While the Ghostbusters brand may be ailing a bit these days after the poor box office performance—and ridiculous internet reaction to—the 2016 reboot, there's no denying that it is still one of the most beloved franchises of the last four decades. Though the original 1984 film remains the unquestioned cornerstone of the entire property, Ghostbusters has endured in various successful forms over t🗹he years, from animated ser🧔ies, to toys, to comic books, and more.

What makes the brand so enduring—and the original movie so timeless—is that it's one of the few examples of a truly successful blending of action, science fiction, and comedy. Very few big-budget special effects comedy movies ever work, and that's because it's incredibly tricky to get non-human, effects-based creatures to have the necessary comedic timing to make jokes land. It's especially tricky to get non-human creatures to have the necessary comedic timing to properly play off of comedy legends like Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, Dan Akroyd, and Rick Moranis. It all came together in such a wonderful way that Ghostbusters '84 holds up better today 🎀than꧑ many movies made 10 to 20 years after it.

And like any beloved comedic property, it can be just as fun to laugh at it as to laugh with it. Ghostbusters parodies have existed for almost as long as the franchise has, and some of the funniest material has come via the brilliant artists who craft hilarious Ghostbusters comics on a near-daily basis.

20 Ring Out

Ghosts and other types of spectral beings are among the most ꦐterrifying villains in horror movies, since it seems iไmpossible to actually battle them in any way.

For the Ghostbusters, it's just another day at the office.

One single ghostly girl crawling out of the TV and slo𓂃wly slithering across the floor? Psh, child's play. The crew should be so lucky that all of their jobs are as easy as sitting back, watching a boring two-minute movie, and letting their pest literally just fall right into the trap.

People often point out how the mere existence of cell phones would've completely broken most of the plots of Seinfeld— that's kind of how it would🌸 be if Egon and the ♈gang existed in the worlds of most horror movies.

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19 Superna✃tural Jumps The Shark 🐼

And now, this is our first comic that is another property with a Ghostbusters angle. After being on the air for what seems like an eternity, it's easy to wonder what could possibly be left for the TV series Supernatural in terms of keeping the storylines interesting.

Maybe they'd go for a stunt villain from another brand to spice things up?

Supernatural definitely has a fair amount of humor in it, so a Ghostbusters crossover wouldn't be completely crazy from a tonal perspective. But that crossover probably shouldn't include a battle with a giant marshmallow monster, awesome as it would be to see Sam and De⛄an take him on in their own unique way. You never know—stranger thin🐼gs have happened, especially on that show.

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18 𝕴 You'๊re A Child's Plaything!

As legendary as The Real Ghostbusters is, the toys based on the show are just as famous, but not for the same reason. In a strange creative decision, the guys were all given absurd, exaggerated expressions of terror that look more in line with old Bugs Bunny or Tom & Jerry cartoons than the series they are ac✱tually based 𒆙on.

Sure, millions of 80s kids had these toys and played with them a ton, but that certainly doesn't make them good toys. Kids aren't very discriminating when it comes to the toys based on their favorite things, after all, and were just happy to have little plastic representations of the Ghostbusters crew that could intermingle with their G.I. Joes, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Transformers.

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17 ꦜ Who Wore It Best?

For years, fans of the two franchises loved to imagine a crossover between Ghostbusters and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It seemed like a no-brainer, as both took place in New York City, both were about a team of heroes not fully trusted by the populati⛎on, and both had a basis in realism but with an exaggerated, fantastical angle.

IDW finally made that happen with a Ghostbusters/TMNT comic book crossover.

There is also one other important thing that the two franchises have in common: jumpsuits. The only thing more legendary than the Ghostbusters' jumpsuits is the bright yellow—and never fully-zipped—one worn by April O'Neil in the original TMNT an𓄧imated series. And it's easy to imagine that Peter Venkman w💮ould use their mutual love of jumpsuits as an opening line to trying to get into April's.

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16 Kyl꧋ie Griffin: Never Scared

Though it wasn't long for this world due to low ratings, the single-season 1997 animated series Extreme Ghostbusters has since been looked at as one of the most underrated branches of the Ghostbusters property and has earned a legion of💛 devoted fans.

It has also inspired a lot of fan art, especially of Kylie Griffin, who later also appeared in the comic series.

Much of that art tends to celebrate Kylie's physical appeal, ♉which many artists have chosen to both accentuate and exaggerate. But that's not the only thing that makes her a popular character— people also love her for her brash,✱ no-nonsense attitude. She definitely seems like a girl who would have scarier things on the posters of her bedrooms walls than she sees on most of the jobs she goes on as a Ghostbuster.

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15 Don't Cross The Genders༺

Although a lot of people tried to retroactively deny that their dislike of the 2016 Ghostbusters movie was due t👍o to its all-female cast, there is no question that a large amount of the railing against the film on social media was exactly for that reason. If you truly felt the movie didn't look good and it truly wasn't because the characters had lady parts, fine.

Acting like most of the backlash wasn't because of the female cast and only that was to be in denial.

All that aside, this comic —which predates not only the reboot but its announcement by nearly a decade— re-images the Ghostbusters as women as a result of a beam-crossing mishap. It also theorizes as to what an all-girl Ghostbusters might have looked like had it happened in the 80s, as evidenced by t﷽he shoulder pads, scrunched socks, and neon-colored tights.

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14 ဣ The Obligatory Unfair Vehicle Level

There's a term, "Nintendo Hard," which is used to describe games of the NES era that were ridiculously difficult—often ꧟to cheap extremes. One of the many dirty tricks that 1980s game developers loved to pull on young gamers was to have levels that took place on fast-moving vehicles and required almost superhuman reflexes to dodge the various hazards.

The Angry Video Game Nerd helped to make Ghostbusters II for NES "famous" for this reason.

Right up there with such infamously tough levels as the hoverbike stage in Battletoads came the Ecto-1 stage in Ghostbusters II, which gave gamers in the 80s worse nightmares than any scary movie of the era. Worst of all, most stages of this type aren't fun to begin with, so you don't even enjoy the pain.

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13 ♏ Ray's Got🌌 A Brand New... Ray

Even though Egon is arguably the biggest nerd of the group, Ray strikes us as being the one whoꦉ geeks out the most over his job and♐ all the fun parts of it. He's always been a fun character because he comes across like a big kid—which is fitting, because Dan Akroyd seems to be that way as well, and he very clearly wrote the character with himself in mind to play it.

In a lot of ways, this comic is the physical manifestation of Ray's personality, depicting him as the wide-eyed, excited teenager that he seems to be. If anything, Ray is the most believable Ghostbusters character in this way, because how could anyone not geek out like an exci🎃ted kid when they get to shoot lasers ꦛat ghosts for a living?

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12 Ghostbuster🎀 Of The Opera ♓

For this list, we mostly wanted to focus on actual Ghostbusters-based jokes and humor rather than other properties being view through a Ghostbusters filter—and there is a ton of that on the internet—but this Phantom of the Opera parody was too good to leave out.

If only Raoul had access to a Proton Pack.

Here we see the jilted Raoul teasing The Phantom for living his life as a spectral entity, much to the annoyance of Christine. The Phantom, not being a real phantom, can't just be zapped and sucked into a trap—but that's not really the p🍌oint here. The point is that Raoul thinks that mocking The Phantom willꦜ win Christine's heart, a plan that totally always works for jerks in stories like this...

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11 🍸 Revenge Is A Dish Best Served Roasted 💧

It might not seem like a big deal to take a marshmallow, put it on a stick, hold it over an open flame until it's charred black, and then eat it. But when y🐷ou think of that marshmallow as a piece of body, it puts the whole act of roasting marshmallows into a much more twisted light.

It becomes something out of the darkest horror movie.

It's frightening—but also a lot of fun—to imagine the sinister atrocities that could've been committed by the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man had he been allowed to live and exist as a full-on villain in the vein of The Joker or Lex Lutඣho꧋r. Put in that context, watching him "roast" his own hand is really just something to see.

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