Deadliners

"Deadliners" is the fifth episode of Extreme Ghostbusters, first aired on September 5, 1997. The team investigates a string of disappearances connected to a reclusive horror novelist named J.N. Kline, whose fictional monsters have begun appearing in the real world. It was written by Duane Capizzi and directed by Scott Wood, with animation by Koko Enterprise Company, Ltd.

The final draft of the script was dated December 1996.¹ At that stage Kline's initials were written as "H.P.," a nod to H.P. Lovecraft, and he was described as a man in his mid-thirties.² The character is otherwise a pastiche of children's horror author R.L. Stine, whose Goosebumps books were a mid-1990s phenomenon; the name may also reference series co-developer Jeff Kline.