Rick Moranis got sucker-punched in New York, and the internet is furious

Isn’t 2020 bad enough already? Now someone has to go and sucker-punch actor Rick Moranis on a New York street? The New York Police Department confirmed to CBS New York that the Ghostbusters actor, who’s 67, was randomly attacked by a stranger Thursday morning on the city’s Upper West Side. 

Surveillance cameras show a man walk up and with no provocation and punch Moranis in the head, knocking him down. The actor went to the hospital with pain in his head, back and hip, CNET sister site CBS reported, but his management team later said Moranis is “fine, but grateful for everyone’s thoughts and well wishes.”

Moranis may be fine, but people are furious on his behalf. Even Captain America — aka, actor Chris Evans — was outraged. “My blood is boiling,” Evans wrote in a tweet. “Find this man. You don’t touch Rick Moranis.”

Ryan Reynolds, who recently coaxed Moranis into appearing in a Mint Mobile commercial, also spoke out.

“Should have known not to subject Rick to the year 2020,” Reynolds wrote. “Glad to hear he’s OK.”

It wasn’t just the famous who were outraged.

“Lemme find out who hit him,” wrote one Twitter user. “That’s my favorite childhood actor. The man made Ghostbusters. Honey I Shrunk the Kids!” Wrote another, “You come for Rick Moranis you come for all of us.”

Some hoped Moranis would call on his past movie experience for revenge. “Perfect plant food,” wrote one Twitter user, referring of course to Moranis’ role in the 1986 movie musical Little Shop of Horrors, in which his nerdy florist Seymour Krelborn found himself feeding a man-eating plant.

Many noted the “I Love NY” shirt worn by the attacker. 

Moranis took a break from acting in 1991 after his wife, Ann Belsky, died of breast cancer, but never formally retired from the business. In 2018, he reprised his famous role in Star Wars parody film Spaceballs on the TV show The Goldbergs, but his last major film role came more than two decades ago in 1997’s Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves. 

In February, actor Josh Gad tweeted that Moranis will star with him in the movie Shrunk, a revisit of the Honey, I Shrunk The Kids universe, with Gad playing Moranis’ grown-up son from those films.

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