I never got the impression that the events were forgotten, rather just that the Ghostbusters did a really good job of ridding the world of paranormal activity and that people had just moved on once they no longer had to worry about spirits running wild through the streets.
Also, at the beginning of the second movie, they mention that the Ghostbusters themselves were sued by a number of local, state and federal agencies.
Ever since the Tylenol poisonings, loads of products come Safety Sealed. Even cat litter. It’s the Corporate way of saying, “We are listening to your concerns”.
Stay-Puft will now add a line in their packaging that includes an 800 number to report any unusual activity by individual marshmallows. They will be ready to answer your questions - for instance, if your marshmallow begins to expand during toasting, this is normal.
The smart move would be to get the Ghostbusters to appear in ads for them, and everyone makes bank…but as noted, collective amnesia seems to happen in GB 2, so I don’t know.
and that is a fight I would pay to see!
The first two Ghostbusters movies really seem to show that ghostbusting doesn’t have a viable business model. It seems like most of the time, there’s not enough business for ghostbusting to be profitable - but there are periods of a few weeks every few years when there’s a ramp-up in activity enough to make the business profitable, until the moment the activity becomes so high that the world is about to end (so the GBs have to work pro-bono just to keep the world around).
The 2018 GB movie seemed to suggest government funding for Ghostbusters, so they can refine their equipment and theories in-between world-threatening crises - a more workable business model.
Ghostbusters 2 definitely did not have the “amnesia” effect. People absolutely remembered the Ghostbusters and what happened in New York. Ray and Winston are doing children’s birthday parties in full ghostbuster gear at the beginning. It’s not that people forgot, it’s that they mostly decided that what happened was the Ghostbuster’s fault. It’s not amnesia driving the setup in GB2, it’s ingratitude.
Like Andy_L just pointed out, Ghostbusting is only a viable business model when there’s some supernatural threat driving up the ghost activity. At the beginning of the first movie, Peter, Ray, and Egon have been working as paranormal researchers for years, and the most dramatic thing any of them have seen was when Ray witnessed a mass sponge migration. They go from that to capturing multiple spooks every week when Gozer shows up. Once he’s gone, that level of supernatural activity goes back to regular twinkie size, and the business dries up, until Vigo arrives at an art museum.
My WAG; short-term retire the mascot, long-term bring the mascot back in an ad campaign humorously referencing the events of the movie.
Subpoenaturally?
Was the ghostly librarian part of the Gozer surge, or everyday twinkie level?
I think she was a pre-existing spirit that had been haunting the library for years, but wasn’t normally able to manifest that clearly until Gozer showed up. Before that, she could only do stuff like you hear about in “real” ghost stories - create cold spots, give people spooky “I’m being watched vibes,” maybe occasionally move a very small object when no one is looking. The sort of stuff that’s hard to prove and has non-supernatural explanations. When Gozer starts breaking into the world, it empowers ghosts like her so that they can manifest visibly, and stack books and throw card catalogues around.
Likewise, at the hotel, the manager said there had been stories about a haunting for years - but probably not to the extent that the Ghostbusters encountered until Gozer opened the door.
And Delta, the airline, seems to be doing no worse than other airlines.
Feels like a difference in kind, rather than degree. If, like, a town had been mysteriously inundated with actual Corona beer instead of there just being a similarity in name, we would have a better parallel.
I tend to agree they’d do fine, though. No such thing as bad attention!
On the other hand, Ayds Diet Mints are hard to come by these days.
Wasn’t it literally an act of god? Their insurance wouldn’t pay out.
Or maybe just changed their name? Like Kool-Aid had to do.
Come again? Kool-Aid has had the same name since it was first sold in 1927.
I was under the impression that they had to change the name of their product after it got (erroneously) associated with the Jonestown Massacre in 1978, to such an entrenched extent in the public mind that “drank the Kool-Aid” gained an entirely new meaning.
ETA: It was actually Flavor Aid. Did they have to change that product name?
Flavor Aid still goes by that name, but it’s been decades since I’ve seen it on a store sheld.
I could be all wrong. I thought Kool-Aid (by that name) had vanished. But, I rarely actually go to that aisle in the supermarket, so I may be imagining it all.
Anything but. Restocking the Kool-Aid is the bane of my existence at the grocery store I work at, because people make such a mess of it picking through the flavors that it takes longer just to put everything back in the right spot than it actually takes to fill it.
If the Destructor had taken the form of the Kool-Aid Man, there would have been no survivors.