History Headscratchers / Ghostbusters

** In the Video Game, it's mentioned that crossing the streams only worked due to the presence of a cross-dimension portal and it should only be used as a last resort. Alternatively, it's possible that Egon could have simply been mistaken about the ramifications, or he was just exaggerating to get the point accross that one shouldn't do it.

** In the Video Game, it's mentioned that crossing the streams only worked due to the presence of a cross-dimension portal and it should only be used as a last resort. Alternatively, it's possible that Egon could have simply been mistaken about the ramifications, or he was just exaggerating.

** In the Video Game, it's mentioned that crossing the streams only worked due to the presence of a cross-dimension portal and it should only be used as a last resort. Alternatively, it's possible that Egon could have simply been mistaken about the ramifications.
** Egon did say, “the end of life as we know it” which could be interpreted to me complete destruction of reality or simply there own deaths. The way he described it was something to the effect of every atom in your body reversing charge and exploding, what Ray though they did to Gozer briefly before the whole choose your destructor part. Presumably all he meant was that if you cross the streams your atoms will detonate scattering your subatomic particles in a burst of radiation which for you might as well be the end of the universe or otherwise enter some other unpredictable state besides death since they're tampering with forces beyond current human understanding.

** Yeah, I was under the impression that Egon was just exaggerating or maybe he meant “the end of life as we know it” for them, not for the entire universe.

* What sets off the events of the first movie? According to the history we're given, Ivo Shandor and his cult decide that humanity should be destroyed, and that [[EldritchAbomination Gozer]] is the best way to accomplish this. So Shandor constructs the doorway to bring Gozer through. He and his followers perform rituals designed to summon Gozer. Only . . . it doesn't work. Shandor dies, and we're given no information about what happened to them (not that the Ghostbusters would necessarily have been able to locate such data anyway). Whether they disbanded or moved elsewhere is unknown. So why, sixty-odd years after their attempt, does Gozer happen to find its way into our world? Does it just move reeeeealy slowly in its own reality? One day, Dana's place is haunted, and we have no idea why.
** IIRC, it's mentioned that Gozer likes to just pop up in our dimension from time to time. Perhaps It can only do so when a Keymaster + Gatekeeper are present?
*** Good point, actually. I'd forgotten that possessed!Lewis mentions that the Traveler has been here before. Which just creates another question: Why are we still here? [[EldritchAbomination Gozer's]] been to our world at least twice before, why not destroy it then?
*** The game indirectly answers this for us; Gozer is incompetent. There must've been mystics around in the Ye Ancient Thymes Gozer originally appeared at who served the same function as the Ghostbusters do in the present. The museum level in the game goes into detail about Gozer worshipers and Tiamat worshipers warring with one another, that they would do so with supernatural means isn't much of a stretch. Shandor must've thought that with the world so much more banal than it was back then (after all, people are quite willing to believe the Ghostbusters are frauds even AFTER the first movie,) Gozer would have no opposition. He was wrong, hence Gozer's latest defeat after a ''series'' of defeats.
*** The last time Gozer visited, humans may not even have been around yet. Gozer did wipe out races like the shubs and and the zulls during the meketrex supplicants.
*** I assumed that Gozer has never been to this dimension, or has only appeared in a 'shadowy' sense (i.e. enough to establish his existence to believers but not enough to actually do anything), and that the shubs and the meketrex supplicants were weird races in other dimensions that he has actually visited and conquered.
** Another possibility is that old favorite of fairy tales: Time moves differently in the dimension Gozer resides in. He showed up when he finally received the message that someone had been calling him.
*** It's also very possible that, even if time moves the same in his dimension, Gozer still perceives it differently, being thousands, if not millions of years old.
*** As we get older, our perception of time broadens. Remember being five or six and a half-hour was an eternity, but as adults, that's barely enough time to get anything accomplished? If Gozer is millions of years old, what's another sixty years?
** Egon said in the jailhouse scene that the building's designed as a giant PKE antenna and that it's been quietly gathering spiritual energy for 60-some years. I'd say it just took that long for the building to gather enough energy to crack the portal open a little and bring the Keymaster and Gatekeeper to Earth. As for Gozer's prior appearances, apparently Gozer wipes out human civilization, but not humanity itself. Its arrival just marks the end of an age, and the survivors go on to build a new civilization (until Gozer gets summoned to destroy that one too).
*** Shandor's planning reveals that he was ready for the long haul here. In the game, it is stated that Shandor and other members of his cult set up deals to gain power after death. This suggests that he was fully aware that it'd take longer than he'd live to gather enough energy to bring Gozer and wanted to be there when the time came. Sucks for him that the time came right as the only guys capable of stopping it opened for business.although he does get to be a powerful boss in the game
** Unless Gozer has a guarantee in his ritual summoning brochure, I don't think he's obligated to bring about the apocalypse the same day you preform your sacrifice.
*** Or your money back.
** I wouldn't exactly call Slavitza Jovan an EldritchAbomination...
*** She's just the form Gozer takes; "It can be anything it wants to be." Chances are, Gozer more naturally looks like a quivering mass of tentacles or something.
** There's a lot of indication that Zuul and Vinz are attracted to Dana and Louis specifically, otherwise they could have possessed anybody in the building, meaning something about them as the inhabitants of those apartments is important to the creatures. It's a bit of a stretch, but maybe the summoning rites require their specific apartments to be inhabited for a certain amount of time and the apartments hadn't both had a tenant for that long until then?
*** Their apartments ''do'' seem to be directly under Gozer's temple.

* Exactly what else should Ray have "chosen" as the Form of the Destructor? The other Ghostbusters immediately get on his case for thinking of something before they'd all agreed on it. (i.e. "What did you DO, Ray?") Ray's logic was perfectly sound, he chose an image from his childhood, something that he thought wouldn't hurt them. Since whatever he chose was likely to be 60 feet tall and capable of ripping buildings from their foundations, what difference does it make if it was a 60 foot marshmallow man, a 60 foot cuddly puppy, or a 60 foot rhododendron? While we're on the subject, since the first thing that they THOUGHT OF was going to be the Form of the Destructor, how would they all agree on something "harmless" without thinking of anything? Gah.
** I thought they were supposed to think of nothing at all and were hoping Gozer would get bored and go away. It wasn't the best of plans. I haven't watched it in awhile so correct me if I'm wrong.
** They didn't have a plan at all - they didn't have time. Gozer springs on them without warning: "The next time any of you thinks of anything, the world will end." They reacted the natural way: "Think of nothing! Think of nothing!"
** Yeah, and they don't really blame Ray that much: they panic and take it out on him when he first admits it, but they let it go as soon as they actually see Stay Puft on the horizon. One bit of FridgeBrilliance I love is that, though it catches them by surprise when it happens, Vinz did tell Egon about it. The way he said it just didn't make any sense until later...
--->'''Vinz Clortho/Louis''': Gozer the Traveler. He will come in one of the pre-chosen forms. During the Rectification of the Vuldrini, the Traveler came as a large and moving Torg! Then, during the Third Reconciliation of the last of the [=McKetrick=] supplicants, they chose a new form for him: that of a giant Slor! Many Shuvs and Zuuls knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of the Slor that day, I can tell you!
*** Now if only we knew what a [[NoodleIncident large and moving Torg]] was...
*** [[Webcomic/SluggyFreelance Isn't he that doof with the lop-eared rabbit?]]
*** "I tried to think of the most harmless thing. Something that I loved from my childhood. Something that would [[http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/nifty.gif never ever possibly destroy us]]."
*** Except he was talking about Gozer, not the Destructor. Gozer was the woman who tells them whatever they think of will be the form of the Destructor.
*** Gozer was "whatever it wants to be." The Destructor is simply Gozer's title: Gozer the Destructor. First it appeared in the form of a woman, then in the form of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
** The thing is, if they all thought of 'nothing', Gozer may have just come in the form of a massive nothing. Say, a giant black hole? With arms and legs?
*** There's a big difference between thinking of 'nothing' as a commodity and thinking of 'nothing' as in not thinking of anything. The latter is what they were trying to do.
*** You guys are taking the expression "think of nothing" too literally. Their plan was not to mentally *select* anything, and that's what Ray semi-accidentally did. When he said, "I couldn't help it; it just popped in there," he's just sort of making excuses. Remember that a moment later he admits that he was *trying* to think of something.
*** There's another relevant quote from Egon's [=PS2=] research notes in the Ghostbusters video game: "In retrospect, we shouldn't have been so hard on [Ray]. Gozer would have probably scanned further for a suitable form, or chose nothingness itself to be its destructor form, which could have potentially engulfed the whole city in a void." Personally, I always thought Gozer would've just kept waiting until one of them thought of something.
*** When Venkman was explaining the trick, why didn't Gozer come in the shape of a 60 foot J. Edgar Hoover? Surely there is some sort of specific mental process that distinguishes any thinking and choosing. Ergo, Ray must have thought something to the effect of "I choose Mr. Stay-Puft."
*** Venkman didn't imagine a picture of J. Edgar Hoover, he just came up with a random famous person's name to explain the trick. Most likely, Gozer needs you to clearly imagine a form for it to take rather than a name that probably means nothing to it.
*** I figured this, too. Ray's thinking was probably "Don't think of anything. Don't think of anything. Although something like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man would be harmless. Unless he was a giant... I wonder, is he just a really pale creature or is he made entirely out of marshmallows? Probably the marshm--" "THE CHOICE IS MADE!" "Oh shi--".
*** I tried, it was actually pretty hard to think of something that can't be [[JackassGenie misinterpreted]]. I eventually settled on a single sock chained to the roof of the building.
*** Great. Now you guys have got me thinking about how it bugs me that they didn't have a giant sock puppet or 300-foot J. Edgar Hoover attack the city!
*** I always just assumed Ray thought of Mr. Stay-Puft instantly, and was pretending he hadn't while everyone else was prattling about Hoover.
*** And I always assumed that Gozer didn't appear as J. Edgar Hoover because none of the guys happened to know what J. Edgar Hoover ''looked like''.
** Inadvertently or not, and regardless of the form he chose, Ray had just made it possible for an inter-dimensional EldritchAbomination to cause TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt. Why ''wouldn't'' they be pissed at him and get on his case, at least for a minute?
** There is no particular reason to believe that the Destructor would be 50 feet tall. Either Stay Puft is canonically kaiju sized or that's a case of JerkAssGenie at work. In all honesty Ray probably did them a favor by dreaming up something big slow and without any displayed powers aside from size and perhaps durability. Assuming Gozer wasn't bluffing and could make anything things could have turned out infinitely worse. Like an Alien Queen, Frieza or Godzilla.

* This may be because I'm black, but it bothers me that in many of the "group" shots, Zeddemore is off screen. However, it's not just him. There seems to be a lot of trouble in capturing several characters across the screen.
** I haven't watched the widescreen version in a long while, but I think this might be a pan & scan problem. I noticed on the network TV versions, they do this awkwardly jerking slow pan, or just outright cut out some of the characters. Winston definitely gets chopped off the picture a lot during the Gozer fight, and Peter ends up having conversations with himself sometimes because the pan & scan shot didn't including Ray or Egon.
*** Harold Ramis points this out in the DVD commentary. The pan & scan keeps cutting him out of shots.
** I know that originally, Winston was going to be appear sooner, and be the most competent member- basically a 'Nam veteran and expert in twenty fields. He was also going to be played by Eddie Murphy. However, they rewrote the script- I think to fix pacing problems- and changed Winston to a blue-collar guy, who could provide a more down-to-earth viewpoint as opposed to, say, Ray.

* After Pete has his meetcute with Zuul!Dana, the next time you see him, he's talking to Egon, telling him he's "whacked her" with 300 cc's of Thorazine. This raises some issues:
** Pete tells Peck that he's a doctor of "parapsychology ''and'' psychology." Psychologists can't prescribe, only psychiatrists can.
** 300 cc's of Thorazine? A standard disposable plastic bag of saline is ''500'' ccs. Even if we call that one carelessness and say that they really meant ''30'' ccs, we're left with...
** I always just assumed they made a mistake and meant 300 milligrams of Thorazine instead of ccs. 300 mg is a perfectly reasonable dosage of Thorazine to give someone who is having a fit. Real psychiatrists give doses of 50 mg up to 1000 mg.
** Venkman. Went to Dana's apartment. ''With a syringe of ''[[DrFeelgood thorazine.]]
*** It was New York in TheEighties (i.e.BigRottenApple) I just assume a lot of people had "a guy" they could call in the middle of the night to get pharmaceuticals delivered.
*** They did so much research on the rest of the stuff that I'd guess they did mean 300 cc's, with the implication being that Zuul!Dana is so super-charged that it took that much just to have an effect (I wonder how he got her to stand still for two or three injections, though). Considering they're wearing unlicensed nuclear accelerators and Peck's problem with them is that haven't registered the containment unit with the city, I wouldn't put it past the Ghostbusters to have their own stock of tranquilizers and such (Egon probably has the medical credentials for it). As for why Peter brought that with him on a date... for my own [[BrainBleach peace of mind]], I'll say it was already in the car, maybe specifically for knocking out DemonicPossession victims without hurting them. Yeah, that's it.
*** Let's say that he had it in case there really was a monster haunting her refrigerator. He did go up there to "check her out" but he had already seen the librarian's ghost so he would have wanted to have a back door in case he needed it. Ray and Egon would have wanted the creature alive for research purposes, and the way you deal with a large, dangerous animal you don't want to kill is by tranquilizing it, so he might have thought it useful to bring such a weapon (in his pocket or something) in case there really was a danger. [[RunningGag Yeah, that's it.]] And it shouldn't be hard for a psychologist to obtain medicine unethically/illegally.
*** WordOfGod states that "Ghostbusters" is Peter's story arc, in which he evolves from a jaded cynic into a true believer. Maybe this is one step in that ascent, where he takes a woman's plea for help seriously enough to bring a backup plan with him in case his theories are right. --ADDENDUM, 12/10/12: What if the Thorazine was ''Dana's?'' Demons in the fridge, a conductor you'd love to strangle, Louis Tully...Thorazine might come in handy. So, "300 cc's" was the point at which Peter finally got Dana!Zuul to calm down a bit.--
*** The fact that Venkman resists Dana even when she's throwing herself at him with lust because she's clearly not herself suggests (to me at least) that he's also not the kind of man who's going to drug or dope a woman in order to date-rape her. In which case, I'm going with either (a) the thorazine is Dana's for whatever reason or (b) he brought it for another reason.
*** We have a trope for that. AboveTheInfluence.
*** Couldn't that have just been because [[DirtyCoward he was too afraid to try]], given his reactions to the other ghosts?
*** I suppose, but personally I'm choosing to think the best of him.
** Venkman says they get a lot of crazies at one point. Whether or not it was true at that point, by the time they were extremely popular they definitely would have been getting a lot of disturbed individuals... people that could freak out and get violent if you told them there was not, in fact, a ghost in their house. ''All'' the Ghostbusters may carry syringes and some thorazine with them so that if they're assaulted by someone they can knock their assailant out.
*** Korsakov K5 with Thorazine-coated darts.
** One possible explanation: There was a psychiatrist that heard the ruckus when Vince wrecked Louis' party (It's not unheard of for doctors to live in the affluent Central Park West), that was a party guest themselves, or that was called by someone there to counsel those in a state of shock. Venkman left Dana's apartment, intending to make for the firehouse, and ran into said psychiatrist. He/She and Venkman were acquainted, and he obtained the Thorazine from the psychiatrist, which he/she ordered to administer to Louis' traumatized clients.
*** Or maybe an animal-control officer was across the hall checking into the "berserk cougar at a party" report, and left a tranquilizer gun in the hallway where Peter could "borrow" it.
** Interestingly enough, the novelization implies that he drugged Dana with Valium that he found in her medicine cabinet, not Thorazine. For that matter, who's to say Venkman wasn't comically exaggerating the amount of Thorazine he gave her?
*** Alternatively he could have been incredulous about just ''how much'' of the stuff it took to knock Zuul out. He mentioned the size of the dosage because it would have been relevant to Egon's research, which would make the line, "She's gonna take a little nap now," a case of [[DeadpanSnarker snarky]] {{understatement}}.

* Doesn't Walter Peck kind of have a point? Granted, he's a FlatEarthAtheist with a personal agenda, but his stated concern is that the city knows nothing about the Ghostbusters' technology, and the containment unit could pose a huge environmental risk to the city. And he's not exactly wrong - when the grid's shut down, it hits, in Egon's own words, like "dropping a bomb on the city". On the one hand, the Ghostbusters are working with technology that no current government agency or regulation has the rules to cope with (what kind of a hazard does "so many ghosts it'd make a 35-foot Twinkie" count as?). But on the other, they really are breaking all kinds of rules, and though they had the bad luck of getting ObstructiveBureaucrat Walter Peck as their EPA inspector, someone was bound to come knocking sooner or later.
** Yeah, he kinda had a point in the beginning. But when Venkman asks Peck the very legitimate question of ''why'' he wants to see the storage facility (remember, at this point Peck did NOT have a warrant to search the premises) Peck goes from zero to asshole in the space of five seconds. "I wanna know more about what you do here! Frankly, I've heard a lot of wild stories in the media and we want to assess any possibility of dangerous and possibly hazardous waste chemicals in your basement." Then he ''threatens'' to go get a court order if Venkman doesn't let him see the storage facility, to which Venkman quite rightly counters by threatening to sue for wrongful prosecution. Imagine if instead of flipping out, Peck had come to Venkman like this: "We realize you boys are doing good work, but the city government has some environmental concerns about the specifics of your operation. Would you mind giving us a tour of your facilities?" Probably would've made all the difference, don't you think? But Peck doesn't do that. Why? Because the guy isn't interested in keeping the city safe. He just wants to lord it over people and throw his weight around. Venkman did nothing wrong by refusing to be intimidated by this abusive and aggressive bureaucrat. He also keeps referring to Peter and "Mister Venkman" rather than "''Doctor'' Venkman" despite Peter have ''two'' [=PhDs=], which is two more than he has.
*** Yes. Peck is basing his search and seizure on nothing but admitted wild stories from the media and pure rumors mixed with his own spite and cynical disbelief. He has no evidence of any actual "flagrant violation of the Environmental Protection Act" whatsoever, which is ironic considering that the guys he's prosecuting are going around wearing packs that, completely unbeknownst to him, are unlicensed nuclear accelerators. (Which leads to another thing worthy of an "it just bugs me" entry:)
*** BTW: No judge, even in New York, is going to issue a warrant or a commercial desist order based on media stories. I was TEN when the movie came out and I spotted that. (Although I still played hooky from 7th grade to spend the day watching it on VHS-- four times-- a few years later.)
*** Which, if that is true, would still not be as much of a problem if Peck could either (a) lie about his sources, or (b) use Venkman's refusal to let them search the grounds as an indication that they clearly had something to hide to a judge who would agree with that, who dislikes the Ghostbusters to begin with, or who knows and trusts Walter Peck. I wouldn't put any of it past him.
*** Peck would never get away with lying about his sources. He'd have to verify his sources in order to justify the warrant. As for the possibility of a corrupt judge, that ''might'' have worked, but it's a pretty big stretch. Any judge who granted a search warrant based on lies and innuendo would quickly find himself impeached and removed from the bench, and even the most corrupt judge in the world would logically care more about keeping his job than about fucking up the Ghostbusters' business.
*** Peck's behavior becomes ''slightly'' more plausible if you keep in mind that he doesn't believe in ghosts and honestly thinks the [=GBs=] are complete frauds who drug their clients into hallucinating supernatural events. Presumably he figures the ''last'' thing they'd want to do is stand up in court and defend their commercial or civil rights, because that could expose their "fraud". He's still a complete jackass, but a bit less unbelievably-so.
*** It's entirely plausible that Peck filed some frivolous suit, that he knew couldn't hold water, before a sympathetic judge, but file paperwork with an address ''just'' wrong enough to both make any summons to the Ghostbusters undelivered, and passable as a clerical error. Thus, once he wins a summary judgement, due to the Ghostbusters failing to respond in a timely manner to a summons they never got, he can then storm the firehouse with a court order because he's a petulant, petty dick that took offense to Peter's "insults."
*** Here's the thing: Even if he thinks the Ghostbusters are frauds, that's ''not his responsibility to do anything about''. He works for the EPA... his job is safeguarding the environment. His accusation that they might be storing/using environmentally unsafe substances is pretty clearly just an excuse to allow him to get involved. He should be making sure companies aren't dumping chemicals in the river, not investigating whether small businessmen are bilking customers. Peck's basically abusing his position because he knows he has the power to get away with it, and it doesn't really matter ''what'' his viewpoint is because it's not his job, nor his responsibility, nor his authority to get involved in the matter.
*** If he honestly believes the GBs are spraying psychotropic gases on people to make them hallucinate, and doing so in public places like hotels or nightclubs, that's surely grounds for an EPA agent to look into the matter.
*** There's then the question of why does he believe that and what gave him that impression? The only time he mentioned it, it appeared to be slander against the Ghostbusters.
*** If he honestly believes that, that's more grounds for him to contact the police or other relevant authorities and transfer the investigation to them, since (so far as I'm aware) doping people does not fall under the EPA's purview.
** And even if he had a point in the beginning, he's definitely stopped having one when the Con-Ed guy -- who presumably knows a metric fuckton more about complicated electronic systems than a pen-pushing bureaucrat like Peck -- nervously informs him that he's never seen a set-up like this as if to say 'maybe we shouldn't be too hasty about this' before only for Peck to shout "I'm not interested in your opinion!" That's informed advice he's shouting down there. For all his high-and-mighty act, it should be pretty clear by then that Peck's just on a power-trip.
*** Not to mention that after everything goes to hell, he has the gall to blame the Ghostbusters for what happened, even in front of the mayor, when ''he'' was the one who ordered the system shut down against both the Ghostbusters' and the Con-Ed guy's protests. When talking to the mayor, he then proceeds to make up baseless theories about the Ghostbusters creating hallucinogens and light shows to scam customers, which the fireman quickly refutes as complete bunk as none of the occurrences are natural, and the fireman says he's seem every form of combustion and this is nothing like any of those.
** Honestly, the most implausible part of the whole Peck affair was that this movie was set in 1984. Does ''anyone'' think the EPA was this aggressive under Reagan?
*** Peck's probably the kind of careerist over-achiever jerk who appears in almost every workplace -- the kind of guy who cares more about advancing up the ladder than anything else. Chances are, everyone else back at the local EPA office was rolling their eyes at his officiousness and being all "Christ, Peck, what ''is'' it with you and the goddamn crusade over the Ghostbusters?"
* How, exactly, do the Ghostbusters not get radiation sickness from repeated exposure to beams fired out of nuclear accelerators? I mean, after a few weeks you'd think their skin would be peeling off, their hair falling out, their teeth blackened to a crisp...
** Is it actually a nuclear accelerator? Venkman says it is, but he's not exactly the finest scientist around (and he may have just been making a joke).
** The reference to "particle streams" seems to confirm that they're using particle accelerators, and most of the [[AllThereInTheManual official diagrams]] of the proton packs show that they're basically modified, portable cyclotrons (or at least, the children's "Ghostbuster's Official Manual" book I had as a kid did! :)). The only answer I can come up with for the radiation is that the beams just aren't enough strong enough to generate high-energy photons in their wake. They might ionize the air enough to create alpha and beta particles, but they can be stopped by the jumpsuits. It's still a health risk, but probably no riskier than smoking or drinking (which they do plenty of, so it's probably an acceptable one to them).
** Not all radiation is dangerous. They're firing proton beams, and protons just aren't very dangerous; they are large, massive, charged particles, so they aren't going to penetrate very much. The really dangerous radiation is high-energy neutron radiation, or high-frequency electromagnetic radiation.
** It's also possible that their jumpsuits have some sort of underlying radiation-shielding for their vital organs. If so, it might explain why they didn't just die when Gozer blasted them: she/it wasn't expecting sub-creatures to have developed protection against her/its energy-blasts, which manifest as similar radiation.

** LOL! On that note, perhaps the trap is as dangerous to the eyes as looking at the sun/a solar eclipse. Or, since Egon seemed just fine afterward, either he didn't look long enough or it's not ''quite'' as bad as that, but close.

* Why do Zuul and Vinz Clortho need to possess anyone when they clearly already have physical bodies?
** The whole "Gatekeeper/Keymaster" thing is clearly a metaphor for sex. From this it can be inferred that some sort of magic ritual needs to be performed by Zuul and Vinz Clortho to summon Gozer and having sex while inhabiting a pair of host bodies is part of that ritual.
*** Yet oddly, Dana told Louis that they didn't have sex. Was she lying because she didn't want to get his hopes up, lying because [[{{Squick}} she wanted to forget having been with him]], or did she not remember because she was possessed at the time?
*** Probably a mix between the first and second, considering how quickly and insistently (and specifically) she shoots him down.
*** A variation on the second option is that she's trying to distance herself from the things Zuul did in her body. She and Louis ''didn't'' have sex; [[InsistentTerminology Zuul and Vinz did.]]
** It would also seem to make sense that this ritual would need to be performed at least in part by entities which are native to the universe Gozer is planning on invading, which neither Zuul nor Vinz Clortho are.
** Makes sense. Presumably the rituals being performed by Shandor and his followers ''also'' included sexual elements, but either way, it was the fact denizens of our world were doing the rituals that allowed the building to start charging energy and draw Gozer and his servants here in the first place.
** Also, we don't know how demon-dogs come into being. It could be that they're artificial beings Gozer willed into existence, and their own bodies [[AnimalsLackAttributes aren't physically equipped]] to have sex.

* Why exactly was Dana!Zuul having her freakout from Venkman's poor Keymaster performance? Maybe Zuul was preparing itself for the ritual by storing up energy, but then had to release it else-how when it realized they were not getting into smexy-action. Or was it just trying to impress and scare Peter?
** Zuul is the extra-dimensional servant of a Cthulloid monstrosity from beyond the veil of reality. Doing weird shit for no apparent reason is entirely in character for her/him/it.
** She was pissed that the Keymaster was asking all these irrelevant questions, instead of getting on with his job of summoning Gozer.

* What is the time frame of the movie after Winston joins? Based on my last viewing it looks like he was a Ghostbuster for a day. He was hired on the same day that Peck came to the firehouse, Dana and Louis got possessed that night, the policeman brought Louis to the firehouse, and Ray and Winston were out driving late at night. The next day is when Peck has the containment unit shut down, and the final fight is later that same day. So Winston's first outing as a Ghostbuster was against Gozer?
** Winston tells the mayor he'd only been 'with the company' for a few weeks. It might have taken Peck that long to get proper paperwork.

* Why do Zuul and Vinz just stand on their pedestals during the confrontation with Gozer? Why don't they attack the 'Busters, particularly when the foursome start zapping the gateway?
** Gozer is basically a god. I daresay Zuul and Vinz think he/she can handle him/herself.
** The demon-dogs unleashing energies while perched on their pedestals is what made the gateway open up in the first place. They ''can't'' budge or it'll collapse.

* What ''was'' Egon doing under the desk during Peter's conversation with Janine? Yes, him suddenly appearing like that was funny, but does the scene ever provide a reason ''why'' he was down there -- hooking up office equipment, listening for ghosts like he was at the library... anything?
** After emerging, he goes and starts futzing with the computer cords, so apparently he was hooking something up underneath the desk.
** For what it's worth, for years this troper misheard Egon's "Print is dead" line (in response to Janine trying to flirt by figuring out if Egon likes to read) as "printer's dead." The Ghostbusters had very limited start-up funds, and most of that went to the containment unit, proton packs, ghost traps, and insanely expensive car (and work to get said car drivable). So they probably bought the cheapest second-hand office equipment they could find, and most of it barely worked or didn't work at all. Egon's fixing it.

* Something that occurred to me upon another viewing of the first film. During the montage, the Ghostbusters on mentioned on radio numerous times, interviewed on TV, and show up on the front page of national newspapers. Why do they need to put an add in the classifieds for help? When Winston approaches the firehouse, he has a newspaper in his hands that looks like the 'Help Wanted' section of a newspaper. Even if the majority of people think the guys are frauds, shouldn't there be a ton of people trying to get a job with these guys?
** Being on TV doesn't signal that they're looking for more people to hire on.
** It's possible that there are a ton of people trying to get a job with the Ghostbusters. Just listen to the way Janine interviews Winston. She sounds ''supremely'' bored, as if she's been repeating this spiel to dozens of people a week for a very long time and Winston is just the latest one to walk through the door. Also note that 90% of the things she mentions have ''absolutely nothing to do with catching ghosts''. What possible use could there be in throwing a huge barrage of questions at recruits, most of which have nothing to do with the actual job, except to scare away the people who aren't prepared to take the job seriously?
** If they announce in an interview that they're looking for a new hire, they're going to get a horde of Ghostbusters-groupies and publicity-seekers who are just looking to hang around with the city's new celebrities, not actually do any ''work''. Posting a classified ad that just lists the job requirements and an address to report to, without actually saying who's hiring, avoids that headache.
** Also, they might be famous, but they're still a professional, legally-established business. There are all sorts of procedures to follow when it comes to seeking new employees, both legally and just to make things easier for yourself when trying to locate someone who is suitable and qualified for the position. I mean, Steve Jobs and Apple were / are famous, but Steve Jobs didn't just announce that he needed employees at the Apple Keynotes, they advertise just like any other business.

* Was the ghost vault patched in to the city power grid? or did it have a back up generator? New York hasn't had the most steady energy system on the planet. and if shutting off the power was all it took for the ghosts to get loose, what happens if a rat were to chew through a line?
** My personal guess would be, given how intense Egon was on the subject of "not suddenly cutting off power to the protection grid", that the grid ran off its own power source rather than being hooked into the mains. Or, at least, the parts of the system essential to it not suddenly exploding and showering New York with paranormal ectoplasmic entities ran off their own power source.

* Were the Ghostbusters unintentionally part of Gozer's prophecy? they gathered a huge amount of spiritual energy into a concentrated space. when the time was right it just so happened to 'burst' making the dimension barriers weak enough for Gozer to come through.

* Why does the Ghostbusters building have five beds in the video game if Venkman has his own apartment?
** Maybe Venkman fell on hard times and had to move back into the firehouse.
** Or maybe there's some nights he has to work late and doesn't feel like going back home. Especially considering ghosts seem to like the night more than the daytime. I work as a reporter, and after some late meetings have decided to stay some place closer to my beat than trudging all the way back home at midnight.
** There's also a reason why firehouses have those beds, even though most firefighters presumably have their own homes -- sometimes they work really long (as in on-call-for-upwards-of-twenty-four-hours long) shifts. Assuming theories suggested above about how the Ghostbusters have periods of intense amounts of work surrounding some kind of major supernatural incident (like how they were completely swept off their feet in the first movie) are correct, and considering there's usually only four of them, it makes sense that even with his own apartment Venkman would probably keep some kind of bed at the station so that he could just crash there for a brief recharge during quiet moments when he's on call for a long shift without having to go home and back. In any case, the building probably just had five beds by default for the firefighters when the Ghostbusters bought it and they just never bothered to get rid of them all, assuming they'd have more people work for them.
** Maybe ''Janine'' asked them to keep the extra bed around in case she wanted a bit of a lie-down during her lunch break.

* One for the video game: Since they went out of their way to justify having the player character be nameless and voiceless, why not provide any way to customize the character model?
** My guess is, there wasn't enough space, what with the physics engine, the destroyable scenery, the transparent ghosts, other environmental effects, CG cutscenes, voice acting...
*** The reason is because of the cutscenes. They were not scripted sequences happening in real time, they were video files.

* Why does the video game include the painting of Vigo with his spirit still in it, when he was apparently destroyed at the end of the second movie and the painting went through a drastic physical change?
** Wild guess: it was probably changed back by the ectoplasmic energy wave at the beginning of the game.
** I have a theory on that one: Vigo has the power to alter the painting at will. He chose to make it looks like the Ghostbusters at the end of the second movie so they'd take it back to the firehouse with them, then he shifted back to his more comfortable natural form at a later date. Ray and Egon did a scan or something, found out he couldn't do much, and not having the option of throwing the painting in the Containment Unit figured it was fine just sitting there.
** Or maybe it's a different painting. Vigo wasn't an idiot in life; he might've had more than one such portrait painted, just in case something happened to one or the other. When whichever museum or private owner held the second copy heard about the events of ''[=GB2=]'', they entrusted the surviving portrait to the Ghostbusters so they could guard against anything spooky happening to ''that'' one.

* Were the ghostbusters unintentionally part of Gozer's prophecy? they gathered a huge amount of spiritual energy into a concentrated space. when the time was right it just so happened to 'burst' making the dimension barriers weak enough for Gozer to come through.

* Has anyone ever considered the fact that, in spite of the happy ending to the second Ghostbusters film, they are probably going to be out of business again within a few months? Think about it. In the first film, the ghosts only start popping up en masse because of Gozer. Once Gozer is banished, the large scale appearance of ghosts ceased, and people were eventually convinced it was some kind of hoax. Then, several years later, we get Vigo, another powerful ghost who, on the verge of resurrecting himself, also causes a huge amount of ghostly activity. With his defeat, surely the ghosts will go away again, and people aren't going to need the Ghostbusters anymore.
** The game handwaves this problem; while major paranormal events do draw so many ghosts that the Ghostbusters are overworked and solving the problem at large (Gozer, Vigo, Shandor the Architect) drastically brings the number down, ghosts don't completely vanish. The city is paying the Ghostbusters to keep New York COMPLETELY ghost-free after the second movie, so they'll always have some amount of work, and at the end of the game, their solution to the "off-season" is to start selling franchises in cities that aren't having a break at the time.
** I did think it would probably happen, and their defeat of Vigo was more of a final hurrah that allowed them to retire with dignity rather than a return to dedicated business for years to come.
** As Egon said in the video game: "People die every day." No matter what happens, there will still be new ghosts. They might not be a prevalent as they were before, but they don't just disappear.
** And even if, worst case scenario, they were forced to close up shop and retire after the whole Vigo business, they've all successfully salvaged their professional reputations. Surely they could all move on to other successful careers. Maybe even get their old jobs back at the university that kicked them out in the first film.
** They may be out of business, but they're still The Ghostbusters. Merchandising, commercial appearances, cameos, book deals, maybe even their own TV show.
** [[PrimeEvil I'd]] think that they use the "off-season" to design and build the next batch of fancy new gadgets in preparation for the next big crossrip.
** I don't recall exactly how much time went by during the first film, but there's a scene in which Ray and Winston talk about how busy they've been lately, and how it could be a sign of bad things to come. That implies that they started their business during a "down time" and the increased activity leading up to the Gozer incident began afterward. So it's less like a gardener who loses all work during the winter, and more like an accountant who works regularly year round but has to do double time when tax season comes.
** The cartoon actually had an episode when the Ghostbusters had no work due to a shortage of ghosts. They somehow retooled their equipment for crime prevention purposes and became the Crimebusters. At the end of the episode they took down a major organized crime figure, only to realize that by doing so, they had just put themselves out of work ''again''. Then Janine got a phone call reporting a ghost...
** If nothing else, they presumably now know, after the experience of the first movie, that their business is highly cyclical, and that they should therefore save as much as possible of the money they made during the fat years.
** In ''Film/Ghostbusters2016'', the team are eventually hired by the city as a public-funded research body in order to anticipate and prevent future destructive paranormal cataclysms of that nature as much as possible. It's possible -- likely, even -- that after two near-misses with paranormal cataclysms, the city authorities in the original franchise decided to do something similar.

* From the second movie; I know it was PlayedForLaughs, but... how in the world did Slimer manage to drive that bus? He's got ''no feet'' to work the break and gas with!!
** Probably some kind of telekinesis. Same as how poltergeists manage to move stuff around despite being incorporeal and having no visible 'arms' or 'legs' that can be seen.

* In both movies, but especially the second, the ghostbusters are accused of being a farce, and yet they're scientists. Wasn't there something in science called peer review? Why don't any of the research scientist/inventor ghostbusters suggest having an independent group of scientists look at their projects to confirm their legitimacy? The most blatant example in the second movie is the river of slime. Here's an idea: Send someone else down there. Give Ray a camera before you send him. Invite James Randi over and collect your cool million. I can understand the immediate threats, but there are long stretches where they could have allowed a scientific investigation to allay suspicions.

* In Hungarian, the letter "s" makes an "sh" sound, and the letters "sz" make an "s" sound. Janosz is supposedly Hungarian, but everybody pronounces his name ''exactly'' wrong. I mean, if you're going to have a Hungarian character and you want his name to sound foreign, at least do the research and spell his name right.
** Who said he's Hungarian? Janosz is apparently a native-born New Yorker (from the Upper West Side) and the nationality of his family is never stated, he just has a strange, vaguely Eastern European-sounding accent. If anything the made-up name was supposed to add to the impossibility of accurately pinning a nationality on him.
** I don't remember the character you are talking about, but if he pronounces his own name, that is the correct pronunciation. Admittedly, there could be an original pronunciation. I had a friend with a last name that had an American pronunciation and an original.
** For what it's worth, in Polish the letter "s" and the digraph "sz" have exactly the opposite pronunciations as in Hungarian, which would make the pronunciation/spelling match up. [[http://www.behindthename.com/names/search.php?terms=janosz&x=0&y=0&type= Behind the Name]] doesn't have an entry for "Janosz" but does show a Polish "Janusz" and a Hungarian "Janos."

* One thing about Ghostbusters 2 that bugs me is that the Ghostbusters are considered frauds in their belief on ghost and that ghost doesn't exist. Despite the fact that all of New York saw what wend down during The Ghostbuster's encounter with Gozer and the appearance of The Destructor. That should have open their eyes when it comes to the existence of ghost.
** People find it very easy to rationalize things after the event. Particularly in the modern western world, people are more inclined to decide that things they can't easily explain have ''some'' sort of rational, grounded explanation, even if they don't know what it is. For example, if you go to see a really good magician perform, at the time you might be convinced that the illusions s/he is creating are actually real, but once the show's over you're more likely to accept that it was probably done with mirrors or something rather than consider the possibility that the magician actually has control over real, genuine magic. Considering that what was left after the events was basically a burnt-out apartment building and a huge mound of marshmallow -- i.e. nothing explicitly 'supernatural' -- it wouldn't be too hard for skeptics to start claiming that it was all just a big con, and for everyone else to eventually accept it because, well, it seems rational.
** It was never stated that ''everyone'' suddenly believed ghosts didn't exist (well, maybe Peck still refuses to and the judge doesn't believe at first), only that the Ghostbusters had lost all credibility as an operation. Possibly when the "Gozer incident" was looked into after the dust and marshmallow had cleared, a lot more facts about how destructive their ghost-busting tactics could be and how unsafe their equipment really was became public knowledge. So their business's reputation was ruined, not because the ''ghosts'' weren't real, but because their ''actual services'' were a ripoff that routinely caused more damage than the ghosts themselves. Remember, the child who accuses Winston and Ray of being "full of crap" denied that his father doubted the supernatural: he just thought they ''personally'' were full of it.

* This may fall more under WildMassGuessing than [[Headscratchers/HomePage Headscratchers]], as it contains a small amount of guesswork on my part, but it occurs to me that there's no way the deleted scene of Hardemeyer being sucked into the slime wall in ''Ghostbusters II'' can fit in the story. If it were reinserted into the film as part of a fan cut, for instance, it wouldn't fit. Here's why. In the scene preceding the Ghostbusters' release, the Mayor fires Hardemeyer, and yet, in the deleted scene, Hardemeyer shows up ''with'' the Mayor as part of his entourage as if he wasn't fired. So what gives? ''All'' I can think of is that the scene of Hardemeyer being slimed was shot ''first'', and then deleted for whatever reason, with the scene of the Mayor firing him added later to ''replace'' it, since both scenes cover effectively the same ground: the slime wall is impenetrable (in the final cut, Creator/BenStein says "We can't make a dent in it," whereas in the deleted scene, a fire fighter conveys this exact same information to the Mayor), the Mayor decides to back the Ghostbusters, and Hardemeyer is removed from the story. Is this close?
** I don't have any concrete information, but since the "sucked into the wall" scene appears in the original script but was deleted my personal guess is that the filmmakers originally filmed the scene, decided it didn't really work for whatever reason (likely SFX), and then added the earlier scene as a band-aid to explain why the character disappeared. So yeah, the above is probably pretty much accurate.
** There's an early version of the script online that has that exact scenario, in which the Mayor doesn't decide he needs the Ghostbusters until he actually sees Hardemeyer sucked into the slime wall. Meanwhile, Louis talks a cousin of his at the hospital into discharging the guys from the psych ward, so they still show up promptly.

** While Venkman probably could / should have just bitten the bullet and let Peck take a quick look (if only to get him off their backs for a while), Peck doesn't exactly conduct himself in a way that's calculated to win Venkman over. Chances are, had the EPA sent around a pretty woman, or even just a more reasonable guy who wasn't a total dickhead, Venkman would have had no problem showing off the containment grid. His issue seemed to be more with Peck being a pompous jerk rather than opening up the Ghostbusters facilities to inspection.

* This may fall more under WildMassGuessing than {{Headscratchers}}, as it contains a small amount of guesswork on my part, but it occurs to me that there's no way the deleted scene of Hardemeyer being sucked into the slime wall in ''Ghostbusters II'' can fit in the story. If it were reinserted into the film as part of a fan cut, for instance, it wouldn't fit. Here's why. In the scene preceding the Ghostbusters' release, the Mayor fires Hardemeyer, and yet, in the deleted scene, Hardemeyer shows up ''with'' the Mayor as part of his entourage as if he wasn't fired. So what gives? ''All'' I can think of is that the scene of Hardemeyer being slimed was shot ''first'', and then deleted for whatever reason, with the scene of the Mayor firing him added later to ''replace'' it, since both scenes cover effectively the same ground: the slime wall is impenetrable (in the final cut, Creator/BenStein says "We can't make a dent in it," whereas in the deleted scene, a fire fighter conveys this exact same information to the Mayor), the Mayor decides to back the Ghostbusters, and Hardemeyer is removed from the story. Is this close?

*** the notes for slimer in the game suggest that several and/or most of the ghosts they deal with are manifestations of common emotions or impressions rather than belonging to a single individual.

** Yeah, and they don't really blame Ray that much: they panic and take it out on him when he first admits it, but they let it go as soon as they actually see Staypuff on the horizon. One bit of FridgeBrilliance I love is that, though it catches them by surprise when it happens, Vinz did tell Egon about it. The way he said it just didn't make any sense until later...

** For what it's worth, for years this troper misheard Egon's "Print is dead" line (in response to Janine trying to flirt by figuring out if Egon likes to read) as "printer's dead." The Ghostbusters had very limited start-up funds, and most of that went to the containment unit, proton packs, ghost traps, and insanely expensive car (and work to get said car driveable). So they probably bought the cheapest second-hand office equipment they could find, and most of it barely worked or didn't work at all. Egon's fixing it.

*** He might just be making an educated guess based on what he knows about ghosts in general (i.e. he hasn't fully confirmed it with testing, but based solely on observation Slimer shows recognisable signs of being a 'non-terminal' entity, whatsoever that might be). It's not exactly strictly following the scientific method, granted, but Ray ''is'' a legit expert on ghosts, so it shouldn't be too much of a stretch that he might be able to make some pre-emptive deductions about what kind of ghost they might be dealing with just from observing it; same as how your doctor might start narrowing down what your condition might be just from hearing you describe the symptoms before conducting the full examination. Furthermore, the person he's talking to is a non-expert anyway, so who cares if Ray's jumping the gun a little bit? He's trying to sound knowledgeable so the guy will be impressed by his expertise and thus will cough up a generous pay-check, and it's not like the guy's gonna follow up on their test results or peer-review their research or anything.

*** The fact that Venkman resists Dana even when she's clearly throwing herself at him with lust because she's clearly not herself suggests (to me at least) that he's also not the kind of man who's going to drug or dope a woman in order to date-rape her. In which case, I'm going with either (a) the thorazine is Dana's for whatever reason or (b) he brought it for another reason.

** There's a lot of indication that Zuul and Vinz are attracted to Dana and Lewis specifically, otherwise they could have possessed anybody in the building, meaning something about them as the inhabitants of those apartments is important to the creatures. It's a bit of a stretch, but maybe the summoning rites require their specific apartments to be inhabited for a certain amount of time and the apartments hadn't both had a tenant for that long until then?

* Why exactly was Dana!Zuul having her freakout from Venkman's poor keymaster performance? Maybe Zuul was preparing himself for the ritual by storing up energy, but then had to release it else-how when he realized they were not getting into smexy-action. Or was he just trying to impress and scare Peter?

** It was never stated that ''everyone'' suddenly believed ghosts didn't exist (well, maybe Peck still refuses to), only that the Ghostbusters had lost all credibility as an operation. Possibly when the "Gozer incident" was looked into after the dust and marshmallow had cleared, a lot more facts about how destructive their ghost-busting tactics could be and how unsafe their equipment really was became public knowledge. So their business's reputation was ruined, not because the ''ghosts'' weren't real, but because their ''actual services'' were a ripoff that routinely caused more damage than the ghosts themselves. Remember, the child who accuses Winston and Ray of being "full of crap" denied that his father doubted the supernatural: he just thought they ''personally'' were full of it.

** In the Video Game, it's mentioned that crossing the streams only worked due to the presence of a cross-dimension portal and it should only be used as a last restort. Alternatively, it's possible that Egon could have simply been mistaken about the ramifications.

** In the Video Game, it's mentioned that crossing the streams only worked due to the presence of a cross-dimension portal and it should only be used as a las restore. Alternatively, it's possible that Egon could have simply been mistaken about the ramifications.

** In the Video Game, it's mentioned that srossing the streams only worked due to the presence of a cross-dimension portal and it should only be used as a las restore. Alternatively, it's possible that Egon could have simply been mistaken about the ramifications.