Ghostbusters New Timeline: The Movies

GHOSTBUSTERS (AMG 19671)
Egon Spengler, Peter Venkman, and Ray Stantz investigate a haunting at the New York Public Library; though they have...little success in dealing with the problem, Egon manages to get reading that confirm the ionization properties of ectoplasmic entities--it could be possible to capture a ghost, and contain it indefinitely. Their triumph appears short lived as they return to discover that the Board of Regents has terminated their grant and Dean Yaeger is throwing them off campus with great glee. Venkman decides that it's fate--they must go into business for themselves. He cons Ray into getting three mortgages on his parents' house to start up the world's first paranormal investigation and elimination agency: Ghostbusters.
The new company purchases an abandoned firehouse to be their headquarters--it's in a run-down neighborhood, but Ray loves the fire pole. Using their new discoveries, Ray and Egon create the proton packs and the first Containment Unit. A plucky Brooklyn girl, Janine Melnitz, is hired as their secretary and immediately develops a crush on Egon. Ray purchases a 1959 Miller Meteor Cadillac Hearse/Ambulance which is modified to become their vehicle, the ECTO-1.
The Ghostbusters' first client is celloist Dana Barrett, who encounters a terror dog in her refrigerator shouting the word "Zuul" at her. Venkman goes to her apartment and checks it, but there is no sign of the creature. By now it's obvious Venkman wants to bag Dana, too.
The Ghostbusters' first case involves a call to the Sedgewick Hotel, where they successfully bust a gluttonous, green, potato-shaped Class Five Full Roaming Vapor. After this, there seems to be a virtual explosion of paranormal activity in the New York area, so much that the team advertises for a fourth member: vet Winston Zeddemore is hired for the job. The Ghostbusters also draw the attention of the government, particularly an EPA hatchet man named Walter Peck. Peck and Venkman don't get off on the right foot, and Peck promises revenge...
Dana and her neighbor, CPA Louis Tully, are posessed by Zuul ("The Gatekeeper") and Vinz Clortho ("The Keymaster") respectively, and when Peck opens the Ghostbuster's containment unit, they draw on the psychic turbulence to release thier master, Gozer the Gozarian, a powerful Sumarian diety. Gozer adopts the form of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man and begins destroying midtown Manhattan before a risky plan by the Ghostbusters thwarts him, sending his intelligence back to his home dimension, along with Zuul and Vinz Clortho.

Despite saving the city, possibly the world, lawsuits are filed against the team for thier activities in levelling Central Park West Rather than go to trial, the team is forced to accept a plea agreement wherein they accept an injunction against acting as paranormal investigators.

Ghostbusters 2

Having had to give up thier lives as Ghostbusters, the team finds new ways to get by. Egon Spengler returns to research, specializing in new theories on psychomagnetheric resonance in human emotional states. Peter Venkman becomes host of a cheezy, low budget TV program called World of the Psychic. Ray Stantz keeps busy as the proprietor of an occult bookstore, and appearing with Winston Zeddemore in Ghostbuster costume at children's parties.

Ghostbusters 2. What Janine Melnitz is up to during these two years was never noted. Considering how differently she's portrayed in GB2, becoming a crack whore doesn't seem totally implausible.

As noted in the Classic Timeline, both the animation and Ghostbusters: Legion assume that the team was NOT shut down immediately after the Gozer case. RGB, of course, didn't know that GB2 would establish a shutdown three years after they'd started airing. The only movie canon evidence to support such an idea is Venkman's line, when putting on his pack in GB2, to it being "a couple of years" since he'd last used it (emphasis added)

Dana Barrett breaks off her relationship with Venkman because he won't commit to her. She marries violinist Andre Wallance (a fellow member of the orchestra) and gives birth in 1989 to a son, Oscar, before divorcing him.

Ghostbusters 2 Sigourney Weaver once conjectured, during an appearance on Arsenio Hall's talk show (promoting GB2) that Oscar's father was a character seen briefly in the first movie, a violinist from Dana's orchestra referred to as "The Stiff" in the movie (she called him "Mr. Nose Spray")--an idea Ivan Reitman and Harold Ramis later confirm in the commentary track of the Ghostbusters DVD. Andre has only been given a name in once place: the novelization of the first movie (so thanks to Miss Janine for supplying the answer to that nagging question!).

Death of Professor Harold Teplitz, preeminant scholar of condensed matter and particle physics. He is proceeded in death by his wife, and survived by his son, Harold Junior. Teplitz's ghost refuses to accept his death, and is "haunted" by his wife and parents.

Two years before Ghost Busted

Birth of Oscar Wallance to Andre and Dana; the two divorce soon after when Andre gets an offer from a European orchestra that is too good to pass up. Dana has also given up her musical career, and works restoring paintings at the Manhattan Museum of Art under the supervision of Janosz Poha.

Ghostbusters 2 takes place late in 1989, and Oscar is only a few months old, so he was born in the same year. Oscar's full name was a complete mystery until Miss Janine uncovered the name of his father from the GB1 novelization.

November. Jock Mulligan is elected Mayor of New York City to succeed outgoing Mayor Lenny Clotch. Clotch's term does not officially end until after New Year's, however. Clotch plans to run for Governor of New York in the 1990 election

A combination of historical events, Ghostbusters 2, and Ghostbusters: The Video Game. Clotch was the Mayor seen in both movies, while Mulligan comes from the Video Game. In the Real World, the 1989 Mayoral election was won by Democrat David Dinkins, to succeed long time Mayor Ed Koch. Clotch's ambitions to the Governor's Mansion were mentioned in GB2, and a Real World gubernatorial race was run in November 1990. In the Real World, Mario Cuomo won his third and last term in the position; it has never been established anywhere in official Ghostbusters canon whether Clotch succeeded in attaining the office.

GHOSTBUSTERS 2(AMG 19672) (First part of the film)
Five years after her victimization by Gozer, the supernatural has again set it's sights on Dana Barrett--and her son Oscar. She consults with Egon Spengler, who brings Ray Stantz into the case. Venkman finds out and also intervenes. The three former Ghostbusters find a river of pink slime flowing through the lines of the old New York Pneumatic Railway--and big trouble with the law.
Louis Tully is hired to defend them in the court of Judge Steven Wexler, but it is the appearance of the Scoleri brothers that forces Wexler to rescind the Ghostbusting injunction and dismiss the case.
The Ghostbusters return to business, with a new two-fingered symbol and a new vehicle, the ECTO-1A. Winston and Janine also return to the company, and Louis is hired as legal consultant. Janine flirts with Louis for a brief time. Egon and Ray experiment on the slime, discovering that it is responsive to human emotion---and that it's power is building, fed by all of the patented New York hostility it's soaking up.

Christmas Eve. The Ghosts of Christmas Past and Future visit Woodrow Wainwright Fraser III, as they had ever Christmas Eve since he was 22. They once again fail to convince the unrepentant "Have more" to mend his ways, or the Ghost of Christmas Present to release it's posession of him. With the Ghostbusters back in business, Fraser threatens the two ghosts with an assertion that next Christmas Eve would be different.

Past, Present, and Future.

GHOSTBUSTERS 2(AMG 19672) (Second part of the film)

December 29. Late in the day, some of the pink slime emerges from Dana Barrett's bathtub and attempts to aduct Oscar. Dana flees the apartment with Oscar, and goes to Venkman.
December 30: Egon and Ray have tracked the river of slime to the emerging essence of medieval madman Vigo Von Homborg Deutschendorf, alias Vigo the Carpathian, living in a self-portrait at the Manhattan Museum of Art. Oscar is kidnapped in full sight of Dana, Janine, and Louis by a ghostly clone of Janosz Poha. Poha, by the way, is deeply under Vigo's domination. Jack Hardemeyer, a mayoral aide, has the Ghostbusters committed to Parkview.
December 31. A cloud of black energy fortells Vigo's return. The Ghostbusters are freed, and using Vigo's own weapon--the psychomagnetheric slime--against him, animate the Statue of Liberty and break the shell around the museum just before midnight.

The very end of Ghostbusters 2
January 1. The Ghostbusters foil Vigo's attempt to possess Oscar. He then tries a desperate ploy, dominating Ray, but fails. The madman is defeated and destroyed.

The very first scene establises Ghostbusters 2 as happening five years after Ghostbusters. The latter part of the movie can be given very specific dates, as the events center around New Year's Day.

After New Year's, The team also returns to their original Ghostbuster logo.

Conjecture, as the ECTO-1A and the two-fingered Ghostbusters 2 logo are not used in anything other than GB2.

Jock Mulligan is sworn in as Mayor of New York City, succeeding Lenny Clotch.

As mentioned above, a combination of Contemporary Accounts, GB2, and the GBVG

One area of fan conjecture after Ghostbusters 2 concerns the continuance of Venkman and Dana's relationship. While Sigourney Weaver is not appearing in the Video Game, and a new character is referred to as Venkman's "love interest", things seem to end rather ambiguously between Venkman and Dr. Selwyn. There will probably not be anything established officially unless Ghostbusters 3 becomes a reality.

THE MOVIES