Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire – the retro characters and moments from the trailer that make us feel good

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire zaps into Cineworld this March and acts as a bridging point between the older and younger Ghostbusters generations.

In the wake of 2021's Ghostbusters: Afterlife, young heroes Phoebe (Mckenna Grace) and Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) have relocated with their mother (Carrie Coon) and teacher Mr. Grooberson (Paul Rudd) to New York. There they are confronted by a spectral new ice age that endangers all of the citizens of the Big Apple.

Who ya gonna call? Well, you don't need that answered. The new Frozen Empire trailer does that for you and also teases plenty of eye-catching supernatural action, mixed in with plenty of retro faces and references to keep Ghostbusters die-hards happy.

Here's what we spotted.

Pete Venkman, Ray Stanz and Winston Zeddemore are all back

Bill Murray's Venkman, Dan Aykroyd's Ray and Ernie Hudson's Winston are now absent the late Harold Ramis whose character Egon Spengler poignantly appeared in the previous movie as a farewell. Spengler was revealed as Phoebe and Trevor's grandfather during the events of Afterlife.

The trailer for Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire cuts back to some of the most pivotal moments from the 1984 movie. The split between past and present implicitly suggests that the latest conflict with the supernatural has been brewing for decades and is poised to be the most dramatic so far.

Take, for example, the cut back to Ray and Winston's nighttime drive in the original Ghostbusters as the former quotes from the Book of Revelation and alludes to the end of the world. It's one of the most affectingly creepy and emphatic moments from a film generally regarded as a laugh riot, and the clip's presence in the Frozen Empire trailer suggests things are about to get serious for the aged OG Ghostbusters team.

Janine Melnitz suits up

Annie Potts' Janine was the loyal receptionist to the Ghostbusters in the first two movies, released in 1984 and 1989. She appeared briefly in Ghostbusters: Afterlife but now gets to don a boiler suit of her own as she takes the invasive spooks to task. Plus, she gets to repeat one of her signature lines from the first movie in a new context.

The Ghostbusters' most infamous human nemesis is back

Chalk this one up as a pleasant/unpleasant surprise. William Atherton's delightfully slimy Walter 'Pecker' Peck made life difficult for the Ghostbusters in the original film, acting in his capacity as an environmental protection officer to shut the ghostbusting unit down. Bad idea: Peck's ill-conceived intervention unleashed all of the ghosts that the team had caught up to that point, leading to a dramatic showdown with the possessed Dana Barrett (Sigourney Weaver).

Just like the New York cockroach, Peck hasn't gone away. He now re-surfaces in a familiar bureaucratic setting to argue with the younger Ghostbusters over the threat facing New York. Some things never change, and we love it.

The library lions are also back

The very first shot of the first Ghostbusters film introduced us to the imposing stone lions that flank New York's Central Library. It was a creepy and ominous opening to one of the best comedies of the 1980s, assisted by Elmer Bernstein's sinister, nodes martenot-led score.

In Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire things go a step further as we see the lions coming to life and actively roaring at our characters. Once again, there's a sense that past demons aren't buried, only dormant, and now ready to spring back to life in the modern age.

The library ghost also returns

All eighties and nineties kids with surely remember being terrified by Ghostbusters' opening scene. In it, we saw the trio of Venkman, Ray and Egon (Winston joins later on) confronting a humanoid apparition lurking in the lower levels of the Central Library after it had already scared an aged librarian half to death.

The following brief shot of the ghost's monstrous alter-ego is bound to catapult fans back to their childhood. Here's hoping it's more than just a fleeting cameo.

Trevor gets slimed

One cannot have a Ghostbusters movie without Slimer. The disgusting blob has appeared in all of the movies and the animated TV series, and now makes a suitably grungy appearance in the Frozen Empire trailer.

Only this time, Venkman's trauma, for it was he who got slimed in the original movie, now passes onto Trevor and he reconciles with a face full of gunge. 

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is released at Cineworld on March 22nd.