Headscratchers / The Real Ghostbusters

Sharing a Trap

• In "Xmas Marks the Spot", the Ghostbusters trap the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future all in one trap, and they all remain separate. But didn't another episode state that when you trap multiple ghosts in one trap, they end up permanently fused?
  • That was "Drool, the Dog-faced Goblin." Um...okay, let's try to untangle this one. Drool and his Bigger Brother are "monster" ghosts; as such, they probably have low personal "integrities." That is to say, when locked in the trap, they fuse easily. The Christmas Ghosts, on the other hand, are personifications of Christmas, and their personal integrities are most likely pretty strong. Also, as revealed at the end of the episode, the Christmas Ghosts allowed themselves to be captured as part of their plan.
  • This one has bothered me as well, especially in light of the fact that in the movie (the events of which are canon to the animated series) all the ghosts stuffed in the containment grid were able to separate after being trapped when the containment grid went nuclear (which is why we have Slimer running around), even though at one point in the film, foreshadowing the danger, Egon mentioned the super concentration of ectoplasm in the grid, implying compression. However, there is another possibility with the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future. They may not be separate entities at all, but rather, all aspects of the same spirit. They wouldn't need to worry about separation, as they were already a connected entity to begin with.
  • Several episodes are in contradiction with this. In "Ghosts ‘R’ Us" a family of ghosts is trapped together and later seem separated, even inside the Containment Unit.
  • The episode that used the plot device "multiple ghosts sealed in one trap fuse together" was the (glaring and illogical) exception, not the rule.
  • To be honest that sounded like an excuse from them to not release Drool. The only “explanation” I can think of for the discontinuity is that Drool was biting the other ghost at the moment of their capture which might be more invasive than be trapped together.
  • Or what Ray meant when he said you can't separate the ghosts was that you can't separate them and let them out individually. Releasing one meant releasing the other, and so they were forced to contain Drool along with his brother in order to avoid letting the more dangerous ghost run free.
    • He specifically said, "their molecules fuse" as the reason you can't separate them, so that theory doesn't work.
    • Ass Pull fan theory: When Drool bit the large dangerous ghost, he deliberately fused their molecules together. The larger ghost didn't try to break free from Drool's bite, so maybe it just couldn't. Letting Drool out of the trap would mean releasing the larger ghost again, and it nearly killed the Ghostbusters multiple times before Drool helped them.

Blowing Up the Innocent?

• In the climax of "Ragnarok and Roll," while the guys' plan to blow themselves and the villain up is noble and brave, how come none of them pointed out while agreeing to the plan that there were also two innocent bystanders on top of the building at the time? Yes, they had no choice, there were billions of lives at stake, they couldn't let that stop them, but still, it would've been nice if one of them had observed "But we'll take out the two of them, too" or told them to run for it (even though they probably would've refused).
  • They had already pointed out that the explosion was going to take out several city blocks, and that there would be substantial collateral damage and civilian deaths, but that even wiping out lower Manhattan was better than the alternative. Presumably, the two bystanders on the building roof with them were included in that.

Mr. Stay-Puft

• Could someone tell me why the Ghostbusters had the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man in the containment unit? This cartoon's supposed to have continuity with the movies, and the he wasn't trapped. He was blown up into marshmallow goo.
  • The 2 prevalent fan theories are:
  1. It's another ghost, not Gozer, who took on that form, probably inspired by how an extremely powerful ghost took it on recently (supported by how his personality is nothing like Gozer's).
  2. The episode "Citizen Ghost" reveals that the Gozer-marshmallow-residue all over their uniforms was dangerous and needed to be disposed of (since Peter fails to do so, it turns into doppelgangers of the guys who nearly kill them). Thus, all the goo that rained down on NYC after the battle was just as dangerous, and the guys needed to dispose of it, too. How? By vacuuming it up and putting it in the Containment Unit, where it returned to its original form, albeit without the mind or personality of its maker (Gozer).
  • The cartoon technically isn't in continuity with the movie. In the cartoon canon, the movie actually *is* a movie, a fictionalized adaptation of the "real" events that happened to the the cartoon ghostbusters.
  • If one considers the unaired pilot episode to be part of the show proper, it shows how they captured the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, along with Slimer and several other ghosts. Perhaps this was part of the "real" Gozer event, in contrast to the movie. (It's basically a slightly more elaborate version of the bit shown in the intro from earlier seasons, which replaced Slimer with another generic ghost.) They're also all wearing the original tan jumpsuits in that, which ties in nicely with "Citizen Ghost." Though... it doesn't jive with how Slimer clearly wasn't in the containment unit in "Citizen Ghost."

Are All Ghosts Undead?

• So what are ghosts exactly? I mean are all of them spirits of the dead? I ask because then some episodes are really really very dark. One episode name “Baby Spooky” has a literal baby ghost walking around with her parents looking for her. The ghostbusters eventually help them reunite but, was he the soul of a dead baby? A family that died together? The episode itself sucks but that’s kind of a dark background if you think about.
  
  In another episode name “The Hole in the Wall” a house have ghosts like pests that come out of holes, depending on the size of the hole the size of the ghost. Alright, but then not only I find difficult to believe some of the small ghosts are spirits of the dead (one looks like a horseshoe with eyes) but also, what the hell is the big one at the end of the episode that is from the size of a Kaiju? And in general why some ghosts look like dead human (almost identical as how they were when alive but with some ghostly features like the zombies in Ray’s farm or Wyatt Earp) and other looks like something that Dali would paint during an acid trip?
  
  And what are the ghosts in Flip Side? Are all spirits of the dead that go there? Is that the afterlife? And if it is, then why do they have ghost versions of Peter, Egon and Ray, did they travel to the future when they died? (now that I think about that could explain Winston’s absent, he hasn’t die “yet” or he went to heaven maybe).
  • The nature of the ghosts will vary from episode to episode. In some episodes yes, they are the spirit of the dead, most notably: the skeleton soldiers in "Bustman's Holiday", Ray’s farmer relatives in "Dairy Farm", the pirate ghosts in "Sea Fright", the ghost of Harry Houdini in "The Cabinet of Calamari", the one in "The Man Who Never Reached Home", Agatha Christie’s expy in Boo-Dunit and probably most of the ghosts in "Deadcon 1". Nevertheless other episodes made clear that other ghosts are actually creatures from Another Dimension that were never humans to begin with like the aforementioned "Baby Spokens", “The Hole in the Wall”, “Trascendental Tourists” and probably the ghosts in “Flip Side” too, as some of the recurring villains like Samhain and The Ghostmaster. Slimer is most probably one of these cases. Other episodes have both like "Cry Uncle" have obviously the uncle who died and the more monstrous one to be one of these spirits. Other episodes like "Venkman's Ghost Repellers" with the New Jersey parallelogram and "You Can't Take It With You" show entrances to another dimensions where “ghosts” (as in weird things/life forms who float around) enter our world with no indication that they are human in any way or ever been.
  • There's an alternate dimension home to supernatural, non-human entities. Some are spirits of dead humans (even animals); others are creatures originally from said alternate dimension. Since they apparently share many properties (ex. able to phase through walls on Earth and possess human beings), both types are collectively referred to as "ghosts." The Ghostbusters franchise may have been the first to use the term "ghosts" this way, but it hasn't been the last. Although a look at the classifications of different types of "ghosts" supposedly found in our world include more than just the spirits of dead humans, too...
  • There actually seem to be a few different kinds of ghosts. Some of them are the undead spirits of once-living humans. Others seem to be demons, or even just elements of PKE energy that manifest into certain forms. All the ghosts that Robobuster "destroyed" simply coalesced into one gigantic mega-ghost the size of New York.

The Monster in the Mirror

• In the "Flip Side" episode, that is like a Mirror Universe episode, why is Slimer's counterpart a monster? Shouldn't he be a human (just probably fat and evil) as everything is backwards?
  • The Flip Side Slimmer makes sense in that it looks like an organic monster probably from another dimension. So, in a similar way how Slimmr is a good ghost living with organic beings (humans) the Mirror Slimmer is an evil organic being living with ghosts.

You Can't Stop a Man's Imagination

• One thing that always confused me in the episode "Captain Steel Saves the Day" was when Captain Steel questioned who he was going to fight upon returning to his comic now that his archenemy Doctor Destructo was in the Containment Unit, and the comic's creator Len Wolfman simply stated that he'll think of something. Exactly how would having Doctor Destructo removed from the comic in that manner stop Wolfman from continuing to use the villain in the comics? It's not like Wolfman can't draw him anymore.
  • It's a common plot element in such stories. Basically, because the character is a coherent idea, removing him from the comic removed him from his creator's mind. That's why, for instance, Wolfman couldn't just introduce a flaw into Destructo's forcefield, but had to create a forcefield disruptor. In essence, Doctor Destructo no longer exists in Wolfman's mind except as a set of memories, and recreating him would be no simpler than creating a new nemesis. Beyond that, well, looking for logic in this line of thought is best answered with the MST3K Mantra.

Peter Wasn't on the Money

• Peter attempts to build a ghost attracter in "Standing Room Only" in hopes of making ghostbusting easier and to ensure that they all become rich, but there is one glaring flaw in this plan. Putting aside the fact that the invention turned out to not be working as intended and that the ghosts gathered at the Firehouse for different reasons, how the hell are the Ghostbusters going to get wealthy if no one's paying them to capture the ghosts that show up at the Firehouse?
  • With how business minded Peter is, he probably figured they can turn it on, draw in a few ghosts, and catch them for free publicity. A free sample, if you will. Then turn it off and wait for people to come to them legitimately.
  • The Ghostbusters' proton guns can be really destructive. If the Ghostbusters have to chase the ghosts through your building, they might cause quite a bit of damage before they can finally trap it. Why go through all that if you can draw the ghosts out of hiding and trap them in a safer area?

Kitchen Duty Gag

• In "Three Men and an Egon", when Egon is de-aging and they change his diaper when he's a baby, one of them says, "Who'd have thought that Egon would go this far to avoid kitchen duty?". What does this gag mean?
  • It most likely means they think he did this to himself in order to avoid either cooking or washing the dishes.

What Exactly Do The Proton Guns And Traps Work On?

• One of the main selling points of villains like the Boogieman was that he was a demon instead of a ghost, so the Ghostbusters couldn't put him in a trap. And yet a lot of the ghosts the Ghostbusters fight, like Samhain and the Thing in Mrs. Faversham's Attic seem like more general demons rather than actual undead spirits. So why would the Ghostbusters' weapons affect demons like them, but merely repel something like the Boogieman?
  • In the first Boogieman episode, Ray refers to him as a corporeal entity, meaning solid. Boogie isn't ectoplasmic. He's as solid as you or I. He just hails from another dimension, and seems more durable to proton beams than a human would be. Samhain and the thing from the Favasham attic were non-corporeal, meaning they could be held by proton beams and trapped.
  • The show was somewhat inconsistent about this. In "The Bogeyman is Back," Egon made an "Atomic Destabilizer," which he said "can convert solid matter into its ethereal counterpart" (which Ray translated from technobabble to English as "this will vaporize the Bogeyman into a ghost long enough for us to trap him just like any other ghost." But then, in the very next episode, "Once Upon a Slime," for the machine that Egon made that accidentally brought to life the fairy tales in Slimer's book, Egon explains that it "was designed to turn ethereal entities into solid matter to facilitate their capture" (which Ray translated as "you mean it's supposed to make wispy ghosts more real so they're easier to catch?"), which is, oddly, the exact opposite of the issue they had with the Bogeyman/Boogieman.

Hard Knight's Day Ending

• At the end of "Hard Knight's Day", how come the Ghostbusters ran after Doris when she went to see the Genevieve Tapestry again, as though they thought she would again be put in danger of being sucked into it? Egon and Ray expressly said that could only happen at night, and by then it was morning.

Living Accommodations

• Do the Ghostbusters just live at the Firehouse full time? They have beds there and, outside of the occasional vacation, they seem to spend all of their time there, including off-time. It's not like they are ever shown to work in shifts, where some of them are "on duty" and the others are "off duty" and go home or whatever, after all. In the episode "Kitty-Cornered," even Louis Tully was shown at the Firehouse, in the middle of the night, in his pajamas, implying that he was staying there as well, for no obvious reason. However, in "The Halloween Door," when Boogaloo is holding Peter and Ray in his hand at a great height, Peter says to Ray that he "can see your house from here." Assuming that wasn't just a throwaway joke, it implies that they do have their own homes away from the Firehouse (or, at least, Ray does), though we simply never see them. Janine, at least, is shown on multiple occasions to have her own apartment.