Headscratchers / Ghostbusters (1984)

How Did Gozer Arrive?

• What sets off the events of this movie? According to the history we're given, Ivo Shandor and his cult decide that humanity should be destroyed, and that 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 Louis mentions that the Traveler has been here before. Which just creates another question: Why are we still here? 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.
    • Some dates are seen in the temple in Ghostbusters: Afterlife that correspond to things like the Krakatoa eruption, Tunguska Event and World War II. Implying that Gozer might have caused those.
  • 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 Eldritch Abomination...
    • 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.
  • Ghostbusters: Afterlife adds some more data from which we can extrapolate. Much like in the game, Shandor took steps to live beyond his natural death to be present when Gozer finally arrived, and with the backup temple in Summerville, the implication is that Central Park West was an attempted technological shortcut, which Shandor was not entirely certain would even work.
  • Suming it all up Gozer seems to need four/five things to turn up.
    • First a gateway, being from outside our world Gozer needs a designated way in. Though pointedly form seems to be secondary to symbolism of the gate. It needs to look the way Gozer wants it to look but physically building a gateway and carving the right appearance on a rockwall are both acceptable.
    • Second a pool of PKE, again being from outside our world it takes a lot of power for Gozer to bridge the gap between worlds to enter. So a lot of spiritual turbulence in one spot though the specific form whether it be ghosts or charged mood slime is not important. Quality of the gate and rituals done likely effects the needed amount of power.
    • Third is anchors, a connection that is both of this world and of Gozer allowing the two to mesh so that Gozer can remain stable in whatever world they visit. Vinz and Zuul, the terror dogs, seem to serve this function latching onto a pair of natives then doing something spiritually significant to forge the necessary connection.
    • Fourth a cult of followers to perform necessary rituals. Gozer needs to tailor the gate and specifics of the summoning to each world, as a result there needs to be a cult willing to commune with Gozer who will impart the necessary details as well as taking actions to create the necessary spiritual turbulence with things like human sacrifice.
    • Fifth a native to choose the destroyer, though this might not actually be necessary for Gozer to arrive. In Ghostbusters Gozer does demand someone choose the form of their destruction but Afterlife has her stay in the arrival form instead. It's unclear if this is necessary but still seems to be part of normal operations.
  • So Shandor and his followers built Sumervile as a summoning point carving the gateway as well as setting up the summoning pit to naturally collect spiritual turbulence but it was going to take a long time. Somewhere along the line Shandor thought to use modern technology and his understanding of the supernatural to speed things along building a skyscraper that would collect spiritual energy way faster as well as having a better gateway. Only he got his math wrong and Central Park West didn't go off when he expected so he wrote that off as a failure resorting to the Sumerville plan instead.

Ray Had No Choice

• 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 Fridge Brilliance 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 large and moving Torg was...
    • Isn't he that doof with the lop-eared rabbit?
    • No, it's a Martian attack robot.
    • "I tried to think of the most harmless thing. Something that I loved from my childhood. Something that would 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.
    • Also, I always thought Gozer understood that Venkman was simply explaining how "choosing the form" worked for his pals.
    • 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 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 Eldritch Abomination to cause The End of the World as We Know It. 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 Jerk Ass Genie 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.

Characters Awkwardly Offscreen?

• 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.

What's with the Thorazine?

• 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 thorazine.
    • It was New York in The '80s (i.e. Big Rotten Apple) 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 they 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 peace of mind, I'll say it was already in the car, maybe specifically for knocking out Demonic Possession victims without hurting them. Yeah, that's it.
    • But Venkman took a cab...
    • 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. Yeah, that's it. And it shouldn't be hard for a psychologist to obtain medicine unethically/illegally.
    • Word of God 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. Above the Influence.
    • Couldn't that have just been because 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.
  • For that matter, carrying Thorazine might be useful if they ever encounter a person possessed by a run-of-the-mill ghost, rather than an extradimensional Gatekeeper. Drugging your client's possessed family member, friend, or neighbors is far less likely to leave them stiffing you for the bill than having to beat them up to subdue them.
  • 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 snarky understatement.
  • There is a throwaway line by Louis earlier in the film when he mentions that he is waiting for an order of vitamins from the drug store. Assuming it is nearby, it's possible that Peter looked in the phonebook and ordered the thorazine ASAP?
  • Another one answered by the IDW comic (if one counts them as canon; that Year One mini is solving alot of these, aren't they?). According to Dana she already had the thorazine in her apartment to treat a case of hiccups.
  • Another possibility that people may not realize is that Peter may have brought it so he could "exit" the date without having any issues if he needed to. Think of it like this: You meet this woman from your job, she seems okay but, as mentioned, you do run into your fair share of crazies as a result (varying from the obviously crazy just from looking at them to possible normal looking and then reveal themselves to be crazy). So, he brought the thorazine just in case she showed signs that she wasn't as "normal" as he initially believed her to be. That way, if those red flags of craziness start showing up during the date, Peter can then use the thorazine on her, take her back to her apartment and leave her there without any issues and then cut off any ties to the situation she brought to them as just "another crazy person". However, in this case, it turned out to be more useful than he was originally intending (as the scene came off it implied that Zuul didn't seem like the kind of person to take "no" for an answer, falling straight into nightmare implications). Honestly, considering the kind of person Peter is, he probably took thorazine on all of his dates prior to becoming a Ghostbusters for the same reason.
    • Please tell me you don't carry Thorazine around for the express purposes of drugging your dates when you get bored with them...

Peck Had a Point

• Doesn't Walter Peck kind of have a point? Granted, he's a Flat-Earth Atheist 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 Obstructive Bureaucrat 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 a headscratcher 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, by filing 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.
    • Actually, it would give grounds for agencies like the DEA or FBI to investigate them, not the EPA.
    • 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. While ignoring the Ghostbusters' warnings might be justified if he genuinely believes that they're frauds and that they're opposed to it because they don't want to be exposed, ignoring the Con-Ed guy's warning is less forgivable. He also tells the cop to shoot Venkman if he tries to intervene, to which the cop tells him off. 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 seen 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?"
    • Given the movie's clear pro-capitalism bent, Peck is also supposed to be a caricature of officious government regulators. The real EPA was probably not this gung-ho under Reagan but Peck is deliberately exaggerated for comic / satiric value.

No Radiation Sickness?

• 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 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.
  • Another relic from the 1980s, David Letterman's Top Ten List, had, under, "Batman's Top Pet Peeves," that his nuclear-powered Batbelt had rendered him sterile. Perhaps everyone develops testicular cancer 10 years after the events in the movie? Or, since we're talking about the 1980s and radiation, maybe it's the same sort of "cosmic gamma rays" that made the Hulk? Sort of like Radiation Inducing Superpowers trope we have here.
  • 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.
    • Looking as the suits closely there are several hoses that connect to the jumpsuit itself. Combine this with the fact that the packs generally aren't used in street clothes (unless in dire circumstances) and it may be that the suits themselves are in fact part of the shielding mechanism.

Pointless Possession

• 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 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; 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 that 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.
    • Considering that Ivo Shandor's Gozer worshippers are likely based on actual occult societies that were somewhat popular in society circles from the late 19th century to the early 20th (groups Dan Akroyd would be very keenly aware of), it is very likely 'sex magic' is something very particular to Gozerian rituals; sex rituals were a big part of many of those societies.
  • 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 aren't physically equipped to have sex.
  • Might also be that in addition to just the sexual act being ritualistic they needed a pair of locals to breach into this dimension using something native to it. This would fall in line with early ideas of sympathetic magic though, scaled up significantly and used to cross dimension boundaries.
  • It could also be that, while Zuul and Vinz Clortho have manifested bodies, they aren't stable; they may only be able to manifest within the building, and once they leave, their bodies start to detioriate (or require more energy and effort to maintain). Possessing humans could provide them anchor points to continue manifesting in our world (and provide 'raw material' for their own bodies once they assume their actual forms full time).

Zuul's Aggro Behaviour

• Why exactly was Zuul-Dana 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.
  • It's strange because Peter explicitly said that he wasn't the Keymaster. He said the Keymaster told him to meet him there.
  • He said he wasn't the Keymaster very quickly while slipping past her into the apartment after claiming he was. She probably either didn't catch what he said, tuned out a bit, or doesn't fully follow Motor Mouth Deadpan Snarkery while possessed by a hyper-dimensional alien being.
    • Nah, she knows he's not the Keymaster, she asks him "Do you want this body, sub-creature?" An unlikely term for her peer and counterpart under Gozer. Zuul's probably just a bit of a vamp because that's her role in existence, performing the final summoning of Gozer via sex.
    • Compared to their Lord and Master Gozer, though, Zuul and the Keymaster are sub-creatures.

How Long was Winston in Action?

• 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.
  • Agreed; Peck couldn't possibly have gotten that warrant, even from a crooked judge, in a single day. But also, when Peck shuts down the containment grid, note how many ghosts escape. Again, there's simply no way they could have caught that many spooks in a single 24-hr period.

Why Not Attack?

• 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.
  • They already did their job so now it's time to kick back and watch their master work. If nothing else Vinz seems to quite enjoy the end of the world as the locals know it. That and again we're talking about a godlike reality warper. Either there was no point in bothering to do anything, it would have been taken as a grievous insult to their literal god to act without permission once it was present, or Gozer wanted this world's defenders present to both choose the destroyer form and put them down herself as a show of strength.

Why Was Egon Under the Desk?

• 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 I 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.

Help Wanted... but Why?

• 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.

A Perilous Potential Power Outage

• 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.
  • Pretty sure the firehouse's lack of adequate electrical power was one of the things Egon complained about when he rattled off all the reasons they shouldn't make it their HQ, right before Ray discovered the firefighters' pole and clinched the deal for that reason, alone. Presumably Egon had to rig up a generator to meet their system's demands.

Did the Ghostbusters Summon Gozer?

• 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.
  • More like when the anticipated rise in supernatural activity was quashed the two beings sent ahead to prepare the way none too subtly found a workaround. Being from a different dimension where time might not flow linearly they may have had some overall idea of what was going to happen but probably not the full picture or they'd have done something about the local defenders earlier.
• I'd thought it was the opposite, that Gozer trying to enter our dimension was the reason so many ghosts appeared in New York over the previous few months. I'm not sure if anything confirms that though.

Why Dana and Louis?

• Why did Zuul and Vinz Clortho single out Dana and Louis for possession? This is especially weird with Vinz as he was in a room with dozens of people and yet chased after Louis.
  • Aside from the obvious need for compatible equipment, Ray pointedly notes while they're going over the building's blueprints that Dana's apartment is a corner penthouse. Maybe when Evo Shandor designed the building, he did it with the intention of singling out whomever was living in the penthouses at the time as potential hosts for Zuul. And after Dana was declared the (un)lucky winner, Vinz simply went after the closest male, who happened to be Louis.
    • As for why Vinz singled out Louis in a room full of equally-possessable people? Simple. Louis smacked him in the face with a coat. It was personal.
  • The building is supposed to be an attractor for psychokinetic energy. Dana and Louis probably live on the floor where Zuul and Vinz materialized since they both first show up in their respective apartments. Being a resident of the building (and thus being there way longer than the party guests), Louis might have had a stronger psychic aura thanks to the building's design "exposing" him to psychokinetic energy, maybe even to the extent that Vinz could somehow sense that Louis was that apartment's tenant and thus his target as per some specific aspect of the Gozer cult's ritual.
  • It's possible that the two of them may be the most sensitive to ghostly things out of everyone who lives in the building. In such a case it may be that Dana and Louis are the ones that chose themselves by making contact with Zuul and Vinz by accident. As I recall when the guys checked out Dana's apartment they couldn't find signs of a haunting even though we know it happened, it may be that was her making mental contact with Zuul for the first time and not Zuul actually manifesting yet.
  • I think it has less to do with the people than the apartments themselves. I think the apartments are what are important. The building was designed so that every detail served a purpose specific to Shandor's attempts to summon Gozer. Consider this. The secret stairs leading to the roof are behind where the fridge was, meaning there's a secret passage in the apartment Dana lived in. So that apartment was important and specific. So whoever had been living in it would've been possessed. It just happened to be Dana. As for Louis', either his apartment also had secret stairs or it was only important insofar as it was directly across from the other one.
    • And to that end whoever was living in the apartment at the time would probably have been sucking down a ton of PKE by their presence in proximity to the summoning alter making them the ideal targets. Already a source of energy that's been built up so as to facilitate the possession.
  • "It's not the girl, Peter, it's the building." There's most likely nothing in particular that's special about Dana and Louis in and of themselves; they just happened to draw the cosmic short-straw by moving into apartments which acted as conduits for the Keymaster and the Gatekeeper to enter this dimension.

Why Not Go Back?

• The university drops their funding... but the very moment they caught the hotel ghost (the "Slimer" one), they had in their hands indisputable evidence of supernatural manifestation. They should have gone back to university and gotten a big, fat grant and hired some ex-special forces to handle the actual Ghostbusting.
  • So, if you had the chance to suit up, strap on a proton pack, drive around in a badass hearse, blow shit up, catch ghosts and get paid for it, you'd get someone else to do it and sit behind a desk? 'Cause that would put you at odds with approximately every single person who's ever seen the films ever.
    • Why not do both? Bust ghosts themselves, but as soon as one ghost is trapped, go back to the university, free the ghost to show it to everyone as indisputable proof, and finally win the Nobel prize, as well as one million dollars from James Randi for proving that paranormality exists.
    • If you free a captured ghost, then you're simply allowing for more damage and arbitrary skepticism. Anyone who saw the original Star Wars trilogy would be familiar with the concept of holographic projections (assuming that it exists in the Ghostbusters universe). What you need, what you REALLY need to sell it for grant purposes is the testimonials of the people at the New York Public Library who interacted with THAT ghost.
    • It's plausible that, now that the trio was unemployed and middle-aged, they'd be more inclined for a "get-rich-quick scheme", which turned out to be their legitimate business within the film.
  • Also, their "indisputable evidence" turns out to be pretty disputable, at least by the EPA. "I have in my hand evidence of the paranormal!" "Okay, let's see it." "Oh, it's in this box on the wall. See the green light? That means there's a ghost in there." "...Really. Can you let it out and let us actually see it?" "Of course not, that would be extremely dangerous." And so on.
  • "Hey, we just got a call. Hop in."
    • Peck is an extreme Flat-Earth Atheist who believes that specific, shared hallucinations of ghosts in particular can be chemically induced. He'd just say they'd drugged him somehow without his knowledge.
  • Also, why go crawling back the university which just shit-canned you — and, in Dean Yeager's case, did so in an incredibly snotty fashion — and let them profit from the groundbreaking research and development that your efforts are opening up when you can remain independent, keep all the profits yourself, and give them the middle finger for being wrong to shit-can you in the first place?
  • I can only imagine the awkward conversation Yeager had with the university's board of regents the day after the city gets saved. "You had the saviors of NYC happily working in your basement for years and a month before their big discovery you decided to fire them? Smooth move, Exlax." Sort of like the record executive who was sure the Beatles were never going to amount to anything.
  • In the IDW Comics, Dean Yeager is interviewed by Rebecca Morales about the firing after the events of the movie. He stands by his decision but admits the university still benefited as the Ghostbusters' actions led to a huge increase of alumni donations.

Attack of the 50-Foot Hoover... or Not

• Why doesn't a giant J. Edgar Hoover appear when Venkman mentions him?
  • Because Ray had already thought of Stay Puft. They were screwed even before Venkman started his spiel.
  • Maybe Venkman only knew Hoover's name, and had never bothered to look at a picture of the former FBI chief. Come to think of it, a recognizable name with no physical appearance attached to it wouldn't be a bad solution to 'thinking of nothing.'
  • Because Peter wasn't "choosing" Hoover, just explaining how the choosing worked. Gozer understood that; it may be a Jackass Genie (as seen when it turned the harmless Stay Puft Marshmallow Man into a kaiju) but it seems to have at least a token sense of fair play, or else this is an inherent limitation of Gozer's power; it had to wait until someone legitimately "chose" form in the sense of specifically thinking of that form before it could take that form.
    • A lot of old myths work quite like this, particularly myths of the Fae, where no matter how malicious they are most supernatural entities are bound by specific rules that must be obeyed or else they can do nothing to you. But then again they have leeway to interpret in the way that favors their agenda like Ray picking something harmless only for it to show up 50 feet tall or whatever beings on a previous summoning request a Torg that Vinz specified was mobile meaning the normal non-Gozer ones aren't.
  • Ray had just identified himself as a duly designated representative of the City, County, and State of New York. It's possible that Gozer wouldn't have accepted an answer from anybody else.
  • Alternately, Peter is just very good at dissociating his words and thoughts. As the most self-conscious Ghostbuster, and the resident "used-car salesman" of the team, mental obfuscation is his stock in trade.

Fast Fixing

• How did the car get fixed up so fast? When Dana first visits the Ghostbusters, Ray is working on the car that he had just purchased. She has her interview, Venkman checks out her apartment, and it is that night that they toast their "first and only customer" over dinner. The phone rings downstairs, they have a call, and they roll out, that very night, in a fully decked out and painted Ecto-1. That would mean that Ray did all the mechanical work he mentioned, added all the crap to the roof, and painted the vehicle in less than twelve hours.
  • Maybe they brought in contractors to help him, further dwindling their limited startup cash?
  • It is not directly stated that the first call happens on the same day as Dana approaching them. It's entirely possible that we're catching up with the Ghostbusters a few days later (they have changed their clothes, after all), by which point Ecto-1 is ready, and the subject just happens to come back around to Dana again.
  • It would also explain why they're eating and for whatever reason failed to invite Janine over to share in the celebration, even though her desk is less than 20 feet away.

Puft Into Existence

• Did the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man literally just... poof into existence without anyone immediately noticing?
  • The original script had it rising from the harbor next to Liberty Island. There's nothing in the finished film to strictly negate that, as the first time we see it it's turning onto Broadway from 56th or 57th Street, as if it just came ashore from the Hudson.^note For some reason he skips 8th Avenue (and therefore has to backtrack a little bit to Columbus Circle), even though he eventually continues up Central Park West
  • Also, the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man is literally the manifestation of an evil God. That he should in fact be able to pretty much 'poof' out of nowhere is perfectly reasonable for such an entity.

Why Not Run?

• Ray Stantz said to Peter Venkman, "Don't move it won't hurt you.", when staring at Slimer. But why didn't Peter Venkman RUN when Slimer came after him? Ray's advice be damned. Peter wasn't exactly trapped in a Dead End and could have easily turned the corner right behind him. Taking a few steps back then just standing there screaming is not exactly escaping a slime bath.
  • He was paralyzed with fear. Apart from the librarian, that was the first ghost Peter had ever seen, and this time he was all alone with it. He just lucked out in that the ghost happened to be, well, Slimer.
  • Run where? Slimer is clearly faster than any human being and can pass right through solid matter. Where could Venkman possibly hide from him?

Just Show Him Already!

• When Venkman and Peck first meet, why didn't Venkman just show Peck the containment facility? If it was just Peck and Venkman, no cops or electricians, Venkman could have just bullshat his way through explaining that it was safe and Peck would have a much harder time convincing anyone else that he had probable cause to prosecute.
  • Because while Peck might have a point about his concerns about the containment facility, Peter also has a point that this guy has no right — legal or general — to suddenly appear in his life and start arrogantly throwing his weight around making demands and threats. Plus, considering how Peck later shouted down the Con-Ed guy who was also making noises about how it might not be safe to shut it down, chances are showing Peck around might have strengthened his convictions to get everything shut down; he's not exactly an open-minded guy.
  • The novelization states that Peter was exhausted from multiple shifts of ghostbusting and lost his temper.
  • In addition, Peck is apparently not aware that "magic word" means "please" until explicitly told so. Even then, his tone of voice when he says "please" doesn't exactly scream "polite and considerate". Peter likely thought that he was an asshole and there was no reason to humor the guy whatsoever.
  • 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 (or at least would have probably framed his refusal in a more diplomatic, less confrontational way). His issue seemed to be more with Peck being a pompous jerk rather than opening up the Ghostbusters facilities to inspection.
  • Even in the film, Venkman is clearly exhausted and in no mood to put up with bull. His coping mechanism for stress is humor, and Peck turns out to be the perfect target for Peter's brand of jerkassery. And Peck isn't the kind of guy to respond well to that, and takes personal offense. And of course, Peter was highly offended by Peck right off the bat. "Exactly what are you a doctor of, Mr. Venkman?" Not using a person's proper salutation is a really good way to get on their bad side, and Peter wasn't about to take Peck's dismissal lying down. As has been pointed out, if Peter had been in a better mood, had Peck been less of a jerk, the whole thing could have been settled amicably (well, up until Peter got to the unlicensed nuclear accelerators, at any rate).

Is Vinz Psychic?

• How did Vinz Clortho know "the signal" would have been the release of the ghosts from Ghostbusters central. Could he read the future ?!?
  • No, you're misunderstanding it completely. He didn't know, in advance, that the signal would be that exact event. He was waiting for a signal, any signal, which would mean Gozer was returning. I'd say the huge plume of ghosts exploding out of one place and going on to rampage throughout the city can be pretty easily interpreted as such a signal.
  • When he's talking to the horse, he says something like, "Soon all our prisoners will be released," which could only refer to the containment unit. Maybe if Peck hadn't shut it down, the ghosts would have escaped soon anyway.
  • Small correction on that. Vinz declares "all prisoners will be released" in a manner that implies he is not talking about the ghosts but that freeing all those imprisoned to run rampant as society collapses is part of Gozer's shtick as Gozer maximizes the destruction or suffering involved in its arrival. Vinz just doesn't realize that the horse is a domesticated animal rather then a slave or criminal being used for forced labor.
  • Maybe he could read the future. However incompetent Gozer may have been (his servants certainly were—judging from Vinz's antics with the horse and at the firehouse, and that Zuul didn't even seem to recognize Peter was the same man who'd just said he wasn't the Keymaster or understand what he was doing since she (?) let Peter inject Dana, they had the intelligence of dogs or less as well as the appearance), he was still a god. Deities tend to have divinatory powers, and one who was summoned periodically to destroy a world would need to be able to see the future to know when the time was right and all prophecies/rituals had been fulfilled.
    • To be fair, the fact that Zuul can't tell that Peter is the same guy who just said he wasn't the Keymaster may not indicate incompetence so much as foreignness. Remember, Zuul is some sort of demon-dog from another dimension. When they were still in dog form, could you tell the difference between Zuul and Vinz Clortho? They probably can't tell the difference between human beings either. They may also have a different sense of time, so from Zuul's perspective, the fact that sometime after a human who said he wasn't the Keymaster left, another human who said he was the Keymaster arrived. Did they look alike? Well, all humans look alike to them. How much time passed? Hard to say, time passes differently here. They also might not exactly know who the dominant species on our world is. The horse was larger and in front, so maybe Vinz just assumed that he must be the one in charge.
    • Also, the demon-dogs possess people. For all Zuul knew, Vinz Clortho could've jumped Peter the second the door was shut and taken over his body.
  • New theory - Zuul was told to wait for Clortho, Clortho was told that he had to find Zuul and that the sign would be a pillar of light and that "all prisoners will be released." However, he didn't know the context - the containment field being shut down and the ghosts busting loose. He knew what would happen, just not where or when it would happen.

Why didn't Vinz torment Louis?

• Before making the move to possess Dana, Zuul teased its presence to her through that whole portal in the fridge bit. Why did Vinz never do anything similar to Louis? Unlike Dana, who suspected the supernatural forces targeting her before it was too late, Louis had no clue what was going on before the terror dogs made their move.
  • Probably because Louis doesn't have a portal in his fridge. Dana's apartment was the one closest to the center of Gozer's spectral energy...thing, so she was picked first as a host. Louis, being her neighbor, was most likely only picked because of his proximity to her, as stated above in the "Why Dana and Louis" folder.
  • Vinz Clortho isn't exactly the brains of the operation. He may not have the imagination to pull eerie stunts on Louis like Zuul did on Dana.
  • "Why didn't Vinz torment Louis"? He literally smashes his apartment up and hunts him through a park. I'd call that pretty tormenting. He's just less subtle about it than Zuul.

Petty cash and their own arcade

• After Ray points out that their Chinese take-out was purchased with the last of their petty cash, we see a Personal Arcade as the trio head off on their first major job. WHY buy arcade machines and a pinball table when starting up a business and being strapped for cash? Even if we assume they got those machines secondhand, Ray fixing them up and/or Peter using smooth talk to haggle a price, those machines would not have been cheap.
  • Maybe they already owned the machines and just moved them? Or maybe they were left behind in the firehouse—firefighters need to keep entertained in downtime, after all.
  • This is in fact a common mistake that startups make - wasting initial capital on fun things like air hockey, table football etc. to make the office a fun and cool place to work. It's very tempting - you're dizzy on the freedom from not having a boss, you can do what you want all day long, you can spend this money however you choose - and it seems like a small percentage of the capital.