Headscratchers / Ghostbusters: Afterlife

• Where did the OG Ghostbusters get their proton packs? I thought Egon took all the Ghostbusters equipment with him when he went to Summerville? Did Winston fund the creation of new proton packs? Did Egon left blueprints behind for creating new ones?
  • The way Ray talked about Egon's absconding makes it sound like he left the other teammates' proton packs along with any loaded fuel isotope in them. That's how they could show up with readied packs at the end.
  • Also, Ray was just as involved in designing, testing and maintaining the team's equipment as Egon, so he could have jury-rigged working ones from spare parts or old prototypes that Egon didn't deem worth taking.

• So, crossing the streams is just a normal thing now? My assumption was it was a one shot, no other option, might result in total protonic reversal thing?
  • Time and study have allowed Egon to figure out why it lead to such potentially catastrophic results and work around them to avoid that outcome while still multiplying the strength of the beams.
  • See, crossing the streams causes a big explosion which causes total protonic reversal, because all that power has to go somewhere. When it's in a big city, full of people, in one dimension, it could leave that city a smoking crater. When there's a portal to another dimension, the brunt of the explosive force goes into that dimension, and ours gets the last part of it (though it's still quite devastating to behold). There's always a portal open in the mine, which goes way deep into the other side. Whatever's down there is constantly trying to come back up, and the stream-crossing tamps it down. Bear in mind, Egon's had the better part of decades to figure out how to do it safely, and under what circumstances total protonic reversal will not occur.

• How does Callie fit in the timeline? The film makes it clear that the events are happening in 2021, and that the events of the first film happened in 1984. The "Ghostbusters 2" happened in 1989. There was no mention of Callie in either of the first two movies, which would hint she was born 1990 at the earliest. This would make the character 31 years old now, and her oldest child is 15—obviously possible, but this makes her a young teen mother. The other option is that Callie had been born by the events of the original movie, and the original Ghostbusters never once brought up that Egon had a kid to think of, given the dangers they were in.
  • Egon could've been married, had a daughter, divorced with his ex-wife getting full custody and remained single thereafter; which would've been very painful. It would certainly explain why he didn't reciprocate Janine's obvious romantic interest in him.
  • Egon is also the sort of person that would completely compartmentalize his professional and personal lives, never mentioning his family because they never came up. He also could have not reciprocated Janine's affections because though he may not be a very attentive spouse, he would not necessarily be an unfaithful one.
  • A piece of paper on the wall of photos in Egon's lab shows the year "1987", suggesting that she was born in-between the first and second film (if not earlier). Chalk it up to a retcon in order to make the plot work.
  • A different piece of paper shows the date 1983, implying that she was born before even the first movie.
  • Not to be taken too seriously, but the only entity that qualifies as a potential partner to Egon and mother to Callie Spengler is of course the positively charged mood slime that Egon was 'sleeping with' in Ghostbusters 2.
  • Callie's age is made completely plausible by looking at the age of the actress that portrays her and the time frame that the first movie occurs in. Carrie Coon was born in 1981. The original Ghostbusters was in 1984. Born before the events of the first movie, there is plenty of time for estrangement to occur between Egon and Callie's mother. And Callie would have been too young to really comprehend her father's moment of fame in 1984.
  • Or possibly 1983 was the year of the divorce, and the last time he'd actually seen his daughter. Which could make Callie's birth year the same as her actor's, and account for Callie having only a few fragmentary memories of him leaving.
  • Who's to say that Egon even married Callie's mother in the first place? He's not exactly the sort to believe in the sanctity of marriage. Callie's own reminiscence admits that even before abandoning her fully he was never really around, fully absorbed in his work.

• If Shandor had built this entire underground temple complex for Gozer to emerge in, even going to the trouble of having his preserved corpse kept there so he could be resurrected at that point, why did he bother with a skyscraper in New York?
  • It seems the Central Park West building was his main plan with Summerville as a backup. New York had a much higher level of spiritual and psychic turbulence and would have a greater impact than a town in the middle of nowhere.
    • That still doesn't explain why he had his corpse kept in the backup site.
    • Because he built that town and the temple and it's suggested that he did that to recreate the civilization. It would be a lot easier to get away with human sacrifice in a town you built and controlled than in the middle of New York City. It could be that New York was too risky to stay at because Gozer was going to destroy it when they arrived, so he relocated and left a message for Gozer to join him at the town.
    • Also, while the odd-and-end features of the building might have been easy to "hide in plain sight", randomly stashing a corpse in the attic in a building that wouldn't have been fully rented out by cult members would have run a risk of having someone external to the cult stumble upon it and call the cops. In a town in Oklahoma where enough folks would plausibly be associated with the cult that the cops wouldn't interfere, the risk of failure on this front seems a lot lower. Also, nothing says that the corpse couldn't have been moved to Summerville at a later date than 1945.
    • Maybe Shandor died in Summerville, and his remaining cultists simply weren't willing to ship him all the way back to NYC? That's kind of a funny thought. Them just dumping him in the mine and running off.
  • It would seem that Central Park West was a later plan to get a much faster summoning by using industrial level technology and ghost knowledge to collect spiritual energy at a highly accelerated rate. The mine was probably the original plan but Shandor opted for something with a quicker pay off and that was mpre extravagant befitting his god. It seems possible, if not probable, that Shandor expected Central Park West to go off in his lifetime but somehow miscalculated how quick energy would pool and when his death approached he wrote his more extravagant plan off as a dud returning to the original much more seemingly reliable plan based on traditional methods.
    • That makes sense, especially considering how 1945 was listed on the temple's dateline . Shandor probably assumed that would be the big event, and that NYC would be wiped out, leaving him and his cult unharmed in Summerville. When it didn't happen, he wrote off the New York building as a botched experiment and spent the remainder of his life charging up the temple's pit with human sacrifices.

• Ray tells Phoebe that the firehouse was converted into a Starbucks. At the end, Winston brings the Ecto-1 back to the firehouse, and it looks abandoned but unchanged.
  • Given his attitude about how the Ghostbusters ended, he may have just been making a bitter quip.
  • It's also possible that he assumed it was what happened. He probably assumed it was bought by the actor, unaware that Winston bought it, and probably hasn't been by because the place holds a lot of memories for him, and just assumed it got knocked down as there are many places in New York that used to exist in the 1980s that aren't the same now, in some cases completely demolished and a new building put into place. And considering the amount of Starbucks that exist in New York City, he probably assumed that what happened to the building.
  • Maybe the upper levels of the firehouse were converted into a Starbucks, but Winston had the garage area and the containment unit down in the basement left untouched?
  • Alternatively, a firehouse presumably would take up a lot of space on a city block, so perhaps what was the fire house got subdivided, and there is a Starbucks somewhere on the lot that building takes up, but a lot of the old firehouse is still there. Maybe the office space of the firehouse was converted, but not the larger spaces that would involve more work.
  • It could also be that Ray wanted to discourage a caller who he still assumed was just some random wannabe-fan from ever looking for the firehouse, because he knows it's not a safe place and she'd only be disappointed by what a dump it's been reduced to. Certainly, his initial reaction to Phoebe's questions suggests he's had to shoot down a lot of those kinds of calls, so claiming it's just a Starbucks now might be his default "Don't bother" response.

• Did the events of Ghostbusters 2 happen in the timeline of this film? When Ray explains how the Ghostbusters broke up, he makes it sound like after Gozer was defeated they stayed in business until the ghost activity dried up. Yet we find out in G2 that they were court ordered to suspend their activities until it was lifted during their trial when they were caught drilling a hole in the road. However no mention is made of Vigo, Oscar, Callie who would have been born between films based on Egon's pictures of her, or really anything that happened during the second Ghostbusters film except for Ray's bookstore that he opened sometime between the first two films.
  • Jason Reitman said Ghostbusters II still happened. Also the photos in Egon's lab imply Callie was born before the first movie, with notes dated as early as 1983.
  • Double-confirmed with the follow-up film Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, as the Statue of Liberty scene in the film was directly referenced and footage shown.

• Why is a kid as demonstrably brilliant as Phoebe in summer school? For that matter Podcast seems pretty smart too. While he might be disinterested in school, he doesn't seem like he would be slacking off so badly that he would need to make it up over the summer.
  • It could just be a general lack of focus in key areas; since we don't see them in summer school that often it's hard to say how much extra credit they actually need.
    • "Einstein failed math" seems to come into play here. It's also possible that she was good at science-ish stuff but was having trouble with (say) literature.
    • It's very possible that Phoebe has to do summer school simply due to grades, not for lack of not "getting it.". Grades, comprehension of subject and intelligence are all very different things.
  • It might be more for the 'day care' aspect of it. Granted, Phoebe's a smart 12-year-old, but Callie might have felt uncomfortable leaving her alone all day while she and Trevor worked, especially given that they were new to the area and didn't know anybody. Plus, it gives Phoebe a chance to meet the other kids, and given that Callie was concerned with Phoebe's socialization skills, that would be a bonus for her.
  • Given Phoebe's intellectual aspirations, she might have asked to go to summer school at a higher grade level, purely so she could jump ahead by a year. With her family dead broke and the inheritance all that spared them from homelessness, she probably knows that building a stellar academic record as a prodigy is her best and only hope of getting a college scholarship someday. Little did she know what a crock Gary's "course" would turn out to be...
    • Yeah, this is the basic answer. Just like in college, high school kids can take summer school classes to get extra "units" and therefore graduate earlier. She might have a plan of skipping a grade or taking college-level classes in her later high school years.
    • Demonstrably false, just before she is dropped off, Phoebe asks her mom why she is there, and complains about institutionalized education. Callie may have put Phoebe there for that reason, but there is no way Phoebe requested it.
    • So maybe Phoebe only found out that the local summer school was remedial-only after she'd asked to go.
  • As for Podcast's presence, he seems like the sort who'd not pay much attention to classes that have nothing to do with his own interests.
  • Some districts offer optional summer classes for kids who just want to learn more or different things than are available on the normal curriculum. And it is a handy way to get some cheap daycare. Now, the comments about no one wanting to be there might indicate the class is a mix of students who need extra education and those who just want it, with Phoebe and Podcast being in the latter group.
  • Another possibility: The people who scheduled the classes at Phoebe's previous school may have screwed up, leaving her to have to take the class in the summer to meet requirements. The troper typing this has had this happen to him. Back in Middle School, he was assigned to some math classes. Though he had completed Middle School and was about to start High School the next year, it was discovered the month before he was to complete his last year in Middle School that he was suppose to have had a certain math class before starting High School, and due to the faculty and staff screwing up his schedule, he never got to take the class during the Middle School years. As a result, this troper had to spend a month and a half of summer school on a math class so he could start High School the following year. Screw ups can happen.
  • Despite the conversations between Callie and Phoebe and Callie and Gruberson, not all summer school is for kids who do bad. There are also advanced or elective summer school courses. It could be under that premise that Phoebe and Podcast were there, but Summerville didn't have the resources for separate advanced courses.

• The day is saved. The bad guys lose, the good guys win. Uhh...And Then What? This is actually a headscratcher for the series as a whole really. The first movie touched on it when Peck(er) turned off the containment unit, but it's never addressed what exactly the long term plan for containing Gozer is. Just stick the traps in a hole somewhere and hope that nothing happens to them? Pass the containers on to your children and your childrens' children and so on and hope none of them ever gets the idea to, say, open the traps with the help of their science teacher heedless of the possibility that something dangerous might be inside?
  • We have a trope for that.
  • Egon probably documented somewhere what the plan was (more than likely probably in the basement lab) after Gozer was secured, which may have been discovered by Phoebe (she was able to figure out what Egon's plan was without any notes from Egon himself), it's not hard to assume she would have figured out what he would have done after Gozer was handled.
  • Failing that, this could also be part of the setup to another film. It could be that Egon was so focused on stopping the clear and present danger to humanity, he didn't have time to consider the issue of long-term storage. Both the traps and the NYC containment unit are at best temporary solutions, their contents akin to the spiritual equivalent of nuclear waste. Perhaps someone should call the EPA...
    • Don't know if calling the EPA is a good idea, considering the last time a member of the EPA was involved basically lead to the apocalypse occurring. There's a good chance that maybe after the events of the first film, the company may have purchased real estate and set up long term storage and allowed for containment units that had smaller numbers of captured entities (in the preproduction art for the first film, this idea was explored). There may be "prisons" set up over the place that are better maintained by Winston's company after the disbanding of the Ghostbusters, and they have larger storage but a limited amount of ghosts incarcerated.
  • It is worth noting that they didn't just capture Gozer. They shredded Gozer into hundreds of pieces each stored separately. Going by pretty much all versions of the Ghostbusters shredding is one of the few ways to completely eliminate a specific ghost. That energy can recombine later to make something new of equal strength or split into multiple smaller ghosts but ripping them apart is effectively a second death.

• Egon's secret lab is entered via fire pole. How do you exit it?
  • Steps we didn't see, obviously. How do people ascend between floors in actual firehouses?
  • If you look closely, when Phoebe walks through the lab, there are some stairs. The fire pole might have been the quickest option when Egon was rushing to get to his lab.

• What is going on in the first scene? Which ghost does Egon have trapped? Which other ghost is chasing him? The trap is later found under the floorboards, secured by a fairly elaborate sliding lock. Did Egon put the trap under the floor just before he sat down on the chair? Did the ghost that killed him not think to search the house for the trap? (Don't forget that ghosts can go through walls, so presumably putting something under floor isn't really much of a barrier.) Apparently it was after the trap in the first place, since Egon clearly uses the trap as a lure. Was Gozer chasing Egon? But then, how could Gozer enter our world without the two terror dogs doing their thing first?
  • I assume you missed it, but he had one of the terror dogs in the trap. The kids release it without realizing what a bad idea this would be. The ghost chasing him would therefore be the other terror dog. As for putting it in the floorboards, I can only assume that the spot was lined with something to shield it from detection. The terror dogs also seem to be limited in what they can do without possessing someone.
    • Why didn't the other dog possess him, then? That's their whole M.O.
    • It wasn't a regular Terror Dog, but a Sentinel Terror Dog. They're different from regular ones in that they walk upright on two legs and have different horns. It was a Sentinel Terror Dog he caught (when they release it from the trap later you can clearly see it's not a regular one) and a Sentinel Terror Dog that pursued him. We don't what they can and can't do, but it's entirely possible they can't possess people.
    • Because he died before the hell hound could, all known possessions by ghosts in universe have involved living people, Egon tased himself as he was grabbed and prevented that from happening.

• Why on Earth would Egon abandon all his friends and family and spend 30 years working on this anti-Gozer project without keeping in contact or providing any evidence? He abandons his own daughter for crying out loud! I know he's trying to save the world, but there's no reason why he can't save the world and also give his daughter a phone call once a week. He's not in a life-or-death struggle 24/7 for thirty years straight! Heck, he even knows in advance that Gozer won't reincarnate until 2021, so he can afford to take a relaxed attitude about it.
  • Egon was never the "relax" type.
  • Not to mention, apparently he never had enough money. According to Janine "He could barely keep the power on". There may have been times when Egon had to get a job, or more than one job, in order to survive. He also needed to eat.
  • As for his daughter, he possibly tried to contact her, but Callie's mother prevented him. Maybe she didn't want her daughter from her to be involved in the Ghostbusters scandals; as the lawsuit after Gozer's first loss. Perhaps growing up, Callie herself ignored her father's attempts to contact her.
  • He told his friends, as Ray pointed out, but they probably figured that if Gozer came back, it'd be easy fight. Egon clearly realized Gozer would come back twice as strong.
    • And so his answer is to run off to handle it all by himself? He really seemed to be flying by the seat of his pants, which is very un-Egon-like.
    • If you knew Gozer was going to come back and even more powerful, and you told your friends and they didn't believe you, wouldn't you go rogue if it meant protecting the people you care about? You would have to do things you don't normally do if you are trying to save the world. Egon, of all people, would understand that concept. When he found the mine, he tried to call Ray for possible help, but Ray shot him down. So, either way, he had no chance at getting any help.

• Related to the above, why were the other ghostbusters skeptical of Egon's claims? They have personally saved the world from ghosts twice now, so Egon's talk about another ghost apocalypse is hardly far-fetched. Also, the movie shows us that there's a well of ghosts that periodically rise up inside the temple, and Egon has rigged an automatic proton-pack system to keep the ghosts down. Did he never think to take pictures of this phenomenon and send it to his ghostbuster friends? Maybe even just expose the whole thing publicly? Or at least tell his estranged daughter why he hasn't been around to see her recently?
  • He followed a LOT of false trails before getting onto Summerville. Ray explicitly tells that. They were already on a slump, Egon was raving about the apocalypse and getting duds all the time, so in the end they got in a big fight, Egon thought he had his hand forced and so cleaned up the guys and left.
  • Possibly the automatic stream-crosser was only installed in late 2020, in preparation for Gozer's expected 2021 return. By the time the ghosts in the pit started rising, Egon believed his bridges with the other three were well and truly burned.
    • We're talking about the end of the world, here. If there was ever a time to reach out to your estranged ghostbuster friends, this is it.
    • He TRIED. Ray mentions talking to him after discovering the location in Summerville, and Ray, while still bitter about what Egon did, ignored him and wrote him off as insane.
  • If Ghostbusters: The Video Game is a part of this continuity, whether wholly or in Broad Strokes, then the other Ghostbusters have every reason to believe that Gozer is already dead and gone. Small wonder that they'd think Egon had lost it.

• Why would Egon steal the Ecto 1 and all the gear? He knows that Gozer won't show up till 2021, so there is absolutely no rush. He could just build new proton packs from scratch if need be. Stealing the stuff (and never returning it) just seems like a dumb Conflict Ball to establish tension between him and Ray.
  • He may have been chasing down a bunch of false leads as to where Shandor's second hidden temple was located, with no chance to settle down and build stuff until he actually located the old mine. Shandor and his cult were evidently quite rich, with enough political and economic connections that they would've had their fingers in a lot of pies, back in the day.
  • Egon probably thought that, if he could track down Shandor's other construction projects and properties, he could demolish them before 2021 and head off Gozer's return without the need for a direct face-off. If the Central Park West building had been demolished to clear ground for a sports arena prior to 1984, would the original film's cross-rip had taken place at all? He didn't know that the site in question would take him decades to locate, or be imbued with too much power for Egon to just zap a guard-ghost or two, sabotage the place, and go home.

• Everyone says Egon is a "dirt farmer" who owns farmland but refuses to grow anything. Did nobody notice the large fields of wheat everywhere?? Are we supposed to assume that this wheat field has been maintaining itself for thirty straight years?
  • Maybe Egon rents the surrounding fields out to neighbors who do grow crops on it? That would explain how he can afford to eat and pay for hardware, if he's getting checks from tenants every so often.

• In the first film, the heroes didn't understand Gozer's plan until it was already happening, but in this film Egon had thirty years of prep time, which raises questions. For instance, you need a physical structure to summon Gozer, right? In the first film it was that skyscraper that had been built out of a special kind of metal. In this film it's an underground temple. If you demolished the temple with dynamite or whatever, wouldn't that end the threat immediately? Seems like Egon could've solved everything really easily.
  • Some things to consider, it doesn't seem like you actually need terribly much of a physical structure. The skyscraper was designed to focus spiritual energy allowing it to build up the necessary charge much faster then more traditional methods. The mine by contrast was clearly much more traditionally built having created a situation where pissed off souls naturally congregate. As a result you could blow the temple itself to dust but the rituals were already in progress and the well of souls being used to summon Gozer would simply bubble up through the rubble with no way to drive them back down.
  • But if there was another temple somewhere, the cult could use that later. He wanted to contain Gozer properly.
  • The temple decorations and carvings and so on were probably there for the cultists' benefit, to keep Shandor's minions properly indoctrinated. Dana's apartment building didn't sport any overt Gozerian scripture or religious decor, and worked just fine as a summoning point without such trappings. Rather, it was the mountain itself that was the focus of spiritual energy, and that shook every time the automatic stream-crosser balked its purpose. Unless Winston's company just happens to specialize in West Virginia-style removal mining, nothing in any of the original Ghostbusters' arsenal was going to suffice to take a whole mountain down.

• When the kids go to get the car and the gear from the police station, where are all the police? The building appears to be completely abandoned for some reason.
  • There's a bit where the police are receiving emergency calls from all over the county, due to all the ghost activity kicking off. Probably they're off looking into those.

• Near the end, the kids get the Ecto 1 out of the impound lot. Phoebe, Trevor and Podcast drive off in the Ecto 1, while Lucky drives away in a cop car. Where is Lucky going, and why? She sort of just disappears from the movie for awhile.
  • She goes to the farmhouse to retrieve another proton pack, and prepare her ambush there.

• After the kids get arrested, Callie shows up to bail them out. She bails out Trevor, Phoebe and...Podcast, for some reason. Where are Podcast's parents?
  • Technically, Podcast didn't break any laws himself. It was Phoebe who shot up the storefronts with the proton beams, and Trevor who was driving recklessly and without a license.
    • Even so, wouldn't the police contact his parents?
    • Assuming Podcast's parents actually care about him. In fact, it makes sense as to why he becomes friends with Phoebe after just meeting her at Summer School: he might not have anyone who cares where he is.

• Does nobody get punished in any way after they shoot up Main Street? Wouldn't the kids get grounded? Wouldn't Trevor get fired?
  • Trevor likely did get fired. But the film ends before his next shift would be due, so we just don't see it.
  • If Trevor had been fired, I doubt they'd let him back on the premises.
    • It's a tiny, boring town. Bored teenagers make bad decisions. If they banned every local youth who ever vandalized property or got fired from one of the few businesses around that hires teens, they'd lose a major chunk of their customer base.
  • Officially? The kids hadn't had their court date yet. They were probably arraigned in front of a magistrate and had a bail set (though what the bail for "firing unlicensed nuclear particle accelerators in a public place" would be is a riddle for the ages...) and were to appear later on for trial. Unofficially? Callie was probably trying to mull over an appropriate punishment, but given her own mental state at the time, she was likely in "check-out" mode and didn't want to deal with it. And, of course, the next day was when all Hell broke loose, literally. Given the kids were proven not only right but also as having helped save the world (and with the original Ghostbusters, who had a documented record of having saved the world already, able to vouch for them), it's almost certain that all the charges that they would have had leveled against them would have been dropped.
    • Or reduced to fines (they did cause a lot of damage with no official request to intervene in the Muncher chase), but Winston was able to clear those up no problem.

• How much can ghost-Egon communicate? Apparently he can't talk, but he can move chess pieces and lamps at will. In that case, can't he just pick up a pen and write messages? He could explain the whole backstory in a couple of minutes!
  • While it might be better for exposition its unclear how much Ego can actually do. Most of his activities are small simple actions, flipping a switch, turning a lamp, opening a drawer. Its entirely possible that in his state the fine movements of writing are beyond him. Even so moving objects and pointing out important things is far more eye catching as well as harder to dismiss as delusions or things he wrote before death.
    • The fine movement idea makes sense. When you look at the scene where he is controlling the chess piece to knock the one Phoebe moved off the board, as well as the lamp and the drawer, the way he knocks the piece off the board, the lamp's movements and the pulling out of the drawer seem rather "aggressive" in comparison to how a living person would do. So, maybe moving objects requires more "force" for ghosts to be able to move items within the physical realm of the living.
  • A trope from Ghost is a tip-off. Being a ghost means you're incorporeal. It took time for Ghostly Egon to learn how to manifest his paranormal energy to make brusque manipulations of objects, and later more refined movements like moving and picking up objects. A lot of willpower was required. Thankfully, Egon has always had a lot of will, which allows him to physically manifest at the movie's climax to aid in saving the day and a face to give the audience and characters a face to formally say goodbye.
    • Not to mention, he did have time to practice between his death and the arrival of his family to the house. I mean, we see that stack of books going from floor to ceiling. He may done that in his time waiting to practice.

• Pheobe calls Ray from prison but gets cut off. Did she not think to just call him back again the next day? She still has the phone number, and presumably she has access to a phone.
  • There are also some factors that hasn't been taken account of with this question:
    • Was it ever established that the farmhouse had a working phone? We know Egon called Ray, but that was ten years prior. And seeing that Janine stated that he could barely keep the power on, it'd make sense that after the conversation he had with Ray when he tried to tell him about the temple's location, he probably just stopped using the telephone and had the services disconnected. We know that the house has internet (as Phoebe uses it to watch the original commercial while at home), which establishes that there might be a phoneline (a place that rural may have been using DSL, which requires a phoneline), but we never really see a telephone at the house, do we?
    • Also, the only other phones that she'd probably have access to in Summerville were payphones (which costs money she may not have).
    • Another factor to take into account, she and others probably wanted to confirm that there was in fact a temple there, as Ray told her "there are a lot of carvings in mountains in that area" when she brought up the carving that Podcast showed her. By confirming that there's a temple there, she could probably try to call back and confirm to Ray that Egon was right. In fact, it may have been the reason why she and the others went back to the farmhouse: Phoebe wanted to tell Callie what she found and that Egon wasn't insane or an asshole that she believed him to be, only to discover that Zuul had taken her over. And as a subsequent result, calling Ray back got sidelined because of the pending apocalypse.
    • It wouldn't have matter if they had called anyway, because it's clear that Ray had to call Peter and Winston, had to gather what equipment they had left and had to drive from New York to Summerville (as there'd be no way they'd be able to get their proton packs on board an airplane post 9/11, mind you). That means they had to drive non-stop from New York to Summerville without any stops (and we do see that in the initial trip montage, it took Phoebe, Trevor and Callie one stay in a motel during their trip). So, Ray wouldn't have been at his shop to answer the phone if she had called back anyhow.
    • Winston is revealed to be the founder and CEO of a multinational corporation, so they could've chartered a private plane and transported their equipment that way, had a rented truck or van waiting for them at the nearest airport and drove from there.
    • Not to mention, as far as Phoebe knew, Ray wasn't going to help her anyway considering what he tells her.

• Egon's entire front yard is littered with ghost traps. They're collectively powerful enough to trap an entire swirling vortex of ghosts and Gozer besides... and Egon's ghost/spirit is fine. How?
  • Egon isn't standing over the trap(s)
    • This is correct. Also, if you pay attention to when the traps in the films are opened, there's a noticeable light that emits from them. This is a capture beam (this is the term used in the video game). Essentially, you have to have a ghost over it to be able to capture it (see the scene where Slimer is captured in the first film or when the Scolari Brothers in the second film are captured). In the game, you had to drag the ghosts over to it before the trap could catch them. Now, apply that to the trap field set by Egon. The multiple traps act like one large trap. The capture beam would, therefore, be a lot bigger. But in either case, Egon was still outside of the capture beam (we see this when he moves Phoebe over to the other OG Ghostbusters while holding Gozer in place. This was to not only get out of the way of the capture field, but to get Phoebe out of the way of the trap field as well (as we never know exactly what happens if a human being if they were in the capture field a ghost trap). So, as long as he wasn't standing in the capture beam, he would not be sucked into any of the traps. Gozer, as well as the swirling vortex of ghosts above the farm, were in the capture beam.
  • Watch the scene again — the traps don't only capture Gozer, they also pull in all of the wayward ghosts that were terrorizing Summerville at the time, from several miles away. Those ghosts weren't over the traps or their capture beams, but they got pulled in anyway. By all rights, Egon should have been trapped as well, but Rule of Drama prevails...
    • Yes they were Gozer had the storm follow them to the house, presumably because they were using the energy to maintain what was left of their form.
    • Odds are, Gozer yanked in all those other spirits deliberately in a mass Devour the Dragon, to maintain its own cohesion against the trap-field's drain, or perhaps in an attempt to chuck minions into individual traps one by one, so they'd fill to capacity. But no, the field's collective suction was too great to be sated by anything less than the Big G.
    • Again, see above capture beam explanation. Egon was close to the capture beam, but not over it to get sucked in (and all ghost trap scenes in both films have to have the specter in the capture beam. They had Slimer over the capture beam in the original film. The Scolari Brothers were above the proximal area for the capture beam in the second film before the guys used the trap (which they had to draw both the ghosts over the trap itself). The invisible ghost(s) handling the crystals in the store during the montage in the second film? More refined capture beam focused between mirrors. So, seeing Egon wasn't in the capture beam for the Trap Field, he wasn't at risk of being drawn in.

• Phoebe says that Trevor has failed his driving exam three times. Later, she reveals that he's still 15, which isn't old enough to even take the driving exam. In fact, given that he'll turn 16 in February, and it's June, he's not old enough to get a learner's permit.
  • Phoebe may have been referring to the written test. In Illinois (where Callie and the kids are living at the start of the film) you can take the written test and receive a learner's permit at 15.

• Trevor is surprised when his mom tells him they'll be staying at the farm indefinitely, instead of merely a week. Did he not notice them packing up all of their possessions from the apartment before they left? Or did Callie leave all of their possessions behind even as they got evicted?
  • Since Trevor assumed they'd be only gone a week, anything large or heavy would have been left behind anyways (if it wasn't part of apartment previously) and Callie could've quietly sold those off while the three of them loaded up the car with everything else that could fit.
  • Or he'd assumed they'd stay long enough to sell Grandpa's old dump, then use that money to find themselves a better place back in the city. Moving for the long term to some tiny farm town in the middle of nowhere had probably seemed unthinkable to a city kid.

• So on their first full day in Summerville, Phoebe goes to school, Trevor starts working at the restaurant, and Callie... did what, exactly? The implication is that she's digging through her father's estate, but then why didn't she notice the Cadillac with the sirens and horn in the barn? Or the subterranean lab with the firepole access?
  • Callie mentions that if Phoebe didn't want to go to summer school she could help "scrub asbestos out of the attic" and with the stuff she picks up from the hardware store, it's suggested that she focused on getting the house into a more livable state and didn't look much at the rest of the property.

• So Trevor finds an old Cadillac in the barn and starts trying to get it back into working condition. Why doesn't he mention his discovery to his sister or mother?
  • Maybe Trevor figured his mother wouldn't let him drive it once he fixed it up, since he doesn't have a license. As for his sister, he didn't tell her to prevent her from telling their mother.
  • Trevor knew that fixing an old clunker up himself on the sly was the only way he'd ever acquire a car of his own, given the state of the family finances. Plus, he didn't want Callie to try selling off its salvageable parts on eBay or whatever.

• If the Field Trap that Egon set up can be powered by a Proton Pack, why didn’t he power it that way in the first place?
  • Possibly Egon was hoping that the power from the silo-capacitors would be enough. Perhaps he didn't have time to perform a test and therefore he couldn't foresee that the trap would not work.
  • The night he died, he didn't have a proton pack with him and the enemy was hot on his heels. Apparently, the proton pack in his underground lab was the only one at hand and it needed to be repaired.
  • Or, more likely, he was forced to ditch his proton pack and other gear when he crashed his truck, because it meant he had to outrun a demon dog on foot. Back-mounted nuclear accelerators aren't lightweight, after all.

• In the opening moments of the film, Egon is seen breaking his way out of the Shandor mine complex. So who closed the gate and locked it after he went in?
  • Probably him. You have to take into account that the town had been shaking for a while before his death, meaning that he had managed to setup the proton packs at the mine. So, that means he probably went to check it regularly, in addition to getting everything set up at the farm. It might have been shortly before the events of the film that he saw the spectral version of Vinz and managed to trap him a few days later (and keeping the gates locked makes sure that no innocent bystanders will get in his way, as well as cutting down the risk of someone finding the tomb and interfering with the proton packs like we later see Vinz do).
  • He probably followed a different route on his secret forays into the mine, avoiding the gate entirely, so nobody in town would notice headlights approaching the site after dark. Getting arrested for trespassing could have ruined his Gozer-capturing plan before it even began. But once he managed to successfully catch one of the demon dogs, he booked it home to the farm by the shortest available way, not bothering to avoid or even open the gate, because getting thrown in jail took a back seat to Egon's not getting possessed or turned into dog chow en route.

• So, why didn't Egon just tell the people of Summerville who he was? The Ghostbusters are known and still remembered in the movie, and being a "celebrity" might've done more for him than being known as the "Dirt Farmer."
  • Maybe out of caution. Keep in mind, he found Summervile, a town made by Ivo Shandor. There's nothing saying that the cult that he created may have still active ties in the town (or, maybe even second or third generation cultists might exist). Seeing that the destruction of Spook Central, which Ivo Shandor himself designed, any surviving cultists would have known it was the Ghostbusters who stopped it. Egon didn't tell anyone who he was because for all he knew, there was a chance that there could be an active Shandor cult that exists in town and doesn't want anyone to let on. Egon was just as much paranoid as he was prepared.
  • Or he knew no one would believe him. It only took five years for all of New York to forget the events of the first film and label the Ghostbusters as frauds, after all—this is a very skeptical and cynical version of our world.
  • For all we know, there might've been an outstanding warrant on Egon for stealing all that gear. He may have fallen into the habit of staying anonymous until the statute of limitations expired back in New York.

• Did this movie de-canonize the 2009 video game? In that you face Ivo Shandor's ghostly spirit and finally defeat him for good, and yet here he is alive and well (or in suspended animation, anyway).
  • Maybe? Could be that Shandor was "dead enough" to become a ghost, suck in spirit energy, and try and become a god as seen in the game, but alive enough to wake up when Gozer arrived at the mine.
  • It's possible that the events of the game might have happened in Broad Strokes.

• This is quite a silly one, but how does Trevor know how to drive a column-shifter? Who taught him to drive any kind of manual when he doesn't have a learner's permit yet?
  • It's not a manual actually. The Series 70 chassis that the Ecto-1 is built on was only ever offered with a 4-speed Hydramatic, which is one of the earliest automatic transmissions. So that's pretty neat!

• How do the kids not know about Egon, ghosts and the Ghostbusters? The events of the first two movies happened less than 40 years ago. If the dead rose and started walking the Earth it would have been documented in EVERY newspaper, magazine, scientific journal and publication and schoolbook all over the world. Scientist would STILL be studying the phenomenon to this day. There is literally NO way that everyone on Earth and these kids don't know about the existence of ghosts.
  • THIS is the main reason I couldn't stomach this film or buy into its drama. Everyone repressing the crazy events of 1984 was already dumb when Ghostbusters 2 did it for the sake of re-hashing the plot of the first movie, and that kind of nonsense is a million times more frustrating in a film that takes itself more seriously.
    • Well, there's multiple reasons:
    • A: As pointed out by Phoebe, the events of the first two films happened over 20 years before they were born. So, unless their parents introduced them to the Ghostbusters and the events of the first two films, there's a good chance that they never would have known about the events, let alone the members of the team, unless they otherwise came across it. Surprisingly enough, this is true about the real world and topics that younger generations may not know. Even modern fans of Ghostbusters had to be introduced to the franchise. These days, they're introduced to it by their parents or they are recommended it by someone who may have seen it. Seeing that Phoebe and Trevor don't have a father and their mother hated their grandfather so much, it would account for why they don't know about everything up front.
    • B: It was localized to New York. There's no indications that Ghostbusters was a world-wide known thing (you have to separate the difference between our real world and the film's fictional world). And even then, people would probably doubt them or completely forget about them because of the fact that haunts stopped over 30 years ago (do you think Gary had Ghostbusters on his mind before Phoebe found the ghost trap? No, he didn't. It wasn't until he saw the ghost trap did he start bringing up the Ghostbusters). Hell, in the second film, people wrote the guys off as frauds, even when there was evidence and eyewitness account of a 40 foot Marshmellow Man walking down the street. And even then, it wasn't completely ignored, as Trevor stated he "remembers all the New York ghost stories" when Phoebe and Podcast brings them up. Podcast may not know about the Ghostbusters because he's a kid in a small town that's far away from New York. And even with his topic of interest being the paranormal and supernatural, that topic has a massive and diverse information base about paranormal events and creatures throughout the world and throughout all of history that he probably hadn't gotten to the topic of New York in the 1980s or Ghostbusters yet (he might have eventually if he hadn't discovered them along with Phoebe. But it just happened to be the fact that Phoebe was there that he started to look into the Ghostbusters).
    • C: The reason why the Trevor and Phoebe didn't know about the Ghostbusters and their grandfather was one is because it wasn't something they were introduced to by their mother. She literally hated her father so much that she didn't bring up the fact that Egon Spengler was their grandfather and that he was a Ghostbuster, let alone what the Ghostbusters were (mostly because of their association with Egon. There's even a good chance that she believed that Egon preferred to spend more time with the Ghostbusters than to spend time with her, since she considers him an absent father. Hell, she didn't even like any type of science because Egon was a scientist. She points out that all she saw were reminders that Egon didn't care about her, which would have included the Ghostbusters). Phoebe even asks Callie why she didn't tell her that her grand father was Egon Spengler and that he was a Ghostbuster.
    • D: As the OP asked, even with modern scientists looking over the events of the past, it's been too long for there to be many that would be interested in trying to confirm or debunk the events of the first two films. This also ties into B, as the hauntings in New York stopped and there hadn't been any noted hauntings outside of New York or in the over 30 years. So, if any scientists who wanted to study what happened, it'd mostly be so long ago that there's nothing new to provide any incite. Not to mention, the remaining Ghostbusters probably wouldn't have been interested in talking about it anyway (especially Ray, as we've seen him try to hang up on Phoebe the moment she asks him if he was a Ghostbuster. He's had that type of call over the years to the point where he's tired of it. And given that be blames Egon for the Ghostbusters collapsing, it makes even more sense that he, Peter and Winston probably don't ever mention it after having moved on). There's also the fact that the Ghostbusters' wheelhouse was outside of the typical scientific norms. Hell, they got kicked out of their university positions because they were considered a group of fringe scientists in an area that has no scientific merit in comparison to most of the other sciences that have been proven more practical and common.
  • Would you expect the average American 12-year-old today to know the lyrics of "Do They Know It's Christmas"? Or about the Union Carbide gas disaster in Bhopal? Or that the Soviet Union boycotted the XXIII Olympiad? Because all of those things were major global news stories in 1984 in the real world, and unless they did a project about it in school or their parents become nostalgic Band-Aid fans during the holidays, I wouldn't expect kids that age to have a clue about those things, either.
  • About those things? No. But if the LITERAL dead rose? Yes. This happened in New York City! One of the the largest, most famous, most lived in cities in the WORLD. There is absolutely no way that this would EVER be forgotten. There were camera crews, reporters, witnesses, political leaders, and other scientists there. Again, there's no way this would be forgotten. And 30 years isn't a long time. Scientists don't just give up studying something because there hadn't been a major event in 30 years. And there's no way these kids didn't learn about something this major in school. That would be like them not learning about WWII.
    • That might actually be EXACTLY why. The dead rising is an event so massively paradigm-shifting that most people likely chose to just try and forget it rather than process it or any implications of it. Besides, you'd be amazed at the kind of ridiculous theories people can come up with to explain anything that contradicts their worldview.

• Why is Trevor driving when the kids go out to the mine to investigate? He is already in trouble for driving under age and without a license. And Lucky, who drives the police car later, is in the passenger seat. So why is he driving instead of Lucky?
  • Because the car belongs to his mom. Lucky can't drive it because she's not a part of the family and not on the insurance (if any). So, if Lucky were to accidentally damage or wreck the car, Trevor would be in even more trouble for not being the one behind the wheel. Besides, he's more than likely allowed to get away with driving the car (even after previously being busted for reckless driving) because Callie connected with him more than she has with Phoebe, as Trevor isn't someone who reminds her of her father, showing even more of a disconnect between Callie and Phoebe. Not to mention, we don't know if Trevor still has a job at the diner and Callie would have allowed him to use the car to go there and back (as punishment for his reckless driving), and she had no idea Phoebe went with him (as we see the scene after the kids find the temple, Callie is looking for Phoebe at the house).
  • Lucky can't have that much more experience driving than Trevor does. Better to have the novice who's more familiar with the car, and can better judge its clearances and handling, sit behind the wheel.
    • Her father is the sheriff, lives in a small town and is at least working age (some states have it where the youngest a person can begin to work is at 16 years of age). There's a good chance that she has a little bit more experience practically in driving than Trevor does.

---