This was something that occured to me watching both GBs earlier, was Peck only made a rival of the GBs because of Venkman's arrogance towards him and refusal to let him inspect the equipment when he first arrived at the HQ? Peck at first just wanted to merely inspect the equipment to ensure it was environmentally safe and not a hazard, and Venkman was being smart and pompous with him the entire time and refusing to let him see, obviously pissing him off. It's no wonder that Peck probably didn't have a high opinion of the GBs after that incident and suspected them to be frauds, and was so furious he didn't even stop to consider the GBs were genuine with their business. But was he this way merely because of Venkman's attitude? Would things have been different had it been Egon, Ray or Winston who spoke with him first?

I'm not defending Peck at all, I can't stand him as much as a lot of other fans, but perhaps he's only a rival of the GBs based on his first meeting with Venkman?

This has crossed my mind more than a few times. I think that its possible he might've been more receptive to their business, but overall I still think he was skeptical of their business and wanted to find a way to shut them down.

I'd say he definitely went as far as he did because of Venkman's attitude.

I don't know; I think he would have shut them down regardless of who actually talked to him. He didn't believe in any aspects of what they were doing (even the CU explosion didn't affect his bizarre reasonings) and I don't think much would have changed that.

Peck started off dissing venkman , theres no way he was not gonna try and shut them down. He was talking all nice just to see the unit.

As seen in the movies, Ray and even Egon could be very passionate and protective about what they do. I think the exchange would have been very different, but the outcome would be the same. Nothing would have changed Peck's mind.

It's worthy of note that when Peck comes to shut off the ECU, Venkman isn't there at first, and he still goes right ahead. That signals to me that Peck had it in for the Ghostbusters, regardless.

To answer your topic question….No, not necessarily. Peck, like mentioned above, was there because he was skeptical of the whole idea and probably wanted to shut them down from the get go. He was just trying to be nice to have a better look at the containment unit.

His demeanor before Venkman's classic jokes and run around was that he didn't care, and was downright insulting. Venkman just happened to pick up on it and play along with him for a bit…which REALLY set Peck off.

Peck had one thing in mind for the Ghostbusters, Peter just so happened to “throw some gas on the fire”.

Peck never intended to be reasonable or professional about the affair, even when corrected by Peter that he was in fact a Doctor, and even after enquiring about Peter's doctorate/s, he still insisted on referring to Peter as “Mr. Venkman”, completely ignoring the titles Peter had been legitimately awarded.

He just needed a reason to shut them down, and sadly Venkman's lack of time for petty bureaucracy was that.

I figured he planned to shut them down anyway, but Venkman's attitude only further pushed him to do so.

I wondered that too…I think it was a matter of time before Peck took adverse action. He was determined to find a seemingly legitimate way to do it.