He has a speech impediment caused by a childhood accident with a croquet mallet. Show The Dark Newt {{ relativeTimeResolver(1572709063028) }}
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PersonalityBetelgeuse is a very rude, crude, and womanizing ghost. He also gets a little crazy at times. Though he seems fun on screen, it is clear he is not a pleasant person to have around in real life, as he constantly invades people's personal space, does disgusting things like spitting in his own coat and makes rather rude gestures. He likes to use unpopular words. Not only that, he seems to love to scare people and pull pranks on them. He also appears to be quite selfish, as his main goal in the movie is to lift his curse and escape no matter who gets hurt in the process. He has the attitude of a sleazy used car salesman. Ironically, he is a corpse who eats insects, including flies and beetles. Beetlejuice could be 600 years old as derived from his line after scaring the Deetzes as a snake implied “I'm feeling a little anxious, if you know what I mean, It's been about 600 years.” Although his age has never been officially confirmed this line could be the best approximation of his age, which would make his birth at the time of the movie somewhere around mid 1300 A.D if he died in his 30’s. Though there was no attempt to hide the fact that Betelgeuse was not meant to be a nice character, even the heroes who summoned him knew that he was, pretty much, a demon. Despite his malicious nature, Betelgeuse also acted as a benefactor of sorts to the heroes. He was still used as a force of (relative) good, as his chaos was directed largely at a group of human antagonists, though he was still rude, obnoxious, and hostile towards the heroes as well. He shows an interest in Lydia during most of the movie, and at nearly the end of this movie, he tries to force her into marrying him to fulfill a contract. He almost succeeds until he is stopped by Adam and Barbara Maitland, as well as a sandworm. HistoryPre-BeetlejuiceAccording to Betelgeuse, he attended Julliard, is a graduate of the Harvard Business School, traveled quite extensively, lived through the Black Plague (and had a pretty good time during that), and has seen "The Exorcist" about 167 times (and it keeps getting funnier every single time he's seen it, not to mention the fact they're talking to the dead guy). Parts of his qualifications including attending Julliard, graduating from Harvard, and extensive travel are all real life accomplishments. This and other lines were improvised during filming and it is possible that the character of Betelgeuse was lying about certain elements of his past for comedic effect with the Maitlands. What is known for certain, per Juno's warning to the Maitlands, is that Betelgeuse was once Juno's assistant (which implies he committed suicide in life since working for her counts as being a civil servant. The explanation of his suicide by hanging was left out of the film) but he was a troublemaker. He went out on his own as a freelance bio-exorcist, claiming he could get rid of the living, and got into more trouble. Also ironically, he is "Living-Buster"--a ghost who exterminates the living by scaring them away. BeetlejuiceBetelgeuse used advertisements (such as flyers, business cards and a commercial, where he said some questionable things about chewing and swallowing) to get the Maitlands to hire him as a "bio-exorcist" to rid their house of the Deetzes. They thought it was odd that the business card and flyers contained no address or phone number. The Maitlands summon him when they learn that he can be summoned if his name is said 3 times in a row. When that happened he disappeared into dust. Things go bad when Betelgeuse starts scaring the Deetzes in ways that seriously harm them, and even worse, plans to marry Lydia as his way of "escaping" the Neitherworld so he can wreak further havoc. Fortunately, saying his name 3 times can also be used to get rid of him. In the end, Betelgeuse ends up in the waiting room for the deceased, where he is last in a long line. Betelgeuse gets his comeuppance when he steals the Witch Doctor's ticket, then makes a boastful remark. The Witch Doctor sprinkles some powder on Betelgeuse, which causes his head to shrink. However, Betelgeuse, with his higher voice on account of this, remarks this may look good for him in a supposed underwear modeling gig. DevelopmentIn early drafts of the script, Betelgeuse was supposed to assume a variety of forms, with his true form being that of a winged demon (the filthy pale man wearing black and white stripes was originally going to be one of the many forms he assumed). Instead of being stuck in a waiting room, Betelgeuse was going to be destroyed at first. He was also at one point in the story supposed to be a smaller, possibly middle-eastern businessman, and the script was a much darker, hard-R black comedy film that involved much more death and despair. NameBetelgeuse's name is often spelled phonetically as "Beetlejuice", as in the title. However, during the film his name spelled Betelgeuse (like the star of Orion, Betelgeuse) during his ad on TV, and everywhere in the grave scene. There has been great debate over which spelling of his name is correct. Some say that because his name is the same as the introduction, this is proof that they meant it as Beetlejuice while others claim that was an error as the credits of the film spell his name "Betelgeuse". Nowhere during the film is his name spelled "Beetlejuice", unless watched with subtitles on, in which it is said from Lydia's interpretation from playing charades with him. Yes there is spelling of "Beetlejuice" in the film. The begining credits title the film "Beetlejuice". The Maitlands used the astrological spelling... after several mispronunciations. Some also argue that he may not have been permitted to write his name the way it should, much like he can't say his own name. However, it is just as likely that he cannot misspell his own name any more than a mispronunciation of it can summon him, a condition which compounds his curse since his name is not spelled phonetically. It is also worth noting that there are hints of a greater meaning in several of the names in the movie, since Betelgeuse means "the hand of Orion" and Betelgeuse's former master was named Juno, a character clearly named after the Queen of the Roman gods, protector and special councilor of the state. Powers and abilities
Beetlejuice from the Animated SeriesIn the animated series, Beetlejuice takes on the roll of the protagonist more readily (athough he is still shown to be dishonest and selfish). He is often referred to as "BJ" for short (“Beej” by Lydia on occasion). The residents of the Netherworld generally consider him to be an unwelcome pest. Unlike his movie counterpart, his powers seem to be limited to wordplay. Needing a timely gag or pun in order to transform or use his power (e.g., he says something “bugs” him, he'll turn into an insect). His relationship with Lydia is more friendly in the cartoon and they consider one another their best friend. For more information of the animated version of this character, go to the animated article. Trivia
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