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Who ya gonna call?

A heroic party whose official professions are defined vaguely enough to allow them to go on all sorts of adventures. Generally requires only one catch (like simply being paid) to take any job no matter how unusual or apparently trite, and all are treated with the same amount of professionalism.

A noticeable trend is for these groups is being some variation of either mercenary work or detective work. If dealing with supernatural forces, you literally have a Who You Gonna Call on your hands.

People who do this stuff without getting paid generally have Chronic Hero Syndrome.

Named for the slogan of Angel Investigations in Angel.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Get Backers
• Futakoi Alternative
• The ninjas from Naruto are rather like this, jobs ranging from mercenary work to finding a lost cat.
• The main characters from Gintama.
• The MITHRIL Organization from the Full Metal Panic! series, on an international scale. They are, amongst other things, hired by the UN to clean up civil wars and stop ethnic cleansing.
• The main Five Man Band from Sorcerer Hunters.
• In Hajime No Ippo, Takeshi Sendoh's backstory has him as an ex-gang leader whose followers actually fought against other gangs to counterattack their abuse of other students. And ever since he was a child, Sendoh strived to protect his friends from bullies: his motto was "Leave this to me! I'm gonna protect you ALL".

Comic Books

• Jon Sable Freelance.
• Heroes For Hire Power Man and Iron Fist, though if the cause is just enough, they'll waive the fee.

Film

• Ghostbusters

Literature

• Skeeve's team and later the M.Y.T.H. Inc. crew (in "Some kind of MYTHsomething" by Robert Asprin) seems to take any client who can meet their fees. Admittedly, they've built up such a reputation by now that not just anyone can afford to hire them.
• Repairman Jack from F. Paul Wilson's series of novels will fix anything, barring mechanical appliances.
• Doc Savage
• Travis McGee, from John MacDonald's novels. He usually gives his profession as 'salvage consulant'.
• Sherlock Holmes makes this trope Older Than Radio, selling his services as a consulting detective to everyone from poor tradesmen and governesses to the official police force of Scotland Yard to aristocrats, captains of industry, and even royalty.
  • While it's certainly true that Holmes is glad to help people who need it and see justice done, and glad to collect his fee, his primary motivation is always finding ways to stave off the monstrous boredom that he feels whenever he is not on a case, since his vast intellect makes it very hard to find meaningful challenges and stimulation in life. From his point of view, the more bizarre and outlandish a case is, the better.
• Harry Dresden, only professional wizard in Chicago.
• In Forgotten Realms — pretty much all and any adventuring groups, chartered or not, that has no strict official affiliation. Which is to be expected, as this setting married Dungeons And Dragons in very young age.

Live Action TV

• Angel The Series (Angel Investigations actually used "we help the helpless", memorably mangled by Cordelia into 'hopeless', as its advertising slogan, and in at least once instance, "We hope you're helpless.")
• The A Team
• The Goodies
• Supernatural
• The Avengers
• The Equalizer
• Vengeance Unlimited, for one million dollars or a favor.
• The Pretender does it for free, since he can steal from the baddies' bank accounts.
• MacGyver - does he actually HAVE a job?
  • Technically yes, but the job description appears to be VERY VERY broadly defined.
• The WWE tag team The Acolyte Protection Agency (APA for short) hired themselves out to various underdog faces for bodyguarding, six-man-tag-teaming, and general-purpose ass-kicking. They even had a few faux-commercials for their services, with the tag line "APA: 'cause we need beer money!"
• Burn Notice
• The crew of the good ship Serenity in Firefly. As an added bonus, some of their jobs do involve helping the helpless.
• Pushing Daisies
• The new TNT series Leverage has this from the second episode on (in the pilot each of the 5 thieves made out with over $32 million on short-sold stock).
  • Leverage is an odd duck because, unlike most other examples of this trope, the characters really don't need money very much at all and are therefore never broke. But then, international thieves are a lot like stock brokers: if the guy's broke, he's probably not worth hiring.
• Sanctuary has a slight twist on this, as the main characters generally help abnormal humans, while fighting the more dangerous ones.

Tabletop Games

• The majority of adventuring parties in any given Tabletop Games, especially Dungeons And Dragons, also tend to be like this, as a cheap and easy way for the Game Master to get the adventure started.
  • Superhero RPGs are perhaps an even better example.
  • In contrast, Dark Heresy characters distinctly don't help the helpless. In fact, since the players work for the Inquisition, chances are they are actively killing the helpless just in case they happen to be Chaos tainted.
  • Shadowrun teams with any sort of ethics at all tend to fall into this category. Of course, most Shadowrunners are immoral scumbuckets who'd slit their own mama's throat for a single Nuyen, but the player characters are exceptions. Hopefully.
    • In this troper's experience the Shadowrun standard is for a team to accept jobs requiring any substantial amount of work only if there's substantial pay involved. If there is, they'll do the job unless it's something like cold-blooded assassination—and even that's possible if the pay is good enough. Sure, ethical teams won't Kick The Dog on the way, but they're shadowrunners. Sometimes it's their job to Kick The Dog for someone.
• Troubleshooters from Paranoia treat all jobs with the same amount of professionalism. That amount is zero.
  • They're troubleshooters: They find trouble, they shoot it.

Video Games

• Elite Beat Agents ... but they mainly just stand around and sing so people have the courage to actually do the job themselves.

Webcomics

• Tagon's Toughs from Schlock Mercenary. When confronted with an angry pacifist, Captain Tagon responds:
  Tagon: But they're almost always bad guys, and we only do it for the money.
• Quentyn from Tales Of The Questor. As "Questor" is essentially something of a cross between a community champion and a sword for hire.
• The titular Revenant Braves in Circumstances of the Revenant Braves.

Western Animation

• Kim Possible: From babysitting to saving the world, "she can do anything".
• Disney animated show The Weekenders has a charity organization "helpers helping the helpless," where helpful helpers help helpless people needing help. Description courtesy of the lady in charge losing her thesaurus (she finds it later). Not quite this trope, but the name is there.
• The Real Ghostbusters have been hired by everyone from private individuals and small families to large corporations and foreign governments.

Web Original

• The Lonely Winds.

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