Plot
In the firehouse dining area, Slimer, Ray, Winston, and Peter eat sandwiches made by Egon. Egon explains the sandwiches are a blend of chemical components meant to replace vitamins and minerals lost through sweat, which puts everyone off them. The rest go to Slimer. A mailman delivers a special envelope for Ray: his Uncle Gaylord has passed away and willed him a joke shop in Queens.
Ray and Slimer go to look the place over and try out the merchandise. Ray finds a hidden button near the register, presses it, and drops through a trap door into Gaylord's Hall of Humor, a private museum of gags. While poking around, Ray accidentally opens a box and releases two Imps without noticing, then sets the box aside. As he and Slimer leave, the Imps emerge, turn invisible, and trail along after the pranks Ray plays.
Back at the firehouse, Ray and Slimer rig a whoopee cushion on Janine's chair and snap a "group photo" that fires a pie at Egon, Peter, and Winston. The Imps, watching from outside, tap the phone lines and trigger a false alarm. The team responds to the Hasty Pastry Bakery, where a giant frog and runaway machinery wreck the place. Egon finds a piece of the frog labeled "Gaylord's Joke Shop," and everyone blames Ray.
Returning the gag props, Ray and Slimer discover the trap door open and the Imps loose again. The Imps, now larger and more dangerous, lure the Ghostbusters to the Twin Towers construction site downtown, drop a girder, and sabotage a service elevator, nearly killing the team before they blast the elevator motor to stop their fall. Egon rigs adjusted Ecto-Goggles so the Imps can be seen. After another attack at the waterfront, Ray decides to re-trap the Imps in the same black box that held them. The team leads the Imps back to the joke shop, where Ray and Slimer bait them with water and pies. Enraged, the Imps charge straight into the open box and are sucked in, and the box is thrown into a Ghost Trap. Ray vows there will be no more jokes, then promptly sits on a whoopee cushion to find the others wearing Groucho Marx glasses.
Production
The episode was recorded on June 6, 1988.2 During the struggle with the black box, some of Peter's lines use Lorenzo Music's earlier recordings rather than Dave Coulier's, until the moment Peter orders the box thrown.
"The Joke's on Ray" was the first appearance of two for the Ecto-3, a small auxiliary vehicle Ray stows in one of Ecto-1's rear panels.
Continuity
Ray was willed the joke shop because his uncle considered him the nephew with the worst sense of humor. When the team first encounters the creatures here, Peter asks what Imps are, which sits oddly against an earlier run-in with Imps in "Janine's Day Off."
Release
In air-date order the episode follows "Camping it Up" and precedes "Flip Side." In DVD order it follows "Poultrygeist" and precedes "Standing Room Only." It was issued on home video as part of The Real Ghostbusters: Complete Collection, on Volume 4, Disc 1.
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Eatock, James & Mangels, Andy (2008). The Real Ghostbusters Complete Collection booklet, p. 30. CPT Holdings, Inc.
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Marsha Goodman (1988). Episode Call Sheet and SAG Report, "Flip Side" (1988).
