Appearances in the original films
Ghostbusters (1984)
Slimer is first seen haunting a room service cart on the 12th floor of the Sedgewick Hotel. According to the hotel manager, he had been there for years. In the ghost classification system, he is described as a "focused, non-terminal repeating phantasm, or a Class Five full roaming vapor."
Ghostbusters II (1989)
Slimer received less screen time in Ghostbusters II than he did in the original, and did not share any scenes with the four Ghostbusters.
Slimer made two appearances in the film. The first is when Louis Tully tells Janine it is time for lunch, then walks over to the table to find Slimer eating the lunch. The second appearance is later in the movie, when Louis is in full Ghostbuster gear and on his way to help the others. He stops at a bus stop to catch a ride. The bus pulls up and the doors open to reveal Slimer at the wheel.
Behind the Scenes
In this film, the Slimer puppet was performed by Robin Navlyt (now Robin Shelby). The following photos and descriptions are taken from her website, and are excellent examples of how the Slimer puppet was performed.
Robin gets into costume aided by ILM's Talent.
Robin gets into costume aided by ILM's Talent.
Barbara Hartman-Jenichen adds water so Slimer doesn't dry out.
Robin at ILM with the Slimer shipped to Planet Hollywood.
Behind the scenes test footage of the Slimer puppet for Ghostbusters II is available here.
Animated series
The Real Ghostbusters
Voice Actor: Frank Welker
Slimer is classified as a Class 5 Full Roaming Vapor and is established in the series as the first ghost ever caught by the Ghostbusters. He slimed Peter during that initial encounter, and Venkman nurses a grudge over it for a long time. Slimer, on the other hand, considers Peter his favorite human being in the world and is always trying to get on his good side.
Slimer's primary motivation is eating, and one of the things Peter often complains about is the massive food bill Slimer runs up. He starts the series as a babbling, somewhat cowardly figure, but later talks more coherently and acts as a "fifth Ghostbuster," developments not embraced by much of the fandom. He has a number of adventures in his own "Slimer!" cartoons, mostly involving avoiding quack scientist Professor Norman Dweeb or having comic misadventures at the Hotel Sedgewick, his old haunting grounds.
Extreme Ghostbusters
Voice Actor: Billy West
Slimer remains the most unchanged of all the characters in terms of personality in Extreme Ghostbusters. He is given a less cartoony look to fit in with the series' overall style and does not play as large a role as he did in Slimer! and The Real Ghostbusters. He is still hanging around the firehouse and appears frequently, portrayed closer to the earlier days of The Real Ghostbusters: a babbling, gluttonous pet. He also annoys Eduardo, echoing Slimer's combative relationship with Venkman in the earlier series.
Appearance in the 2016 film
Slimer is the green ghost who takes a joyride in the Ecto-1 in the 2016 Ghostbusters film. He pigs out at a hot dog cart, hijacks the team's car, and later turns up with a partner of his own during the climactic battle in Times Square. The character is loosely based on actor John Belushi, a close friend of Dan Aykroyd, and is a deliberate callback to the original Slimer, who also raided a Sabrett hot dog stand near the end of the 1984 Ghostbusters.
In the 2016 film he was voiced by Adam Ray, performed in suit by stuntman Peter Epstein, and puppeteered by Ronald Binion.
After Rowan North broke the barrier between dimensions and flooded Manhattan with ghosts, the Ghostbusters found their path into Times Square blocked, in part by a row of Sabrett hot dog carts. Jillian Holtzmann remarked that the scene looked like her kitchen. A green glow came from inside one of the carts. As the team approached, the lid popped open and Slimer roared, scarfing down hot dogs, then turned and burped at them before flying their way. The team sidestepped him and he sailed straight into the driver's seat of the Ecto-1.
The engine started and Slimer reversed the car out, ignoring Abby Yates and Patty Tolan shouting at him to stop. Abby was annoyed that Holtzmann had left the keys in the car, and Patty noted that her uncle, who owned it, was going to be furious. Slimer swung the Ecto-1 into a parked car, then floored the gas and charged it toward the team. When Abby called for everyone to open fire, Holtzmann pointed out that the equipment on the roof rack was essentially a nuclear reactor, so Patty voted against shooting. They jumped clear as the car barreled past the carts, smashed a fire hydrant into a geyser, and knocked over a light pole that narrowly missed a passing pedestrian. Abby concluded they had just handed a ghost a nuke and suggested they run.
Slimer turned up again alongside Lady Slimer and the Ecto-1 Party Specters, cruising past the Ghostbusters near the Mercado building in the Times Square area. Abby was glad someone was enjoying himself. The crew reappeared as the team steered the Ecto-1 into the portal Rowan had opened, sending Slimer and his companions through the portal and the Divide into the World of the Dead. When the Ghostbusters detonated the reactors on the car's roof rack to reverse the portal's polarity and force the ghosts back through, Slimer and Lady Slimer were launched into the air atop a seat cushion. They traded a look, laughed, and dropped back down through the portal.
In the 2016 Ghostbusters video game from Activision, Slimer first appears in the Queen Charlotte Hotel level as a ghost that must be trapped. The game's in-fiction containment unit entry describes him this way (reproduced with the game's own spelling and grammar): "This troublesome little spud has been tormenting high end hotels in the New York area for years. Where he comes from is a matter of dispute, but his voracious appetite and foul onion-like ordor is not."
In IDW's comics, a version of this Slimer designated 80-C drove a shuttle to the Firehouse during a cross-dimensional ghost retrieval mission, dropping off Ghostbusters teams from several alternate dimensions. Slimer 80-C and several other Slimer variants flew up to the second floor, looked in on the original Slimer held in the containment tank, and were startled when he screamed at them. He is alluded to in Ghostbusters 101 #3, where Abby and Holtzmann recognize "the ghost that stole our car" before Holtzmann notes that one got blown up.1 He also appears in Ghostbusters Crossing Over #5.
Classification
In the original films, Slimer is described as a "focused, non-terminal repeating phantasm, or a Class Five full roaming vapor."
The 2016 tie-in Ghostbuster's Handbook lists Slimer as a Class 5 full-roaming vapor, describing him as "a rather grotesque entity made of ectoplasm (thus the name Slimer)."2
Development
Paul Feig and co-writer Katie Dippold worked out an unused backstory in which Slimer had been a gangster executed for killing a waiter who botched his order. He began his afterlife as a more traditional ghost and was disfigured when the Ghostbusters, still testing their gear, were called to the restaurant he was haunting.3 As Feig described it, the proton beams ran too hot, blew Slimer's legs off, and turned him green, after which he distorted into the figure seen in the film and escaped into the world.3 Concept artist Tully Summers produced designs for this "Old Gangster Ghost" in February 2015, with Slimer meant to emerge from the human shell once the proton stream sliced through it.4 Summers also developed a more alien take on Slimer with dangling entrails and rows of revolving teeth, but production scrapped that direction in favor of a look closer to the classic 1984 design.5
Feig had previously worked with effects veteran Rick Lazzarini, who had built ghosts for Ghostbusters II, and with puppeteer Ronald Binion on a Ford campaign, and he put Lazzarini's Character Shop near the top of his list for animatronic work.6 After reading the script, Lazzarini had a dozen designers visualize the film's ghosts, including Slimer, and presented the sketches and renderings to Feig and the core crew.6 The shop began building 3D mockups, but a few weeks later the budget was cut and the practical-effects plan was shelved.6 The project came back on a tighter footing: Slimer would be a fully articulated puppet, augmented with effects, built on a small budget and intended mainly as a movement reference and an on-set presence for the actors to react to.786
Lazzarini rehired key crew and built a Slimer sculpture, molds, and a suit, along with animatronic mechanisms for the eyes, brows, tongue, and mouth. The head's functions included three axes of brow movement, upper and lower eye blinks, side-to-side and up-and-down eye motion, a jaw that opened and closed, and a tongue that could telescope in and out and move in tentacle-like ways.6 The head was fitted with a helmet molded for Binion, who provided the body and arm movement while Lazzarini operated the facial expressions during filming.6 On set in Boston, the puppet required only two operators: Binion inside the suit and Lazzarini working the radio control for the face. Visual-effects work went to Sony Pictures Imageworks and MPC,8 who added random tufts of hair and an overabundance of slime pouring off Slimer's arms.8
The puppet's under-skull carried speakers, high-definition video goggles, and a microphone so Binion could hear directions, see the camera frame, and talk to the crew. Feig was initially reluctant to put Slimer in the film's trailer, but changed his mind once he saw how the effects came together.9
Trivia
Slimer drives the Ecto-1 in the 2016 film much as the original Slimer drove a hijacked bus in Ghostbusters II. The shot of Slimer and Lady Slimer rocketing out of the portal on a seat cushion is a nod to the scene in Die Hard 2 in which John McClane ejects from a jetliner just before it explodes. On the Boston set, the street where Slimer reverses the Ecto-1 is Water Street, and he guns it through the roadblock past Milk Street while clipping several lamp posts.
Slimer was also used to advertise QuickBooks in a series of online spots, with the 2016 film's puppet reused for the campaign.
