In these heartbreaking times, when so many of our real idols are turning out to be massive dickholes, maybe it seems pointless to note how equally creepy some of our fictional idols are. But those guys reflect on our culture too, specifically when we clearly weren't supposed to find them creepy. The comically lecherous middle-aged loser has been a comedy staple so long that they probably turn up in cave drawings. Everyone chuckled and tried to ignore that in the real world, getting stuck in the same room with one of these guys can ruin your goddamned life.

So let's talk about Dr. Peter Venkman, immortalized by Bill Murray in Ghostbusters. You know, the guy who asks a clearly traumatized woman if she's menstruating. The guy who harasses Sigourney Weaver's character Dana with multiple unwanted displays of affection (a woman who also just underwent a traumatic experience), blackmails her into a date (by promising new info on said trauma), and belittles her throughout the movie like a sleazy pick-up artist who recently learned about negging. That guy.

Columbia Pictures

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He is introduced mere minutes into the film as a college professor abusing his position to hit on a female student, faking experiment results to set up some time alone with her -- the kind of thing which would ruin a career today, but which society was apparently fine with for several thousand years before that. And besides, he's supposed to be a jerk, right? The whole point of those early scenes with Dana is that he falls flat on his face. It should be mentioned that she's a fairly well-written character too, as women in '80s comedies go. She's a successful musician living in a great apartment who repeatedly points out how unprofessional Venkman is being.

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So the movie does acknowledge he's kind of a dick (though a lovable one), but that leads us to the fact that this man apparently brings syringes full of tranquilizers on his dates.

Let's back up a second and set the scene. When Venkman first invites himself into Dana's apartment (letting it slip that it's an excuse to "check her out"), he quickly makes sure she's single and has no roommates, and then starts with the sexually suggestive jokes. Venkman, a man she's known for like two hours and who got her alone in her apartment under false pretenses, then tells her he's "madly in love with her." Dana makes it clear that she's not interested and kicks him out ... so Venkman decides to switch to a new strategy.

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He waits outside her workplace to tell her he has new information on the entity that is terrorizing her, but would prefer to give it to her "in private." When Venkman shows up at Dana's home, he finds out that she has been possessed by an evil demigod named Zuul. The scene ends with Dana/Zuul growling at him, and by the time we get back to them, Venkman is on the phone with the other Ghostbusters, telling them that he "whacked her up" (that's '80s for "knocked her out") with 300 cc's of Thorazine:

Columbia Pictures

Columbia Pictures