Well there’s something you don’t see every day…
I know you’ve been haunted by this question since 1984: Why did Gozer the Destructor take the form of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man and not FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover? Let’s break it down and see what this choice was really all about!
Choose And Perish
During the climax of Ghostbusters, our crew of four plucky exterminators find themselves at the top of Central Park West in New York City, staring through a dimensional portal at an ancient god named Gozer that’s bent on destroying our world. “Choose the form of your destructor!” it booms.
But what did it even mean by that? Dr. Peter Venkman called a timeout to work things through:
“Oh, I get it! Very cute. Whatever we think of! If we think of J. Edgar Hoover, J. Edgar Hoover will appear and destroy us, okay? So empty your heads, don’t think of anything. We’ve only got one shot at this!”
Wait, I hear a ghostly voice whispering, doesn’t that mean they were thinking about J. Edgar Hoover just then? Shouldn’t a giant J. Edgar Hoover have turned the corner and not a puffy sailor mascot?
Well, while that was going on, the thought of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man slipped into Ray Stantz’s mind. The rest was horrifying high-calorie history. Why not Hoover, though?
You Can’t Put J. Edgar Hoover On A Lunch Box
I mean, you can, but would you want to? He’d make for a weird action figure.
Anyway, all that stuff about Hoover was just what Venkman thought was going on. Fun fact: In the original screenplay and novelization, he brought up baseball Hall of Famer Roberto Clemente instead of J. Edgar Hoover. But Gozer didn’t say anything about the first random thought becoming the choice.
In the novelization (page 238), Egon Spengler gave his thoughts:
“I think he’s saying that since we’re about to be sacrificed anyway, we get to choose the form we want him to take.”
– Egon Spengler
To that, Ray imagined it as sort of like a last request. So Gozer probably required a deliberate choice. The thought of Stay Puft wasn’t an accident, either; Ray chose it because it was the most harmless thing he could imagine. A mix between the Pillsbury Doughboy and the Michelin Man. “I tried to think of…something that could never ever possibly destroy us,” he said, “Mr. Stay Puft.”
That clashes with his dumbfounded stare and “I couldn’t help it! It just popped in there!” Both can be true, though! While Ray wanted to think up something harmless, Stay Puft itself might have been an impulsive subconscious reflex. Either way, it seems like Ray had a more focused intention with his thought, and wasn’t just making a sarcastic quip like Venkman. I mean, maybe Ray just thought of Stay Puft before anyone else had a chance to think, but…
What’s that? Other Ghostbusters media explores the choice in more detail, and Ray is at the center of it all? Let’s move!
The Role of the Selector
The 2011 IDW Ghostbusters comic actually focuses hard on Ray’s role as the “Selector” during its first four issues. In it, a third minion of Gozer named Idulnas (also known as The Third) shows up, and beats Ray to a pulp while demanding he choose something more fitting for The Traveler than a giant marshmallow man.
The comic basically paints Gozer as a very persistent entity, and its first foray into Manhattan didn’t have to be its last. But the Selector, in this case Ray, remained locked in place.
“When the destructor came, Dr. Stantz, you were the chosen selector,” Idulnas revealed, “You were the one who was to determine the way this world died. You chose an ineffectual embarrassment. An easily routed form. In doing so, you personally handed Gozer defeat for the first time in all time.”
It turns out, if you take the IDW comic as canon, Ray was chosen to be the Selector of the Destructor from the very beginning.
“Did you ever wonder why it was YOUR mind that chose the form of the destructor? Your colleagues were hardly able to clear their own. The destructor’s form could easily have been an abstract equation, a marine corps drill instructor, or…Miss February.”
In the comic, Ray is also visited by a spirit guide who takes the form of Jake Blues, telling him to make sure he thinks of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man again. Ray refuses Idulnas’s demands to change his mind, Stay Puft returns, and is summarily exploded into marshmallow goop all over again.
Is Gozer Forever Stuck As A Marshmallow Man?
Gozer the Gozerian, Gozer the Destructor, Volguss Zildrohar, the Traveler (I want to make sure I get its name right), is an ancient god from an alternate dimension, worshipped by the Hittites, Mesopotamians, and Sumerians back around 6000 BC, according to Tobin’s Spirit Guide.
Vinz Clortho, the Keymaster, and Zuul, the Gatekeeper, served as its demigods and harbingers. In 1984, Clortho, using Louis Tully as a conduit, shared tales of past Destructors. There was a Torb chosen during the rectification of the Vulronaii, and a giant Sloar during the third reconciliation of the last of the Meketrex Supplicants. Well, just take it from a possessed Tully:
He fails to mention anything more specific about the nature of the choice, though.
Something that’s not explicitly stated in the original movie is that once a choice is made in a given dimension, it would seem Gozer’s kind of stuck with it. In Ghostbusters: The Video Game, the Cult of Gozer managed to re-summon Gozer through the use of mandalas around New York City. But it once again arrived as the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. During their adventures in the cemetery, Ray pondered if the choice might be static per dimension:
“This has been bugging me. When the necromantic shockwave summoned Gozer back to our plane, why didn’t he assume a more effective Destructor form immediately? I mean the marshmallow man is scary, sure, but there has to be a better way to destroy the world. It’s simple: When he enters our plane of existence, he must be locked into that form from our first encounter. One Destructor form per god per dimension! I like it! Sounds like the kind of symmetry these things tend to operate on. Hey, so maybe I didn’t choose such a bad Destructor after all, huh?”
In Ghostbusters: Afterlife, while Clortho munches on some dog food at a Wal-Mart, Mini-Pufts pop to life and cause havoc like a bunch of gremlins. Even if only bite-sized, in our world Gozer can either take the form of an androgynous diva with a flattop or, you know, marshmallow.
So there you have it! Gozer took the form of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man because it was a mostly deliberate choice made by Ray Stantz, the Selector, and it became stuck with that form for the duration of its (multiple) stays in our dimension. Whew. Glad we got that covered.
I will say this: Had Gozer accepted J. Edgar Hoover as the form of the Destructor, I just don’t think Ghostbusters would have achieved its lasting appeal. I mean, maybe, but the vibe would have been a little different.
