Egon Spengler’s college course on the paranormal. The Extreme Ghostbusters were formed when a handful of misfit students signed up for Dr. The writing staff, guided by the likes of Richard Raynis, Jeff Kline, and Dan Akroyd, would take advantage of this pre-millennial moodiness to usher the franchise into more dramatic territory. Thanks to programs like Batman: The Animated Series, which had aired in the interim between Real Ghostbusters and Extreme Ghostbusters, cartoons for kids could speak to all ages and be adult without being rated R. RGB‘s optimistic cheese was swapped for melancholic decay simply because the climate of chidren’s television at the time could allow it. With this dimension added to its storytelling, XGBwas often thoughtful in ways that its parent series couldn’t be. So why was there was an action figure released as part of the corresponding toyline? The fuck if I know.)

But no, he never appears in the actual show. (Oh, and yes that was a redesigned version of classic RGB villain Samhain in the intro. To refer to Extreme Ghostbusters as a serialized story is stretching it, but there was a loose sense of long term continuity being played with, which more often than not took the form of throwbacks to The Real Ghostbusters. It invited us into the psyches of its main characters, chronicling the struggles of their personal lives which usually intertwined with the ghost-of-the-week plots. That’s why the horror elements of XGB were dialed way the fuck up, becoming much darker than the Real Ghostbusters was during its heyday.Įxtreme Ghostbusters had the balls to tackle heavy subject matter and broader social themes when we weren’t expecting it. Also, the writing team was well aware of how its predecessor was both intentionally and unintentionally disturbing – because several of them had worked on it.

The XGB are made up of people who weren’t usually portrayed as heroes on cartoons (and still aren’t, if we’re being honest). One glance at its radically-inclusive team lineup is all you need to notice that. Living up to its name, Extreme Ghostbusters was extreme indeed. Which is why we have this: an awkwardly timed, tonally disruptive Ghostbusters animated series.Įnter a brand new cartoon that picked up the sticky, ectoplasm-covered mantle of The Real Ghostbustersand wore it slightly askew to evoke that wholesome sense of 1990s irreverence: Extreme Ghostbusters. Nobody’s kid was exactly clamoring for a sequel, reboot, or a Ghostbusters continuation of any kind – except for Dan Akroyd, who was practically lobbying for a third installment while sitting front row at the Ghostbusters II premiere. It was the late ‘90s – the pre- Pokemon, post- Mighty Morphin Power Rangersdays to be exact. There was a time when no one cared about Ghostbusters.

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