Plot
A night-shift security guard at the U.S. Online Company finds wiring and panels torn apart and coated in a strange substance. When he shines his flashlight into the ceiling, a Gremlin drops down and attacks him.
At the firehouse, Garrett and Roland are unable to sign on to the U.S. Online homepage, which Garrett had been using to build a website to drum up publicity for the team. Kylie warns that the government uses the Internet to keep tabs on everyone, while Eduardo and Slimer watch television. Janine reports that none of the bills have been paid because there has been no paying client in weeks. A news report about the U.S. Online outage convinces the team that something paranormal is behind it, especially after Roland recognizes ectoplasmic residue at the scene.
At U.S. Online, the team takes P.K.E. readings and finds large claw marks, but FBI agents Jack Stone and Harry Gannan arrive suspecting sabotage and have everyone cleared out. Back at the firehouse, Egon analyzes the residue: part ectoplasm, part petroleum-based lubricant. He identifies the culprit as a Gremlin, a creature that secretes lubricant from its claws to loosen parts and delights in dismantling anything mechanical. He alludes to wartime aircraft failures and to the Titanic as possible Gremlin handiwork.
The team chases the Gremlin into a subway terminal, where it has rigged a train to run at 120 miles per hour with no brakes. Garrett welds a dismantled section of track back together so the runaway train can pass safely. Stone and Gannan, meanwhile, build profiles on each of the four young Ghostbusters and conclude they are dangerous and should be watched closely. At the phone company, the team corners the Gremlin and Kylie and Roland trap it, but the agents arrest the whole team on charges including terrorism, conspiracy, sabotage, and assaulting federal officers.
The Ghostbusters are flown toward Washington, D.C. on a cargo plane. Egon dispatches Slimer, who stows away and reaches the aircraft. When Stone opens the trap thinking it is a bomb, he releases the Gremlin aboard the plane. The Gremlin takes apart Garrett's wheelchair before the team gets free of their handcuffs; Garrett opens a door and the Gremlin is sucked out, and Eduardo's stream wrangles it back inside long enough for Kylie to re-trap it. Afterward the agents cover up the entire incident, attributing the citywide failures to microwaves from a surveillance satellite, and file the classified case as "G1027."
The Gremlin
The Gremlin is classified as at least a Class 5 entity, assessed by Kylie on arrival at U.S. Online.2 Egon connects it to a tradition of mechanical sabotage stretching back to World War II aircraft failures and, more speculatively, to the sinking of the Titanic. The creature secretes a petroleum-like ectoplasmic lubricant from its claws to loosen parts, which is what leaves the distinctive residue at each attack site.
In appearance, the EGB Gremlin is a light blue creature with a blue underbelly, large pointed ears, slicked-back black hair, yellow eyes and teeth, and four-fingered hands with yellow nails. The design was not created from scratch for this episode: character designer Fil Barlow had already built a similar creature for the show's opening title sequence, where it was called Boggart. When "Grease" needed a Gremlin, Barlow adapted the Boggart design rather than starting over.
After being recaptured on the cargo plane, the Gremlin is placed in the Containment Unit at the Firehouse. It later reappears in "Slimer's Sacrifice" as one of the ghosts gathered under Surt's command, and is mentioned by Garrett in "Eyes of a Dragon" when he describes the team's recent cases to Michael Wu. The Gremlin design also appears on Cover B of IDW Publishing's Ghostbusters Vol. 1 Issue #9, alongside Gremlins from the RGB episode "Don't Forget the Motor City."
Cast
The regular voice cast includes Tara Charendoff (later known as Tara Strong), Maurice LaMarche, Jason Marsden, Pat Musick, Alfonso Ribeiro, Rino Romano, and Billy West. Guest voices are Richard Anderson, Jeff Glen Bennett, and Mona Mansour.1
Trivia
The U.S. Online Company logo seen on Garrett's laptop was designed by production supervisor Shannon Muir, who combined the logos from free Internet-trial discs of providers such as AOL and CompuServe into a highway design.3 The date and time shown on Garrett's laptop read 4/7/97 and 10:00 a.m., establishing April 7, 1997 as the in-universe date of the Gremlin's attack.
The episode is dense with nods to other media. The security guard at U.S. Online is watching "The X-Files" when the Gremlin strikes, and the show's lead agents are renamed Mully and Sculder, a flip of Mulder and Scully. Both Eduardo and Harry compare the in-flight Gremlin to a Twilight Zone episode with Captain Kirk, a reference to the 1963 installment "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" starring William Shatner. The push-back shot of the government hangar at the end echoes the warehouse finale of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
The first appearance of agents Stone and Gannan mimics a recognizable stock-photograph pose associated with Men in Black. This is a noteworthy coincidence because Men in Black: The Series was also produced by Adelaide Productions, the same studio behind Extreme Ghostbusters; the MiB animated series later returned the favor with small Ghostbusters references in its own episodes.
The Ghostbusters II connection runs deeper than the Garrett line. The film's cast appeared as guests on The Oprah Winfrey Show in June 1989 to promote the movie, which adds a layer to Garrett's quip about being booked on Letterman and Oprah. Garrett's line to the FBI agents ("The best, the only, we're the Ghostbusters!") is also a variation on dialogue from Ghostbusters II.
This episode fills in a significant amount of background on all four team members. Kylie's parents are divorced; she was close with a grandmother who died a year earlier; she owns a black cat named Pagan; and she is nicknamed "Brainiac," both a common term for a smart person and a nod to the Superman villain. Eduardo lives with an older brother he doesn't get along with and listens to punk music. That brother, a cop named Carl Rivera, later appears in "Rage." Roland is the oldest sibling in a large middle-class family, volunteers for Little League and Food for the Homeless, and mentions thinking about applying to the FBI after graduation. Garrett has been disabled since birth, is drawn to extreme sports for the rush, and is studying to become a physical therapist.
The team's phone number is given as 212-555-GOST (212-555-4678), a change from the numbers used in The Real Ghostbusters. Eduardo's remark "Maybe he's dead" when Garrett wonders what happened to the Gremlin is characteristic of a running line the character deploys throughout the series.
References
Some content on this page was researched using the Ghostbusters Wiki on Fandom.
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Episode infobox data (air date, production number, writer, director, animation studio, and voice cast) for "Grease," Extreme Ghostbusters, Season 1.
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"Shannon Muir's EGB Tidbits," Ghostbusters HQ (archived at web.archive.org).
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Troy Benjamin interview with Shannon Muir for GhostbustersHQ.com, republished on gbfans.com.
