The Real Ghostbusters/YMMV

• Acceptable Targets: There is an ancient mystical tome in the ghost realm called "The Book of Annoying Beings." The Ghostbusters are on one page. As the Ghostmaster rips it out in frustration, we see that the very next page is devoted to mimes.
  • Several pot-shots are taken at New Jersey. Understandable, considering the show takes place in New York.
• Animation Age Ghetto: Interestingly, the show began life as an attempt to get out of this; given who ran the show early on, this shouldn't be surprising.
  • The essential idea was to create a show that was acceptable for Saturday mornings, but would still get the same Multiple Demographic Appeal that the movie had, which is why you have unusually solid (and complex) writing and humor (with examples like the episodes "The Thing in Mrs. Faversham's Attic" or "The Hole in the Wall Gang"), episodes with near-psychedelic visuals like "Knock, Knock" and, uh, a bit of occasional "focus" on Janine. Unfortunately, since The Merch sold like crazy, the executives saw only dollar signs, and demanded Retools to try and sell more merch. The writers revolted, many (including J. Michael Straczynski) left and the show went right back into the ghetto (ironically, this also drove away the wee kiddies to shows like, well, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe since the uniqueness of the early show is what drew people to it in the first place).
• Anvilicious: Season 4 episode "Follow That Hearse" really wants you to know that pollution is very, very bad.
• Author's Saving Throw: "Janine, You've Changed", considered by many fans the best use of this trope ever.
• Base-Breaking Character: Slimer is a pretty divisive character. For every fan who is amused by his antics and scenes where he annoys the hell out of Peter Venkman, there's one who sides with Venkman and wishes that the Ghostbusters would just trap Slimer and imprison him with the other ghosts in the Containment Unit. It didn't help that the later seasons gave more focus on him and even renamed the show as Slimer! and The Real Ghostbusters.
• Complete Monster:
  • The Grundel, who targets children at night and derives great pleasure from terrorizing them.
• Creator's Pet: Arguably Slimer: he was The Scrappy to a lot of viewers, so what did the producers do? Rename the show Slimer! and the Real Ghostbusters and have him show up even more. Then there were the Junior Ghostbusters. Yeah.
  • Slimer was at least a little more bearable when he genuinely helped the Ghostbusters save the day, like when they went up against Killerwatt.
  • A large part of the problem was that Executive Meddling changed Slimer's character. Originally, Slimer was an affable sidekick that didn't speak coherently. While there were episodes where he would play a major role, there were others in which he barely appeared if at all. However, with the third season, Slimer started to take more focus in plots and began speaking coherently.
• Funny Aneurysm Moment: The episode "Janine's Genie" has one scene in which the Ghostbusters, including Janine, attempt to prevent a ghost-hijacked plane, with passengers inside, from crashing in New York City. Janine and Peter, piloting the plane themselves, nearly avoid crashing against the World Trade Center.
• Gannon Banned: This series and its concept is created by Columbia (which produced the original movies), not DiC, who only did the animation work.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Peter gets possessed by a demon in an early episode. The symptoms? Spiky hair and a yellow complexion.
  • The story goes that Lorenzo Music was dropped because Bill Murray was concerned about Peter Venkman sounding like Garfield and executives sought to accomodate him. If indeed true, well, that makes a later Murray role very ironic.
• Memetic Molester: The Grundel has a reputation of being interpreted as some kind of sexual predator thanks to his unsavory obsession with manipulating children. Many people even assumed he was meant to be a stand-in for child molesters.
• Narm: Dave Coulier's portrayal as Peter Venkman from Season 3 onwards is very cringe-worthy due to how he delivered Peter's dialogue as if he was brain dead. Even worse is when the studio redub older episodes that originally had Lorenzo Music as Peter, taking away the humor out of Peter's one liners. Luckily for fans, the DVDs left it out.
• Non Sequitur Scene: At one point in the episode "Banshee Bake a Cherry Pie?", we get a scene of a lovestruck Venkman dreaming he's in a music video with a singer (actually a banshee) he has a crush on. Egon appears, interrupting the performance and then breaks the fourth wall as the scene ends.

Egon: "Uh, hello, I'm Dr. Egon Spengler, and you're not watching this overblown spectacle. It's totally in the banshee-riddled mind of my colleague here. Um, thank you."

• Only the Creator Does It Right: The show's downturn in quality coincides with J. Michael Straczynski with quitting as head writer, though he did return to write some good episodes as a freelancer.
• Retroactive Recognition: Before hosting his own talk show, Arsenio Hall was voicing Winston Zeddemore.
• The Scrappy: The Junior Ghostbusters, a trio of kids that came with all the Executive Meddling to make the show Lighter and Softer. None of the writers were thrilled with using them. J. Michael Straczynski even once recalled saying he'd only use them if he could run them over with a truck. The kids only appeared twice here (though with expanded roles on Slimer's own cartoony spin-off), but fans were still irritated because these two appearances took up screentime from the Ghostbusters' re-matches with fan favorites the Boogieman and Samhain, respectively.
• Seasonal Rot: After the syndicated episodes, Seasons 3 and 4 suffered from Executive Meddling to be Lighter and Softer (as well as replacement voice actors for Peter, Winston and Janine), but still had some fan-favorites. Season 5, however, awkwardly shoehorned in elements of the second movie (Louis was one thing, but the city's injunction against the team was seen as forced). Slapstick humor became even more apparent and a number of episodes saw a Two Shorts format instead of one story.
• Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped: The show was very rarely ever Anvilicious in any sense; "Janine, You've Changed", however, has a rather blunt anvil about not needing to worry about your appearance and weight and whatnot and trust that people will like you just the way you appear. And if you're at all familiar with the history of "youth beauty" and anorexia in the 80s and early 90s, that anvil seriously needed some dropping on the show's largest age group.
• Strawman Has a Point: Anytime Peter complains about Slimer, there's at least some degree of merit to his complaints. In the episode "Slimer, Come Home", he condemns Slimer for eating "anything that's not nailed down or on fire." In the episode "They Call Me MISTER Slimer", he points out Slimer is responsible for a lot of bills that he doesn't have to pay for.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: How many people reacted to the changes that was a part of Season 3 and beyond. J. Michael Straczynski and quite a few other members of the writing have stated on record that they completely agree.
• Ugly Cute: Slimer. The spud was actually pretty likable until he got overexposed in the later seasons.
• The Woobie: Slimer in some of his focus episodes, especially in "Slimer, Come Home".