Ghostbusters/Fridge

Fridge Horror:

• And I Must Scream: If you accept (as Winston clearly does) that a ghost is the immortal soul of a dead human being, imagine what it must be like to spend a literal eternity trapped inside a concrete block.
• The concept, once you stop and think it through. Eldritch Abominations -- plural -- exist and actively plot The End of the World as We Know It. The rank-and-file supernatural nasties, down the most benign, harmless minions of said Abominations, are still capable of causing untold destruction and chaos. Ordinary humans who are willing to do insanely sick twisted shit in life can subsequently obtain ridiculous amounts of supernatural power once they die. Periodically, humanity has to face the threat of "Old Testament, real wrath-of-God-type stuff". And who's left to defend the planet from all this? A science nerd, an occult nerd, a uni bludger and a blue-collar guy who just needed a job with a steady paycheck, all armed with Mad Science. In a nutshell, the world needs Superman and it's got the cast of SNL.
  • Don't knock the 'cast of SNL', though; they've stepped up to the plate each time they've been needed so far.
• add some grimdark and you get 40k.
• A video game example, but what, exactly, is the deal with the children's section in the library?

Fridge Brilliance:

• In a scene at the last level, Ray has these regarding Stay Puft. He figured that the necromantic shockwave in the opening brought Stay Puft back to New York, but was still wondering why he didn't pick a new Destructor Form. Ray explains that Gozer, like the other ghosts, operates on a form of symmetry that has him locked into Stay Puft form. "One Destructor Form per god per dimension as Ray puts it, musing that he didn't choose such a bad form after all.
  • Ray and Winston carry the Slime Blowers in II because they are the most positive Ghostbusters, as opposed to Egon, who is borderline emotionless (being seemingly immune to the same slime that made Ray and Winston want to kill each other), and Peter, who is...well, Peter Venkman.
  • In the vein of Fridge Logic, Peter mentions "If we think of J. Edgar Hoover, J. Edgar Hoover will appear and destroy us..." Didn't he have to specifically think of J. Edgar Hoover in order to even say his name?
    • Not necessarily. He was naming a random celebrity, not thinking of anything in particular. If I asked you to think of a random person, you'd just spit out a name. Or it could be that you need to actively picture something, like Ray actively chose the Stay Puft man. Or Ray was already thinking about Stay Puft while everyone else was prattling on about Hoover.
      • In the game, Egon notes in Tobin's Spirit Guide (PS 2 version, I'm not sure Egon's notes appear in the other versions) that they were lucky that Ray picked Stay Puffed. He muses on the fact, that if they had successfully thought of nothing Gozer could had picked someone else other than the Busters to choose... or it could have gone with Nothing as its Destructor Form. And how exactly do you fight Nothing?
• The first time you see the original film, you assume that a "torb" or "sloar" must both be unspeakably-dreadful monstrosities when the Keymaster mentions them. On later viewings, once you know that the destructive force manifested in this era as a 50-foot marshmallow man, you have to wonder if those previous manifestations were as something equally dumb...
  • You get to find out what sloars are in the video game, though.
• The real-life version of 55 Central Park West does not look like it did in the first movie because the Ghostbusters blew up the missing portion!
• He's not doing it out of scientific motives and clearly doesn't notice, believe or care, but Peter Venkman's experiment into "the effects of negative reinforcement on psychic ability" at the beginning of the first movie is proved perfectly; the more shocks he gets, the more psychic the kid he's electrocuting gets, while the more he butters up the hot co-ed, the less psychic she gets.
  • Yes, but it's not negative reinforcement. The shocks are positive punishment, but because Venkman wants to see him squirm, he ruins the experiment with arbitrary shocking. The girl, thanks to Venkman's praise, is being positively reinforced against proper psychic deduction.
• The "Ghostbusters" theme by Ray Parker Jr. is the advertising jingle for the Ghostbusters as an organisation.
  • Sooo... The first thing they did with the five grand they got for the hotel job was hire a big-name star to write an advertising jingle? Instead of, say... A)improving their equipment so it's less likely to hurt someone(such as themselves) B)Fixing up the firehouse so it wasn't a deathtrap C)Publishing their results so the rest of the academic community would take them seriously? They were pretty damned confident about future work.
    • Of course, good advertising would help get them future work and more business -- as a catchy Ear Worm jingle is likely to help provide -- would help with all of those problems over time; A) and B) are gradually resolved as more income is coming in from more jobs, and C) as they gain more evidence from these jobs to help support their results rather than one isolated case study. Don't knock it; you can have the best and safest equipment and facilities in the world, but if no one knows your business exists it's not going to do you any more good.

Fridge Logic:

• The university drops their funding... but the very moment they caught the hotel ghost (the "Slimer" one), they had in their hands indisputable evidence of supernatural manifestation. They should have gone back to university and gotten a big, fat grant and hired some ex-special forces to handle the actual Ghostbusting.
  • So, if you had the chance to suit up, strap on a proton pack, drive around in a badass hearse, blow shit up, catch ghosts and get paid for it, you'd get someone else to do it and sit behind a desk? 'Cause that would put you at odds with approximately every single person who's ever seen the films ever.
    • Why not do both? Bust ghosts themselves, but as soon as one ghost is trapped, go back to the university, free the ghost to show it to everyone as indisputable proof, and finally win the Nobel prize, as well as one million dollars from James Randi for proving that paranormal exists.
    • Probably just as a "Screw You" to the university. "What? You want us back so you can share in the glory? Nah." Also, its possible they were assembling evidence towards publishing during the course of the movie.
      • Had to pay at least lip service to the mad science traditions. "They Called Me Mad! Who's Laughing Now?"
  • Also, their "indisputable evidence" turns out to be pretty disputable, at least by the EPA. "I have in my hand evidence of the paranormal!" "Okay, let's see it." "Oh, it's in this box on the wall. See the green light? That means there's a ghost in there." "...Really. Can you let it out and let us actually see it?" "Of course not, that would be extremely dangerous." And so on.
  • "Hey, we just got a call. Hop in."
    • Peck is an extreme Flat Earth Atheist who believes that specific, shared hallucinations of ghosts in particular can be chemically induced. He'd just say they'd drugged him somehow without his knowledge.
• Ghostbusters are supposed to be a privately operated company. Given that, how are they authorized to have blue police lights on their car?
  • They wouldn't be the first people to purchase a used ambulance or cop car with some of the works intact. I don't know if that's illegal anywhere, but if it is then it must vary by region.
    • One of Dan Aykroyd's conceits was that the 'Busters operate somewhat outside the law--in fact, there's a deleted scene where the car burns up a parking ticket. Walter Peck is about the only remnant of this idea, but one can easily assume that the Ectomobile rapidly became an icon and nobody wanted to challenge an icon (in-universe, that is).
  • Actually, in New York, cops use red lights; blue lights are used by volunteer firefighters and ambulance workers, and can be temporarily mounted on private cars with a permit. Although it's doubtful that the Ghostbusters would have qualified for such a permit...
• Why doesn't a giant J Edgar Hoover appear when Venkman mentions him?
  • Because Ray had already thought of Stay Puft. They were screwed even before Venkman started his spiel.
• This:

I feel like the Ghostbusters are too proud they “ain't afraid a no ghosts.”
It's your job.
My exterminator doesn't keep telling me he's not afraid of spiders.