray was cast, but unfortunately passed away before production on the movie began.
  • Chevy Chase and Steve Guttenberg were approached for the part of Peter Venkman as well. Chase turned down the offer as he claimed that the original script was much darker and even scarier than the final product, while Guttenberg declined due to scheduling conflicts with Police Academy.
  • Michael Keaton, Richard Pryor, Robin Williams and Tom Hanks were also considered for the role of Peter Venkman before the casting of Murray.
• Christopher Lloyd, Christopher Walken, Jeff Goldblum and John Lithgow were considered for the part of Egon Spengler before the casting of Harold Ramis.
• Eddie Murphy was initially approached for Winston Zeddemore before Ernie Hudson was cast, but turned it down due to filming commitments to Beverly Hills Cop. Originally, the character was meant to appear in more of the film and would've joined the team much earlier. Winston would've also been the one who was slimed at the hotel rather than Venkman.
  • Gregory Hines, Yaphet Kotto and Reginald VelJohnson were offered the role of Winston Zeddemore as well before the casting of Hudson. Hines turned down the offer in order to star in The Cotton Club instead. VelJohnson would later go on to play a corrections officer in the film.
• John Candy was approached for the part of Louis Tully before the casting of Rick Moranis. However, Candy wanted to portray the character as an odd German guy who owned dogs. Ivan Reitman and Dan Aykroyd didn't like this idea, since there was already so much dog imagery in the movie, and they couldn't bring themselves to replace their character with Candy's interpretation.
• Julia Roberts, Denise Crosby, Daryl Hannah and Kelly LeBrock read for the role of Dana Barrett before Sigourney Weaver was cast.
• Sandra Bernhard was offered the part of Janine Melnitz before the casting of Annie Potts, but declined as she refused to serve as a comedic foil to a predominantly male cast.
• Gozer was originally going to take the form of a man in a business suit and would've been played by Paul Reubens. Reitman was the one to devise the androgynous form at the last minute, believing it would work better as a supernatural manifestation rather than the rather mundane look. However, the design of Ivo Shandor in Ghostbusters: The Video Game is said to be based upon what Paul Reubens might look like in ten or fifteen years' time.
• Lindsay Buckingham was originally set to do the theme, having done the theme from National Lampoon's Vacation already. However, because of that success, Buckingham declined the offer as he didn't want to get into the rut of being asked to write movie themes.
• Ray Parker Jr. almost refused to do the theme song, as he had no idea how to work the title into it. However, when he saw the advertisement sequence, he was inspired to make it call-and-response.
• About 60 different songs with Ghostbusters in the title were rejected, before the version by Ray Parker Jr. was accepted. One of them circulates in chopped up pieces. Another one, performed by Glenn Hughes and Pat Thrall, resurfaced in June 2021.
• The movie was meant to be an adult/older teen-oriented comedy, not unlike the earlier Ramis/Murray vehicle Stripes. Even then, what ended up in theaters is chock-full of casual smoking, swearing, political undertones, sexual innuendo, and of course the ghost-on-human blowjob scene. There's even allegedly an alternate take where Egon, upon spotting Stay Puft coming up the road, shouts "Oh, FUCK!" instead of "LOOK!", but this was cut because the PG-13 rating didn't exist yet and one Precision F-Strike would've meant nobody under seventeen could see the movie, as it would jump straight from PG to R. Upon realizing kids were losing their minds over it, however, The Real Ghostbusters was conceived and began running, which led to Ghostbusters II being green-lit. The sequel was toned down to be more kid-friendly, with maybe five swear words dropped in the whole movie, every character except Ray ceasing smoking (and Ray is never, ever seen with lit tobacco or even a cigarette; he merely chews on the end of unlit pipes and cigars), fewer sex jokes, and an overall broader style of comedy.
• Ghostbusters varies tremendously from its original concept. Dan Aykroyd's original script called for multiple groups of Ghostbusters who traveled through time and fought ghosts in different dimensions wearing SWAT-like gear and using wands to battle ghosts. This idea was rejected as technologically unfeasible in 1984. Supposedly, the special effects would have cost over $300 million. Reitman re-purposed the script as a "going into business" story to make it more grounded, realistic, accessible to audiences, and affordable.
• The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man was on the chopping block. The producers were worried that audiences wouldn't buy the character, and were prepared to produce a different ending if test audiences didn't react positively. Fortunately, they did, even though the test version of the movie lacked completed special effects, making him more of an Unseen Evil.
• The librarian ghost's One-Winged Angel form was originally even scarier. The original model was later used in Fright Night as Amy's vampire face.
• The Ecto-1 was originally going to be painted black until it was pointed out that most driving would be at night and the car would be difficult to see. It was then repainted white.
• The original version of the script began with the Ecto-1 flying out of Ghostbusters HQ, but Reitman suggested that it would be better to show how the team got started.
• The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man was originally supposed to come up out of the water right next to the Statue of Liberty, to get a contrast of size, but the scene was too hard to shoot.
• The ghost in the Ghostbusters logo originally looked more like Casper the Friendly Ghost, and Stay Puft and Slimer looked MUCH different.
• Originally, Stay Puft was going to be the Pillsbury Doughboy, but Pillsbury declined.
• The movie was originally set in outer space. The main characters were just one of many competing ghost-smashing teams operating in that universe, and worked for an inter-dimensional being called Shandor. Shandor accidentally trapped another being, called Zuul, in our time and dimension, and Zuul's owner, Gozer, would come to our dimension to get his pet back, meaning that it would be up to the heroes to stop him.
• There were originally only two Ghostbusters.
• Butt-Dialing Mordor figured into the original premise—our nuclear power plants and electronics and things were stirring up the dimensions where ghosts reside, and they were waking up very angry; from this, the free market responded with "Ghostbusters" as a way of getting rid of the ghosts.

Ghostbusters II

• The movie was apparently supposed to start getting into the "other dimension" aspect of the mythology but that was changed at the last minute to something closer in plot to the first movie. Bill Murray was upset with the radical changes to the script and it is another reason why a third movie lingered for so long in Development Hell. Unfortunately, it is this similarity to the first movie that contributes to its overall lesser reception. The game was able to finally get into this aspect of the premise, being cheaper to do than a movie format.
• The producers proposed several ideas for major ghostly manifestations, including tombstones shooting off like rockets, a ghostly subway station with rotting commuters, and a ghostly, burning Hindenburg (with flaming passengers getting off, carrying their burning luggage). Only the subway station idea made it into the film (in the form of a ghostly subway train), while the Hindenberg made it to the drawing stage before it was scrapped in favor of the Titanic apparitions.
• In the first draft of the script, Dan Aykroyd wanted to contrast to the first film's climax atop a skyscraper by making a subterranean threat. This draft followed Dana Barrett, who is kidnapped and taken to Scotland, where she discovers a fairy ring and an underground civilization. The Ghostbusters would have had to travel through an underground pneumatic tube over 2,000 miles long that would have taken three days to traverse. Aykroyd eventually decided that retaining the New York setting would allow for continuity and would better fit the story he wanted to tell while still allowing them to explore underground and that his first draft was "really too far out... too inaccessible".

Ghostbusters: Answer the Call

• Fieg had originally envisioned the reboot as a trilogy, with the first film focusing on the all-female team in New York, the second film focusing on a male (or mixed-gender) team on the West Coast, and the two teams joining forces for the third film and facing a massive threat.
• Feig's original pitch to Amy Pascal for the first film involved the Big Bad as an executed murderer, a "Ted Kazinski (sic) type" (whom he envisioned being played by Peter Dinklage) who left a crazed manifesto detailing his plans for global conquest and destruction. His execution by electric chair is botched when it's hit by a supercharged electrical storm, causing him to
• Possibly playing off of this, Feig originally envisioned an opening involving "an old guy getting electrocuted", but says they "mercifully" threw it out in favor of Katie Dippold's suggestion for a more iconic, old-NY feel.
• Emma Stone was approached for an unspecified role in the film, but turned it down due to her reluctance to commit to another franchise after The Amazing Spider-Man Series.
• Anne Hathaway, Jennifer Lawrence, Eliza Dushku, Alyssa Milano, Anna Faris and Rebel Wilson were also considered for undisclosed parts in the movie. Hathaway's character was supposedly going to be a doctor named "Anna".
• Rick Moranis declined to make a cameo, stating that he didn't want to "spend one day of shooting making a cameo for something I did thirty years ago".
• Originally, the film was going to have practical effects in addition to the final CGI work, much like the original film as according to effects artist Rick Lazzarini (who was personally chosen by Feig). While this didn't happen, Lazzarini would contribute, uncredited, two stand-in puppets for Slimer and his mate.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife

• Jason Reitman and Gil Kenan revealed that a version of Callie and Phoebe's argument ended with Callie breaking the P.K.E. meter, the Missing Trailer Scene of Phoebe working on something in her room is what remains. This scene was changed due to test audiences hating Callie for her actions and making her Unintentionally Unsympathetic.
• The Terror Sentinel was originally envisioned as a separate entity from Zuul and Vinz Clotho, before being re-envisioned as an alternate form the Terror Dogs could assume.

Television Shows

The Real Ghostbusters

• Ernie Hudson auditioned to reprise his role as Winston Zeddemore before the casting of Arsenio Hall.
• Filmation was in talks to animate this series. If they had, at the very least, their show never would've happened.
• In light of falling ratings after the Slimer Retool, producers asked JMS to return as head writer for Season 6. JMS had other projects at the time, though he agreed to write a few episodes (chief among them "Janine, You've Changed").
• The executives softened Janine's character to be more "motherly" but they also wanted to make her a full-fledged Ghostbuster as opposed to just a secretary who only occasionally got involved with the plot. Quite a few fans think this might have actually been a good idea, especially if it had been thought up during the show's peak.
• An early four minute pitch promo/workprint featured an entirely different character design for Peter Venkman (one that came closer to the more blue collar looks of live action Venkman Bill Murray than the chiseled pretty boy design they ultimately went with), the Ghostbusters wearing their beige movie jumpsuits instead of the multi-color coded jumpsuits they wore in the finished series, a slightly different animation style, and Slimer still appeared to be an antagonist rather than a team pet and mascot. Clips from it appeared in some ABC promos (one for the show, and one for their Saturday lineup that season as part of their "Together" image campaign that year) before the show debuted.
  • In early storyboards for the promo pilot, Winston had facial hair. It was later removed to keep his design simple.
• The casting call for "The Devil to Pay" lists Samhain and has "(originally William E. Martin)" crossed out, which appears to indicate that the illusion of Samhain seen in the episode was originally intended to have dialogue.
• According to J. Michael Straczynski, the titular Eldritch Abomination from "The Collect Call of Cathulhu" should have been called "Cthulhu", but the typographer for the title changed the spelling to "Cathulhu" thinking it was a typo.

Extreme Ghostbusters

• The show was originally planned as a series-wide Myth Arc revolving around a coming war in the spirit world between supernatural ghosts (dead humans) and "peranatural ghosts (ghouls)" (spiritual entities like Gozer who were never alive to begin with). The ghouls were originally written as demons (but that was nixed early on to avoid offending anybody's religious sensibilities) that threatened to spill over and destroy the Earth. Also, Egon would have long since quit his job at the university to become a mystic and travel through the afterlife (losing his ability to speak English and speak in an unknown ghostly language), only returning to the world of the living to warn people about the war. Janine would have been the teacher and it would have been her who put the group together.
• An early version of the intro (used as a promo on certain Columbia-Tristar VHS tapes) shows a ghost trap that used three arms as a cover instead of the three-piece dome cover seen in the final version.
• This early logo◊ that was found on a animation website shows rivets in the red 'Ghostbusters'' logo, which were removed in the final version. Even the word "Extreme" is stylized in a manner not seen anywhere else. This rivet logo would actually appear in the series itself; it's seen on the firehouse in the episodes "Home Is Where The Horror Is" and "Moby Ghost".
• Gnat, a mischievous goblin who would have joined Slimer as a second Non-Human Sidekick/Team Pet, never made it to the final show.
• Ghosts from the first show such as The Boogeyman, Sandman, Ghost Master, Stay Puft, etc. were planned to appear but the only ones that made it was the Grundel, and Ragnarök.
  • Samhain was going to appear in this show but wasn't able to do so, despite the fact that he had his own toy◊ and his redesign appeared in the intro and end credits.
• Garrett was originally going to be a girl named Lucy. When he was changed, he was originally named Lucas.
• Roland was originally a clumsy Gentle Giant, Eduardo had a dream of running in the Olympic Games, and Lucas had a Hair-Trigger Temper. (Some of these still made it to the character profiles on the EGB website.)
• According to Maurice LaMarche, Frank Welker was approached about reprising Slimer. However, the recording sessions were at night in order to accommodate the schedules of cast members who worked on live-action projects. Since Welker's schedule was busy enough as it was, he opted to just step aside and gave them his blessing to recast Slimer. However, Welker did return to voice Ray Stantz in the last two episodes.
• Garret's nightmare in "In Your Dreams" was originally going to be a lot worse. It was going to be his mother torturing him with a cattle prod!
• Ever wonder where the Deluxe figures' equipment came from? At one early stage, these larger kits were going to be the new equipment, to be deployed against super-powered ghosts. The only remnant of this is the Field Projector Egon rigs up at the end of "Killjoys", and the "Ghost Vacuum" from "Sonic Youth" (which can also be seen at the end of the intro, as the piece of machinery Roland is resting his arms on).