Plot
Children are flying kites and families are having picnics in Central Park when a twister suddenly forms and scatters the crowd. Back at the Firehouse, the Ghostbusters, Janine Melnitz, and Slimer watch a news report on the strange weather while Egon Spengler runs calculations. He concludes the tornado is not really a tornado and wants to know what it is. The team takes Ecto-1 to the park, where Egon gets dangerously close to the funnel to take readings and finds it is leaking psychokinetic energy. He is pulled in, and Ray Stantz and Peter Venkman are dragged in after him while trying to save him. The twister disperses just before Winston and Slimer are sucked in as well.
Egon, Ray, and Peter land in an alternate universe where ghosts trap humans and lock them inside a Containment Unit. When Ray checks his watch, it burns out. They head to the local Firehouse and find it a mess of webs and slime; the refrigerator hides a large octopus that attacks Ray. Upstairs they discover three sleeping figures who turn out to be ghostly versions of themselves, the Peoplebusters. Their proton packs are useless here, firing streams of ghosts that the Peoplebusters happily eat before retaliating with their own slime-firing packs. The Ghostbusters flee downstairs, startle a ghostly "Janine," and run out into the street.
The team flies through a ghostly New York called Boo York, nicknamed "The Big Pumpkin" instead of "The Big Apple," scaring the spectral locals as they go. The Peoplebusters give chase in a souped-up version of Ecto-1. Ray is captured first and thrown into the Peoplebusters' Containment Unit. Egon and Peter rest on this world's Statue of Liberty, rendered as a witch, until the Peoplebuster Egon and Peter arrive in their version of Ecto-2 and drive them back into the city. Egon phases through a wall, and the pair hide among a shelf of heads in a beauty salon until Egon sneezes and gives away their position. He is captured next.
At the real Firehouse, Winston, Janine, and Slimer try in vain to reach the others until Slimer crosses the wires with his tail. The inside of the Peoplebusters' Containment Unit turns out to be a beautiful, Earth-like environment, just as the Ghostbusters' own Containment Unit holds a horror dimension fit for the ghosts trapped within it. Winston realizes this is where the dimensional barrier is weakest. Egon, Peter, and Ray, along with all the other captured humans, escape, holding off the Peoplebusters with their now-functioning throwers and firing the throwers together to reopen the doorway in the twister. The Peoplebusters end up covered in their own slime as the Ghostbusters and the freed humans leap back through. Everyone lands safely in Central Park, where the team reunites with Winston, Slimer, and Janine.
The Peoplebusters
The Peoplebusters are the ghost-world counterparts of the Ghostbusters, serving as the episode's main antagonists. The call sheet for "Flip Side" lists them individually as Egon Ghost, Peter Ghost, Ray Ghost, and Janine Ghost.2 Three of the four correspond directly to the Ghostbusters present in Boo York: no Peoplebuster counterpart of Winston appears in the episode, most likely because Winston was not among those who entered the dimensional vortex.
Each Peoplebuster has a distinct monstrous design. Flip-Egon is a skeleton with a tentacle replacing the rat-tail portion of his hair, the tentacle ending in a working mouth. Flip-Peter is a zombie who occasionally struggles to stay upright. Flip-Ray is a patchwork construct in the style of Frankenstein's monster, with a hand substituted for one foot. Flip-Janine is a more skeletal zombie variant. A giant red octopus-like creature occupies the Firehouse refrigerator; many fans interpret this as the Flip counterpart of Slimer, though since Slimer is himself a ghost, others argue the creature may simply be a Boo York oddity rather than a true mirror counterpart.
The Peoplebusters' equipment inverts that of the Ghostbusters. Their backpacks are large tanks of slime filled with floating eyeballs that fire an enveloping stream of green slime, which acts as a trap for living humans, analogous to how proton streams corral ghosts. For pursuit they use a giant dragster-style oversized version of Ecto-1 on the ground and an aircraft with insect-like wings as an Ecto-2 equivalent. Their team symbol substitutes an image of Egon's face for the ghost in the Ghostbusters' logo. The Peoplebusters are portrayed as civic heroes within Boo York: crowds cheer them, and their moral framework is the mirror of the Ghostbusters'. Flip-Egon is more openly expressive than the real Egon and shows a particularly cruel sense of humor; Flip-Ray is harder-nosed and less sympathetic than his counterpart.
The slime coating humans in Boo York dissipates upon contact with an Earth-like environment, which is why the captured people inside the Peoplebusters' Containment Unit are able to move freely once inside. The Peoplebusters return in NOW Comics "Annual 1993," where the Ghostbusters accidentally release them into the living world.
Boo York
Boo York, nicknamed "The Big Pumpkin," is a thriving ghost city occupying the mirror-dimension counterpart of New York City. Its population consists entirely of spectral beings, and the Peoplebusters operate there as ghost law enforcement. The city's physical rules are inverted for each species: living humans naturally fly and pass through walls in Boo York, while ghosts cannot do either. Landmark geography is transformed accordingly; the Statue of Liberty is replaced by a witch.
The Peoplebusters' Containment Unit opens into a pleasant, sunlit Earth-like environment rather than a horror dimension, which is the inverse of the Ghostbusters' own unit. Evidence inside the unit suggests humans have been accidentally crossing into Boo York since at least the 1920s. Boo York appears on the regular cover of Ghostbusters International #11 as a background reference.
Production
The episode was recorded on June 13 and 14, 1988, with Dave Coulier recording alone on June 14.2
Trivia
When Ray taunts his captors that the Ghostbusters are the "good guys," he adds that they even have their own TV show. After Ray is taken, Peter references Peter Pan.
A running joke gives Boo York a particular dislike for the living Egon Spengler: the Peoplebusters' logo features Egon, and a photo of him is used to scare an Elvira look-alike's hair straight. A ghost can be heard "moonbathing" and singing a Peoplebusters version of the Ghostbusters Theme Song, substituting "when something's not strange in the neighborhood." No Peoplebuster counterpart of Winston appears in the episode.
The physical rules of Boo York are reversed for the two species: humans can fly and pass through walls, while ghosts cannot. Even so, Peter's Peoplebuster counterpart describes the escaping humans as "solid bodies." Not all of the people trapped in Boo York are from New York; one woman wearing an aviator's cap resembles Amelia Earhart, and a man in a suit may be a nod to Jimmy Hoffa. While voicing Ray, Peter, and Egon's reactions to the city's wind, the episode plays on Chicago's nickname as the "Windy City," a nod to the Illinois roots shared by several of the live-action film's creators, including Harold Ramis, Bill Murray, and Brian Doyle-Murray.
A non-canon nod to the episode appears in the later IDW Publishing comic Ghostbusters International #8, whose opening park scene reuses the children and kites from the start of "Flip Side."
References
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Eatock, James & Mangels, Andy (2008). The Real Ghostbusters Complete Collection booklet, p. 28. CPT Holdings, Inc.
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Marsha Goodman (1988). Episode Call Sheet and SAG Report, "Flip Side" (1988).
