Entries-specific
Franchise-wide
Consider how this trope works, particularly the ancient Asian Gu or Kodoku magic: numerous dangerous creatures are all trapped, isolated within a single location. Eventually, due to one stressor or another, they begin to devour each other and grow in power as a result, until only one or two are left, which have grown to an entirely new dimension of power. If there is any freedom to act in any way within the tank, then it has inadvertently become a very accurate rendition of this very process, meaning it may be only a matter of time until the unit switches from holding thousands of ghosts to holding one entity unlike any they've seen before..
Even when people disbelieve in the ghosts; it should be easy enough to prove that their equipment does stuff. Each Ghostbuster wears an "unlicensed nuclear accelerator" on their back that can clearly and undoubtedly send out a stream of energy capable of intense physical damage. ....yet nobody else in their world seems capable of, or even interested in duplicating this technology. This is because they can't. It only works because Egon and Ray believe it works. (Peter and Winston don't care how it works, just that it does, so they don't interfere with the effect.) Any attempts to reproduce this effect would either just fizzle or explode.
- Fridge Brilliance: Egon and Ray were the first ones to use the packs. Peter didn't use his until he saw they evidently worked.
- This also explains the constant untried prototyping where "one mistake could cause all life to explode at the speed of light" never happens...and when they cross the streams, it fortunately is always in a situation where something else happens anyways. It also conveniently doesn't hurt people when it hits them in the game, or heck, when they fire it in their general area without the convenience of a lead radiation shield.
- In Real Life, things can't travel at the speed of light. If you, for example went faster than light then time would essentially be frozen for you, meaning that life has nothing to really worry about as it's likely that the explosion has already happened.
- An alternate explanation is that most people simply aren't crazy enough to strap what equates to a mini-nuke to their backs without anything more substantial than the promise that "it probably won't blow you to New Jersey, we think".
- Their new slogan became 'Now with 100% less world-destroying demon!'
- They sued the Ghostbusters for it.
- Walter Peck slinks into the CEO's office."I understand you and I have an enemy in common."
- In alternative, people saw the Stay Puft marshmallow man as a publicity stunt for that product. It worked, people started buying more Stay Puft marshmallow, the company laughed all the way to the bank, and when asked whether that event was a publicity stunt, they replied: Sure, Let's Go with That.
- In the first issue of the comic an exec from Stay Puft's parent company is on the phone with somebody about it, talking about the fact that yes, they take a hit to their profits when he appears, but hey, it's basically free advertising.
- The Ghostbusters start capturing a few traditional, not too dangerous hauntings, and suddenly the PKE meter goes off the scale. This is because regular hauntings use up the PKE in an area. Removing minor ghosts concentrates the PKE and allows for a "cross-dimensional rip" event, such as Gozer or even a super-powered ghost like Vigo to come into being. Fortunately the events required to deal with them knocks PKE down to acceptable levels again and the "ectosystem" is again balanced.
- Rest assured that whatever city the Rookie gets sent to will have a Cross Dimensional Rip soon after he sets up business.
- Here's how the first movie's timeline would go: Gozer was already partly in our world due to the ritual Shandor and his cultists performed. It just took so long for him to show up either because of a time-differential between the worlds or because the building had to accumulate enough energy. Once this happened, Gozer could appear enough to induce the visions in someone. Things Gozer would want to happen. This happens all the time, in fact, it's why Peter didn't find any readings in Dana's apartment when he checked. Had the PKE not accumulated, this is all it would have been; the echoes of a god in another dimension; barely a blip on the radar. Then when the capturing of ghosts in the city started increasing the PKE...
- One final streamlining of all the above: New York City has the Grey Lady, Slimer, the Chinatown Ghost, and a bunch of other paranormal denizens floating about. On their own, in their own locations, the PKE is negligible. Inside the Containment Unit, however, the nasties are all in one place. That's what's concentrating the energy.
- As interesting an idea as this is (a bit like police going light on some minor organized crime to prevent an all-out power vacuum), the video game seems to suggest that the increase in PKE is due to Shandor seeding the entire city for Gozer's return back during his cultist days, possibly using the pink slime from the second film. Unless Ivo had some way of ensuring the Ghostbusters would form, bust ghosts, and raise the PKE level, this theory is probably on shaky ground.
- This explains why it seemed to become more monstrous as the public became aware of how dangerous it was. With less goodwill towards the cute image, Gozer's true nature was able to shine through. Presumably, it'd look a lot worse and be much stronger after wrecking New York.
- Stay-Puft did seem to be getting more aggressive and evil as it continued (both as the city's fear increased, and as it drew closer to the portal), culminating in its fiery, outright demonic incarnation once the proton packs ignited it. In that case, Ray's choice might have helped saved the city: by thinking of the most harmless thing he could come up with, he slowed Gozer down enough for them to think of a plan. As Venkman said, "Nice thinking, Ray."
- In the Wii version of the Game, Egon's notes in Tobin's Spirit Guide essentially validate Ray's choice. Egon remarks that had any of the Ghostbusters truly thought of nothing, Gozer may have simply moved on to someone else to make its' choice, and that it might have chosen literal "nothingness" as its' final Destructor form.
- In alternative, Walter Peck was so dumb he never figured out that the mayor was possessed, and his high PKE level was only due to the fact that he was an ass-kisser. Literally.
- Or maybe the possessed Mayor made sure to imbue a little PKE into Peck without him realizing it, just to divert Ghostbuster suspicion towards a guy he knew they hated anyway. And it worked! They never scanned the Mayor with a PKE meter.
In addition, Egon attempting to drill a hole in his head (a reference to a practice named "trepanning", which was believed to exorcise evil spirits and increase intelligence) was an attempt to gain greater access to latent psychic ability, as he either recognized or suspected he had this ability.
- If Part 3 had ever come to be, it could have been a perfect setup to get Peter and Dana back together again, both of them going through an on-again-off-again relationship throughout the years. And Oscar becoming a new recruit for the Ghostbusters, it would have led to Dana to come back to the HQ and running into Peter once more.
- Now that a threequal has been confirmed, this is entirely possible.
- Shandor's cult knew this and used it to make deals with them for power after death. Once elevated, Shandor's ghost, being a sane human remnant, was able to channel his new powers well enough to destroy Gozer after absorbing enough PKE. His line "I have chosen" was him creating his Destructor form on his own and reveling in his superiority over the Gozer.
- Gozer has to let the inhabitants of the world it's invading select the form in which it attacks them is some rule the thing lives by, either set by itself out of sportsmanship or love of challenge, or else set by some yet higher being or cosmic law. Perhaps it even has to be the first inhabitant(s) to encounter the thing, hence it demanding from the Ghostbusters alone that they make the selection. Had Ray refused any selection like the others, it may have done something to coerce them, like torture them magically, maybe with that same force lightning-like effect.
- Not likely that it has to be the first natives encountered, as Gozer nearly blasts the guys off the building before it asks the question. Had they fallen and such a rule applied, Gozer would've had nobody left to ask.
- Gozer requires humans to choose the Destructor because it wants to pick an especially devious form. Not so much "what are you afraid of?" but "what's the most grotesque thing you can think of?" Maybe it plays a little mix-n-match with different people's thoughts: someone thinks of molluscs and other deep-sea nasties, while someone else thinks of scorpions or something, and the result is some kind of unspeakable...whatever. Now, someone's going to ask, "Well, in that case, why did it go with the form of Mr. Stay Puft?" Answer: Gozer looked at "Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man" and went, "Well, there's something I haven't tried before!"
- Gozer anticipated that when it came through the gate it would be greeted by worshippers, so there wouldn't be any hesitation. "I'm here, what do you want me to be?" When Ray tried to order it back to its home dimension instead of falling to the ground and saying, "All hail Gozer the Destructor!" it got pissed off. After all, only a fellow god would dare try to give Gozer orders. But the ritual having been almost completed, it still needed the final part: Choose.
- Alternatively, they only erased people's memories of the Gozer incident, as Gozer is not a ghost. Also note that Winston is the only character to reference Gozer in the sequel. (They probably allowed the Ghostbusters to remember some or all of the event, in case their knowledge and abilities are needed once more; Louis remembers possibly because being possessed while being partially conscious burns the experience into your soul or something.) It just so happens that by taking away their biggest and most public event, the majority of people assumed all the little events (which have now dropped dramatically after Gozer's defeat) had a logical explanation. For the game, everyone has been deneuralized of the event.
- If someone calls the Ghostbusters mistaking an alien for a ghost, MIB shows up on the scene, neuralizes the Ghostbusters and persons who reported the alien, and everyone is nonethewiser. Also, proton packs = alien science?
- Aren't both movie franchises owned by Sony Pictures? Also, who would handle a ghost alien? I would imagine a more benign one would be better suited for the MIB (who are better at negotiations), whereas the opposite would be handled by the Ghostbusters (presumably ghost physics are universal). However, what if a completely corporeal, non-deific entity from another dimension comes to us? It's not a ghost or deity or anything, but does the MIB extend to inter-dimensional relations? This would probably make sense if you consider the original MIB comic in which they also faced supernatural beings.
- The video game establishes that Gozer worshippers supplied the Mood Slime from GB 2, and since numerous ghosts throughout the franchise the take the forms of things that are decidedly not human, this is entirely possible.
- Taking the whole canon into account it seems to be a mixed bag.
- The most common ghosts seem to be echos of people or strong feelings, how close the echo is to the original will vary considerably and produces things like Slimer a being of pure gluttony or the Ghost Jogger who follow a set pattern but lack emotional depth on their own. Additionally many of them become dormant unless theres another major phenomena going on for them to absorb passive PKE out of.
- The next most common are construct ghosts, that are manufactured through other means and either aren't based on humans or are based on secondhand information. The Scolari Brothers are construct ghosts manufactured by mood slime and the Judges anger filled memories which is why they're murderous caricatures only retaining their most physically noticeable features such as a prominent chin paired with a sly smile or being overweight.
- The rarest are actual people and beings that were never alive in the first place. Usually restricted to people who know what specifically they're doing to provoke the state or who had prior contact with the supernatural. For non-humans that's gods or demi-gods like Gozer and the terror dogs.
- It could be a new "rite of passage" for newbies to the company, as there may have been many who joined the Ghostbusters between the events of the second film and the video game, only to wash out early because they can't handle the job. So, they reserve the Rookie tag and nickname until they're able to pass their trial period, where they finally get their tag and the others begin to use their name.
- Venkman says it himself: "No names Ray. We don't want to get too attached."
- Might that be about the time of the Reconciliation of Meketrex?
In the films, the only times Egon really shows any emotions is during a deleted scene when they are getting kicked out of the University (he grabs Venkman), which was prior to the trapping, and when he gets mad at Peck (clearly, his soul or some such was released when all the ghosts escaped, or the sudden surge of psychokinetic energy affected his behaviour).
Similarly, some experiment (perhaps designing an early trap) prior to the first film did something to Venkman's soul, hence why he can look into the trap and why he never takes anything seriously.
- Philadelphia - An old city with many haunted locations, especially the infamous Eastern State Pentitentiary, whose spirits are already reported as violent.
- Gettysburg, PA - Easily one of the most haunted cities in America, which is understandable given what happened there.
- Washington, D.C. - Since the Busters are recognized by the state of New York, the Federal government could call them to clean up many of their buildings and properties
- Chicago - With the Hull House and Ressurection Cemetary, the new office will already have a who's who of supernatural beings.
- The comics show that this is where the Rookie chose to set up his franchise after the game.
- What would you nickname the 'busters at that station house? "The Ineffables?"
- Charleston, SC - As the third oldest surviving city in the US, there are more than enough famous ghosts for the Ghostbusters to deal with, from Anabelle Lee to Edward "Blackbeard" Teach.
- Memphis, TN - Depending on the timing, you could have Slimer rock out with the ghosts of Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Isaac Hayes.
- Boston, MA - Right in the heart of Lovecraft Country.
- Bangor, ME - Smack dab in the middle of Stephen King Country
- St. Louis, MO - Home of the infamous Lemp Mansion and Brewery, whose history of suicide and corruption has surely boosted the city's psychic turbulence.
- Seattle, WA - At least seven documented ghosts just in the Pike Place Market, clear on the opposite coast (they are lacking in West Coast presence), and attracted an unfortunate amount of infamous serial killers.
They're (maybe) both Jewish, (Egon Ambiguously so, Willow in an Informed kind of way) and we can assume Badass Bookworm is an inherited trait. In the video game Egon mentions a niece, and he's given a brother in the first movie novelization. Scientists and scholars run in Egon's family. Throw in some continuity from the cartoon, and the Spenglers have a couple of wizards in their family tree as well.
So Willow is Egon's brother's daughter. Okay, so that leaves her with the wrong last name... but hermom is the type to insist on keeping (and possibly passing down) her own surname name due to ideas on psychology/sociology/patriarchy/proper parenting.
Since it involved incubating a powerful cosmic entity, the initial stages of Dana's pregnancy took years instead of weeks. Fortunately, she had a husband to attribute the pregnancy to at the time when it became more apparent. Oscar's presumably strong spiritual presence is what attracted the pink slime in the beginning of Ghostbusters II, even before Vigo chose him as his vessel.
With this in mind, it wasn't the crowd singing that interrupted Vigo's "Now we become one" moment, but Oscar/Gozer rejecting him.
- Disproved by the game, but only by a little bit: from the game, we know that a juvenile giant slor is pretty damn big. It must get even bigger when it matures to adulthood.
- Well, maybe the planet and its inhabitants are even bigger.
- Disproved by the game, but only by a little bit: from the game, we know that a juvenile giant slor is pretty damn big. It must get even bigger when it matures to adulthood.
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- The Ghostbusters video game features written recordings claiming that Gozer did appear on Earth in the past.
- What if Vinz, having been driven hopelessly insane as suggested above, can only think of the term "women" in the singular example of Zuul, the only (presumably) female he knows. Yes, extradimensional female, but with the whole Gatekeeper thing, I think it holds. When he tries to say "many men and women (or women and children, for that matter) knew what it was like..." it comes out as we might hear a child say "many mommies and daddies."
- Two problems with this theory. One: the species is referred to in multiple sources as "terror dog." Two: even in the human world, it's not uncommon to name a person after a different species. Ask anyone named Robin, Bunny, Tiger, ect.
- They might be called "terror dogs", because they kinda look like dogs and they are scary. Maybe that's just the English name of a zuul. Kinda like guinea pigs is the English name of what the natives of South America knew by a completely different name (and are not pigs). Or how Hounds of Tindalos in the Cthulhu Mythos are not actual dogs - but the "hound" descriptor is a good way to describe the unknown due to an analogy.
- Maybe my memory is faulty but Vinz doesn't say Zuul in quite the same way as he says zuuls, does he? Maybe they're two distinct words with pronunciations so distinct that our human ears can't quite make them out.
- Interesting...that would also explain why the slime worked on Vigo to defeat him—it was the negatively-charged slime that "awoke" him and gave him his power. Having the slime that had been positively charged by the New Yorkers and the Ghostbusters hit him took away all his power and re-sealed him in the portrait.
- The video game seems to imply that the pink slime was created in the laboratory on Shandor Island, and possibly that it's what made New York so susceptible to supernatural activity in the first place.
- Venkman was doing an experiment to test the effects of negative reinforcement on psychic ability. By the end of the experiment, the male subject has enough psychic ability to know that one of the cards has wavy lines on it though not the exact number of lines. This is despite the cards up to this point having geometric shapes rather than abstract "wavy lines". Venkman, preoccupied with sexual conquest, ignores him in favor of the female subject.
- In Ghostbusters II, Egon is working on a similar experiment - testing how positive and negative feelings affect the environment. It seems to be succeeding as he is seeing spikes of energy in the atmosphere with both positive and negative feelings produced by his human subjects.
- When the Ghostbusters discover a slime that responds to those positive and negative feelings, even going so far as to stir up psychokinetic energy in the courtroom strong enough to attract ghosts, they believe the slime is the cause of psychic disturbances in the city. In the video game, the slime is explained as bile of a Sloar, but what if that's only part of it? The massive amounts of slime and the fact that it's found in the sewers of New York imply that it didn't come from just one source. It could have built up as an element of human excrement over many years. The experiments of Venkman and Egon proved that humans have both psychic ability influenced outside factors as well as the innate ability to turn it into energy. Of course, human excrement would contain some of this energy.
- The slime wasn't in the sewers, it was in the long-abandoned pneumatic transit tunnels that run under Broadway. No poop in those.
- Side note: the implication I always got from the huge size of the river of slime was that it was a residue that had built up over time from all the crime, nastiness, and negative energy in New York. It may not be an accident that the filmmakers had it flowing through a fictional counterpart to Beach's Transit System which he created to circumvent Boss Tweed's power—the area and the reason for its construction was itself part of a hostile competition, and no one involved (but especially Tweed) was a particularly shining example of humanity at its finest. In any event, this doesn't mean, of course, that the slime still couldn't come from human excrement—just pointing out that the size of the river was likely also due to the saturation in negative psychic energy and disturbances over the years, and surely a commentary upon New York as it is stereotypically viewed. (Brooklyn Rage was actually stated in-story to be the reason the slime was building up so much power for Vigo, so there's no reason years of it couldn't have created the river in the first place.)
- The first part is confirmed in the world of the comics as of IDW's Ghostbusters: Year One issue #2. "Male student" (now identified as Bob Douglas) was interviewed for a book about the Ghostbusters (shortly after the events of the first film) and said he's been having nightmares about a haunted painting and something about a baby, meaning he's got a precognitive vision of the future. He claims this was the result of the electric shocks, no doubt because he had no way of knowing he guessed the symbol on the card correctly. Milton Angland from Ghostbusters 2 also seems to have the gift; he predicts the world will end on New Years Eve of that year, which it almost does due to Vigo.
- This one overlaps with a lot of other ghost stories, including Kingdom Hospital. In Kingdom, Mary states that Paul, her nemesis, sometimes goes back into the sensory-deprivation tank (presumably where he died) to "recharge". In other words, he must periodically return to the scene of his death to regain PKE. Therefore, the purpose of the Ecto-Containment Unit is to prevent ghosts from returning to the scene of their death and rebuilding their strength. After a while, they begin to disintegrate...at least in theory. Problem is, the G Bs can't put their trophies into separate cells, and there's nothing they can do to stop the ghosts from pooling their collective energies. This is why the ECU in The Real Ghostbusters resembles an alternate dimension: so much ghost energy concentrated in one place.
- Remember the other guest on Venkman's show in 2? The one who said it'd end on Valentine's Day? That's a good guess on when it'll finally come around.
- She received that info from an alien...perhaps 2016 will instead see the Doctor's final regeneration?
- That one was Jossed in Doctor Who 2013 CS "The Time of the Doctor".
- Perhaps...if we're lucky and Third Impact doesn't happen first...
- She received that info from an alien...perhaps 2016 will instead see the Doctor's final regeneration?
- Jossed that Ghostbusters 3 would be released in 2016. Confirmed that the guest's prediction that the world would end on February 14, 2016 is correct ... because that's when the first teaser for the Continuity Reboot was released, marking the end of Venkman's continuity and the beginning of a new one.
- Annnnnnnnnnd now we have confirmation on an actual Ghostbusters 3 that takes place in Vankman's timeline.
- Gozer took advantage of the damage done to the spirit/mortal world boundary, with an assist from that building that basically drilled a tunnel into our world.
- GB2 takes place after Madoka ends the Magical Girl system. The pink slime is solidified curse.
- Or, it's a classic Milgram experiment, and he was seeing if the girl would stop the experiment out of concern for her fellow test subject.
- Jossed (at least in the world of the comics) as of the IDW comic Ghostbusters: Year One #2 - Bob Douglas was interviewed for a book about the Ghostbusters, complained about the electric shocks, and claimed they were responsible about bad dreams he's been having about a haunted painting and a baby.
- Egon shows some symptoms of Aspergers syndrome, too- social awkwardness and a similar obsession with a single topic (the supernatural). This troper doesn't fall on the autism spectrum, but several of my friends do, and one of them described Egon and Ray as "two halves of one Aspie." Plus, Egon has a collection of "molds, spores and funguses".
- The IDW Ghostbusters comic's roll call pages described Egon as "probably on the spectrum", though it also claims Egon doesn't care what other people think of him.
- Alternatively, she was twice as upset when she realized they bagged her guest of honor.
- Well, in various interviews, Dan Aykroyd admitted that he modeled the character of Slimer (aka Onionhead) after John Belushi as a means of honoring him since he passed away. Originally Aykroyd written the script to be with three Ghostbusters characters and had intended for Belushi to play one of them. However, since Slimer does show some similar actions to Bluto (such as his eating habits and, in once scene, seen chugging down a bottle of Jack Daniels like it was nothing), this WMG may not be far off.
- Several sources confirm in various ways that Akroyd considers Slimer to be "the ghost of John Belushi", which, for this troper is as good as confirmed Word of God.
An early script for Ghostbusters 2 describes her as one of three women on the show who claim to have had sexual relations with an alien, while the IDW comics featured her making a visual cameo at Ray's occult bookstore.
Perhaps they're made to accompany Gozer whenever it travels to the next world which is partly why the targeted dimension experiences supernatural activity with Gozer's arrival. Hell, maybe Zuul and Vinz Clortho were among them being made into subservient demigods in the process.
- I think the idea was that the Scoleri Brother ghosts were ripped from the angriest person in the rooms head, as a Hanging Judge, of course two of the worst killers the judge convicted would be twisted into monsters in his head.
- It's possible, as the same thing happened with the library ghost in the first film. She appeared normal and docile when the guys find her. It's only after they annoy her by trying to talk to her and then trying to "get her" did she completely change from a normal human appearance to a full-fledge monstrous form.
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