Winston Zeddemore, PhD is a fictional character appearing in the Ghostbusters films, TV series, and video games.
Buster Jones provided Winston's voice in the remaining seasons, and he reprised the role in a cameo on Extreme Ghostbusters.
[2] His character was originally intended to represent the audience, but was rewritten to be "an outsider and a late addition" to the Ghostbusters team.
[4] After working with him the previous year on Trading Places, Dan Aykroyd originally wanted Eddie Murphy to play the role of Winston Zeddemore.
Aware of his comic abilities, his characterization of Winston would have been in a semi-improvisational style, similar to Bill Murray's performance as Peter Venkman.
[6] Winston Zeddemore's first on-screen appearance is in the movie Ghostbusters, when he responds to a help-wanted advertisement the team has posted in an attempt to deal with their sizable workload.
In the film's novelization, it is stated that Zeddemore has recently been discharged from Strategic Air Command, and has moved in with his mother Lucille while he looks for work and an apartment.
However, he continues to act as an "everyman" and voice of reason for the team, and when the jailed Ghostbusters seriously propose asking a federal judge to release them because they must fight an invading god, Zeddemore reminds the others that no one will believe their claims.
At the start of the sequel Ghostbusters II, the team has been forced out of business due to legal injunctions and property damage lawsuits.
Winston later develops a dislike against Vigo the Carpathian after learning his atrocious past from Egon and Ray, and calls him an "ugly dude" after seeing his portrait.
He helps Stantz and Egon Spengler investigate a mysterious river of slime under the city and, in the process, revealed to have fears of underground pests like roaches and rodents before they encounter a number of specters that haunt the city's subway tunnels and then being "hit" by a phantom vehicle of a train that derailed in the 1920s.
Later, he helps them pilot the Statue of Liberty (suffused with slime charged by positive emotions) through New York City to rally the public and defeat the spirit of Vigo the Carpathian.
Despite his successes, Winston remains loyal to his friends and still thinks fondly of being a Ghostbuster, ready to return to action.
In the final act of the film, he arrives with Venkman and Ray to help the Spengler family deal with a returned Gozer.
At the end of the film, being sentimental of his past, Winston buys the team's old firehouse headquarters back from Starbucks, and has the Ecto-1 restored and delivered there.
He still loves being a Ghostbuster but has also become more practical in his advanced age, at one point lecturing Ray when his investigation into Garakka led him, Phoebe Spengler and Podcast into danger.
Finally, in the episode "The Moaning Stones", Zeddemore is revealed to be the reincarnation of Shima Buku, a shaman at war with an immortal demon known only as the Undying One.
As a result, he is almost always shown driving the car in The Real Ghostbusters cartoon, and is often seen performing routine maintenance such as oil changes on the vehicle.
Ghostbusters: Afterlife would further this point, as Winston can be seen feeling the car in the film multiple times, examining the vehicle's condition after several years of neglect (He was heard mumbling "what happened to you?"