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  • Big Lipped Alligator Moment: The dream sequence in the first film, remnant of a cut scene that appears in its entirety in the novelization.
  • 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).
  • 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).
  • First Installment Wins: Very few would label the second film as outright bad, but the first is iconic.
  • Fountain of Memes: "See you on the other side Ray. Nice working with you Dr. Venkman", "This man has no dick", "I collect spores, fungus, and mold", "Shit that would turn you white", "BURNED AT THE STAKE!", "Who you gonna call?", "Don't cross the streams", it would take less time to list off the moments that aren't quotable.
  • Funny Aneurysm Moment: The paranoid environmentalist who shuts down containment in the first film; creating a problem that unregulated industry has to solve. While the EPA and its fellow protection agencies may have helped create certain problems, it's usually because they didn't go far enough.
  • 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.
  • Harsher in Hindsight: In the first film, Walter "Dickless" Peck makes a big deal about how the Ghostbusters are a potential risk to the environment. Then, in the promotion for Afterlife, the franchise began selling NFTs, which have been criticized for their negative impact on the environment. Seems Peck was on the money for once.
  • 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 Loser: The 2016 on-screen all-female team for a variety of reasons, though Leslie Jones' character, Patty Tolan, is one of the main victims here. Doubly so when Leslie Jones tweeted her disapproval over Afterlife.
  • 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.
  • Sequelitis: The second movie is generally considered much weaker than the first, and something of a pale imitation at that.
  • Signature Scene:
    • "Choose! Choose the form of the Destructor!"
    • Ray and Winston dancing to the theme song in the sequel. The trial as well given what a Large Ham the judge is.
  • 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.
  • Strawman Has a Point: Walter Peck's initial plea to see the containment grid was reasonable. He's also quite polite before Venkman gives him the runaround. It is his job to make sure people like the Ghostbusters are operating with safe equipment, and in fact the Ghostbusters' containment grid could cause a massive explosion in a densely-populated area. After getting crudely brushed off by Venkman, however, he overreacts and orders the grid's immediate deactivation. If Venkman had cooperated, instead of treating Peck and the EPA as an enemy from the start, they could have avoided the ensuing meltdown.
  • 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 PlayStation 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.
  • Values Dissonance: At the start of the first 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.
  • Vindicated by History: While still considered weaker than the first, Ghostbusters II gotten a lot of fans, defenders and a growing fanbase looking back on its merits much more fondly than in 1989, citing Vigo being an entertaining villain and a great soundtrack. The effects have aged pretty well too.
  • 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.
  • Weird Al Effect: People today are not likely to know "There is no Dana, only Zuul." They will, however, likely know "There is no Sara, only Vindication."

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