Corrected entry: When Peter and Dana are looking in her refrigerator after the Gozer incident, notice the Coke can on the top shelf. In the wide shot, it has "Coca-Cola" written in small cursive letters, but in the close-ups, it just says "Coke" and the letters are large, and in print.
Corrected entry: After the battle with Gozer and the Stay-Puft Marshmallow man, if you pay close attention, you can see that the marshmallow goo covering Ray varies in amount, especially after he apologises for the barbecued dog hair comment.
Correction: Just before the barbequed dog hair comment, watch Ray in the lower right section of the screen. He is clearly seen to be wiping marshmallow off of his face, which accounts for the change in amount.
Corrected entry: Why did the Gatekeeper and Keymaster (the dogs) have to possess Dana and Louis? From everything we see, the dog statues are at the top of the building, and the demon dogs break through. Then they go and destroy half the building to find people to possess. They wait a while, Louis gets taken to the Ghostbusters, and Dana stays in her apartment. Then even later they go back to the top of the building, and stand exactly where they were standing after changing from the statues where the lightning changes them back into the demon dogs. What was the point of them leaving, possessing people, then coming back?
Correction: This is a question, not a mistake. Just because the whole scenario seems pointless to you, it doesn't make it a plot hole.
I agree; it's a legitimate question though, so instead of sticking it in the correction section I'd say to move it in the appropriate section.
It actually is addressed in the new movie why it happens, so I thought about adding the reason in, but have held off on it in case I get some of the details or wording wrong.
Corrected entry: When Dana returns from dog form she has no foam in her hair. When she emerges from the building at the bottom with Bill Murray she does.
Correction: She had to walk down the stairs through the entire building with a group of people covered in marshmallow. It wouldn't be hard to get some on her on the way down.
Corrected entry: When the Staypuft marshmallow man is melting, we see lots of melted marshmallow cover the rear left side of ECTO 1. When the Ghostbusters get in and drive off at the end of the film, the vehicle is clean.
Correction: There are several hours between the time Ecto 1 is covered in marshmallow until the Ghostbusters drive off in it, plenty of time for a good Samaritan in the crowd to clean it off.
Several hours have passed, really? They come out of the same building, and they didn't have a change of clothes or anything. It would be minutes. You technically can't discount the fact that since apparently doomsday was postponed someone might have decided it would have been nice to give a quick sponging to the Ghostbusters' car, but seems frankly the more far-fetched explanation.
Corrected entry: Who takes 300 cc's of Thorazine with them on a date?
Correction: The same person who would unethically and unnecessarily administer electric shocks to a test subject in an attempt to impress a girl and make her think she is psychic.
I think what the person who submitted this mistake is saying is why would he need it or carry it at all. Peter was going on a date with Dana Barrett so he would have no need to take it with him at all.
I think what the person who submitted the correction was saying is he's a weirdo and a creep; that's why he brings drugs on a date.
Corrected entry: In the ballroom scene, when Egon shoots the cake, it explodes seconds before the proton beam touches it. (00:36:10)
Corrected entry: Near the end when the Ghostbusters are talking with the mayor, Ray's hair is flat on his head. In the next scene when they get to Dana's building his hair is full and wavy. Would he have washed and blow dried between scenes?
Correction: Of course he washed and blow dried his hair between scenes. After speaking with the mayor, the Ghostbusters obviously had to go back to the firehouse (which isn't very far from city hall) to get Ecto 1, along with their uniforms and proton packs. While there, he did his hair. The Ghostbusters then drove Ecto 1 back to city hall to meet their escort and head to Dana's building.
Despite the usage of "of course" and "obviously", it sounds convoluted from start to finish, especially considering that they have a police escort at all times. It'd be more believable if you said they used the Mayor's shower or something (the truth is that simply they did not bother with the detail because it would have been pointless and detrimental for the movie's pacing, but that is a meta explanation).
Corrected entry: How could Egon get down to the ground floor so quickly? I mean, a few moments earlier, he poked a guest in the shoulder. And, why would he go back down to the first floor in the first place? They said that nothing happened on any floor except the twelfth.
Correction: Egon probably was able to track Slimer to the ballroom immediately after he slimed Venkman, Egon never says he was on the first floor, he probably knew the layout of the hotel and picked up Slimer's trail heading for the ballroom.
But Egon says, "get down here right away, it just went into a ballroom." That line alone indicates he is already down there.
Egon can still say 'get down here right away" while he himself is still en route to the ballroom.
Somehow I don't believe a man as intelligent as Egon would use an improper term such as "get down here" unless he was already at that location. He more than likely would have said, "get down to" or "get down stairs." Speculation yes, but in terms of his character, I feel this makes sense.
Corrected entry: When Dana tells Peter of the refrigerator incident, Peter opens the door to investigate. On the top shelf is a can of Coke with the label "Coke" clearly displayed. Just a moment later, he double checks the fridge, where the can now reads "coca-cola." Somebody turned the can between shots.
Correction: There are two cans, it's just that in some shots we see them one at a time.
Corrected entry: When Ray purchases the car for the business, Peter comes up and asks "how much?" In that scene, Peter is wearing a green and black checkered shirt and then he waks inside and asks if there are any messages. When he walks inside, he now has a completely different shirt on.
Corrected entry: When Winston says "I wanna make a phone call" to the guard in the jail, the guard closes the door of the cell twice. (01:10:45)
Correction: In fairness, you do hear two noises, the second more subtle. I took it as the door taking an extra pull to properly close. You can argue that in the first shot we don't see the door touching the strike plate or frame, and in the second shot you don't actually see anyone locking it, but I am pretty sure that there are many doors that behave in a similar way in real life.
Corrected entry: When Dana is tested if she's telling the truth, right after she says "Who would make up story like that?", we can see her saying "yeah I know" silently, as if she had messed up that line. (00:23:00)
Correction: She says "make up a story like that". She didn't mess up the line. Why she made the facial expression is therefore moot.
Corrected entry: When Ray pulls up in the Ectomobile (before it has been painted), Peter is walking over to the car and the camera is following him. In the reflection of the window, a piece of equipment can be seen (possibly a boom mic). (00:20:30)
Corrected entry: When Dana comes to the station for the first time, Ray is working on Ecto1 and it's primer gray, no light bars or equipment. In one of the following scenes they are eating dinner and cheering to their first customer. Then the alarm sounds for their first call to the Sedgwick hotel and they get in the Ecto1 that is all tuned up, painted with lights and equipment mounted. The events all appear to happen in the same day. It wouldn't be possible to do all that work to Ecto1 in the perceived span of time. (00:21:50)
Correction: The key word is, "appear." Even if there are just a few days between the events, it makes sense for Ecto-1 to look as it does.
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)
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.
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.
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.
So why post it?
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.
I think you need to look up the word mistake before posting something new. Because it makes completely no sense to post this.
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.;).
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.;).
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.
Correction: If you look closely, there are actually two cans of Coke in the refrigerator. The on nearest Peter is the one with the cursive writing, and the one on Dana's side is the one with the big bold lettering. Although if you watch the can with the cursive writing, the can turns to the left just a bit from when the refrigerator was first opened.
DvdNut