Ghostbusters (1984)
Peck arrives at the Ghostbusters' Firehouse as an EPA inspector for the third district, Greater New York, concerned about wild media stories and possible environmental violations from the Ghostbusters' operations. His first meeting with Peter Venkman is immediately adversarial: Venkman refuses to let him tour the facility without a court order and attempts to make a fool of him on the way out. Peck returns weeks later armed with a Cease and Desist All Commerce order, a Seizure of Premises and Chattels, a Ban on the Use of Public Utilities for Non-Licensed Waste Handlers, and a Federal Entry and Inspection Order.
Inside, Egon Spengler warns repeatedly that the Containment Unit is a high-voltage laser containment system and that shutting it off would be like dropping a bomb on the city. Peck is not swayed. Convinced the Ghostbusters are con artists using "sense and nerve gasses" to fake hauntings, he orders the reluctant Con Edison worker to cut the power. The grid goes down, every captured ghost escapes into the city, and an explosion tears through the block. Peck immediately tries to pin the explosion on the Ghostbusters and has them arrested.
At the Mayor's office, Peck attempts to paint the Ghostbusters as scam operators running a fraudulent operation, but his credibility collapses when Ray Stantz points out that everything was fine until Peck shut off the power. The Fire Commissioner and Police Commissioner pile on with accounts of bizarre phenomena across the city that no conventional explanation covers. The Mayor sides with the Ghostbusters and ejects Peck, who swears revenge. After the Ghostbusters defeat Gozer and the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man is destroyed, a large wave of melted marshmallow douses Peck in the street, and he screams that he hates Peter Venkman.
According to Harold Ramis, William Atherton was so thoroughly reviled by the public after the film's release that people were reportedly picking fights with him in bars.
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire
By Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, Walter Peck has been elected mayor of New York City. His antagonism toward the Ghostbusters has not diminished with the promotion.
He summons the new team to his office over the damage caused during the Sewer Dragon bust: two lamp posts, two Toyota Prius cars, and an entire fleet of rental bicycles. He then zeros in on Phoebe Spengler's age, determines she is 15, and identifies her active participation as a child labor violation. She is benched from Ghostbusting for three years until she reaches the legal working age.
When Phoebe destroys Patience the Lion at the New York Public Library, Peck arrives at the police station to gloat. He informs the team that the Firehouse is condemned, the Proton Packs will be melted down to scrap the next morning, and the Ectomobile is his next target. Phoebe reminds him that the last time he tried to shut down the Ghostbusters, he created a cross-rip into another dimension. Peck interprets that as slander and has her arrested.
At the film's climax, Peck goes to the Firehouse with a police escort intending to blame the citywide crisis on the Ghostbusters. Peter calls him a clown. When Channel 3 reporters arrive, Winston Zeddemore steps in front of the cameras and credits Phoebe and the team for saving the city, declaring them the Ghostbusters. The crowd cheers and drowns out whatever Peck was trying to say.
The Real Ghostbusters
Walter Peck appears in the episode "Big Trouble With Little Slimer," voiced by Robert Towers. Following his firing from the EPA, Peck joined B.U.F.O. (The Bureau of Unidentifiable Flying Organisms), a government agency he used as a vehicle for revenge. He first tried to set the team up by sending them on a fake call to a B.U.F.O. facility in Queens, where their unauthorized entry onto federal property was meant to result in their arrest. The plan backfired when Testing Lab 5 turned out to be genuinely haunted by a Class 5 ghost.
Regrouping, Peck had Slimer classified as a U.F.O. and obtained a warrant to take him into custody, threatening to shut down the Ghostbusters entirely if they refused. After B.U.F.O. scientists concluded Slimer posed a possible threat, Peck had him placed in a cyclotron and changed the stop code to prevent any rescue attempt. The device was not designed for sustained operation and soon threatened the lives of everyone in the facility. The Ghostbusters fired their Proton Streams into the center of the cyclotron to manipulate the magnetic field and stop the device. Slimer reformed and the facility was saved. The B.U.F.O. general fired Peck and his associate Calahan for their role in the crisis.
Compared to his film counterpart, the animated Peck displays a somewhat higher degree of viciousness and takes visible glee in persecuting the Ghostbusters. The animated version was drawn with a mustache but no beard.
Ghostbusters: The Video Game
Walter Peck returns in Ghostbusters: The Video Game (2009), again voiced by William Atherton. Set in 1991 during Thanksgiving weekend, Peck is now the head of the Paranormal Contracts Oversight Commission (PCOC, pronounced "peacock"), serving as a liaison between the Mayor's office and the Ghostbusters. When Mayor Jock Mulligan wins election on a pro-Ghostbusters platform, he appoints Peck because he has vaguely heard that Peck has prior experience with the team.
The Ghostbusters protest being saddled with Peck, while Peck's first declared intention is to remove their business certification. The Mayor points out they need each other: the Ghostbusters need Peck for credibility with City Council, and Peck's own job disappears if he puts the Ghostbusters out of business. Peck grudgingly follows orders, though he refuses to hand out complimentary tickets to the opening of the Gozer exhibit at the Natural History Museum.
Throughout the game, the amount of property damage the player causes determines how irate Peck becomes. He has established a financial threshold for acceptable destruction; exceeding it results in fines. Game creators confirmed Peck allows the Ghostbusters a certain degree of flexibility, albeit grudgingly.
The game takes a darker turn for Peck when Ivo Shandor's ghost is revealed to have been possessing Mayor Mulligan all along, using Peck as a patsy to slow the Ghostbusters' investigation. Peck is also manipulated into opening the Containment Unit and kidnapping Selwyn. In the realistic version of the game, possessed Peck is used as the art for the Tobin's Spirit Guide entry on the "Possessed Human." The Rookie ultimately frees Peck from his restraints following Shandor's defeat, and the group must run to safety. Peck's antagonism for the Ghostbusters remains as strong as ever.
A notable script note: the February 11, 2008 draft revision for the Return to the Sedgewick level reveals that Peter told the team he had discovered Walter Peck lives with his mother, an aunt, and is unloved by both.
IDW Comics
The IDW Comics continuity, which follows the events of both Ghostbusters films, gives Peck his deepest character arc. After the Gozer incident he was placed on restricted duty pending review. Journalist Rebecca Morales attempted to interview him for a book on the Ghostbusters; Peck refused, threatened to sue if quoted, and returned to the EPA. He was later hired by B.U.F.O. alongside Jack Hardemayer.
When the PCOC was reinstated by the City and County of New York, Peck was appointed head of the commission. Over many issues the comics gradually reveal a more complicated figure beneath the bluster. After personally witnessing what the series describes as "Apocalypse Events," Peck admitted his perspective had changed: he came to believe the Ghostbusters should exist, but still needed oversight for the safety of the public. In practice, he fights constantly with the Ghostbusters while also quietly protecting them from outside threats. Most notably, he kept the federal government from confiscating the Ghostbusters' equipment by informing Washington that the technology was so poorly constructed it could end all life on Earth without proper care and maintenance.
In Ghostbusters International #7, Peck strapped on a Proton Pack for the first time and personally battled Banshees alongside Ray and Winston during a case in Ireland. He almost shot Ray and Winston twice. He also brokered a deal with magnate Erland Vinter that protected the team from a buyout, arranged the FBI secondment of Special Agent Melanie Ortiz to the Ghostbusters by leveraging a game of golf with her reluctant section chief, and eventually offered Janine Melnitz the position of PCOC liaison. Janine accepted after negotiating an extra $15,000 on top of his initial offer, with the right to keep her desk at the Firehouse and control her own schedule.
Additional details established across the IDW run: Peck holds a Masters in Business Administration, has some degree of fluency in Japanese, and keeps a photo of himself with President Reagan in his office. Ghostbusters: Back in Town Issue #4 establishes that a billboard Callie shoots during a bust bears Peck's face from his mayoral campaign, connecting the IDW version directly to his eventual rise to mayor in Frozen Empire.
Writer Erik Burnham noted he had not originally planned Peck to be such a prominent ongoing presence in the series, but drew inspiration from the PCOC backup stories written by Tristan Jones.
Personality
Walter Peck follows his orders to the letter and apparently does not believe in flexibility or grey areas. He possesses little to no sense of humor and approaches his job with almost unshakeable seriousness. He seems to genuinely believe he is a noble crusader fighting "the good fight," and that anyone who voices opposition is essentially making an admission of guilt. Peck's title as a "civil servant" is an amusing paradox given his demeanor: he is about as uncivil as one can be. His desire to protect the public does seem to be sincere, even if his personality is highly abrasive. He is not in the game for personal glory and does not appear to expect people to like him. He views getting his job done as more important than being liked.
Peck can be initially cordial and professional, but his demeanor reduces quickly to visible agitation when he meets non-cooperation. He is perfectly willing to lay spurious charges against those under his suspicion while still sticking to established protocol. He is also capable of ignoring his own responsibility for the consequences of his actions, as with the city-wide disaster caused when he ordered the Containment Unit shut off over the explicit warnings of everyone present, then immediately pinned blame on the Ghostbusters for the explosion.
Peck is by nature a skeptic who did not believe in the supernatural, a position he held even as the evidence mounted. His skepticism had considerably eroded by 1991, when he headed PCOC during the Video Game. By the IDW Comics, after witnessing apocalyptic paranormal events firsthand, he openly admitted his view had shifted. His antagonism with the Ghostbusters, however, remained a constant through every continuity.
Legacy
Putting his abrasive, unlikable demeanor aside, Peck was not entirely wrong to be wary about the safety of the Ghostbusters' equipment and their training in operating it. Even the Ghostbusters themselves expressed strong doubts about the safety and reliability of their gear and the limited testing behind it, and there are strict laws regarding the use of nuclear equipment in populated areas. While he was personally responsible for the Containment Unit meltdown, the incident did illustrate why such laws exist. His unrelenting hassling of the Ghostbusters can be read as a net benefit: it forces them to be attentive to public safety, to maintain and adequately test their equipment, and to keep their records clean.
That said, Peck was an agent of the Environmental Protection Agency, not the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. He was overstepping his role through several illegal actions that contributed directly to a near-catastrophe. The fact that his underlying concern (dangerous unregulated technology operating in a densely populated city) was not entirely unfounded does not excuse the method.
Casting and design
Walter Peck is played by William Atherton in Ghostbusters (1984), reprised in voice for Ghostbusters: The Video Game (2009), and again in Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024). The role was originally read by Michael Ensign, who was ultimately cast as the Hotel Sedgewick manager instead. In The Real Ghostbusters episode "Big Trouble With Little Slimer," Peck was voiced by Robert Towers. A deal could not be reached for Atherton to reprise the role for Ghostbusters II, and Ivan Reitman cast Kurt Fuller as the functionally analogous character Jack Hardemayer.
In the original film, Peck wears a Phi Beta Kappa pin. Phi Beta Kappa is a prestigious academic honor society in the United States. His middle name, Margate, is established in the Ghostbusters II August 5, 1988 draft script, in which Peck was called to the witness stand to testify against Peter, Ray, and Egon.
In Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, Peck is seen wearing a wedding band throughout. The field coat worn at the police station scene was a suggestion from costume designer Alexis Forte. Chris Rock was originally attached to play the mayor in Frozen Empire; that version of the character was described as happy-go-lucky and supportive of the Ghostbusters.
For the television broadcast of Ghostbusters (1984), the "dickless" insult from the Mayor's office scene was replaced with "Wally Wick." The Comedy Central version keeps Ray's original line but changes Peter's to: "Yes, it's true your honor, this man is some kind of rodent, I don't know which." A preview cut included first in the 2022 Ghostbusters Ultimate Edition contains an additional moment, at around the 1-hour-17-minute mark, in which Peck is called a fascist.
Mattel released a 6-inch Walter Peck action figure through the Matty Collector store as the fourth entry in the Ghostbusters 6-inch Movie Masters line, produced to mark the franchise's 25th anniversary. The figure came packaged with a Containment Unit accessory. The back-of-card "Personnel File" leaned into the film's humor: his "Ghostbuster Status" listed him as "NOT a member of the team," "Annoying bureaucrat with large vocabulary," "Possible psychopath," and "Hypothesized to lack genitalia," with accomplishments including "Responsible for releasing free-roaming, vaporous apparitions across greater Manhattan."
In the Ghostbusters: The Board Game crowdfunding campaign (Cryptozoic Entertainment, 2015), Walter Peck was announced as the 18th stretch goal at the $940,000 level on March 5, 2015, and was unlocked the following day. He came with the Paranormal Contracts Oversight Commission card, which quotes his "Shut it off!" line and summarizes his arc from the first film through the IDW Comics setup.
Quotes
"...[I have a] Cease and desist all commerce order, seizure of premises and chattels, ban on the use of public utilities for non-licensed waste handlers and a Federal Entry and Inspection Order."
"What is the magic word, Mr. Venkman?"
"I want to know more about what you do here. Frankly there have been a lot of wild stories in the media and we want to assess any possible environmental impact from your operation like the presence of noxious, possibly hazardous waste chemicals in your basement. Now either you show me what is down there or I come back with a court order."
(on the Firehouse answering machine in the Video Game) "Well, even losers can win, sometimes! Nicely done! It kills me to say that!"
"Security, remove these men... with excessive force!"
References
- Ghostbusters (1984), Columbia Pictures
- Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024), Columbia Pictures / Ghost Corps
- Ghostbusters: The Video Game (2009), Terminal Reality / Atari
- IDW Publishing, Ghostbusters ongoing comic series (Volumes 1-3), written by Erik Burnham
- The Real Ghostbusters, "Big Trouble With Little Slimer"
- Matty Collector, 6" Walter Peck figure product listing
- Cryptozoic Entertainment, Ghostbusters: The Board Game Kickstarter campaign (2015)
