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Peter Venkman, PhD is a fictional character from the Ghostbusters franchise. He appears in the films Ghostbusters, Ghostbusters II, , and in the animated television series The Real Ghostbusters and Extreme Ghostbusters. In those four live action films, he was portrayed by Bill Murray, and was voiced in the animated series first by Lorenzo Music and then by Dave Coulier. Dan Aykroyd originally wrote the script with John Belushi in mind to play the role of Peter but Belushi died of a drug overdose on March 5, 1982, leading Murray to get the role. Peter is a parapsychology, initially a skeptic on the paranormal despite being a scientist on the subject, and the leader of the Ghostbusters.
In 2008, Peter Venkman was selected by the magazine Empire as one of The 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time, described by Empire
Despite Peter's lackadaisical attitude, he has developed plans that help the Ghostbusters save the day, and he is shrewd and more street smart than the more academically inclined Ray and Egon. Peter serves as the front man and leader for the group and possesses more social ability than his friends. For instance, he persuades the city mayor to release them after being arrested, return their equipment, and otherwise support their attempt to stop Gozer the Gozerian. In addition, Peter uses a combination of his social skills and psychology/parapsychology knowledge (presumably) to assist the Ghostbusters during their climatic battles in Ghostbusters, Ghostbusters II, and . Specifically, he informs his fellow Ghostbusters the intentions of Gozer when they are asked to choose the form of the destructor during the climax of the first film as well as distract Vigo the Carpathian and Gozer during the climax of the second film and , respectively.
Peter encouraged and prodded Ray to mortgage his house in order to find the capital needed to purchase the firehouse. Whether motivated by the prospect of becoming rich or just the fact that he no longer had to work under the thumb of the board of regents, Dr. Venkman was very motivated to begin a new career. Peter soon became the first to meet the company's first client, Dana Barrett, and formed a romantic interest. Dana had claimed that there were monsters in her fridge even though Peter could not find any such thing. After that incident, Peter, Egon, and Ray were eating dinner at the firehouse when their secretary Janine got a call. Peter and his team came to the Sedgewick Hotel, where Peter came face to face with the ghost that would one day become known as Slimer. Peter was slimed during his first encounter with the ghost, which Ray greatly praised as "actual physical contact." Peter and his team eventually captured the ghost, which soon made them popular and busy around town with other ghosts.
Peter had stopped by at one of her orchestra rehearsals. He happened upon her talking to a colleague who played in the orchestra with her, and who was interested her as well. He asked, "Who's the stiff?" and she answers, "The stiff happens to be one of the finest musicians in the world." Peter has found some answers for Dana, but say they can find out more on another night. Peter continues to compliment and flirt in confidence and Dana reluctantly says, trying to keep down a commotion, "I'll see you Thursday." He says, "We'll eat and read." As she walks away with her male colleague, he addresses her somewhat jealously, "So, who the hell is that?!" and Dana replies, "A friend. An old friend." She smiled because of Peter constantly complimenting her appearance and now stating that in front of her male colleague.
Not too long afterwards, Janine is overrun with calls and stressed out. She tells Peter there is a man waiting in his office from the EPA and she has been working two weeks without a break and states that he promised he would hire more help. He sarcastically praises her experiences in order to let her know the door is open for her to discover more opportunities if she is unsatisfied with working for him. As the phone is ringing once more, Peter replies to her, "Are you going to answer that?". Peter soon meets an EPA representative named Walter Peck, who becomes angry when Peter refuses to show him the storage facility.
As Peter was coming to see Dana and take her out on a date, he notices that she has undergone a radical change in appearance and is now acting very strangely. She bars entrance to her apartment, asking him if he is "The Keymaster". After getting the door slammed in his face he tricked her in order to gain entry. Once inside Dana refers to herself as Zuul, "The Gatekeeper" and tells Peter she is awaiting the coming of Gozer, "The Destructor". Peter replies, "Oh..." and notices slime seeping through the kitchen door and furniture.
The possessed Dana quickly leads Peter to the bedroom where she tries to seduce him asking him "Do you want this body?" He replies by asking if it is a trick question. The possessed Dana is unrelenting in her attempted seduction, telling Peter "Take me now subcreature." Peter ignores her and Dana slams him onto her bed, pouncing on him and pinning him to the bed with supernatural strength. She passionately kisses him and rolls him over on top of her, telling him "I want you inside me". Peter tells her she apparently has two people inside of her already. Peter then attempts to try to talk to the real Dana Barrett, ignoring her seductive advances in the process. While asking for Dana she replies in an inhuman growling voice that "There is no Dana, only Zuul". Peter gives Zuul to the count of three to leave Dana's body, to which she responds by turning her eyes white, thrashing her head back and forth on her bed, then growling furiously like a beast, and levitating above her bed. Peter, realizing the seriousness of Dana's condition, sedates her and calls Egon to explain what is going on. He soon learns from Egon that her building was renovated by an evil architect named Ivo Shandor, and she is possessed by Zuul, the Gatekeeper of Gozer.
After Peck returns and shut down the Containment Unit, the ghosts all escape, and Peter and the other Ghostbusters are imprisoned for EPA violations. Peter convinces the mayor that an apocalypse of "Biblical proportions," is coming to destroy the city.
The Ghostbusters are released and go toward Dana's building, escorted there by a police and army motorcade as a dark cloud starts to cover the entire city. After an earthquake strikes, nearly trapping them in rubble, the Ghostbusters made it to the top of the building. However they are too late to stop Dana and Louis Tully from releasing the evil Gozer and transforming into their possessors' Terror Dog forms. The Ghostbusters confronted Gozer, who electrocutes them before being zapped by their proton packs. He vanishes and returns in the form of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man (which Ray had been thinking of). Peter and his team then cross their proton streams, and force the door to Gozer's dimension to close, destroying the Marshmallow Man in a blaze of flames and saving the city. Peter rescues Dana, no longer possessed, from the rubble of Zuul's charred body, finally winning her affections for saving her.
In the five years since, Egon described Peter (even to Dana) as being borderline(-manic) until he eventually "crossed the border." Peter became the host of a psychic reality talk show in the years after the Gozer battle. The Ghostbusters go to Dana's aid after she claimed her baby stroller rolled away from her by itself, and pinpoints that there was "something brewing under the street," of First Avenue. Egon, Peter, and Ray dig under the surface of the road where they discover a river of slime. The three Ghostbusters are summoned to court after causing a city-wide blackout, where they stand trial on the grounds of violating a restraining order and destroying a section of First Avenue. They go back into business after the slime sample in the courtroom absorbed the judge's negative energy while shouting and exploded out two ghosts; the Scoleri Brothers. After the judge rescinded the order and dismissed the case (while under duress from the ghosts), the Ghostbusters were allowed to put on their Proton pack and bust the ghosts, declaring to the public afterwards that they were open for business once again. While his teammates investigate the river of slime underneath the city, Peter renews his relationship with Dana and becomes paternally attached to Oscar despite not being his father. When Oscar is targeted by the ghost of Vigo the Carpathian, Peter and the team defeat Vigo and save both Dana and Oscar in a final battle at the Manhattan Museum of Art, saving the city once again.
In court, Peter implied that two years prior to the film's events, the team secretly had violated the judiciary orders against them and used their Proton pack. During the confrontation with Vigo, even when paralyzed, Peter's tongue was still as sharp as ever and he still managed to provoke Vigo's ire with a variety of pointed insults, including referring to him as a "dumb blond".
In Ghostbusters: Afterlife, after the closure of the Ghostbusters business following Egon's theft of the Ectomobile and the majority of their equipment, Peter returned to teaching at SUNY Cortland, becoming a Professor of Advertising, indicating that he has earned an advanced degree in business education and marketing. He, Ray and Winston arrive in Summerville, Oklahoma during a new Crossrip incident to aid Egon's family in stopping Gozer. After Gozer's defeat, Peter praises Egon's granddaughter Phoebe for her fighting Gozer herself before they joined her, acknowledging her as a Ghostbuster. After Peter returns to Cortland, he reunites with Dana Barrett who has since become his wife, as indicated by the wedding rings they are wearing. Dana submits him to the same ESP test that he once used on his parapsychology students, hooking him up to the shock machine to playfully torture him, especially after Dana caught him cheating the test and he lets slip that he only shocked men (not women) with it.
The episodes "Venkman's Ghost Repellers", "Cold Cash and Hot Water", and "Treasure of the Sierra Tamale" feature Peter's father, a con artist/Businesspeople who could not make an honest dollar and was often away on business during Peter's childhood, as mentioned in "X-mas Marks The Spot". He is depicted as a selfish, even obnoxious father; his relationship with Peter is estranged. Peter has claimed to be a Scorpio, as mentioned in "Mean Green Teen Machine". In "Last Train to Oblivion", one of Peter's favorite hobbies is trains, and he used to dream about driving a big locomotive when he was a child (Peter even studied engineering in college for two years before discovering it had nothing to do with trains). Peter Venkman was voiced by Lorenzo Music during the first season. At the start of the second season, Music was replaced by Dave Coulier when Murray complained to the studio that the character sounded too much like Garfield the cat (who was also voiced by Music). Coincidentally, Murray voiced Garfield in the and its .
The Ghostbusters in Extreme Ghostbusters keep a statue of Peter Venkman, complete with uniform and working original Proton Pack, in the Ghostbusters Firehouse.
Peter still maintains the smooth-talking slacker identity from the previous two movies, willing to jump at any chance to get out of doing work or going into a dangerous situation. He offers to take Marine Ecto-8 to avoid going onto Shandor Island. These attempts are transparent at best, prompting the other Ghostbusters to roll their eyes or glare at him.
Peter is still primarily motivated in his own best interests. He can be goaded into expending effort if an attractive female or a lucrative payoff is involved. But in the end he will still come around to doing the right thing when it's really important.
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