Headscratchers / Ghostbusters

Specific works:

• Ghostbusters (1984)
• Ghostbusters II
• Ghostbusters (2016)
• Ghostbusters: Afterlife
• Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire
• The Real Ghostbusters
• Extreme Ghostbusters
• Ghostbusters: The Video Game

Soulbusters?!

• Was anybody else ever bothered by the spiritual ramifications of what the Ghostbusters do? Think about it - if the creatures they are fighting are the actual spirits/souls of dead people, rather than demons or some other form of Eldritch Abomination, then aren't the Ghostbuster's effectively binding souls in such as way as to prevent them from moving on to whatever awaits them in the afterlife whenever they trap a ghost and put it in the containment unit?
  • I don't think any proof is ever offered in the first movie outside of human speculation that the spirits you see are actually dead humans. They usually manifest themselves more like demons, or creatures than the spirits of lost relatives.
    • 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.
    • That would explain why Slimer eats so much; he's a manifestation of hunger!
  • Do you also complain when cops catch crooks? The Ghostbusters do the same thing, only, the crooks they catch are already dead. (BTW, I think this would've been an excellent rebuttal for Neil Anderson when April complains about the exact same thing in Return of the Ghostbusters)
    • it’s really nothing like the police arresting criminals. For a start, most criminals are eventually set free.
  • Doesn't the fact that the ghost exist imply that the spirit/soul of the dead person was NOT going to move on? The first ghost they see is the one in the library. And it seemed to be implied that it was haunting the place for a number of decades. More than likely, the 'free' spiritual options were exhausted before anyone bothered to call up the Ghostbusters to pay them ($5k+) to take care of the problem.
    • Granting that there probably are some troublemakers who have been actively avoiding moving on to Hell or some other unpleasant parallel dimension, I can't help but be disturbed at the thought of some kindly old grandfather who stayed behind to watch his family winding up in the supernatural equivalent of jail because Venkman started thinking about profit margins instead of helping people move on.
    • Grandpa would have to be doing something more than simply "watching his family" to even come to the attention of the family, and makes sense that it would have to be something unpleasant for the family for them to call in the Ghostbusters and pony up that kind of money.
  • They're also all batshit insane. The cartoon touched on this more than once, the idea that ghosts who don't actively cause trouble aren't actual targets for the Ghostbusters, and I'd wager a guess it's the same in movie canon, it's just that nearly all the ghosts we see on-screen are completely anti-social psychopaths who are capable of influencing the physical world enough so that they can easily kill people. The presentation is just family-friendly enough to avoid any direct discussion of this topic, but it's plainly obvious that these things are, at best, interested in nothing more than interfering with the living, and at worst, complete monsters. William Atherton, playing Walter Peck, came close to suffering serious injuries when they dumped the fake marshmallow goo on him. Now put this in the context of the fiction; a lot of ghosts don't show any human behavior, they just rampage about wrecking stuff, which has the side-effect of putting living people in harm's way. If you're comparing the containment unit to a jail, then there's absolutely no reason not to compare the ghosts they throw in there to criminals, who have never shown signs of being capable of rehabilitation. Whatever was human about them is gone, assuming they weren't crazy to begin with like the Spiderwitch. Compare to Eleanor Twitty; they never went back to the library after her once they had ghost traps and proton packs, there was no need. She was just a kindly old lady keeping her books arranged from young, careless whippersnappers. Why does this change in the game, where they go back to get her, years later? She's animating books into goloms and flying bats that attack people. Slimer? Not in the containment unit either. They mention he's made a past time out of staring into the containment unit's viewer, which means they also let him out of his cage in the lobby, too, just not always since he's prone to making a fuss. When he does make a fuss, he only poses a threat to people who get in the way of any food he sees. Look at the drawings left by the schoolchildren who took a field trip to the firehouse; some of them were obviously pleased as all get-out that they got to feed Slimer, so there's some plain-as-day established facts here they do take a ghost's behavior into consideration. It's not at all a stretch to imagine that in the grandfather example above, they would actively refuse the job in movie-canon just like in the cartoon (where Venkman wasn't really any less of a jerk,) instead taking on the task of explaining to the family what's going on in such a way that they accept it, and/or helping the ghost let go and move on. I think it's safe to say that morality isn't absent here, it just doesn't get any screen time since it's not a terribly philosophical setting.
    • In addition to that, what else could the Ghostbusters do to the entities they catch? Ghosts are indestructible on their own, so the only option is to remove them. As the movies have shown, the GBs don't know of any way to force a ghost to cross over if it doesn't want to and any attempts at reasoning with violent ghosts are met with nothing but attacks. True, shoving a bad ghost into the same place as evil gods might seem harsh, but there's really nothing else to be done. The choices are either the Containment Unit or leaving an immortal, invincible psychopath out where they can do harm.
    • The comics actually mention this several times. They talk about the ghost of a little boy who they were sent to bust by the family currently living there. But they realized he just wanted to use the family's TV, so they agreed to let him stay as long as he didn't cause any trouble. There's also another example where the ghost of Major-General Anthony Wayne is preparing to invade Canada because he believes that one last victory will finally allow him to move on. Winston, being a former military man himself, tells him that it's not a good idea, and convinces him to get into the trap voluntarily because it's the closest thing to the peace he seeks that they can give him.
  • The cartoon also goes into how ghosts are sort of a PKE impression people sometimes leave behind when they die, and not the actual person. It's not always consistent with itself (especially in the later seasons), but enough episodes have revolved around a massive PKE surge taking on the shape of some nearby psychic impression and becoming a ghost (for example, the ghostbusters' PKE-infused original jumpsuits, or Murray the Mantis, or the Scoleri Brothers being created by the mood slime in Ghostbusters II) to suggest that ghosts are The Heartless rather than human souls.
    • Agreed. They are made of ectoplasm, a spiritual substance formed from powerful emotions. Much like the constructs from Green Lantern, most of the ghosts can be thought of as just wild animals formed from concentrations of emotions in an area. Given that they are made of powerful emotions, they probably act to increase powerful emotions in the area in order to feed. And what's a powerful emotion? Fear.
    • Some are otherworldly beings while others are merely inhuman collections of PKE, but the more humanoid ones appear to actually BE the human that they once were. The main reason we don't see many good (sane) ghosts around is because most good people don't actually BECOME ghosts without outside interference.
    • "The more humanoid ones appear to actually BE the human that they once were." They may appear to be, sure. There is no evidence (and certainly not in the films) that they actually are. The films are very much rooted in the modern parapsychological view of spectral activity, which very much refuses to view ghosts as souls. In such views they're more like residue left by living beings than the actual beings themselves.
    • There is one episode that may cover this, Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Ghost. They get called to bust a ghost by a ghost who doesn't realize they died. Comments are made this isn't the first time, and the ghost moves on after their business is finished. I believe the same thing happened in Citizen Ghost when they found the sled.
  • All of the above notwithstanding, several episodes involve the Ghostbusters dealing with the actual spirits of several famous dead people (Harry Houdini, Casey Jones, and an Expy of Agatha Christie) who are causing problems for the living. How do the Ghostbusters get rid of them? Simply by helping them complete their Unfinished Business. They help Harry Houdini catch the guy who had stolen his tricks, they help Casey Jones prevent a train crash, and they solve Agatha Christie's unfinished mystery novel. The Ghostbusters are effectively "busting" them without needing to use their proton packs or traps.
  • A quote from Egon's notes in the video game (PS2 version, which has Egon's spirit guide commentary as one of its admittedly few selling points): "Her name was Eleanor Twitty. With all the havoc manifestations cause, it's easy to forget that a lot of them originally came from the psychic imprints of human beings. I don't believe that there's much of anything left of a 'soul' or whatever at this point, but it's still an unnerving concept to ponder if you let your rational guard down." Admittedly, Egon's a rationalist who likely doesn't believe in souls at all; Ray would probably have a different take on ghosts and whether they used to be people, or they're just based on people.
  • The only ghosts that are even based on once-living people in the films are the Scolari brothers, and it's more probable that, given the properties of the pink slime in the courtroom scene, they were a psychic manifestation tied to the judge that sentenced them rather than the brothers' actual souls. Everything else is usually just some kind of violent, inhuman spirit. That ghost from the library is obviously a shape-shifter, so its librarian form could have very well been a mimic of a living person that it just saw the week before.
    • The game has you deal with the librarian as a boss and the notes( and subsequent boss battle) state she was alive 50 years ago but was killed protecting a rare tome from a demigod known as the collector (the aforementioned boss) wether her existence is typical or a result of irritating a level 5 demigod is unknown.
    • What about the Titanic and its passengers?
    • How do we know it's the real Titanic? The ship itself never made it to New York, so why should it be activated by the pink slime? The disaster was famous, so it's very likely the Titanic that pulls into port is recreated by the malevolent slime feeding on peoples' subconscious knowledge of the event to freak them out.
    • Or maybe the original sinking created a variety of ghosts, some of which had completing the voyage as their Unfinished Business. They flew to New York and hung around intangibly near the docks, but weren't strong enough to actually manifest until the pink slime gave them a power-boost.
    • Given the occasional (if inconsistent) remarks in the franchise about ghosts being energy impressions rather than real souls, Our Ghosts Are Different is probably the simplest and safest explanation for this IJBM. However, if you need to theory that works with the more traditional view, there's nothing to say ghosts can't "move on" from inside the containment unit. It might even provide extra motivation to do so.
    • Most of what the Ghostbusters do is deal with unpleasant ghosts. If kindly old Aunt Agnes likes to manifest and chat from time to time, there's no real reason to call someone and pay them exorbitant amounts of money to get rid of her.
    • Yeah, you'll notice that we never see them bust Fiorello LaGuardia. All he did was show up and have a long chat with the current mayor. He wasn't into wreaking havoc, and as a result we never hear of him being contested.
    • Though to be totally accurate on this one, the Ghostbusters were incarcerated in a psychiatric facility at the time.
    • Although, in a valentine's day strip, Winston convinced a ghost to cross over by having a chat about how many people have suffered heartbreak, and how it does not give him an excuse to haunt an apartment.
    • I haven't read that strip, but it sounds like in that case the heartbroken ghost was probably making a bit of a nuisance of itself in some way though. What's being suggested here is that if the ghost isn't really causing any trouble and the people around aren't really bothered or negatively impacted by it, there's no real reason to hunt it down.
  • It seems that the ghosts from the first movie are different in nature from the ghosts of the second movie. The ghosts from the first movie (minus the Librarian) were all or mostly interdimensional beings or spirits who enter our dimension due to Gozer's increasingly weakening the borders between dimensions due to its imminent visit, whilst the ghosts from the second movie were indeed spirits of the dead resurrected due to Vigo's influence (probably as a dark magician was also a necromancer and knew how to bring back the dead, needing their energy for his purposes). Therefore the busting of the ghosts from the first movie were not so much avoiding dead people to move on as traping dangerous trespassers. On the second one that's another issue (but as mentioned before there's nothing preventing ghosts from moving on to the next realm while inside the unit).

No Permanent Solution?

• Why don't the Ghostbusters put more research into a permanent way to get rid of ghosts? The Containment Unit has been proven to be a massive liability as every single ghost to get near the firehouse outside a trap tries to take a swipe at it. Seeing as they have demons, evil gods, and who knows how many plain vanilla ghosts just itching to cause Armageddon and able to wait thousands of years for it, you'd think they'd be spend at least a few weekends in trying to find a way to force them into a less fragile plane of existence than ours.
  • Quite simple really, by the time the containment unit is forced to explode or open by outside forces the ghost free warranties they've given out have expired. Also it would probably cost a lot more to find a way to shove ghosts into another dimension or otherwise permanently remove them than it would be to simply capture them again(for a fee of course). If the good people of New York were willing to fund that endeavor I'm sure the Ghostbusters would turn a good portion of their research to it. The Ghostbusters are a company like an insurance company, not a charity.
    • True, but it cannot be a good idea to risk having so many powerful beings with a grudge against humanity in general and you specifically loose at once.
    • No one ever claimed that men who strap nuclear reactors to their back for a living had any common sense.
    • Might be worth noting here that Mankind also hasn't figured out how to dispose safely of hazardous waste materials from nuclear reactors which also last several thousand years or so. It doesn't stop society at large (a) generating further such waste products or (b) storing it with the best technology available at the time. Granted, it's not the same thing as chaining down Eddie Munster's vengeful spirit for all eternity, but it was also The '80s.
    • Mankind has in fact discovered how to do this (by using the waste in different "fast reactors"), but it's rarely talked about because various entities have an interest in promoting fear of nuclear reactors, and the mental imagery of leaking barrels of glowing poison is very valuable in doing so.
    • Who says they don't try? Maybe they just can't do it with present technology.
    • The cartoon says they do. Egon's soul was sucked out and replaced by a demon while looking into other dimensions. Slimer was put into a giant centrifuge device that was supposed to destroy ghosts. Given Extreme Ghostbusters, they never found a workable alternative in 20 years.
    • In "Robo-Buster", Egon says outright that it's not possible to destroy ghosts; attempting to do so would merely scatter their PKE energy, and it'll just come back later as something else. That would also explain why the Slimer example above would still be a legitimate concern while still maintaining the premise that only containment is viable; Slimer could be destroyed by the centrifuge, but his PKE energy would just come back again later, and whatever it comes back as would probably no longer have the personality and morality that made Slimer an ally instead of an enemy.
    • Might be they were trying to tell us something.
    • If you have to wonder if they were trying to tell you something rather than it being blindingly obvious to everyone that they were, it wasn't an anvil.
  • What bothers me more about it isn't that someone with a grudge can shut the containment unit down, it's the the containment unit isn't a passive system and as such will inevitably, perhaps much later then sooner, but inevitably fail on it's own without outside tampering. If another "they did it in the cartoon" is still worth some speculative value instead of being a cop-out at this point, they...well, did this in the cartoon with an episode having Egon make a portal to the Netherworld, actually saying that the containment unit would one day run out of space. It didn't go well, but the issue was never brought up again. Of course, the solution to that seems to be quite simple and would effectively be started in any hypothetical spinoff to the game; build another containment unit.
    • Besides that, the ghosts in the Containment Unit will presumably last for eternity. The neither the unit nor the Ghostbusters as a company will. This means that the Ghostbusters are essentially leaving an army of madness and evil locked up in a manner that could prove hazardous to humanity for eons.
    • The Ghostbusters didn't create the ghosts, they only incapacitated them as best they could. The ghosts were all loose and causing trouble in New York before they were trapped. Sure, it'd be a lot better if they could finish the darn things off permanently or shunt them into some other dimension, but just because it's not a permanent solution doesn't mean it's not a major improvement over having the city's libraries and hotels continually trashed, to say nothing of whatever the more actively-brutal ghosts might've been up to.
    • If we use the cartoon to fill in the gaps (and since I love the cartoon and think the JMS seasons were very faithful to the movie's mythology, that works for me!), they were working on a permanent solution. A rival businessman even tried to compete with them when he thought he'd come up with the answer (of course, it turned out he was dangerously wrong and they had to clean up his mess). I'd chalk up the lack of onscreen worrying to Rule of Drama: watching Ray and Egon having a technobabble debate while Peter and Winston watch TV in the background would just be boring. At least, it would in theory - I'd pay good money to see that...
  • At least as far as the original films go, long-term safety considerations were likely not taken into account because these are films where people who stop dangerous supernatural entities for cash are heroes, private businesses automatically are morally superior to the government, and the EPA is the bad guy. Including any indication that Ghostbusters should have felt responsible for the accumulating waste-product of their particular industry would have interfered with the first film's ability to be a rags-to-riches love song to good old fashioned capitalism, and second film's ability to be a rehash of one.
    • Well, that and the fact that there was enough going on without the plot slamming to a halt so that someone could painstakingly explain the long-term safety considerations of the fictional devices of a team of ghost hunters. While the politics of the movie are certainly open to critique, not everything about it is a result of pure fanatical Reaganism.
  • The Ghostbusters never say in the films that the containment system they currently have has to be a permanent solution, only that SIMPLY shutting it off would be catastrophic. The presence of the word "simply" indicates that they have indeed considered the long term and have a safer alternative should the need arise.

No Peer Reviews?

• 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 regard to the river of slime, even if they had convinced the authorities of its existence, what could they have been done at that point, other than put more lives in danger? Vigo was already so powerful that he could have sent dangerous monsters and other manifestations to hinder any efforts to block or control the river by the authorities, just like he did when the ghostbusters themselves went down there. Teams of sewer workers would probably end up driven mad, possessed or killed by Vigo's minions. If they had alerted the authorities about the painting (and convinced them to its threat), Vigo would just blast anyone who attempted to move it or destroy it, and order Janosz Poha to move it to a more secure location. Only the ghost busters alone could stand any chance of stopping him.
  • The Ghostbusters were kicked out of the University because they were lousy scientists. "Your theories are the worst kind of popular tripe, your methods are sloppy, and your conclusions are highly questionable. You are a poor scientist, Dr. Venkman." They went into business for themselves with proprietary technology they invented, using methods they want to keep secret from others. No way are they letting anybody else break their monopoly.
  • Considering the subject of their theories (i.e. GHOSTS), it's probable that they couldn't get anybody to take them seriously enough for an effective peer review before the movies. As for what happened after the movies, I can only imagine that the importance of the Ghostbusters' discoveries (new nuclear models, micro sized fission reactors, possible confirmation of the afterlife) is downplayed because the writers don't want to deal with the messy implications of their work. There is a precedent for such things, after all.
  • And besides, according to the J-REF themselves many people can't force themselves to wade their way through the sometimes year or two of red tape involved before they can so much as sit down and actually have the million dollar challenge test. Yes, even if it involves simply going somewhere else, there's still a lot of legalities involved with that much money. It's a long and arduous process and New York would be long since doomed by Vigo by the end of it.
  • What's more baffling is how anyone could assume the Ghostbusters were frauds after the events of the movies (and the cartoon, if you consider it canon) since by that time there have been multiple high-profile supernatural incidents witnessed by hundreds of people, many of them in very public places. Anybody denying the existence of the supernatural by that point would be a Flat-Earth Atheist.

Anatomy Analogy

• The filmmakers said that they way they thought about the Ghostbusters when they made the movie was that the group was like a single entity, Ray being the heart, Egon the brain, and Venkman the mouth (voice). Where, then, does Winston fit in? What part of the entity is he? The soul...?
  • I hate to say this, but apparently he's the spleen.
  • I'd say the arms/body or something similar. At least in the first movie, he's not a scientist like the others, but he's a hard worker and the everyman.
  • Or maybe the eyes, since he's the Audience Surrogate who brings an outside perspective to the group and keeps them grounded in practical reality. That especially fits with Peter being the mouth: Peter takes the Ghostbusters' POV out to the world, while Winston brings the rest of the world's POV to the Ghostbusters.
    • The cartoon makes it clear that he's the hands. He does almost all the driving, is stated to be the best shot with the proton pack, and is often seen helping Ray and Egon with their various projects and inventions when he's not doing basic repairs on more mundane things.
    • Louis is the appendix. He's a part of the team, but no-one's quite sure why.

Slimer Stays

• At the end of the first movie the Ghostbusters send back Gozer to his hellish reign. That means that any ghosts who infested New York would vanish (he was just Gozer's doing who created the Mandala if the ghosts started plaguing the city). Nevertheless Slimer doesn't vanish, in fact you can see him floating towards the camera before the credits, and he stays at New York until Vigo's return. WHY ?!?
  • The building didn't create the ghosts or summon them from the afterlife, it just attracted them to New York.
  • The hotel manager said that staff had known that the ballroom where the guys fought Slimer was a spooky place for a long time, just never as bad as it'd recently become. Slimer had been haunting the hotel all along; the cross-rip merely increased his power enough that he could start manifesting and nomming corporeal food. When Gozer got banished, the little green glob presumably lost that power-boost, flew home, and resumed harmlessly haunting the ballroom.

"Don't Look in the Trap" ... but Why?

• Why can't you look directly in the trap?
  • Maybe it's just a safety precaution, due to a few uncertainties about how it works. At one point Egon goes, "I looked in the trap, Ray!" and he seems to be fine afterwards.
  • Alternatively, the "Return of the Ghostbusters" fan film gives the explanation that Ray theorized that the eyes were literally the "window to the soul" and that a person looking into the trap while it's closing will cause the trap to pull that person's soul into it.
    • If that's true, maybe Egon was okay because he's wearing glasses, and thus his "windows" were shielded.
  • It's really really bright and could hurt your eyes.
    • That actually makes sense. If you're firing a proton stream at a ghost and everything around it, the last thing you want is flash-blindness from looking into the trap.
  • 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.
  • Presumably Ray himself had avoided looking directly at the trap when he was testing the device, so couldn't judge precisely how bright the light it emanates is. He was warning the others not to look as a precaution against what might be bright enough to blind someone. Luckily for Egon, it wasn't quite that intense.
  • Assuming you take the IDW comics as canon, its just really, really bright. Painfully bright. Winston looked into one on his first night on the job, and aside from rubbing his eyes afterwards he was perfectly fine.

Fleeing Phantoms

• Why do the ghosts run from the particle beams? Even Gozer avoids them as powerful as it is. Did they know that it could catch them before the Ghostbusters did? Just doesn't make sense to me as to why they would run and try to avoid the beams when nothing else has been able to touch them up to this point. Or maybe the Busters are just really, really bad shots after all. The only ghost we see that really doesn't result in massive damage(When beams are involved) in its capture is Vigo, but they don't really capture him in a trap or anything.
  • Why do people duck or run when someone fires a gun at them? Preservation instinct. Presumably, the ghosts do sense that the beams are in some way harmful or debilitating to them. Regarding the 'Busters being bad shots, to be fair whenever you see them firing the particle beams they're clearly struggling with them; they're obviously not easy to direct or control.
    • The beam from a proton pack seems incapable of shooting in a straight line, explaining the Ghostbusters' bad shooting.
    • As Dan Aykroyd said in a documentary, it's "a thousand times more powerful than a fire hose."
  • As to why ghosts seem to instinctively fear proton-pack beams, we really have no clue how such beings perceive their surroundings. It's likely that they can sense energies emanating from the beams and thus perceive them as dangerous before they're actually hit by one, the same way a human might feel heat radiating off a hot object and refrain from picking it up.

"Don't Cross the Streams" ... but How?

• How do the busters avoid crossing the streams? Have you seen those things? I'm not even sure how they aim with the beams lashing every which way.
  • Judging by how much effort the Ghostbusters visibly have to put into crossing the streams at the end, it seems to me like the streams naturally repel from each other (sort of like how a magnet repels from another magnet), so they don't have to worry much about accidentally crossing the streams; what Egon is cautioning about is deliberately forcing the streams to cross as they did at the end.
    • This actually makes perfect sense. Their devices produce streams of protons, which are by definition positively charged particles. Identical charges repel one another. Crossing the streams would have likely caused a repulsion effect which would collapse all stream integrity, throwing protons in all directions at even greater velocities than normal proton radiation, causing... Bad Stuff.
    • But in that case, why would Egon have to warn everybody, as if it was something that could happen by accident? Hell, if we're talking protons here, how could they even do it deliberately without a hadron collider? I don't think the four Busters can match the Strong Nuclear Force with just their arms.
    • Not the strong nuclear force, just electromagnetic force. Protons have a positive electric charge, which is what makes them repel each other. The SNF is what prevents protons from repelling each other in the nucleus of an atom, and I'm not sure it even has poles. You can shove, for instance, the north pole of two magnets together, depending on how powerful they are, it just takes effort. (Also the SNF only works on like the femtometer scale anyhow.)
    • He's warning them because it's something incredibly dangerous regarding the proton packs that he thinks they need to know about. Since it clearly is possible to cross the streams (albeit with some effort), he wants them to be aware of the danger in doing so that they don't, say, decide it might make catching a particularly tricky ghost easier if they cross the streams one time only to end up destroying the universe. As for how they cross protons without a hadron collider... look, we're dealing with a science fiction horror comedy about a gang of scientists chasing ghosts here. We're already well outside the parameters of accepted mainstream physics on this one. Even on the Headscratchers page, at some point you do either have to let your Willing Suspension of Disbelief take over or just give up. Just call the proton packs mini-colliders that Egon invented and have done with it.
  • In the video game, they use the cross-the-streams tactic in the finals phase of the story, and Egon can be heard saying that he's deactivating some kind of protective anti-crossing field just prior to them forcing the particle beams together. Presumably he'd added such a precaution not long after their first fight with Slimer, once it became clear just how erratic the streams' trajectory was.

What Does "Non-Terminal" Mean?

• Dr. Ray Stanz refers to Slimer as "a focused, non-terminal, repeating phantasm, or a Class Five full roaming vapor". What is the 'non-terminal' part supposed to mean?
  • Based on context Slimer is a vapor cloud with some humanlike features rather then a fully humanoid body, a vapor, hes not the result of a person dying and leaving a psychic imprint, non-temrinal, he shows up again and again over the years, repeating phantasm, and hes able to go where he likes but tends to return to one specific haunt, full roaming and focused repectively. The class thing is more technical and related to types of ghosts rather then strength.
  • What Non-terminal most likely means is that Slimer is a repeat performer if you will. Slimer isn't a terminal apparition and thus does not cease to exist once whatever he's trying to do is done. Unlike say more humanoid ghosts that cease to be when whatever is holding them to the world is complete Slimer is a force of raw emotion without specific goals that could be completed only a base motivation he'll seek to fulfill. In this case one of gluttony where his base motivation is gorging himself in every way he possibly can.
  • Possibly that Slimer's appearance doesn't recapitulate the way he died, the way the executed brother-ghosts from GB2 popped into existence sitting in the electric chairs that killed them.
  • Also possibly that he's non-lethal; he causes a lot of trouble and being attacked by him isn't incredibly pleasant, but Venkman pulls through it more or less unharmed.
  • In the animated series, at least, it's clear that the creatures referred to as "ghosts" are both the spirits of dead people and creatures from another dimension. I always assumed "non-terminal" referred to the latter (Slimer sure doesn't look like the spirit of a dead human).
    • Except it's puzzling that the guys could've deduced that before they'd gotten Slimer trapped and back to the lab.
    • 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 recognizable 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.
    • Although if All There in the Manual sources are to be believed, Slimer apparently was the ghost of a human who died in the hotel, FWIW.
    • "Non-terminal" could mean that he's not confined to one location or terminus (unlike other ghosts? Perhaps most of them stick to the place they died at) or perhaps he is in no danger of fading away/terminating by himself (again- unlike other ghosts?)

Why is Crossing the Streams Bad?

• Why would crossing the streams cause the end of the universe? I’m not a physicist but I find hard to believe that two or more proton streams would have such a grandiose effect. A terrible large explosion or the dead (maybe disintegration) of the people shooting the streams, yes. End of all life as we know it? No, and if they are then how the hell are they walking around with Doomsday devices that can cause the Cessation of Existence of the universe?
  • Actually there’s a fan theory that says that this is how the Ghostbusters defeated Gozer; by destroying his universe. As they crossed the streams pointing them toward Gozer’s dimension. Now, about HOW crossing proton streams can destroy an entire universe I have no idea because I’m not a physicist. I can believe that crossing protons streams is a bad idea and would cause a massive explosion that will kill a lot of people around, but all life as we know 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 to get the point across that one shouldn't do it.
  • Egon did say, “the end of life as we know it” which could be interpreted to me complete destruction of reality or simply their own deaths. The way he described it was something to the effect of every atom in your body reversing charge and exploding, what Ray thought 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.
  • In Extreme Ghostbusters, Egon tells Eduardo that crossing the streams results in a nuclear explosion. Nuclear explosion + large amounts of eldritch spiritual energy? Yeah, I can see how that would happen.

How Were the Lights Legal?

• Ghostbusters are supposed to be a privately operated company. Given that, how are they authorized to have blue police lights on their car?
  • They wouldn't be the first people to purchase a used ambulance or cop car with some of the works intact. I don't know if that's illegal anywhere, but if it is then it must vary by region.
    • One of Dan Aykroyd's conceits was that the 'Busters operate somewhat outside the law—in fact, there's a deleted scene where the car burns up a parking ticket. Walter Peck is about the only remnant of this idea, but one can easily assume that the Ectomobile rapidly became an icon and nobody wanted to challenge an icon (in-universe, that is).
  • Actually, in New York, cops use red lights; blue lights are used by volunteer firefighters and ambulance workers, and can be temporarily mounted on private cars with a permit. Although it's doubtful that the Ghostbusters would have qualified for such a permit...
  • While they were successful and had recurring customers, it's arguable that the Ghostbusters performed a hybrid of pest control and emergency services, one or both would require a business license at minimum and a city permit depending on how they classified their business.
  • Given how this is a universe where the good guys are pure capitalists, and the bad guys are regulatory bodies, it's likely that either the laws simply aren't as strict, having been written by "good guys". Or, that the good guys who would enforce such things simply allow the Ghostbusters to slide on this law, because they recognize fellow good guys and understand that the law must often be left unenforced for the greater good.
    • Saying that "in that universe things are different" is the same as saying A Wizard Did It, all movies are suppose to happen in our universe except for the obvious alternate history plots.
    • Also, come on. This is absurd. The movie is unarguably pro-capitalism, but to suggest that it takes place in a pure unfettered Reaganite wet-dream is just baseless ax-grinding. There is clearly a regulatory framework at play in this film, and it is clearly supposed to be set in more-or-less "our" reality, it just stretches things so that the heroes can operate as all stories do. We can critique the politics of the movie without going to ridiculous extremes about it.
  • Ultimately, this one's just basic Rule of Cool. In the real world, the Ghostbusters might not be allowed to use blue emergency lights... but damn if Ecto-1 doesn't look cool with blue emergency lights going, so the filmmakers used blue lights under the (not entirely unreasonable) assumption that most of the watching audience didn't, wouldn't and don't care about official New York county and state emergency vehicle regulations when it comes to fictional depictions of ghosts and the busting thereof.

How Do They Get Paid?

• How do they manage to have a sustainable business whatsoever with the fees they charge? Several thousand dollars to trap a ghost- which even the Sedgewick Hotel thought was ludicrous to pay, how are private citizens going to come close to paying? It's not as if there is any insurance that would come close to covering such matters, and if someone without insurance or funds is likely to refuse medical care when they absolutely need it, someone scraping by on minimum wage isn't going to call to have a ghost removed. Furthermore the cartoon made it clear that, despite the hefty fees they charge, they still barely make enough to show a tiny profit, if at all, due to the insane operating costs(the ECU alone probably reaches the 5-digit mark on a monthly electric bill).
  • Likely they tailor the fees to the customer. The Sedgewick can obviously afford the five thousand, but residential customers likely get reduced rates and payment plans. This is something that other service companies like plumbing, pest control, and mechanics are often accused of in real life.
  • If you look closely at Peter and Egon's body language during the scene where they give the hotel manager the bill, you'll realize that Peter is deliberately pulling those numbers out of his ass because the manager was rude to them. That probably isn't an indicator of what they usually charge. In fact, since that was their first job, they may not have entirely figured out their pricing model yet.
  • This was brought up as a sidebar in the RPG from West End Games. To paraphrase, it was a sliding scale. The little old granny who is barely getting by but gave the local franchisee cookies? Charge the bare minimum, run the job at a loss. Working for The Government or Big Business? Tack all kinds of fees on 'till the cows come home. Seeing that Venkman can be a softy at times (like with the episode The Thing in Mrs Faversham's Attic), this policy might apply to the Home Office, too.

Nuclear Nitpicks

• So, nuclear power cells in the proton packs... where did they get it? What happens if a pack is badly damaged? Or stolen(this did happen in Extreme Ghostbusters)? In hindsight the proton packs seem to be incredibly dangerous without proper R&D going into their creation, coupled with the likelihood they engaged in some "Doc Brown" type illegal dealings to get the material. Venkman's words highly suggest they told no one what these packs were made with. Plus the mere possibility of killing someone if the beams- which are somewhat hard to control- accidentally grazes a bystander.
  • As David Hahn proved back I the say there is a surprising amount radioactive material floating around and if one is smart enough you can build a working nuclear reactor out of basic power tools. Egon could probably whip up a working enrichment system in the office.

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