Egon Spengler

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Lore & Background

Egon Spengler is a tall, lanky, laconic, bespectacled, handsome member of the team responsible for the main theoretical framework for their paranormal/quantum studies, having earned over a dozen advanced degrees including parapsychology and nuclear engineering from New York University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, respectively. He is socially awkward, as demonstrated by his stiff interactions with the Ghostbusters' secretary Janine Melnitz, and his reliance on Peter Venkman as a spokesperson for the group. Egon is the most serious and rigid member of the team. Of his hobbies, Egon states that he collects 'spores, molds, and fungus', and claims that, as a child, the only toy he ever had was 'part of a Slinky', which he straightened out. As implied in the first movie, Egon apparently is a junk food junkie, due to his affection for sweets and snack crackers. In the second film it is revealed that he and Ray like takeout foods like pizza, Asian, Greek, and Mexican cuisine; in the first film, there is also a scene where Egon dines on Chinese takeout with Peter and Ray, during which he eats egg rolls while he finishes building the proton packs. Despite being a stereotypical timid professor-like figure, Egon is prone to violent reactions when pushed too far temperamentally, as demonstrated by his attempt to assault Walter Peck. After Egon dies, the haunting in his farmhouse reveals that, like Ray, he was a skilled automotive mechanic, evidently collected wrecked cars for parts when he was alive and able to repair the Ecto-1's engine with his grandson Trevor as a poltergeist.

In Their Own Story

Egon was very interested in paranormal phenomena, even while working with Ray Stantz and Peter Venkman at Columbia University. He and Ray Stantz studied paranormal literature in their spare time, and Egon personally follows John Horace Tobin's works including Tobin's Spirit Guide, and were interested in theories of reincarnation. It is mentioned in the film's novelization that Egon's mother is alive, and he calls her after finding a payphone to inform his termination of his employment at Columbia University, while Peter and Ray are discussing plans for the Ghostbusters business, explaining his absence on this scene. Egon was usually the first to interview case subjects, adding to their mantra, 'we're ready to believe you.' Examples were Dana Barrett from her Zuul encounter and her carriage phenomenon with Oscar. Even people Peter called 'schizo' always went to either Egon or Ray to describe their paranormal experiences, no matter how far-fetched their stories were. For his part, Venkman once took back everything negative he said about Egon, rewarding the fellow scientist with his favorite candy bar (a Crunch bar). Egon's only weakness is evidently junk food (or at least snacks), as he is seen, on occasion, snacking on candies, crackers (like Cheez-It), egg rolls, and Twinkies. When house-hunting for their headquarters, Egon was against Peter leasing the firehouse at North Moore Street due to its conditions and location (dilapidated wirings, neighborhood being plagued by criminal elements, etc.), but Ray was attached to the building due to his fondness for its brass fireman's pole and the fact it was a place they could afford with their then-pitiful budgets. In time they renovated the building to suit their needs after their business took off. With Ray's assistance, Egon developed the technology behind the P.K.E. Meter, the Proton Pack, the Trap, the Aura Analyzer, the para-goggles, and the storage facility. He spent a lot of time focusing on the stability of the storage facility and was concerned about the possibilities of a P.K.E. surge of dangerous proportions. Egon was particularly critical of Walter Peck's actions, and his attitude that the Ghostbusters were responsible for the explosion of the containment unit that occurred when Peck ordered a utility worker to shut the unit down. After their encounter with Stay Puft, Egon suggested an atypical solution when he recommended blasting Gozer's dimensional portal while crossing the proton streams to reverse the particle flow and send Gozer back to its dimension; he was also aware of the inherent risks involved in crossing the streams. Egon once tried to drill a hole in his own head (a process known as trepanning), which he says 'would have worked' if Peter had not stopped him.

Reader's Guide

Due to the large amount of collateral damage New York City suffered from the battle with Gozer, the Ghostbusters were sued by nearly every county and city agency in New York. Additionally a judicial restraining order was enacted which barred the Ghostbusters from performing services as paranormal investigators and eliminators, effectively putting them out of business. Five years after the events of the first film Egon returned to teaching at Manhattan College, working at its Institute for Advanced Theoretical Research and was conducting experiments on human emotions, during which he invented the Giga Meter, a device similar to the PKE Meter designed to detect and measure psychomagnotheric energy in gigaelectron volts. A negative test involved keeping a couple with marriage problems locked in a room for hours and gradually raising the temperature. A positive test involved a girl in a room with dozens of stuffed animals and a puppy. He was the first person Dana Barrett contacted when her baby carriage took off by itself. Egon recommended bringing in Ray, and they both performed a physical exam on Dana's son Oscar. Egon, along with Peter and Ray were later arrested after digging a large hole under First Avenue as part of their paranormal investigations to help Dana. At trial they were found guilty by judge Stephen Wexler (whom Egon said was known as 'The Hammer') of willful destruction of public property, fraud, violating their judicial restraining order, and malicious mischief. While angrily insulting the trio, judge Stephen Wexler inadvertently manifested the ghosts of the Scoleri Brothers, two murderers he sentenced to death by the electric chair. In the ensuing chaos judge Wexler dismisses the charges against the Ghostbusters and rescinds their judicial restraining order, allowing Egon, Ray, and Peter to capture the released ghosts and effectively putting the Ghostbusters back in business. Egon had a dry sense of humor which he would use to bewilder Peter, and smirked at his friend's cluelessness as to what the word 'epididymis' meant. Egon primarily worked with Ray (both of whom still lived at the Firehouse), conducting research on the pink slime. Eventually they developed 'slime blowers', consisting of large metal tanks and handheld nozzles that fire positively charged substance. Still very scientifically minded, Egon here seemed to have loosened up a little bit, letting his sense of humor show and even giving Dana a smile and Peter (who was carried away with photographing Vigo's portrait), a knowing smile. It is implied by Peter that two years prior to the film's events, the team had used their proton packs. Not limited to John H. Tobin's books, Egon and Ray rely on the latter's resources at Ray's Occult Books, and through Leon Zundinger's article in Magicians, Martyrs and Madmen found information about Vigo the Carpathian. Although the 2016 Ghostbusters film is a reboot, the film's marketing confirms that a version of Egon Spengler does exist in the film's fictional universe. According to a tie-in video to the film, Kate McKinnon's character Dr. Jillian Holtzmann and Harold Ramis' character Dr. Egon Spengler created the film's proton packs. The paragraph accompanying the video read: Engineers at Sony Corporation developed the 2016 Proton Pack™ in collaboration with nuclear engineer and munitions expert Dr. Jillian Holtzmann. Sony President and CEO Kazuo Hirai commented 'The perfection of the Proton Pack™, long a dream of the world’s greatest engineers since first pioneered by Dr. Egon Spengler of Columbia University, is an example of Sony’s relentless pursuit of innovation. It absolutely delivers the wow factor that is so important to our company mission'.

Did You Know?

• The character's name, Egon Spengler, is an amalgamation of the name Egon Donsbach, who was a Hungarian refugee classmate of Ramis' at Senn High School, and the name of German polymath Oswald Spengler.
• Christopher Walken, John Lithgow, Christopher Lloyd, and Jeff Goldblum were all considered for the role of Egon Spengler, before Ramis, who had gotten close to the character while writing him, felt compelled to play it himself.
• Maurice LaMarche stated that when he auditioned for the part of Egon in The Real Ghostbusters, he was asked not to do an impression of Ramis, which he ignored because impressions were one of his strengths as a performer, and there was no other way he could imagine properly portraying the character other than to follow Ramis' example.
• Egon once tried to drill a hole in his own head (a process known as trepanning), which he says 'would have worked' if Peter had not stopped him.
• Egon's only weakness is evidently junk food (or at least snacks), as he is seen, on occasion, snacking on candies, crackers (like Cheez-It), egg rolls, and Twinkies.