Ghostbusters: Answer the Call (2016)
Working a MTA subway booth at the Seward Street Subway Station, Patty encountered the troubled Rowan North during his routine, listening to his cryptic warning about a coming "Fourth Cataclysm" and then watching him vanish into a restricted tunnel. Investigating, she found a strange sparking device on the tracks and came face to face with the Electrocuted Ghost. Shaken but intrigued, she tracked down Abby Yates and Erin Gilbert after seeing their viral ghost video, led them through the station to show them what she witnessed, and shortly afterward walked into their makeshift lab above Zhu's Authentic Hong Kong Food and announced she was joining the team.
Her pitch was practical: she had read extensively about New York's history and knew the city block by block, and her uncle Bill owned a funeral home with a 1984 Cadillac Fleetwood hearse they could borrow to haul equipment. Abby took her up on it. The hearse was later customized by Jillian Holtzmann into the Ecto-1 without Patty's knowledge or consent, leaving Patty unable to return it to her uncle. Patty also re-purposed four MTA flight suits from work, modifying them into the team's official uniforms so they wouldn't keep getting slimed.
During the Stonebrook Theatre investigation, the ghost Mayhem perched on Patty's shoulders as the crowd looked on, setting up one of the film's best-known sequences. When Rowan later possessed Abby's body and dangled Jillian Holtzmann out a window, it was Patty who grabbed Holtzmann's arm and pulled her back in, then slapped Abby free of the possession. Patty also recognized the Mercado Hotel's name when the team mapped Rowan's Ley Line network, drawing on her knowledge of the site's history of violence to help them locate Rowan before he completed the ritual.
In the climactic battle, Patty wielded the Ghost Chipper sidearm to neutralize Mayhem and used the team's idea of driving the nuclear-equipped Ecto-1 into the portal as a giant Ghost Trap. After the crisis, when the city illuminated buildings in tribute to the Ghostbusters, Patty was the one who noticed the lights and brought everyone to the roof to see them. In the film's final scene, listening to EVP recordings, Patty caught the word "Zuul" and brought it to the team's attention. She later contributed case studies on six haunted locations around the world to the revised edition of Ghosts from Our Past.
Patty holds a Bachelor of Arts in History, confirmed by her official IDW virtual trading card released on April 5, 2018. An early note in Ghostbusters Crossing Over #1 incorrectly attributed a Master's degree; the trading card takes precedence.
IDW Comics
Ghostbusters 101
When a dimensional overlap brought the original team of Peter Venkman, Ray Stantz, Egon Spengler, and Winston Zeddemore into contact with Patty's team, Patty quickly noted that Winston looked like her Uncle Bill, about thirty years younger. Working alongside both teams at Ellis Island, she correctly predicted the hauntings would involve pirate ghosts given the island's history of executions. She also identified Zuul by name from her EVP work, prompting the realization that her team may one day face Gozer. Kylie Griffin theorized that any such manifestation would be a weaker echo, given that most of Gozer's essence remained imprisoned in the original team's Containment Unit.
Ghostbusters: Answer The Call
In the Answer The Call comics continuation, the team faced Doctor Kruger, a 1900s mad scientist who had conducted fear experiments from a Yorkville brownstone and could drag people into a "Nightmare-Scape" by exploiting their specific fears. Patty's fears were identified as creepy dolls and being left alone, which incapacitated her during one confrontation. The team ultimately overcame Kruger by exploiting the specificity of their fears as a weapon, meeting him in a shared memory of an accidental chapel explosion that had brought all four of them together before they knew each other.
Patty was central to the investigative thread: she discovered Kruger's journal in his sealed underground lab, read it on the drive back (telling Erin and Abby to shut up fifty times), and emerged knowing his plan. She also suggested the idea that became the team's winning strategy, which Abby called her a genius for, prompting Patty to correct her: "I'm a Ghostbuster."
Ghostbusters Crossing Over
During the interdimensional crossover event, Patty traveled with a mixed field team that included Ray Stantz from Dimension 68-R, Garrett Miller from 68-E, Janine Melnitz, and Ron Alexander. When Garrett was possessed by the Hungry Manitou inside a circus, generating a Giant Murder Clown construct, Patty tackled Ron out of harm's way after his impulsive use of a Proton Grenade backfired, and helped coordinate the strategy to free Garrett. The team was subsequently redirected to Collectors' Limbo by Tiamat, where they fought back rather than submit, ultimately stripping Tiamat of her P.K.E. and trapping her.
Personality
Patty is the practical anchor of the team, relying on cultural knowledge, common sense, and direct observation where her colleagues lean on theory and instrumentation. She is the first to spot when a situation is absurd, the first to state plainly that something is terrifying, and the first to act when someone is in physical danger. Her knowledge of New York City's history, geography, and folklore functions as the team's local intelligence, comparable in scope to Ray Stantz's broader paranormal reference knowledge. The Ghostbusters Crossing Over #1 notes confirm this, stating her knowledge of the New York City area equals Ray's.
She speaks with a southern accent and wears a gold vanity necklace. Her family is a recurring presence: uncle Bill (funeral home owner), cousin Mookie, and a cousin named Marcie whose doll collection, per the novelization, was the origin of Patty's fear of dolls and mannequins.
Casting and Design
The role of Patty was originally written with Melissa McCarthy in mind, with the name "Patty Tolan" chosen as a direct nod to McCarthy's Irish ethnicity. After McCarthy was cast as Abby, director Paul Feig mentally cast Leslie Jones for Patty after watching Jones' "Weekend Update" segments on Saturday Night Live, where Jones had been a cast member and writer since 2014. Jones was born September 7, 1967, in Memphis, Tennessee.
Jones lost 27 pounds during production, underwent regular chiropractic treatment and Epsom salt baths, and received massages throughout the shoot. Her stunt double was Alyma Dorsey. On page 215 of the tie-in book Ghosts from Our Past, Jones is thanked in the acknowledgments. A deleted scene concept involved Patty battling a giant animatronic Barbie doll in a haunted FAO Schwarz, but it was not filmed due to budget constraints.
Patty's parallel in the original Ghostbusters team is Winston Zeddemore: both are the last to join, both are the sole Black member of the team, and both lack the scientific doctorates of their colleagues. Unlike Winston, who answered a help-wanted ad, Patty initiated contact after a direct ghost encounter on the job.
In the IDW comics, Ghostbusters Crossing Over confirmed her team is designated Dimension 80-C.
The 2016 Ghostbusters uniforms, which Patty sourced and modified from MTA stock, have been a popular costume project on GBFans.com given their accessibility: the base flight suit is a modified real-world garment rather than a fully custom build. Discussions around the 2016 team's gear, including Patty's personal Ghost Chipper sidearm, can be found in the Props forum and in the 2016 film's subforum.
References
Some content on this page was researched using the Ghostbusters Wiki on Fandom.
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Ghostbusters: Answer the Call (2016), Sony Pictures.
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IDW Comics: Ghostbusters 101, Ghostbusters: Answer The Call, and Ghostbusters Crossing Over.
