So, you have a project you need some professional advice on, or perhaps your company is facing difficult times or some other thing that you feel needs someone outside your current organization to come in, look at the situation, and offer their opinion, perhaps even lend their skills if need be. You need to bring in a consultant.
These are professionals who have only loose ties to the company or people they're assisting. They come in only for specific purposes, and once they've done what they came to do they collect their pay and hit the road. Some companies might keep consultants on retainer, calling them back in for various issues that crop up, but they are still free agents. While there are internal consultants, who bounce around to various departments in the company they work for, these are rarely seen in fiction. Most consultants are brought in for that external viewpoint.
The uses of consultants in stories are as wide and varied as the professions they advise on. They might simply be a one-shot character, a recurring character if their position brings them back frequently, or if viewed from the other end, it could be used to send a character to a variety of different places for various reasons. It might also be used to explain something about the character; why someone always seems to have money without going to work five days a week; well, they are a consultant to big firms, so they get paid big bucks to give their opinion on technical issues.
For times when police or detectives want to consult someone on an unsolved criminal case, they might be consulting an Amateur Sleuth or even, to get a sense of the criminal mind, Consulting a Convicted Killer. Other times (if you're really off your rocker) you might be consulting an inanimate object, in which case you're Consulting Mister Puppet.
Compare with The Worm Guy, a consultant usually in a rather fringe field of expertise who is often brought in almost by force. Particularly unlucky consultants may find themselves playing the role of Ignored Expert, or worse, The World's Expert (on Getting Killed).
Not to be confused with Bringing in the Expert, which is when you have Dirty Business that you need done right.
Examples
- In Kemono Jihen, Inugami's kemono office is officially a group of "specialists" called in by transmetropolitan police in order to keep up The Masquerade. The office's credentials are apparently so thorough that Inugami can easily let Kabane, a thirteen-year-old boy, into an ongoing crisis situation with his approval.
- Moriarty the Patriot follows Professor William James Moriarty, mathematics professor and criminal consultant. His morals might be in question, but his expertise is not.
- Sherlock Holmes is also present as the world's leading detective consultant.
- While it's not usually his main line of business, Lex Luthor has occasionally taken consultancy gigs when the price was adequate. For example, during the arc where Swamp Thing was holding Gotham City hostage until his lover Abby was freed, the Sunderland Corporation brought Luthor in to map out how to destroy the plant elemental. Luthor finished his ten minute presentation ten seconds early, just so the Sunderland people had enough time to write out his check for a million dollars.
"I know from invulnerable... ...and this refugee from a canned sweet-corn label isn't it."
- Us and Them: After defeating Jenova, the Seraph (another of Jenova's people) Medea and her husband, Reidmar (a Cetra), work with Shinra as they reorganize in the aftermath. They don't actually work for the company, but Medea comes in now and then and donates samples of her cells so they can continue enhancing SOLDIERs, and Reidmar helps them monitor the Planet's health as they dismantle the mako reactors.
Film — Live-Action
- The Avengers: Mentioned in passing to explain why Jane Foster isn't present; S.H.I.E.L.D. set her up as a consultant for a distant, remote observatory to keep her out of harm's way.
- The Hunt for Red October: Skip Tyler, a former submariner until he lost his leg to a drunk driver, now teaches at the naval academy and occasionally consults with the Navy on technical matters. Ryan comes to him for help figuring out what the mysterious doors in Red October's hull are.
- In Inside Man, police negotiators try to hire an Albanian translator to translate a speech from the bank robbers, ending up with the Albanian ex-wife of a bystander — who only agrees to do it if they fix her (huge bag of) parking tickets. She's the ideal expert for the job, having grown up listening to that exact voice... on propaganda radio — it was a prerecorded speech of former Albanian president Enver Hoxha.
- Iron Man 2: At the end of the film, Natasha Romanov recommends Tony Stark not be admitted to the Avengers Initiative, but kept on as a consultant. This leads directly into the short The Consultant, where Tony is tapped to "convince" General Ross to let Emil Blonsky (The Abomination) join the Avengers. It doesn't work, as intended.
- Parodied in House II: The Second Story with Bill Towner, "Electrician/Adventurer". He's simply called to the protagonist's new (haunted) house to repair some wiring in a wall, but shows he's apparently an expert in supernatural activity (his response to finding a doorway to an ancient Aztex temple is a mild "Looks like you got some kinda alternate universe in there or something.") He helps the heroes duel the Aztecs and leaves everyone baffled by his expertise.
- The Martian: In the "Ares III: Refocused" extra, it reveals that after Mitch resigned from NASA he took up as a professional consultant which he thinks is the perfect job for him, he gets to tell people what he thinks and then leave.
- The Rock: After terrorists armed with VX poison gas take over Alcatraz Island, the government enlists FBI agent Stanley Goodspeed (a chemical weapons specialist) and former British Intelligence agent John Mason (the only prisoner who ever escaped Alcatraz) to breach the prison and neutralize the rockets. When their Navy SEAL escorts are wiped out they have to work together to stop the terrorists.
- Patty Perkins from Constance Verity Destroys the Universe works as a "supervillain consultant", an independent contractor helping "wealthy idiot" masterminds put their operations together, whether it's designing logos and uniforms for their henchmen, to designing death traps and Death Rays.
- In Death: Whenever Eve Dallas's husband Roarke decides to help out on one of her cases she always refers to him as a "civilian consultant". This is partially because as a billionaire businessman he does have useful expert knowledge, and partially because it is the most convenient thing to put on her reports.
- Sherlock Holmes is the world's first and only consulting detective, taking on cases as police needs him to rather than seeking out those cases himself.
- In the short story A Study in Emerald, the detective of the story is also a consulting detective, apparently the world's first and only. Except, the detective is not Holmes, but Moriarty.
- Bones: The point of the whole series. Dr. Temperance Brennan is a forensic anthropologist at an institution called the Jeffersonian who consults for the FBI, helping them identify the skeletal remains of murder victims and solve their murders.
- Elementary: Aside from being a private detective who consults for the NYPD, Sherlock himself will occasionally employ the services of his "irregulars" — experts in various fields that he himself is not exceptionally versed in, such as advanced mathematics or paleontology — whenever a case comes up that requires a bit of extra help.
- The Noddy Shop: Whenever there is a problem involving some sort of animal, April May McJune, an animal handler, is brought in to deal with it.
- NUMB3RS: The point of the entire series. Charlie Eppes is a math genius who consults for the FBI when they come across a difficult crime to solve.
- White Collar: Neal Caffrey is a white collar criminal on a leash, a tracking anklet that lets the FBI monitor his location while he serves out his sentence, which involves coming in to consult on cases for various white collar crimes.
- Dilbert: Occasionally, Dilbert's company brings in consultants to give advice. Usually, Dogbert plays the role, and he usually either gives worthless advice for his own amusement, or drags things out to extract as much money as he can from the job.
- Final Fantasy XIV:
- As a crafter or gatherer, many quests involve people coming to the Warrior of Light for their expertise in a chosen field to help. For example, Alchemist players end up called on to help with forensics to solve a Locked Room Mystery.
- In the Shadowbringers expansion, the Role Quests feature bounty hunters going after especially dangerous sin eaters. Each bounty hunter needs an expert adventurer's help to go after their quarry.
- Giott is hiring a skilled healer to help understand the riddle of how Sophrosyn is healing sin eaters and even raising them from the dead when healing magic shouldn't work on sin eaters at all.
- Cerigg is hiring a magic expert to understand the "hollows" Phronesis is opening with its magic everywhere it travels.
- Lue-Reeq is looking for a fellow offensive fighter to watch his back while hunting Andreia.
- Granson wants someone extra durable who can survive an assault from Dikaiosyne.
- Mass Effect 3:
- When you find Garrus during the Reaper invasion of turian space, you find he's become the turian government's go-to consultant on the matter, since he's really the only one who has any experience fighting Reapers. Garrus himself is a little incredulous to find himself in this position.
- Mordin Solus is found on at the Salarian Tasks Group facility on Sur'kesh despite having retired from the STG. He says he's there as a consultant on the genophage, working for an actual cure since no one else has the expertise, experience and motivation for it. Has to be him, someone else might get it wrong.
- Jacob Taylor refuses reinstatement in the Alliance Marines, feeling his time with Cerberus disqualifies him. Instead he becomes their consultant on Cerberus tactics.
- The Daily WTF has a lot of articles pertaining to the work of "Highly Paid Consultants". Most often they provide some software without the proper means to maintain it, which means the company then needs to either hire them again or resort to extreme measures.
- Secret Millionaires Club: An Edutainment Show example, the premise is a club of kids, mentored by billionaire Warren Buffet, who go to different businesses that are having troubles, along the way learning about various aspects of the business world.
