Cast and crew
The regular voice cast includes Lorenzo Music as Peter, Frank Welker as Ray, Maurice LaMarche as Egon, and Arsenio Hall as Winston. Guest voices were provided by Greg Burson as Dyb Devlin and Karen Hartman as Marsha. William E. Martin was originally slated to reprise the role of Samhain but, for undisclosed reasons, did not.2
Characters
The primary antagonist is Dyb Devlin, a minor demon masquerading as a game show host, voiced by Greg Burson. His true nature is that of a dybbuk, and his name encodes this double identity: "Dyb" alludes to dybbuk, while "Devlin" derives from the Irish word for devil. Within the spirit world, his "Race the Devil" program carries the alternate title "You Bet Your Afterlife." Dyb's scheme is to collect the Ghostbusters' souls as a means of ascending the demonic hierarchy. His human-world front-of-house assistant, Marsha, voiced by Karen Hartman, runs the stage and selects the game rounds.
The audition pits two pairs of contestants against Ray and Winston. Mr. and Mrs. Todd are the first to compete; asked to name the slowest of the Seven Deadly Sins, Mr. Todd answers "Sleepy" (one of Snow White's dwarfs) rather than Sloth, and the couple is eliminated. The Glick Brothers, Bill and Bob, are identical twins who are the final competitors Ray and Winston must defeat. They are eliminated when they fail to buzz in first and name two additional synonyms for the Devil before Ray rattles off his long list.
Samhain appears in the second game round as a fabricated illusion rather than the genuine entity, who remains imprisoned in the Containment Unit. The illusion vanishes the moment Ray makes physical contact with it.
Plot
Peter sleeps in, dreaming he is being carried through Tahiti by adoring locals, until the voices of his bearers blur into Ray and Winston bickering over a game show on television. He wakes and falls out of bed. In the lab, Egon Spengler explains that Ray and Winston's game show hobby has gone on for months and they have gotten rather good at it. Flipping through the newspaper, Peter spots an ad calling for contestants on a new game show whose grand prize is an all-expenses-paid vacation for four to Tahiti.
Ecto-1 pulls up at the audition for the show, "Race the Devil." The host's assistant, Marsha, lays down the ground rules and leads the would-be contestants to the stage. Ray and Winston decide to compete out of a sense of moral obligation to teach everyone a lesson. The host, Dyb Devlin, steps from a puff of smoke after a gust of wind, and the auditions begin. Mr. and Mrs. Todd along with Ray and Winston are selected. Ray and Winston breeze through the competition, but Egon starts to sense something is wrong, noticing that every question relates to the Devil and his minions.
Once Ray and Winston win their spot, Dyb has them sign what he calls a standard release form, partly to avoid paying Marsha overtime. Egon realizes the truth too late: Dyb Devlin is a minor demon, and the contract has put the team's souls at stake. On the ride home Winston repeatedly moans that he has sold his soul to the Devil, only to be corrected by Ray that Dyb is just a minor demon, prompting Winston to switch to lamenting that he sold his soul to a minor demon. When Peter suggests they simply skip the taping, the team is teleported to Dyb's plane of existence.
The game runs in three rounds. Marsha selects "Dyb's Choice," a three-part challenge. In "Spikes," Ray stands over a pit while Winston has three tries to guess a twenty-letter word; on his last try he gets it, the word being a long scream. Dyb, shocked and angered, declares that the show is his bid to rise through the demonic ranks by claiming the troublesome Ghostbusters. In the second round, "1, 2, 3," Ray and Winston must pick one of three doors and survive, but each door leads to the same Door #1. Behind it waits Samhain. Ray reasons that since the real Samhain is still in the Containment Unit, this one must be an illusion, and it vanishes the moment he touches it.
The final round is a deadly twist on roulette. All four Ghostbusters are strapped to a wheel, and a steel ball will be set loose unless someone confesses a secret. Winston, Peter, and Egon confess in turn, but the ball stays in play. Ray finally admits he ate half of a cookie that Slimer had slimed, disgusting both his teammates and the demon audience, and the ball stops. Dyb, a sore loser, sets the ball moving again, but the team times it and kicks it into the ceiling, surviving the resulting cave-in. Peter then confronts Dyb and, citing the signed contract, demands the prize. Forced to comply, Dyb whisks the team off to Tahiti, along with three tons of deviled ham.
Production and references
In the introduction included on The Real Ghostbusters Complete Collection, the episode is described as a salute to game shows, with "Let's Make a Deal," "Wheel of Fortune," and "Double Dare" specifically referenced.3 At the time he wrote the script, McCoy was himself auditioning for game shows, even using a cast on his arm as a hook to land a contestant slot, though he flubbed a question whose answer was South Dakota. The script also reflected the writers' frustration with the kinds of puzzles seen on "Wheel of Fortune."3 The recurring Door #1 gag drew on a joke then circulating through the comedy circuit.3
The episode drew protest mail. McCoy recalled the production was flooded with letters from parents over the mention of the Devil, while Hickey noted that the complaints missed the point, since the antagonist was not the Devil but a dybbuk.4
The puzzle answers play with familiar references. The first audition answer is Sloth, one of the Seven Deadly Sins, while Mr. Todd answers Sleepy, one of the dwarfs from "Snow White." Asked for other names for the Devil, Ray rattles off a long list, including Mephistopheles, the Prince of Darkness, Beelzebub, Apollyon, Satan, Lucifer, Diablo, Old Gooseberry, Old Nick, and Old Scratch.
Episode dialogue in the following two paragraphs is drawn from The Real Ghostbusters, "The Devil to Pay" (1987).5
A geography running gag threads through the episode. Winston mentions that some of his cousins live in Bismarck, but he is mistaken, since Bismarck is the capital of North Dakota; Ray is likewise wrong, as the capital of South Dakota is Pierre. Egon, asked about vacations, wonders whether filing fungus samples counts.
During the show, Dyb introduces Winston as a spirit controller from New York whose hobbies include music and Biblical studies, and Ray as a parapsychologist with multiple degrees who hopes one day to win a Nobel Prize. Dyb also states that the team fought Samhain the year before. In their roulette confessions, Winston admits to taking twenty dollars from petty cash to buy his girlfriend a birthday present, Peter confesses to a prank on Janine Melnitz the previous week, sending Slimer up the water pipe while she showered under the pretense that there was a doughnut in her shower cap, Egon admits that he once got an A-minus on a college test and his parents would not speak to him for a week, and Ray gives up the cookie secret. Neither Janine nor Slimer appears in the episode, though both are referenced during the roulette scene.
In the Spikes challenge, the game show set includes a prop resembling Wicket the Ewok from Return of the Jedi, visible beneath Ray as he stands over the pit.
Dyb Devlin later made two non-canon cameo appearances in IDW Publishing's Ghostbusters comic series: as a stage manager of "The Ja'nine Show" on page 2 of Issue #1, and in an in-universe advertisement on page 17 of Volume 2 Issue #3. The Glick Brothers appear in a non-canon cameo exiting Pequod's on page 1 of Ghostbusters Issue #12.
Episode order
By air date, "The Devil to Pay" follows Apocalypse, What Now? and precedes A Ghost Grows in Brooklyn. In the DVD running order, it follows Buster the Ghost and precedes Slimer, Is That You?.
References
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Eatock, James & Mangels, Andy (2008). The Real Ghostbusters Complete Collection booklet. CPT Holdings, Inc.
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Marsha Goodman (1986). Episode Call Sheet and SAG Report, "The Devil to Pay" (1986).
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Dennys McCoy (2009). The Real Ghostbusters, "The Devil to Pay" Visual Commentary. Time Life Entertainment.
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Benjamin, Troy & Goldberg, Craig (2025). The Real Ghostbusters: A Visual History. Dark Horse Books, Milwaukie, OR, USA. ISBN 9781506749273.
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The Real Ghostbusters, "The Devil to Pay" (1987).
