Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II, opens with a portrayal of Spengler's death. In the film, it is retroactively established by Jason Reitman and Gil Kenan (with acknowledgements from two of the franchise's creators Dan Aykroyd and Ivan Reitman and Harold Ramis's family as canon), that Egon fathered his daughter Callie in 1982 before the events of the first film. Even Peter and Ray are unaware of her, though Janine does know. However, he became estranged from his family, and Callie grew resentful of her father and blames his life as a scientist for his abandoning her. Despite the Ghostbusters successfully closing the "Manhattan Crossrip of '84", at some point after the "Vigo Incident of '89", Egon had discovered prophecies saying Gozer would return in 2021, but his insistence that the Ghostbusters prepare for this strained their relationship (a nod to the real-life estrangement between Ramis and Bill Murray after their collaboration in the film Groundhog Day), and preparing for the events of the prophecies is the reason for his distance with his daughter, who he intended to protect. Ten years after the Manhattan Crossrip, Egon stole equipment and the Ecto-1 and moved to Summerville, Oklahoma, where Ivo Shandor had mined the selenium used to build the Shandor Apartments building in New York City. Shandor had built another gateway for Gozer in his mine, and Egon spent years preparing to stop Gozer's eventual return, building automated energy cannons with the components of the proton packs and PKE meter to barricade the portal with crossed streams, as well as setting a ghost trap field with an array of 198 traps for Gozer on his property. He earned the nickname "Dirt Farmer" from Summerville's residents for not growing anything on his land, and for his eccentricity. At some point before the Ghostbusters disbanded, he added a scissor seat on the right side of the Ecto-1 with Ray and added a taser configuration on the team's PKE meters for defense against the spectral entities they hunt; he uses the taser against Gozer's minions after he settled in Summerville, an innovation which even frighted Zuul. He is revealed to be a collector of strange artifacts, like a death whistle from the Aztec culture similar to the ones first discovered by archaeologist Francisco Rivas Castro in 1999, and Sentinel figurines from Shandor's Gozerian Temple, and still eating junk food. He remained in contact with Janine and had