"Who ya gonna call?"

The tagline nobody wrote. The song lyric that accidentally became the greatest marketing campaign in blockbuster history.

Here's the thing. It wasn't the original theatrical tagline. It wasn't on the poster. It wasn't even in the script.

Ray Parker Jr. wrote it as a song lyric. The audience made it iconic. And the studio just had the good sense to catch up.

So who wrote "Who ya gonna call?" Ray Parker Jr. did, for a number one Billboard hit. But somebody at Columbia looked at that lyric, retired the actual poster taglines ("They're Here To Save The World" and "We're Ready To Believe You"), and decided to make a song hook the permanent face of a $370 million franchise.

That person has never been named.

Which makes this the first episode of The Poster Says... where the mystery isn't who WROTE the tagline. It's who PROMOTED it.

Nate is joined by fellow voice actor and longtime colleague Mary Morgan, whose credits run from One Piece and Fairy Tail to Diablo IV and Hearthstone, to break down Ivan Reitman's Ghostbusters (1984). The first comedy ever to spend real money on special effects. The movie Columbia had almost no faith in. The highest-grossing film of its year.

Along the way: the 60-plus rejected theme song submissions before Ray Parker Jr. walked in. The Huey Lewis plagiarism lawsuit that's still sealed to this day. Why "We're Ready To Believe You" might be the most underrated alternate tagline in franchise history.

And why "Who ya gonna call?" is the only major movie tagline that doesn't work unless the audience finishes it for you.

Two voice actors. One perfect question. You already know the answer.

🎙️ Follow Nate Begle: natebegle.com | @natebegle on YouTube and @natebeglevo on Discord

Mary Morgan is a voice actor whose credits span animation, anime, video games and beyond, including One Piece, Fairy Tail, Diablo IV and Hearthstone.
🔗 marymorganvo.com | @marymorganactorvoice on YouTube

The Poster Says… theme by:
Dr. Ariel Alexander

"It Mu5t Be Found."

Look at it again. The "5" replacing the S isn't just a design flourish — it's a smuggling operation. Months before audiences knew the title, before any cast had been announced, before a single frame had been shown, the marketing team hid the number FIVE inside the word "Must" on a teaser poster. The tagline is doing two jobs at once: the words promise urgency around an unnamed "it," while the typography has already told you what "it" is. That is sophisticated, layered, graphic-driven copywriting — and the person who thought of it has never been named.

Which is appropriate. Because the "it" the tagline is asking you to find turns out not to be an object at all. It's Leeloo. And even more specifically, by the film's extraordinary ending, it's LOVE — an abstract emotional force that the entire plot has been building toward without ever announcing itself. A teaser that seemed to be about a missing macguffin was actually about a missing truth. Five words that work completely differently once you've seen the film than they did before you bought the ticket.

Joining Nate for this one is his friend of over twenty years — admin professional, cook, and by her own unambiguous declaration, the biggest Fifth Element nerd on the planet — Carley Jo Cave. Her Instagram handle is @shiny_multipass. If you know, you know. If you don't, you will by the end of this episode.

Along the way: Jean-Paul Gaultier designing nearly every costume in the film, including Leeloo's iconic bandage outfit. Comic book legends Moebius and Jean-Claude Mézières bringing their entire visual universe to Pinewood Studios. Chris Tucker's Ruby Rhod — reportedly turned down by Prince and Will Smith before Tucker said yes. The film that opened the 50th Cannes Film Festival and became the highest-grossing French film in history at that time. And the five other documented taglines — including "Is it love or live?" which quietly spoils the entire ending if you know where to look.

Multipass.

🎙️ Follow Nate Begle: natebegle.com | @natebegle on YouTube and @natebeglevo on Discord

Carley Jo Cave is an admin professional, cook, and by her own unambiguous declaration, the biggest Fifth Element nerd on the planet. Her Instagram handle is @shiny_multipass. If you know, you know.

🔗 @shiny_multipass on Instagram

The Poster Says… theme by:
Dr. Ariel Alexander

"You'll laugh. You'll cry. You'll hurl."

Six words. Three beats. The most structurally precise comedy tagline ever written.

"You'll laugh" and "you'll cry" are the oldest formula in Hollywood marketing — the prestige-drama promise, the awards-season cliché, the language of films that take themselves very seriously. The anonymous Paramount copywriter played those first two beats completely straight, mimicking the rhythm with perfect precision. And then — "you'll hurl." One word. Tonally incompatible with everything that came before it. Wayne's World vocabulary dropped into the middle of a prestige marketing template, detonating on contact.

Here's what makes it even richer: the word "hurl" specifically — not "vomit," not "be sick," not "throw up" — is Wayne's own word. The tagline doesn't just describe an experience; it speaks in the film's own voice. And the film's central theme is authenticity versus selling out. The tagline's refusal to use a committee-approved, sanitized word for nausea is, in retrospect, the same argument the film makes for two hours. The most anti-corporate film of 1992 got the most authentic tagline. The anonymous copywriter either understood the irony completely or accidentally proved the film's point.

Joining Nate is voice actor and co-host of Mitch & Mike's VO Journey Podcast — Mitch Leschinski. Michigan native, Livonia-Westland theater kid who found his people the day his friend abandoned him at an audition and the theater kids took him in anyway, and a voice actor whose warm, sarcastic, genuinely Midwestern energy is about as Wayne Campbell-adjacent as a guest gets. (His podcast co-host, Mike Pelletier, has already appeared on The Poster Says... for My Cousin Vinny — so both halves of Mitch & Mike's VO Journey have now officially made an appearance on this show. Party on.)

Along the way: Mike Myers' 25 drafts, the Bohemian Rhapsody fight that almost cost us the most iconic scene in the film, the sequel tagline with escalating exclamation points that is itself a joke about sequel marketing, and why "Party on." as a two-word alternate tagline might be the most distilled piece of marketing copy for any film ever made.

Excellent.

🎧 LISTEN: On ALL the platforms and of course at natebegle.com/podcast

📺 WATCH: Full video episodes on YouTube!

🎙️ Follow Nate Begle: natebegle.com | @natebegle on YouTube and @natebeglevo on Discord

Mitch Leschinski is a voice actor and co-host of Mitch & Mike's VO Journey Podcast — a Michigan native with a warm, sarcastic, genuinely Midwestern sound spanning commercial, narration, eLearning, characters, video games, and audio drama, with credits including Kellogg's, Quaker, Shell, and Shoestring TV.

🔗 mitchleschinski.com | @MitchLeschinski on X | Mitch & Mike's VO Journey on YouTube

The Poster Says… theme by:
Dr. Ariel Alexander