Ghostbusters

Corrected entry: When Peter and Dana meet at the fountain, there is a shot of Nerd-boy sitting on the fountain. Next, Peter tells Dana, "Sigourney, but I like you as an artist." Peter mentions the actress's name, not the character name.

Correction: He doesn't say "Sigourney". He says "It's corny".

Greg Dwyer

Corrected entry: At the end when they cross the streams, Stay Puft is looking at them at their level. He was nowhere near that tall.

Correction: He was climbing the building.

Phaneron

Corrected entry: The Ghostbusters cross their proton pack streams which results in a tremendous explosion. The next scene shows the blast pushing Mr. Sta-Puft away from the building. A second later another scene shows the explosion radiating outward from the roof. The only part of him shown over the edge of the building is his head and his right hand. To get all over the Ghostbusters, marshmallow would have to be blown in the opposite direction against the force of the blast. It makes sense that there was marshmallow all over the street, but how did it land on the Ghostbusters?

Grumpy Scot

Correction: That is part of the joke. Just like part of the joke is that all of the Ghostbusters are covered in marshmallow except for Venkman, and that the explosion should have killed all of the Ghostbusters, along with Dana and Lewis in the first place. It doesn't make sense because it is not supposed to.

The movie has many more and better jokes than the fact that its climax does not make logical sense. Of course, they didn't study the ballistics involved in a few tons of marshmallow being heated by heavy radiation shot by an imaginary device, but we're here to nitpick, after all.

Sammo

Corrected entry: After the Staypuft Marshmallow has been blown up we see everyone covered with marshmallow (except for Bill Murray). When we see them leaving the building, everyone has suddenly been cleaned up.

Correction: Submitted and corrected before. The Ghostbusters have had plenty of time to clean up on their way down the building, especially since they were covered in marshmallow at night, and when they reach the street, it's morning.

Corrected entry: After Ray's dream sequence, when we see all three 'busters lying in bed: after he finishes tossing and turning Bill Murray appears to sit up, as if expecting the end of the take.

Correction: Actually, this whole scene was meant to be 'real'. It was, however, edited because it was too long, and turned in to a 'dream' sequence. As a result they filmed extra shots of Ray sleeping (and dreaming), and the joke was that Ray was groaning with pleasure while dreaming of the ghost/oral sex, and his moaning and falling off the bed woke the others. If you look carefully, Bill Murray (Peter) is actually looking at Ray, having just been woken up by him....

Correction: The dream ghost was Kymberly Herrin - Playboy playmate of the month for March 1981.

Thomas Norris

Corrected entry: In the scene after Dana's orchestra rehearsal, when Dana sees Venkman skipping by, she asks the "stiff" to wait there a moment. The "stiff" replies with "What? Oh, sure", however his lips do not move.

Correction: He indeed does say the words. What he says doesnt actually need much mouth motion at all (try it yourself) but watch his throat/adam's apple to see the motion that matches his words.

Corrected entry: In the sequence where the ghosts go berserk in New York, one ghost shoots itself into a taxi cab through the muffler. Right after that a man goes into the taxi, and we see the ghost at the wheel, in the form of a live corpse. The taxi then proceeds to drive off. However, it is now being driven by a regular guy, easily visible in the shot for a second or two.

Correction: We have no idea if this is an actual ghost driving the car (if so, this is the only instance in the film where a ghost manifests itself in a solid form), or if it's a possession, giving the driver the momentary appearance of a corpse.

JC Fernandez

Corrected entry: Scene where Venkman gives Egon the candy bar and says, "You've earned it": in the original film version, Venkman gives Egon a Nestlé Crunch bar; in the VHS/DVD versions, the candy bar is a Payday. I'm guessing there was a contract dispute with Nestlé sometime between the film release and the video release of the movie.

Correction: It's always been a Nestle Crunch bar. In the theater and on DVD. It was too small to see on VHS.

Corrected entry: In the scene in the hallway at the hotel with the green ghost, the ghost goes through a wall right above a vase of ferns, and about a second later, a cart crashes into the table with the ferns on it. The ferns go up into the air and out of the shot, but they never come back down. (00:33:14)

Correction: This scene is in slow motion, which is why they don't come back down.

Corrected entry: In the scene where Dana gets out of her car with the bag of groceries (just before you see the statue on the roof crumble) all of the cars are driving on the left side of the road. The story, however, takes place in NYC.

Correction: Its a one way street, so all lanes are in the same direction.

Ral0618

The entry is wrong, so is the correction though; it's shown as a two-way street with cars going both ways (it is also not the moment before the statues crumble).

Sammo

Corrected entry: When Gozar, or the voice of that lady character is telling the Ghostbusters to "choose" the form of their destructor, Peter tells them the example about J. Edgar Hoover and that they need to clear their minds. Well if he was thinking of J. Edgar Hoover at the time, shouldn't he have came out instead? (01:29:41)

Correction: No, because Gozer probably would give the Ghostbusters some time to reach a decision.

Disagree. It's Gozer the Destroyer. Not Gozer the Magnanimous... Choosing is all the break they get. But I can't prove that. Of course neither can you, so I find it a weak argument to stand behind. Luckily, whether or not Gozer the Destroyer would give them time is irrelevant. The choice was not made by the first person/character/being that pops into any of the GB's heads. Their choice is made the first time any of the GB team chooses a p/b/c "as their Destroyer." The line about J. Edgar Hoover was for illustrative purposes only. Peter didn't say, "if it were up to me, I'd choose J Edgar Hoover to be our Destroyer. And then that's who Gozer will appear as to Destroyer us. Does that answer your question, Ray?" (I can't remember who he was explaining to.) No, he's just explaining concept. Ray even says when asked what he did; (paraphrasing here,) I'm sorry. It just came to me. Something from my childhood. Something that could Never Ever Hurt Us... And I remembered Saturday mornings and Mr. Staypuft..." Ray thought of the spmm *in terms of selecting him as a Destroyer* in an attempt to trump the devil's bargain presented by Gozer. That or he went to La-La land and made a dumb choice. That's really the key word there; choice. Or "choose," rather. When you choose something, you don't just act on the first thought it idea that pops into your head. No, you consider a few options, maybe run an informal cost/benefit analysis. Then you pick your course of action, or in this case, Destroyer Avatar. If she had said maybe, "Think of a Destroyer." I could see the argument for the beskirted Director. At least that's always been my understanding.

Ray thought of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man before Peter said J. Edgar Hoover. Simple.

It doesn't matter if Gozer would give them time or not; Gozer doesn't say "the first thing you mention is what I will assume is your choice." We so not understand how Gozer interprets choice, so we can't say it's done wrong. No mistake.

Corrected entry: At the beginning of Ghostbusters, Peter Venkman says that he studies the effects of negative reinforcement on ESP ability, when, in fact, he actually studies the effects of positive punishment on ESP ability. This can be seen in the fact that he adds an aversive stimulus to the subject when the subject "gets it wrong" in order to decrease that behavior, which is positive punishment. If he was studying negative reinforcement, he would have to make the shock occur at all times unless the subject guessed the right card, at which point, the shock would be removed. Of course, Peter's methods were shown to be less than sound.

Correction: The "negative reinforcement" occurs with the female subject. She sees that the punishment for getting a wrong answer is electric shock. When she gets the right answer (or so Venkman tells her) she escapes that aversive stimulus. *That* is negative reinforcement. The experiment is bunk anyway, because Venkman is lying to them both.

Phixius

You could just as easily say that she's receiving positive reinforcement because he keeps complimenting her. The only thing that's for sure here is that his experimental design and conduct has a faulty member is poor.

Correction: The shock isn't the only stimulus. He's is also either being overtly obvious that he's helping the woman OR could be that the stimulus is the woman getting all the right answers.

Or that Venkman is a hack and doesn't know the difference between negative reinforcement and positive punishment.

jimba

Corrected entry: In the beginning when Ray is approaching the ghost in the library, when he says get her he's making his scared face before the ghost freaks out.

Family5

Correction: He's about to lunge at a ghost, and doesn't know what is going to happen. There's no reason why he can't be showing his fear and trepidation in this moment.

Phaneron

Corrected entry: As Gozer is flipping over the Ghostbusters, we can see some sort of ceiling decoration, but they are on top of a building and even the open portal door shows no roof above them.

Correction: That's actually part of the building spire with clouds above it. Not a ceiling. The clouds are fake of course and not moving so it looks like a ceiling. You can see this spire again when he marshmallow man is fired upon by the ghostbusters and the explosion later.

lionhead

Corrected entry: The movie takes place in the fall of 1984, but when Dana visits the Ghostbusters for the first time, Janine to kill time is intently reading her copy of People Magazine with Cher on the cover. It's the January 23 issue; it's not an absolute impossibility, but it's obviously a magazine they picked up the day of the shooting (which happened late 1983 to early 1984). (00:21:15)

Sammo

Correction: I'm sorry, but this is highly far-fetched. No mistake is sight in any way. There is absolutely nothing wrong about someone reading a magazine, new or old.

lionhead

To add to what the others said, I'll also add that most businesses, doctor's offices, etc. don't usually have new magazines on the magazine rack. They tend to keep old ones around for people to read instead. Weirdly enough, there's actually a reason for it - studies/polls show that places that put out new magazines tend to get most of them stolen. So they purposely just put out whatever old magazines they have lying around. Chances are, that's one of the only magazines they had sitting around the Ghostbusters HQ.

TedStixon

Oh absolutely, as anyone who's been to the doctor's or even the barber shop has experienced (newspapers are usually the daily ones instead, it's cheap and makes sense), but it's not as if there is a waiting room or magazine rack there, and their business freshly opened so it's not a leftover. Again, I personally find the justification of the magazine clashing with the fictional timeline but matching perfectly the one of the shooting less straightforward than the explanation, but of course it's my own view and as I said with full disclosure and honesty in the entry, it's not a complete impossibility. We don't see the whole place so there can be a waiting table somewhere with magazines from 9 months prior that one of the Ghostbusters picked up somewhere and I don't deny it.

Sammo

So why post it?

lionhead

This is getting a little redundant but again; simple, it's her desk, there are no other magazines or magazines rack nor a waiting room in a place that just opened for business, and I find more believable by a very good margin that they used whatever magazine they had handy when filming, which happens to be the time when that magazine is from, than thinking that it was a deliberate choice coherent with the fictional world to have her read at her desk a random old thing. I respect the objections I have read so far, but I already weighed them before posting and anyone can make their own judgement on that weighing them differently.

Sammo

I think you need to look up the word mistake before posting something new. Because it makes completely no sense to post this.

lionhead

Ah, well, I explained more than abundantly why I thought it relevant to post the objectively verifiable detail with a caveat and I wouldn't randomly do it whenever characters happen to read a magazines in movies - the 'meta' explanation is by far more linear, and I say it as someone who had months-old mags in their backpack when I was a teenager. I respect other people's evaluations and I don't mind if the entry is downvoted based on a disagreement about its relevancy on grounds of not being sufficiently incongruous to be a mistake. I think we can leave it at that and refrain from suggestions on what other people need to do.;).

Sammo

Sure, I said it all in the entry already. There's no law of nature or man-made that forbids a secretary from bringing at work a 9 months old weekly magazine. I think the real (or less far-fetched, if you will) reason is more than apparent, but do what you want with the information.;).

Sammo

The fundamental problem is that you yourself said it's not necessarily a mistake... ergo, it's not a mistake. Sure, in a meta context, it probably was just a magazine they picked up before filming... but that doesn't make it a mistake in-movie. There're many reasons why someone might be reading an old magazine, which invalidates the mistake. Case in point, we keep old newspapers and magazines at my house to re-read, because sometimes they have good articles, recipes, etc. It's totally possible and even likely she might be reading an old magazine.

TedStixon

Correction: You said it yourself: it's perfectly plausible for her to read whatever she feels like.

Sacha

Corrected entry: When Ray and Winston are driving back to the Ghostbusters' office, Winston (who is driving) is wearing coveralls; when they arrive and get out of the car, he is wearing just a shirt and trousers. (01:04:00 - 01:08:20)

Correction: But they also switched place; Winston is not driving anymore, Ray is the one at the wheel. So it is technically possible that they stopped the car at one point past Manhattan Bridge and Winston took off the uncomfortable suit.

Sammo

Corrected entry: After Dana and Louis break the gargoyles their hair is clean, but when they get to the lower floor their hair has foam in it.

oswal13

Correction: Very true. It has though been corrected multiple times already, because it's quite easy for them to have got some of the marshmallow muck (or 'foam' as you correctly call it since it's obvious shave foam) on themselves being next to the Ghostbusters who were covered in it. I am not a big fan of "it might have happened offscreen" explanations, but this does seem in line with what is shown.

Sammo

Corrected entry: When Dana is "strapped" to the chair and pulled into the kitchen, you can clearly see the track in the floor upon which the chair is riding. (00:51:50)

Correction: Can you really, though? I rewatched the scene on BD, I could post screenshots of the scene, and there are no tracks in the floor, simply the line of separation between tiles.

Sammo

Corrected entry: At the end of the movie when everyone is waving to the Ghostbusters and Ray is backing up the car, on the light bar on Ecto 1, the outer lens is a solid blue light bar. When the car goes to drive away, it's a clear light bar with blue lens covers over each individual rotator.

lbfire20

Correction: The light bars on the front and back of the roof of Ecto-1 are blue but have a solid white colored portion in the center, and nothing about them changes in between shots.

Revealing mistake: There's a scene where Dana's building is falling apart and stones and stuff are falling to the street below. One of the huge boulders bounces off a wooden police barricade in the bottom left hand corner of the screen, and then off a person. (01:29:14)

More mistakes in Ghostbusters

Ray Stantz: Everything was fine with our system until the power grid was shut off by dickless here.
Walter Peck: They caused an explosion!
Mayor: Is this true?
Peter Venkman: Yes, it's true. This man has no dick.

More quotes from Ghostbusters
More trivia for Ghostbusters

Question: I heard that Ron Jeremy had a walk on part in this film, does anyone know in which scene he is in?

Answer: Ron Jeremy can be seen in the crowd outside the firehouse right after the containment unit is shut off.

More questions & answers from Ghostbusters

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