Egon Spengler, PhD is a fictional character from the Ghostbusters franchise. He appears in the films Ghostbusters, Ghostbusters II, and Ghostbusters: Afterlife, in the animated television series The Real Ghostbusters and Extreme Ghostbusters, in the video games Ghostbusters: The Video Game and Ghostbusters Beeline. Egon was portrayed by Harold Ramis in the films and voiced by him in Ghostbusters: The Video Game and Lego Dimensions, and voiced by Maurice LaMarche in the cartoon series. He is a member of the Ghostbusters and one of the three doctors of parapsychology, along with Dr. Peter Venkman and Dr. Ray Stantz. Creation and conception The character of Egon Spengler was named after Oswald Spengler and a classmate of Ramis at Senn High School, Egon Donsbach, a Hungarian refugee. Christopher Walken, John Lithgow, Christopher Lloyd, and Jeff Goldblum were all considered for the role of Egon Spengler, before Ramis, who had gotten close to the character while writing him, felt compelled to play it himself. Maurice LaMarche stated that when he auditioned for the part of Egon in The Real Ghostbusters, he was asked not to do an impression of Ramis, which he ignored because impressions were one of his strengths as a performer, and there was no other way he could imagine properly portraying the character other than to follow Ramis' example. He got the part anyway and said in an interview that he did two different takes: in which he impersonated Ramis, the other in which he tried a more "Woody Allen"-like approach that did not suit the character's physicality, he admitted. Character Egon Spengler is a tall, lanky, laconic, bespectacled, awkward member of the team responsible for the main theoretical framework for their paranormal/quantum studies, having earned over a dozen advanced degrees including parapsychology and nuclear engineering from New York University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, respectively, after completing his undergraduate studies in psychology at Columbia University in 1969. Being addicted to science, he is the creator of the Ghostbusters' equipment along with Ray Stantz, thus making him the brains of the Ghostbusters. Although book smart, Egon does not have much social ability, as demonstrated by his stiff interactions with the Ghostbusters' secretary Janine Melnitz, and his reliance on Peter Venkman as a spokesperson for the group. Egon is the most serious and rigid member of the team. Of his hobbies, Egon states that he collects "spores, molds, and fungus", and