Well folks still seem to think he ignored GB2 in this film even though he’s said he hasn’t as we see the book store and Gigameter is under Egon’s diplomas as well as Janine wearing some leopard which is a nod to her coat from 2. For many of us the game is canon, for others the comics from IDW are and to many just the first film happened. We live in a time where fans can accept or reject what they like. Take what you want and leave the rest like a salad bar.
The game isn’t canon the same way the cartoon series isn’t canon. It would be absolutely ridiculous if that game were canon. For Christ sakes, the game even ignores the movie canon. They have a picture of Vigo at the HQ!
Ghostbusters isn’t Star Wars or Star Trek. It can’t start taking itself too seriously by worrying about things like canon or continuity.
Gold and silver age comics didn’t take themselves seriously, but they considered canon an important part of the story telling.
I missed the leopard print on Janine & the Gigameter.
The game should still be cannon - having it not is kinda disrespectful to Harold.
Afterlife doesn’t interfere with the game: in many ways it adds to it, & the comics.
The game’s hypotheticals on Gozer and its destructor forms become irreconcilable when you try fit it in with the lore laid down by Afterlife, and it’s noted without room for confusion that Shandor is very much dead and his body having rotted away to the point of just being a skeleton in the game’s canon.
Had Shandor not been in the new movie, there might’ve been wiggle room… But as it stands, there isn’t.
I still have to disagree there. I am aware the game is not considered canon but for those that do wish it I will once again counter your point that he’s found as a dead skeleton in the game. That’s a hidden easter egg, like the other items including a Ghostbusters DVD of the movie…so by that law alone I don’t count the cursed artifacts as anything but bonus trophy’s. At the end of the day people who want to make the game canon in their universe will, so will fans of the cartoon shows and the comics. Is it official? Not at all.
Picking and choosing which bits of the game’s own canon to accept is not going to make it any more compatible with Afterlife.
Even if you discount the skull, he’s very clearly a ghost in the game, he washes his hands of Gozer after the guys turned it into marshmallow spread for a second time, and turns himself into his own god-like entity, before being blown up in the finale.
In Afterlife he’s humbly Gozer’s follower, makes no indication he’s witnessed the world outside of the temple since the 1940s, makes no indication he’s ever witnessed Gozer in action before, there’s no allusion to Shandor having dealt away with Gozer or made his own destructor form, and no allusion to the Ghostbusters having ever encountered Shandor.
The game exists in a separate continuity. I get this is extremely frustrating, but it is what it is, and there’s no disgrace in that. The cartoons and comics and novelisations exist in similar but diverging continuities.
Right but ghostbusters is a comedy movie franchise and not based on a comic book.
Again, I know Dan kept trying to sell the game as the third movie but really it doesn’t jive with what happens in GB2. Otherwise that painting of Vigo wouldn’t be there.
Plus video games are so different from a storytelling perspective I don’t understand why anyone would want it apart of the same continuity. The game has you going thru levels that are designed purely to make player feel like they are a ghostbusters Vs telling a coherent, funny story. Like…your catching Slimer and other ghosts in the hotel again, there’s the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man again. That isn’t done because the story demanded it. It’s done because the makers of the game wanted the player to go thru familiar settings and feel like they are apart of that first movie. And there’s nothing wrong with that, that’s the job of a game. But it doesn’t work as a story in “this is the 3rd film” way. The game is all Ghostbusting all the time. But we know that’s not what ghostbusters movies are like. Nor should they be.
Ghostbusters is largely a character based comedy. And as fun and cool as the game is…it’s not that. So yeah, I guess I’ve just never understood why some fans were fine with calling the game the 3rd film. I get that it’s the last time the original crew are all together and that Harold & Dan contributed…something…to the story. That is cool and special. But we shouldn’t try and force a square peg into a round hole. Movies are movies and games are games. Vastly different style of storytelling done for very different reasons.
TVG is just a part of the gb multiverse much like gb2016. It was an awesome game and fun to think if it as canon at the time but now we have REAL movie sequels. I don’t doubt that future movies will contradict the game more. From a creative standpoint they shouldn’t have to be hamstrung because of a video game only known by a small fan base.
Multiverse fixes everything. It’s working for Marvel and DC right now
We don’t see Shandor long enough to notice anything but how he splits when the going gets tough 
I think game fans can agree that he may have been killed for having betrayed Gozer during TVG events. We keep coming to this but it’s simple.
Is the game Canon? No
Can people still enjoy the game on it’s own? Yes
Can the plot of the game be worked to fit with Afterlife for one’s own “head canon”? Yes IF you actually look at both stories
Will telling people it isn’t canon or can’t make sense going to change anything? No.
Seriously, this isn’t a hill we should be fighting over. I didn’t see nor have ANY interest in seeing ATC. I don’t tell people it’s not canon or can’t work with other mediums though. IDW obviously tried to meld them. Are those comics canon? No but people enjoy them. BTW Trek and Wars make TONS of shows and content that are not to be taken as canon and are not serious. Lower Decks, The various Lego shows SW has.
I just like to sit back and think of Dan, Ivan & Harold writing their draft of Ghostbusters 1 at Martha’s Vineyard in summer ‘83 and never in their wildest dreams imagining a group of geeks debating the merits of the “Ghostbusters canon”.
Considering the original use of word canon relating the evolution Christianity and what we know as the Bible. If my knowledge of history tells me anything will break in seperate sects who will attempt to reconcile at councils. Some will disagree and go live in desert as weird cult. Considering this analogy 2016 fans must be our gnostics.
I’d call that a big yes
Hello GB fans community!
One of my burning questions are:
Mr Grooberson said that the GB firehouse was now a starbucks, but the end of the movie Winston rocked up in the Firehouse which was empty and pulled in the Ecto 1 to obviously work on it. Wha? Was it or was it not a starbucks, or are we assuming that they left and put the interior back to a dilapidated GB headquarters?
Thanks in advance, not sure if I missed something. Maybe I’ll pick it up on a second viewing.
My guess is that Dan (not Grooberson) just ad libbed the line as a funny joke and/or the firehouse is a late new addition to the movie they couldn’t reshoot the scene. A simple mistake that can be handwaved by Ray being old and misremembering who bought the firehouse from them. (Or perhaps Winston said Star Bucks bought it to hide he actually bought it).
My feeling is that it was never a Starbucks. Ray lied about the Firehouse’s fate in order to discourage Phoebe, who he’d initially thought to be a Ghostbusters groupie, from going to visit it.
I figure, reading between the lines, that Winston never kept Ray in the dark about what happened to the place, because with Egon gone, Ray would be the only person left who’d be able to keep the Containment Unit operational.
All the debate about the canon status of the video game is funny because we got side tracked from my initial question and that’s when did the original Ghostbusters go defunct?
I still can’t really figure it out for sure, but I am kind of feeling like maybe they went defunct around 2000/2001 given how rundown the firehouse looked, plus it probably would have taken Winston a good 20 years to build up a major business.
Eric confirmed it was a Starbucks and Winston bought it after the Summerville battle.
Ray does mention the bad economy so we’d have to look back at historical ones. I think the big subprime crisis in 2007/2008 seems a good candidate for the latest it could have happened and Ray mentions 10 years back he got a postcard from Egon which would be 2011.
No disrespect meant to Eric, but I’m not buying that.
The Firehouse doesn’t look like it was recently vacated, it looks like it hasn’t been used in in years.
Like I said in the talkback, it was probably the express type you’d see in the drive-through stand alones or inside super market kiosks ad it was built essentially butt up against the front door of the Firehouse and all they did was hook into the Firehouse’s utilities but weren’t allowed/given access inside. Like in 1990, Lenny declared the firehouse a historical site so it couldn’t be knocked down, remodeled, etc. so Starbucks had to go building with a smaller structure and scooching up on what little piece of the property they could.
I would suspect that when Egon and Ray rebuilt the Containment Unit either after they defeated Gozer or after they went back into business in 1989, they devised new measures to prevent the grid from being easily shut down like it was before by just pulling down one switch (yeah, we’ve seen stuff like that in RGB and IDW) and perhaps even a separate power source that could sustain it indefinitely or least for a couple decades before it would have to be replaced. No way Ray didn’t seal the entrance to the basement before the business closed down again..