QWhy does Peter's voice change in the third season?
AAccording to Maurice LaMarche, who voiced Egon Spengler, Bill Murray, who played Peter Venkman in the live action films, had complained, or at the very least, curiously asked, the show's producers why Peter "sounded like Garfield" instead of like him. This was because Peter was originally voiced by the late Lorenzo Music, who was also the voice of Garfield, a role that Murray himself would later play, coincidentally using the same voice he used while playing Peter. Whether or not Murray pushed to have the voice changed is unclear, but Music was replaced by Dave Coulier of "Full House" fame, and to be fair a gifted voice impersonator in his own right (as his impersonations of Popeye the Sailor and Bullwinkle the Moose testify), Coulier was instructed to give Peter a voice similar to that of Bill Murray.
QWhy does Janine's appearance change so much along with her voice and attitude?
AJanine was originally voiced by Laura Summer, but starting in the third season Summer was replaced by Kath Soucie, which is when her character's look changed for the first time. According to the third season series bible, Summer's voice was deemed "too whiney" and so the role was recast. And according to J. Michael Stracyznski, the show's original story editor, the network decided to take the advice of consultants to change Janine from a feisty, sardonic, N.Y. secretary to a "mother figure" for the Ghostbusters, which also entailed changing the style of her glasses from triangular to round, as the consultants seriously believed that the pointy glasses would scare children. This was also part of a push to make the series more "kid friendly". Strazcyznski and the other original writers disliked these demands for change and many of them left the show as a result. The initial redesign of Janine had long hair, which was later replaced with a design that was meant to evoke Annie Pott's haircut in the second Ghostbusters film, and ultimately two more designs that gave Janine shorter, curlier hair. Ultimately, the changes proved unpopular and the network asked Strazcysnki to come back, which he couldn't do as he had other commitments, but he agreed to write a few episodes for them on the grounds that he be allowed to write it as he saw fit and not as censors and consultants wanted. Strazcysnki decided to explain why Janine's voice, appearance and personality changed so much in an episode titled "Janine, You've Changed", in which it was revealed that Janine had fallen victim to a demon posing as a kind of "fairy godmother" called a Makeoverus Lotsabucks (the name a deliberate yet playful swipe at the network), which fed off a person's vanity and changed the victim's appearance as the victim instructed, promising that it would improve them, when in reality it would ultimately turn them into another Makeoverus Lotsabucks. Janine's personal reason for being victimized by the Lotsabucks was that she wanted to "improve" her appearance until she found a look that would attract Egon Spengler, to whom she had long harbored a romantic infatuation but with whom she'd had trouble actually engaging in a relationship due to his somewhat stilted emotional range. What Janine didn't know was that the Lotsabucks had been using her magic to externally blind Egon and the other Ghostbusters to the changes in her appearance, making Janine more dependent on the Lotsabucks. Ultimately Egon was able to save Janine by admitting that he loved her as well.
Qwhy do the characters look different from the live action films?
AIn the early promo artwork for the series, the Peter Venkman character was drawn to look more like Bill Murray and Egon Spengler was drawn to look more like Harold Ramis. But the animators changed the look of Peter, and changed Egon's hair color from brown to blonde, in order to avoid lawsuits for using the actors' likenesses without permission. As for Ray Stanz and Winston Zeddemore, their characters were never drawn to resemble Dan Aykroyd or Ernie Hudson, respectively.
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