10 Fun Facts About GHOSTBUSTERS II You May Not Know
This week marks the 25th anniversary of Ghostbusters II. It may not be everyone's favorite movie, but when I was a kid I loved it just as much as the first one. It's really not that bad of a movie, sure it had some really cheesy parts, and I wasn't a big fan of what they did with Janine, but it was still entertaining. One of my favorite parts of the film when I was a kid is when they hooked the NES Advantage joystick up to the Statue of Liberty and walked it into New York City to save the day. I thought is was so freakin' cool.
Since it is the 25th anniversary of the film, I thought it would be fun to share few interesting bits of trivia about the movie that you might not know. So here are ten of them that I picked out from Imdb:
- Originally, the producers planned on having the crashed Hindenburg appear as a ghostly airship. They dumped this in favor of the apparitions coming off the Titanic.
- In the scene when Egon looks up information about Vigo in the database, Vigo's full name is listed as Vigo Von Homburg Deutschendorf. The actor who plays Vigo is Wilhelm von Homburg and the twins who play Oscar are William T. Deutschendorf and Henry J. Deutschendorf II. The twins are the nephews of singer John Denver whose real name was Henry J. Deutschendorf I.
- The kid who tells Ray that, according to his dad, the Ghostbusters are "full of crap" is played by Jason Reitman, the son of director Ivan Reitman. Jason grew up to direct films such as Juno and Up in the Air.
- The term "proton pack", was never officially used on screen until the Ghostbusters are in the subway tunnel and Egon says, "Before we go any further, I think we should get our proton packs."
- The original VHS and laserdisc release of this movie was in letterbox, causing complaints to video stores prompting them to call RCA/Columbia to find out if there was a problem in the printing. To make matters worse, it was not letterboxed in the film's original aspect ratio of 2.35:1, but rather letterboxed and panned-and-scanned into a 1.66:1 frame. The DVD release in 1999 was the first time that the film was presented in it's original 2.35:1 aspect ratio on home video.
- Because The Real Ghostbusters (1986) animated spin-off series was so popular with the kids, Reitman, Dan Aykroyd, and Harold Ramis made a conscious effort to tone down the adult innuendo and behaviors from the previous movie. Between the two films, all the Ghostbusters gave up smoking, and the ghosts took on appearances closer to those in the animated series rather than the more frightening effects of the first film. It's the same reason that Janine's character was changed, and Slimer was living in the firehouse.
- When Ray, Egon, and Winston go down into the sewer to examine the slime, and Winston is using a measuring device to see how deep it is, when he is being pulled towards the slime and Egon and Ray are trying to hold him back, you can hear one of the other 2 actors (Ramis or Aykroyd) call Winston "Ernie" by mistake, Ernie Hudson plays Winston in the movie.
- Judge Wexler says that he tried the Scolari Brothers for murder and gave them the Electric Chair. The State of New York abolished the death penalty in 1965, 24 years before this movie takes place, when Judge Wexler would have been too young to be involved judging a murder trial.
- The movie ends at New Year, so it must have been around Christmas time when the majority of events took place. There is a surprising lack of Christmas decorations in New York City.
- After the Ghostbusters smash the glass and metal dome on the roof of the museum, the entire dome wasn't actually totally destroyed. When the Ghostbusters rappel down, the dome is still halfway intact, and later on, when Vigo looks up at the ceiling, half of the dome is intact.