Decoding all the Easter eggs in the Ghostbusters: Afterlife trailer

This town where Callie, Phoebe, and Trevor have moved could be a former Shandor colony, and the mine is very likely where they harvested their materials for that skyscraper. If so, the mine itself might attract some supernatural beings, which would explain that bulbous phantasm we see in the trailer, ricocheting through town and blowing out bus windows as it rambles through the streets, upsetting the locals. (That’s Coon’s husband, playwright and actor Tracy Letts, as the shovel-wielding hardware store clerk.)

By the end of the trailer, Trevor has gotten the Ecto-1’s engine going, and he and his sister chase after the creature, trying to capture it with a rehabilitated proton pack and a “gunner seat” that pops out of the side of the rusting old vehicle.

What is the creature? Some might mistake it for Slimer, the voracious green ghoul the Ghostbusters confronted in the Sedgewick Hotel when they got their first-ever call for a job. It’s definitely not Slimer, but it might be a similar kind of entity. In the original movie, Stantz described them in technical terms as “a focused non-terminal repeating phantasm, or a Class 5 full-roaming vapor.”

This one has about six limbs and is more a blueish color than green, although it may have a similar appetite to Slimer. When we see it earlier in the trailer, it appears to be hiding amongst some old machinery, munching away at something unseen.

Later, we do glimpse part of one recognizable creature from the original film—the giant lizard-like claw of a Terror Dog, pressing its foot down on the hood of Mr. Grooberson’s car.

He looks just as freaked by it as Rick Moranis’ Louis Tully in the original movie when he came face-to-snout with the monster, which is a kind of servant of Gozer and a harbinger of the god’s return.

There’s a lot more for the movie to reveal on July 10, but now we know why the town is trembling. It has reason to be afraid.

But there is a formidable young hero nearby, and she's getting to be a good shot with a proton pack.

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