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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.
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.
Comic Books
Film
Literature
- Literary example: The M.Y.T.H. Inc. crew 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 Mc Gee, from John Mac Donald'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.
Live Action TV
- Angel The Series (Angel Investigations actually used "we help the helpless", memorably mangled by Cordelia into 'hopeless', as its advertising slogan)
- 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.
- Mac Gyver - does he actually HAVE a job?
- 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).
- 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 RP Gs 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.
- Troubleshooters from Paranoia treat all jobs with the same amount of professionalism. That amount is zero.
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
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.
Web Original
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