Scott Sommer;134375
Stay Puft is also in the containment unit to which is never explained how or why? He was blown up in the first movie.

He was caught in the opening! :p

Originally Posted by Scott Sommer
Stay Puft is also in the containment unit to which is never explained how or why? He was blown up in the first movie.

I think one reason is, the fact that, after the movies the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, along with Slimer, became the unofficial mascotts for the GB franchise, so he had to return, and maybe the creators couldn't figure out a plauseable explanation the kids would understand. Also, a lot of ppl actually liked him, so they decided to bring them to back in RGB as likeable characters, especially for the kids who were too young to see the first movie.

rockstar232007;134379
especially for the kids who were too young to see the first movie.

I wouldn't really say that. A lot kids saw movies that weren't really meant for their age. Ghostbusters was only PG, PG 13 right? Hell, I watched Terminator 2 when I was like 6.

Scott Sommer
Second of all, stuff from the cartoon contradicts the movies. For example, in the cartoon Mr Stay Puft is a friend of the Ghostbusters and has helped them on several occasions. Stay Puft is also in the containment unit to which is never explained how or why? He was blown up in the first movie.

*That was easily explained in the “Citizen Ghost” ep…Remember the “evil ghost doppelgangers”? They were comprised of the residual “Gozer/Stay Puft” [Remember now - Stay Puft IS Gozer - That's movie canon] residue left on their flight suits post-Gozer battle…And when Peter stashes them behind the newly-constructed “Ecto-Containment Unit Mark II”. near an unseen crack in said unit, they absorb the energy leaking from it?…We all know what happens next - The “Ghost Doppelgangers”…Now heres where it connects - The ghosts now in the containment unit, and being comprised of mostly residual “Gozer energy”, most likely having fused within the trap , reverted back to it's last “whole form” it remembered - Mr. Stay Puft…

*And in his first “series debut” “Cry Uncle” he was still evil…

Scott Sommer
Now in the video game timeline, which is written by Dan and Harold same as the other movies, Mr. Stay Puft is an Enemy again. How does the cartoon explain this? This is just one of the inconsistencies.

*We have yet to see if that is really the Gozer/Stay Puft, or a ghostly clone or something as such…The final story has yet been told, and won't be 100% revealed until we conquer the game…

Scott Sommer
Let me give you an example using Ghostbusters. In the cartoon before Ghostbusters II came out, it seemed like they stayed in business and still doing well. When Ghostbusters II came out, they said that the Ghostbusters we're sued and then had a restraining order on them preventing them from catching ghost. This is assumed that this happened 5 years ago after they beat Gozer as Peter said “We did a job for the mayor some time ago and got stiffed on the bill…”

*In answer to this, and to quote myself:

Ectofiend
*And the series never really pegged what years that it took place in…“Citizen Ghost” didn't really say how many years since the “Gozer” battle that all of this was taking place in, and neither did “Partners In Slime” with how long it had been since Vigo…So theoretically they could have “gone out of business” somewhere between “GB1/RGB” and “GBII/RGB the later seasons”…

Scott Sommer
So what do you follow the cartoon or the movie when the cartoon contradicts?

So I say, the cartoon is canon to a point, but unless it is really approved by Dan Aykroyd, then I don't consider it canon.

*You compromise between the different series in any particular discrepancy…Find a point where the two meet and can make sense…

*And Dan Aykroyd created the idea, yes…But it's not just his baby…You see Harold Ramis , Ivan Reitman, Micheal Gross, Joe Medjuck all had a hand in what GB1 became…So he's not the “be-all-end-all” creationist concerning the franchise…

*James Van Hise , J.M.S. to name at least two all expounded on the GB lore long after GB1 had come and gone…Expanding the relationships, the backgrounds of the characters, the ghosts, the technology …So I'm not going to discount it solely on the reasoning that “Dan Aykroyd didn't write it personally”…

*And honestly - Have you read his first draft of GB1? When it was just him writing, and didn't have the collaborative help of both Harold and Ivan? It was a mess…IMHO…

*Cheers.

Ectofiend;134381
*And honestly - Have you read his first draft of GB1? When it was just him writing, and didn't have the collaborative help of both Harold and Ivan? It was a mess…IMHO…

Considering such a script has never been leaked online or available, and considering the majority of us have never even seen a page of it, I'm gonna have to say no, he hasn't read the first draft.

Alright, for argument's sake, take into account the stuff we've heard about the older drafts, such as time travel, a dimension-shifting Ecto-1, etc…

Zuul actually being a shape shifting dog thing running from Gozer and eventually hooking up with Peter?

Exactly. Others include it being a big corporation and the Ghostbusters' boss being Shandor.

While I don't necessarily disregard one or the other, I'd say I'm more of the “different universes” theory.

However, Ectofiend, I agree with you about “Partners in Slime” never saying directly when it happens, but “Citizen Ghost”, while not explicitly saying “this date so and so”, definitely implies that all of this happens immediately following the Gozer battle. Hence the firehouse being in disrepair, and the guys returning with marshmallow still on their uniforms. If they were to go out of business (movie universe), the uniforms would not be left to sit next to the containment unit, because if they went out of business, surely the containment unit would be shut off.

Ectofiend;134368
*At least that is my two cents…Fritz?

*Cheers.

I somehow knew my name would get dragged into this:-)

I'll just say that, for the most part, I agree with what Ectofiend has posted in this thread to date. I've pretty much built my status on the GB boards by trying to make the movies and cartoons work together and writing fan fics based on that idea.

The realist answer: no, the video game will probably not include much if anything alluding to animated canon. They don't have to. And even if they wanted to, as Sony in it's “wisdom” seems to consider RGB a seperate intellectual property from movie-based GB material (despite the fact that RGB started, after all, as movie-derived GB material), it might actually add a layer of legal hoop jumping to use very much. Even EGB had problems using the exact RGB likenesses (ie “Temporary Insanity”, where the RGB Venkman mannequin's face is blurred out)

(As I like to often quote “Intellectual properties lawyers are a low species of life”)

Some stuff I previously posted on GBFans:

Let's face it, the days when one could claim one “true” canon started to fall apart in 2004, when the first of the retcons and reboots started to come along. Before then, the saga was pretty linear, and happened more or less in “real time”.

Everything released with Columbia Pictures and/or Sony's approval is canon. But there's more than one canon–because not every product released with Columbia/Sony's approval considers everything else released by Columbia/Sony canon.

GB1 doesn't count anything else as canon–because there was nothing before it. It's not accurate to call anything “in canon” with GB1: it's more accurate to say “These sources consider GB1 canon”…and that, of course, means everything. RGB is just as valid a continuation of GB1 as GB2 or the first edition of the GBI RPG or the 88MPH mini-series; they just contradict each other, not GB1.

RGB considers GB1 canon–go back and watch “Citizen Ghost”. It's relationship with GB2 is a little more troubled–there's some elements from GB2 introduced in the 1989 season that clearly come from GB2 (Janine's stupid hair cut, Louis Tully shoehorned into the show, mention of Vigo and mood slime) but on the other hand there's no mention of ECTO-1A or any suggestion that the team went out of business.

EGB considers RGB canon, more or less, and thus includes by implication everything that RGB considered canon. Though there's some suggestion that, like many fans, it downplayed some of the excesses of later RGB (ie Slimer's “development” in later seasons is ignored to put him back much like he was early in RGB)

GB Legion only considered GB1 canon. It didn't consider GB2 it's “definite” future. It did borrow the ECU from RGB, but on the whole doesn't consider RGB part of it's canon.

GB2 of course only considers the first movie part of it's canon. The new video game, the IDW comic, and The Return consider only the two movies part of their canon–but not necessarily each other. There has been some suggestion that the Tokyopop manga does consider the video game it's “definite” future, which means it probably won't contradict any of it–but I doubt GBVG truly considers the Tokyopop book canon from it's own end.

Now do I hope that the video game includes some nods to RGB? Absolutely. Just like in Legion, a big, red ECU would be the easiest, yet most subtle way to do it, as it would in no way contradict GB2–we didn't see the ECU in GB2, and the original hole-in-the-wall version blew up. (And also, I guess, acknowledge Legion just a bit, which was an awesome story despite being released by a crooked idiot)

Even George Lucas, whom some fans now consider the poster child for “The creator doesn't always know best” and feeling free to ignore stuff released with Lucasfilm's legal authorization, wasn't opposed to acknowledging and using bit of the “Expanded Universe”: the name of the Republic/Imperial capitol world, Coruscant, first appeared in Timothy Zahn's Heir to the Empire trilogy. “Boonta Eve” is an in-joke to, of all things, the Droids cartoon. And Jedi Knight Aayla Secura was created by Dark Horse, but Lucas liked her so much he put her in Episode 2-3.

At the end of the day, I guess every fan will have to decide for themselves. Speaking solely for myself, RGB brought me to the party even more than the first movie did, I applauded EGB for actually advancing the story instead of staying stuck in the 1983/4-1991 status quo, and while I will put as much of the video game as I can into my “personal canon”, stuff that contradicts it, even if crafted by the hands of Daniel the Creator and Saint Harold, is gonna have a harder time being accepted by me, the same way many Star Wars fans hate the Prequels and Harry Potter fans hate the last book, despite being written by the creators of those respective franchises.