Background
Gozer was worshipped as a god by the Hittites, Mesopotamians, and Sumerians around 6000 BC. Two demigod minions served as its primary agents of arrival: Vinz Clortho, the Keymaster, and Zuul, the Gatekeeper. In order for Gozer to walk the human plane, the Gatekeeper and Keymaster had to assume the form of beasts together and perform their opening ritual. The Sumerians also believed Gozer ruled a dark underworld realm in the bowels of the earth, consuming the souls of those sacrificed to it.
Gozer had traveled through multiple dimensions and worlds across its history, taking a different chosen Destructor form in each. As Vinz Clortho recounted while possessing Louis Tully:
"Gozer the Traveler. He will come in one of the pre-chosen forms. During the rectification of the Vuldrini, the traveler came as a large and moving Torg! Then, during the third reconciliation of the last of the McKetrick supplicants, they chose a new form for him: that of a giant Slor! Many Shuvs and Zuuls knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of the Slor that day, I can tell you!"
By the 4th millennium BC, Gozer's followers (the Gozerians) formed a large Sumerian sub-culture engaged in a prolonged conflict with the followers of Tiamat. Tiamat ultimately encouraged her cult to perform the rituals needed to banish Gozer from the physical plane, dooming it to wander between dimensions. The earliest known written reference to Gozer appears in an Egyptian text believed to date to approximately 1600 BC, warning of its minion Zuul.
By the early 20th century, a new Gozerian cult had formed in New York City, led by architect and physician Ivo Shandor. Following World War I, Shandor concluded humanity was too sick to survive and spent the 1920s constructing an elaborate paranormal mechanism intended to summon Gozer and destroy the world. He designed 550 Central Park West as a super-conductive antenna for concentrating spiritual turbulence, with a rooftop temple as the primary gateway. A second temple was concealed inside the Shandor Mining Company selenium mine in Summerville, Oklahoma, where Shandor's preserved body waited in suspended animation. Inscribed on the mine temple walls were predicted return years including 1984 and 2021. J.H. Tobin documented Gozer in his book Tobin's Spirit Guide.
Ghostbusters (1984)
A surge in paranormal activity across New York City in 1984 heralded Gozer's approach. Zuul and Vinz Clortho arrived first, possessing Dana Barrett and Louis Tully respectively. Walter Peck's forced shutdown of the Containment Unit released every captured ghost into the city, adding to the chaos. By the time the Ghostbusters reached 550 Central Park West, the ritual was already complete. Zuul and Vinz Clortho transformed into their Terror Dog forms, and the gate opened.
Gozer emerged from the Temple of Gozer in a female humanoid form, moving with inhuman agility. It asked Ray Stantz if he was a god. When Ray answered no, it blasted them. When the Ghostbusters opened fire in return, Gozer performed a double-flip off the temple stairs and vanished, briefly leading the team to believe they had won. Instead, an earthquake shook the rooftop as Gozer's disembodied voice commanded them to choose the form of the Destructor. Egon Spengler, Peter Venkman, and Winston Zeddemore were able to clear their minds, but Ray involuntarily thought of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, the mascot of a marshmallow brand he remembered fondly. Gozer assumed that form and advanced on the city.
The Ghostbusters could not hold back the giant Stay Puft form with their Particle Throwers alone. Egon proposed crossing the streams, reversing the flow of the containment beam and forcing the gateway closed. The explosion destroyed the Gozerian temple, incinerated the Stay Puft form, and banished Gozer back to its own dimension. Dana and Louis reverted to human form, and Zuul and Vinz Clortho departed with Gozer.
Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021)
In the years following the Vigo incident, Egon Spengler moved to Summerville after discovering the Shandor mine concealed a second Gozerian temple. He rigged Proton Cannons to cross streams automatically if PKE readings spiked from the sacrificial pit, and constructed a network of buried Traps around his farmhouse designed to capture Gozer and every entity accompanying it. The plan failed. Egon captured Vinz Clortho in a Trap and intended to use it as bait, but Zuul attacked and killed him. Before dying, he hid the Trap beneath the farmhouse floorboards.
Several days later, Egon's granddaughter Phoebe found the hidden Trap and inadvertently released Vinz Clortho. Gozer's return accelerated as Zuul possessed Egon's daughter Callie and Vinz Clortho possessed Gary Grooberson, and Vinz destroyed Egon's containment system inside the mine. With no barrier remaining, the ritual completed and Gozer manifested: a form similar to its 1984 appearance but now covered in bony protrusions and crystalline spikes with electrical energy surging through its body. Its first act upon emerging was to tear the reawakened Ivo Shandor in half when he proposed they rule the world together.
The Ghostbusters mounted a defense at Egon's farm. Phoebe distracted Gozer while the Remote Trap Vehicle moved into position beneath Zuul. Trapping Zuul stripped away part of Gozer's form, reducing it to a crackling ghostly state, though even in this fractured condition it was able to seize a Proton Stream and overpower individual Ghostbusters. Gozer freed Zuul and restored its full power. The arrival of Peter Venkman, Ray Stantz, and Winston Zeddemore allowed the team to cross streams again, but Gozer proved strong enough to separate the three Proton Streams and throw the team into Ecto-1. The ghost of Egon manifested and aided Phoebe, and the distraction gave the team time to reactivate the Trap Field. With both Zuul and Vinz Clortho trapped, Gozer's form collapsed into PKE wisps and was drawn into the buried Traps.
Ghostbusters: The Video Game
By 1991, Gozer had become largely a memory, prompting an exhibit at the Natural History Museum. The Cult of Gozer, however, had survived and used Mandala magic channeled through four sites around the city to attempt to reconstitute Gozer without a portal. A powerful ghost outbreak preceded Gozer's re-manifestation as the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man in Times Square. This second coming was significantly weaker than the first, requiring energy from the Mandala network and a sacrifice from Shandor's bloodline. The Ghostbusters and a new recruit defeated it before it could consolidate power. Ivo Shandor ultimately abandoned Gozer to pursue his own bid for godhood, using the Mandala energy for himself.
IDW Comics
In the IDW ongoing series, Gozer's ancient rivalry with its sibling Tiamat is central to its backstory. Their respective cults waged prolonged ideological and violent conflict, and Tiamat eventually manipulated her followers into performing the rituals that banished Gozer from the physical plane. After its defeat in 1984, Gozer's physical essence was dispersed across Earth but its consciousness remained, repeatedly seeking to use Ray Stantz as the Selector to allow a new Destructor form to be chosen. Tiamat ultimately tricked Gozer, denying it access to its recaptured essence and consuming its consciousness, banishing it to another dimension. Kylie Griffin later theorized that Gozer is a unique multiversal entity: if an echo of Gozer were to appear in any alternate dimension, it would only be a fragment.
The Real Ghostbusters
Gozer never appears directly in The Real Ghostbusters animated series, but is frequently invoked as a benchmark for extreme paranormal power levels. In "The Collect Call of Cathulhu," Egon noted that Cathulhu made "Gozer look like 'Little Mary Sunshine.'" In "Janine Melnitz, Ghostbuster," paranormal activity was measured as "as bad as when Gozer was around." The battle did leave a physical legacy: in "Citizen Ghost," the Ghostbusters' uniforms had absorbed so much psychokinetic energy during the fight that they had to be destroyed. Peter delayed the task and the contaminated uniforms manifested as Spectral Ghostbusters, formed in part from residual Gozer energy.
In the Marvel Comics UK tie-in (Issue #64, "Cool Zuul!"), Gozer appeared inside a refrigerator Janine Melnitz purchased from an establishment called Zuulusi, the Appliance of Supernatural Science. Gozer demanded Janine choose a Destructor form. She refused, tricked the Terror Dogs into chasing a wooden spoon into the refrigerator, and kicked Gozer in after them, shutting the door.
Personality
Gozer is cold, ruthless, and entirely contemptuous of mortals. It treats humans as instruments of ritual, potential sacrifices, or obstacles to destruction, and responds to any perceived challenge with immediate lethal force. Its Superiority Complex is evident throughout both films: it blasted the Ghostbusters the moment Ray answered he was not a god, reacted violently when provoked during the rooftop confrontation, and killed Ivo Shandor without hesitation when he overstepped. Its few lines of dialogue consistently frame interactions in terms of sacrifice, dominion, and death.
Slavitza Jovan described the character as "almost arrogant" and said she played Gozer as a timeless figure, an "almost arrogant Roman empress" who regarded regular humans as beneath her.
Powers and Abilities
Gozer is classified as a Class 7 entity. Its documented abilities include dimensional travel, shape-shifting, telepathy, lightning projection, invisibility, intangibility, pyrokinesis, and weather control. Its mere entry into Earth's dimension caused measurable increases in paranormal activity and disrupted natural forces, producing the storm and earthquake that preceded the rooftop confrontation in 1984.
A key limitation is that Gozer must take a physical form chosen by a human Selector upon crossing over, and it is locked into that Destructor form until its work in that dimension is complete. In 1984, Gozer had not fully entered the world when the Ghostbusters crossed the streams, which may have been essential to their success. In Ghostbusters: Afterlife, it was demonstrated that Gozer requires both Zuul and Vinz Clortho to maintain its full physical form: trapping either minion visibly fractured its power.
Casting and Design
The name "Gozer" originated with Dan Aykroyd, who cited two sources: a Gozer Chevrolet dealership in upstate New York, and the 1977 Enfield haunting in England (also a basis for the film Poltergeist). During that haunting, a medium named Annie Shaw channeled an entity that identified itself as "Gozer," described as a user of black magic. The word also exists as a Hebrew term for the person who performs circumcisions in Judaism.
Early drafts imagined Gozer resembling Bert Parks, and later a Robert Young type. A design based on David Byrne of Talking Heads was also considered. Ivan Reitman ultimately suggested making Gozer a woman with an androgynous quality, citing David Bowie and Grace Jones as touchstones. Harold Ramis was initially skeptical but came around to the idea. The original Aykroyd-Ramis premise had Gozer taking the form of Ivo Shandor, envisioned as a kindly man in a suit played by Paul Reubens; this was not used in the finished film.
Actress Anne Carlisle was offered the role and declined. Slavitza Jovan won the part, playing Gozer as a timeless and imperious figure. Because of Jovan's Slavic accent, her voice was dubbed by Paddi Edwards (uncredited). Reitman auditioned roughly six or seven different approaches: a traditional "voice of God," an effeminate male voice, and various combinations, before settling on a deep, low female voice inspired by The Exorcist. Gozer's acrobatic double-flip during the rooftop sequence was performed by a stunt double at Entertainment Effects Group. The visual of Gozer's disembodied voice emerging from the atmospheric disturbance above the temple was achieved by manipulating paint inside a layered saline-solution water tank, a technique developed by Gary Platek previously used in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
For Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Jason Reitman personally reached out to Olivia Wilde via text to ask if she would portray Gozer. Daily preparation for the role ran between five and a half and six hours. Lou Elsey and Beth Hathaway fabricated the main bodysuit; Arjen Tuiten sculpted the neck piece; the wig was made by Michelle Nyree, styled by Aimee Macabeo, and the lenses painted by Jessica Nelson. The addition of extra crystalline spikes to the suit was Olivia Wilde's own idea. Emma Portner performed the unusual body movements for the spirit form sequences. The statue of Gozer discovered in the Summerville mine was inspired by Polish sculptor Stanislaw Szukalski.
Gozer has been produced as a collectible by several toy lines. Minimates released a Gozer figure as part of their Ghostbusters line. The Ghostbusters: The Board Game Kickstarter campaign unlocked Gozer as a stretch goal at the $450,000 milestone. In Ghostbusters: The Video Game, two achievements are tied to Gozer-related encounters: "Gozer's Most Wanted" and "Let Me Guess, Gozer Worshippers."
References
- Ghostbusters (1984)
- Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021)
- Ghostbusters: The Video Game (Atari/Terminal Reality, 2009)
- IDW Comics: Ghostbusters ongoing series
- The Real Ghostbusters (DIC/DiC animated series, 1986-1991)
- Marvel Comics UK: The Real Ghostbusters Issue #64, "Cool Zuul!"
