Details
Plot
The episode opens on Peter running through a fog-filled forest, pursued by a large ant monster. His proton stream has no effect on it, and the creature slices the cord connecting his particle thrower to his proton pack, leaving him defenseless. Cornered at the edge of a cliff, Peter wakes to find he has fallen out of his office chair. Ray runs past to answer the door. A package has arrived, and Peter hopes in vain that it is a back massager. It is an ant farm. Peter, who declares the world would be better off without bugs, is not pleased.
At the Museum of Natural History, Winston Zeddemore and Janine Melnitz view a stone tablet depicting the monster from Peter's dream. A display identifies it as Apshai, the Egyptian god of insects. The exhibit curator lectures that Apshai ruled Egypt from an unusual temple until the Egyptians, who no longer worshiped him, drove him out. Apshai and his followers took the temple's Crystal Capstone, the alleged source of his power, and were never seen again. The curator presents the one recovered relic, a gold scarab. The moment he opens it, an earthquake rocks Manhattan. Far below the city, the Crystal Capstone glows aboard a buried boat, and a mandible emerges from it.
At the Firehouse, the earthquake sends Egon Spengler scrambling to save his collection of spores, mold, and fungi. Ray's ant farm breaks, and the insects file out in an oddly organized march, joined by an unusual number of other bugs streaming out of the building. Egon notes the timing is wrong, since bugs are agitated before an earthquake, not after. A huge procession of insects is heading down the street, and in Central Park, enlarged insects emerge from cracks in the ground.
Ray and Egon take Ecto-2 while Peter and Slimer drive Ecto-1. A giant dragonfly attacks the helicopter and forces it into a pond. Reunited, the team finds the bugs are building something. Egon insists they are not real insects but ethereal enlargements under some kind of behavior control. Peter goes to fetch the ghost traps and finds beetles stripping Ecto-1. He blasts one, shrinking it back to normal size, then is ambushed by giant spiders, webbed up, and carried underground. Slimer follows after him.
Egon devises a new plan: he needs a fire pumper and four thousand gallons of honey. The bugs take the bait and feast, letting the team descend into one of the fissures. Below, Apshai announces that Peter has been chosen as his sacrifice and rants that humanity has ruled the world long enough, promising termites to destroy buildings, locusts to ruin crops, and mosquitoes and bees to torment people. Up above, Janine recognizes the structure the insects are building as a representation of the Temple of Apshai but cannot reach Egon by radio.
The team tracks Apshai down. Janine frees Peter and tosses him a proton pack, but the Crystal Capstone is placed atop the pyramid before they can stop it. Powered by the Sun, Apshai grows enormous. Rather than firing on Apshai directly, the Ghostbusters target the capstone. Once it is destroyed, Apshai turns to sand and fades away, the bugs shrink back to normal, the temple collapses, and the fissures close. Egon and Ray reflect that the world still needs insects as a monarch butterfly lands on Peter's nose.
Ghosts and entities
Apshai is the episode's main antagonist, an ancient Egyptian god of insects voiced by Frank Welker. According to the Museum of Natural History exhibit, Apshai ruled Egypt from a power pyramid temple roughly 3,000 years before the episode's events, until the Egyptians drove him out. He and his followers sailed away with the Crystal Capstone and were never seen again, with Apshai entering a state of hibernation within the capstone as it lay buried deep underground. Once reawakened, Apshai commands insect armies, fires energy blasts, and grows to enormous size when the Crystal Capstone absorbs solar power. He is classified as a Class 7 entity in Ghosts From Our Past: Both Literally and Figuratively: The Study of the Paranormal (page 119) and as a Class 6 in the Insight Editions Tobin's Spirit Guide (Section IV: Gods and Major Demons, page 74).
The Enlarged Insects are ordinary insects, including ants, beetles, locusts, spiders, and dragonflies, transformed into giant ethereal facsimiles by the Crystal Capstone's behavior-control field. Egon is careful to distinguish them from real insects: they are ectoplasmic enlargements rather than carbon copies and revert to normal size when struck by a proton stream. They retain the behavioral traits of their natural counterparts, including spiders spinning webbing and an instinctive attraction to honey, which the Ghostbusters exploit as a distraction. Voice credits from the episode call sheet identify Brian George as the guest voice for the ants, Frank Welker for the dragonflies, Maurice LaMarche for the assassin bugs, and Buster Jones and Kath Soucie for additional ghost insect voices.2
The Crystal Capstone is the keystone of the Temple of Apshai and the stated source of all of Apshai's powers. Carried away when Apshai fled Egypt, it lay dormant aboard a buried barge for millennia. Opening the Scarab of Apshai reactivates it and causes Apshai to emerge. Once the Enlarged Insects complete a facsimile of the temple and place the capstone at its apex, the capstone draws power from sunlight, rendering Apshai invincible. The Ghostbusters destroy it with proton streams, immediately ending Apshai's threat and dispersing the enlarged insects.
The Scarab of Apshai is a gold scarab recovered as the only relic of Apshai and displayed at the Museum of Natural History. Sealed for roughly 3,000 years, it served as the trigger for Apshai's return: opening it during the exhibit causes the Crystal Capstone to reactivate and sets off the episode's earthquakes. The Scarab later received a background nod in the IDW comic series: a display case on Cover B of Ghostbusters Crossing Over Issue #4 includes the Scarab of Apshai among its objects.
The Temple of Apshai is the power pyramid from which Apshai once ruled Egypt. The Enlarged Insects scavenge materials from across New York to reconstruct a facsimile of it underground, including stripping parts from Ecto-1. Janine identifies the structure from above before the Ghostbusters descend. The temple collapses when the Crystal Capstone is destroyed.
Production
The first draft of "20,000 Leagues Under the Street" was turned in on May 21, 1990, by Jules Dennis and Richard Mueller.3 The episode was recorded on March 20 and 22, 1991, with Dave Coulier recording alone on March 22.2
Trivia
Peter's premonition of the giant insect that attacks him later is the second time he has a precognitive dream about an entity he goes on to face. The first was of the Sandman in "Mr. Sandman, Dream Me a Dream."
At the museum, Winston laments that he would rather be at a Mets game, in keeping with his enthusiasm for baseball seen in "Night Game." Janine claims she was Cleopatra in a past life. Over the course of the episode she wears three different outfits and dons her jumpsuit for the first time since "Jailbusters."
The end credits use the end title theme from the earlier seasons rather than the theme used in the final two seasons.
In the broadcast order, the preceding episode is "Attack of the B-Movie Monsters."
References
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Eatock, James and Mangels, Andy (2008). The Real Ghostbusters Complete Collection booklet, p. 42. CPT Holdings, Inc.
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Marsha Goodman (1991). Episode Call Sheet and SAG Report, "20,000 Leagues Under the Street" (1991).
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Benjamin, Troy and Goldberg, Craig (2025). The Real Ghostbusters: A Visual History, p. 13. Dark Horse Books, Milwaukie, OR, USA. ISBN 9781506749273.
