The Mysterious Cloning of Ernie Hudson

I saw Ghostbusters in the 80's when I was a kid and I loved it. Sure, I might have been only 8 or 9 when I first saw it and didn't get all the jokes, but I knew it was funny. And the older I got the more the movie grew endeared itself to me as a comedy standard. I knew Ackroyd and Murray from old SNL reruns and other movies. Ramis was new to me, but I dug the nebbish tech-geek he played in the movie. And then there was Winston. The "new guy" who comes in in the second half of the movie willing to believe anything they say, as long as there's a steady paycheck in it. They didn't give Winston much to do, except say a few funny lines and play the "outsider" for a little bit.

All was well and good when a sequel was announced and was released June 1989. We got a new villain in Viggo; Dana Barrett returns; Janoz as the new dweeb gunning for her, a slightly re-vamped version of Slimer (who now seems to have turned traitor on his fellow ghosts), Louis Tulley reprising his role, and all four original ghostbusters....or were they?

I had no problem recognizing all of the other actors reprising their roles, but I didn't even know they had kept the same actor to play Winston in the sequel. You think that sounds silly, in recent years I've encountered other people who also saw GB II as kids and didn't realize it was the same actor. Or, supposed to be.

Take a look at the pictures above and try to tell me that there isn't something fishy going on. GB II was released in 1989, which means it was filmed in 1988. Assuming the original GB was filmed a year before its release in 1984, that makes a five year gap between the two productions. There's no way that the visage of Ernie Hudson changed that much in such a short amount of time. Sure, the actor playing Winston in GB II looks Ernie Hudson from GB I, but anyone can see there are some subtle, but obvious differences.

What am i getting at? A late-April Fool's joke? No. A conspiracy to replace the real Ernie Hudson with a clone at some point in time after GB I? Maybe.

I wish I could find a bigger picture of Mr. Hudson from GB I than the one above, but it's all I got.

I'm not saying this conspiracy is real. I'm just saying that the guy playing Winston in GB is not the same one in GB II. Why? Who would want or need to create this kind of conspiracy? Who knows. But they should know that there's a few of us out there who are on to them. Oh yes, we can tell. And we'll be watching.