Headscratchers / Ghostbusters II

• Has anyone ever considered the fact that, despite the happy ending to the second Ghostbusters film, they are probably going to be out of business again within a few months? Think about it. In the first film, the ghosts only start popping up en masse because of Gozer. Once Gozer is banished, the large-scale appearance of ghosts ceased, and people were eventually convinced it was some kind of hoax. Then, several years later, we get Vigo, another powerful ghost who, on the verge of resurrecting himself, also causes a huge amount of ghostly activity. With his defeat, surely the ghosts will go away again, and people aren't going to need the Ghostbusters anymore.
  • The game handwaves this problem; while major paranormal events do draw so many ghosts that the Ghostbusters are overworked and solving the problem at large (Gozer, Vigo, Shandor the Architect) drastically brings the number down, ghosts don't completely vanish. The city is paying the Ghostbusters to keep New York COMPLETELY ghost-free after the second movie, so they'll always have some amount of work, and at the end of the game, their solution to the "off-season" is to start selling franchises in cities that aren't having a break at the time.
  • I did think it would probably happen, and their defeat of Vigo was more of a final hurrah that allowed them to retire with dignity rather than a return to dedicated business for years to come.
  • As Egon said in the video game: "People die every day." No matter what happens, there will still be new ghosts. They might not be as prevalent as they were before, but they don't just disappear.
  • And even if, worst case scenario, they were forced to close up shop and retire after the whole Vigo business, they've all successfully salvaged their professional reputations. Surely they could all move on to other successful careers. Maybe even get their old jobs back at the university that kicked them out in the first film.
  • They may be out of business, but they're still The Ghostbusters. Merchandising, commercial appearances, cameos, book deals, and maybe even their own TV show.
  • They probably use the "off-season" to design and build the next batch of fancy new gadgets in preparation for the next big cross-rip.
  • I don't recall exactly how much time went by during the first film, but there's a scene in which Ray and Winston talk about how busy they've been lately, and how it could be a sign of bad things to come. That implies that they started their business during a "down time" and the increased activity leading up to the Gozer incident began afterward. So it's less like a gardener who loses all work during the winter, and more like an accountant who works regularly year round but has to do double time when tax season comes.
  • The cartoon actually had an episode when the Ghostbusters had no work due to a shortage of ghosts. They somehow retooled their equipment for crime prevention purposes and became the Crimebusters. At the end of the episode they took down a major organized crime figure, only to realize that by doing so, they had just put themselves out of work again. Then Janine got a phone call reporting a ghost...
  • If nothing else, they presumably now know, after the experience of the first movie, that their business is highly cyclical, and that they should therefore save as much as possible of the money they made during the fat years.
  • In Ghostbusters (2016), the team is eventually hired by the city as a public-funded research body to anticipate and prevent future destructive paranormal cataclysms of that nature as much as possible. It's possible — likely, even — that after two near-misses with paranormal cataclysms, the city authorities in the original franchise decided to do something similar.
  • Confirmed in Ghostbusters: Afterlife that the original-continuity team's workload dwindled until they were barely afloat, after which Egon abandoning the others and running off with their equipment put them out of business for keeps.

• It may have been Played for Laughs, but... how in the world did Slimer manage to drive that bus? He's got no feet to work the brake and gas with!!
  • Probably some kind of telekinesis. Same as how poltergeists manage to move stuff around despite being incorporeal and having no visible 'arms' or 'legs' that can be seen.

• In Hungarian, the letter "s" makes a "sh" sound, and the letters "Sz" make an "s" sound. Janosz is supposedly Hungarian, but everybody pronounces his name exactly wrong. I mean, if you're going to have a Hungarian character and you want his name to sound foreign, at least do the research and spell his name right.
  • Who said he's Hungarian? Janosz is apparently a native-born New Yorker (from the Upper West Side) and the nationality of his family is never stated, he just has a strange, vaguely Eastern European-sounding accent. If anything the made-up name was supposed to add to the impossibility of accurately pinning a nationality on him.
    • I think he just misunderstood Venkman's question about where he was from as meaning where did he live. FWIW, he's apparently Romanian in the comics.
  • I don't remember the character you are talking about, but if he pronounces his own name, that is the correct pronunciation. Admittedly, there could be an original pronunciation. I had a friend with a last name that had an American pronunciation and an original.
  • For what it's worth, in Polish the letter "s" and the digraph "Sz" have exactly the opposite pronunciations as in Hungarian, which would make the pronunciation/spelling match up. Behind the Name doesn't have an entry for "Janosz" but does show a Polish "Janusz" and a Hungarian "Janos."

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

• There's no way the deleted scene of Hardemeyer being sucked into the slime wall can fit into the story. If it were reinserted into the film as part of a fan cut, for instance, it wouldn't fit. Here's why. In the scene preceding the Ghostbusters' release, the Mayor fires Hardemeyer, and yet, in the deleted scene, Hardemeyer shows up with the Mayor as part of his entourage as if he wasn't fired. So what gives? All I can think of is that the scene of Hardemeyer being slimed was shot first, and then deleted for whatever reason, with the scene of the Mayor firing him added later to replace it, since both scenes cover effectively the same ground: the slime wall is impenetrable (in the final cut, Ben Stein says "We can't make a dent in it," whereas in the deleted scene, a firefighter conveys this exact same information to the Mayor), the Mayor decides to back the Ghostbusters, and Hardemeyer is removed from the story. Is this close?
  • Since the "sucked into the wall" scene appears in the original script but was deleted my personal guess is that the filmmakers originally filmed the scene, decided it didn't really work for whatever reason (likely SFX), and then added the earlier scene as a band-aid to explain why the character disappeared. So yeah, the above is probably pretty much accurate.
  • There's an early version of the script online that has that exact scenario, in which the Mayor doesn't decide he needs the Ghostbusters until he actually sees Hardemeyer sucked into the slime wall. Meanwhile, Louis talks a cousin of his at the hospital into discharging the guys from the psych ward, so they still show up promptly.
• Why is it that the Ghostbusters were accused of being frauds when clearly the ghosts were running rampant during the final act of the film and everyone clearly saw a 100ft Marshmallow Man causing destruction in NY? Not to mention why didn't the Ghostbusters counter-sue when it wasn't them that released the ghosts from the containment unit?
  • The Real Ghostbusters implies they did. Peck was fired from the EPA and basically became a chauffeur for military brass, until he tried to frame The Ghostbusters by luring them unto a military base with what is basically SWATing, and got fired from federal government work, permanently.
  • It's also entirely possible Peck was using his connections, which he garnered during his service with the EPA, to slander The Ghostbusters at every opportunity because he simply can not stomach anyone successfully defying his office, or him personally, or worse, actually being allowed to operate without having the lips of their spokesman superglued to his butt, just to stroke his own ego. Thus even though The Ghostbusters may have filed suit, and even won, the damage is done with the public, and they had to prove their heroism, again.
  • Nobody saw what happened on the roof except The Ghostbusters, Gozer, and the terror dogs. The Stay Puff Marshmallow Man could have been waved off as a repurposed parade balloon, seeing as Stay Puff is a popular figure in the Ghostbusters verse, I mean imagine you were the mayor, what would look better to qualm the hysteric masses? "Ancient Sumerian God tries to destroy the world" or "Stay Puff publicity stunt gone wrong"?
• What the Hell even is Vigo? Is he some kind of creature who takes human form and hangs out in our reality for kicks?
  • Probably the 16th century's own answer to Ivo Shandor: a murderous human sociopath who sought power from the supernatural.
  • If Gozer is an Eldritch Abomination by way of H. P. Lovecraft, then Vigo is an Evil Sorcerer by way of Robert E. Howard. Lacking a convenient Cimmerian to deal with him, the Ghostbusters are the next best thing.
  • He's Vlad the Impaler by way of Dorian Gray.
  • He's basically a wizard.

• I get people believing that the Ghostbusters are frauds or conmen who faked all the ghost encounters. What I don't understand is the psychiatrist who questions them after they've been committed - it's as though he has no idea who these guys are. Is he simply in the mayor's pocket? Or is the idea, "These guys are worse than frauds - they actually believe this crap and their beliefs are endangering the public"?