Technical Advisor

Most commonly seen in film and television production, many directors will opt to base their stories around a specific subject. Whatever it is, such as history, sports, science, etc, the most imperative part about covering such material is to portray it correctly. While Artistic License can be taken for the sake of the story, there will also be issues when it comes to pointing out mistakes and glaring flaws in the subject material, which will sometimes come off as annoying among those knowledgeable about said subject. To prevent this as best as they can, directors may need to bring in some outside help.

That's where technical advisors come in.

True to their name, a technical advisor (or consultant, both terms are acceptable) is somebody who is brought onto the production team because of their extensive outside knowledge of a given subject. Their job is to work with the director and actors in order to allow for the subject in question to be portrayed as authentically and realistically as it possibly can, demonstrating the team has Shown Their Work. This includes making the necessary changes to the script to ensure that the story is realistic and working with the actors to help them understand their characters better in regard to their subject.

The use of a technical advisor is not restricted to film and television, however, and can apply to all facets of popular media, including video games, literature, and more.

Super-Trope of Backed by the Pentagon, where a project is given support and backing from a government agency (i.e. Military, Space Agencies, Police, etc) or non-government agency (i.e. game studios, tourism boards, etc). If this role is taken by a cast member, see Cast the Expert. Not to be confused with Bringing in the Expert or Expert Consultant (which are both about In-Universe experts being called in).

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Cells at Work!: Japanese physician Tomoyuki Harada served as the medical supervisor for the series, in order to portray the anthropomorphic versions of cells, bacteria, and diseases correctly, as well as supply the correct information retaining to each respective entity. Additionally, he also served as the medical supervisor for the spin-off series, Cells at Work! CODE BLACK.
• When Will Ayumu Make His Move?: The end of several chapters of the manga features a Shōgi game record that depicts all the moves made by the main characters, Ayumu Tanaka and Urushi Yaotome. These records were written by Madoka Kitao, a Japanese professional women's Shogi player who helped as an editorial consultant for the series' Shogi-centric storyline.

Fan Works

• Child of the Storm: An In-Universe example. It is mentioned that Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which is a Show Within a Show, is actually a surprisingly accurate depiction of how Grey Court vampires operate. This resulted in the Grey Court trying to stop the series' production, which is how Wanda Maximoff ended up as its technical advisor. She both played bodyguard to the filming crew and gave them advice on how to make their portrayal more accurate.

Film — Live-Action

• Battleship: Rick Hoffman^note Not to be confused with another Rick Hoffman, who cameoed as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the film, is a retired US Navy captain who served as the film's naval consultant. During production, he ran what the crew dubbed "Capt. Rick's Boot Camp", where he helped teach the actors and extras how to perform their roles like actual Navy servicemen, such as saluting, how they should stand and talk, how they should dress, etc.
• The Fast and the Furious: Car enthusiast Craig Lieberman served as the technical advisor for the first two films, being responsible for choosing what cars to use (with at least three he himself owned) in certain scenes, acquiring the parts needed for build modification, and procuring extras for shoots. While he also served as this in the third film, he served a smaller role and was afterward replaced by vehicle builder and modifier Dennis McCarthy, who has remained in this role since.
• Full Metal Jacket: R. Lee Ermey was originally brought on set as a consultant on how the Drill Sergeant Nasty character Seargent Hartman should behave, due to him having experience as a Marine drill instructor. He ended up becoming the Trope Codifier, as not only did director Stanley Kubrick wound up just giving the role to Ermey instead, he went on to play similar roles for the rest of his career.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe: Throughout the franchise's history, many military and scientific advisors were relied upon to make sure the films stayed true to the real world as possible:
  • Caltech quantum physicist Spyridon Michalakis served as the scientific consultant for both Ant-Man and Ant-Man and the Wasp to root the more fictional science behind Ant-Man's powers to real-life quantum physics, even coining the name "Quantum Realm".
  • Avengers: Endgame: Several doctors and research professors were tapped into as scientific consultants for the film, including USC physics professor Clifford V. Johnson and CalTech theoretical physicist Sean M. Carroll, in order to create a version of time travel that stayed true to real-life theoretical physics and not like how it is commonly portrayed in popular media, such as Back to the Future.
  • Black Widow (2021): The film consulted with several military consultants in order to determine the feasibility of the Red Room, such as how high could it be in the air to sustain a two-minute freefall as seen in the film's ending
  • Doctor Strange (2016): Astrophysicist Adam Frank served as the film's scientific consultant to help the writing staff balance the scientific and philosophic themes of the film, bringing forth the idea of the Multiverse.
• Sneakers: Len Adleman, one of the mathematicians behind the RSA public-key encryption system, was an advisor on the film and wrote Janek's lecture on the mathematical underpinnings of the codebreaking technique that drives the plot. Since the whole point is that it's an entirely new technique previously unknown to science, his brief was not to ensure accuracy but rather to produce some impressive technobabble with just enough relation to reality to sound plausible.
• Top Gun: The actor that plays Charlie Blackwell's "older man" date is none other than the real-life "Viper", (now retired) US Navy Rear Admiral Pete Pettigrew, who was a TOPGUN instructor and served as technical advisor for the film. Pettigrew designed a number of the film's aerial scenes, including the scene resulting in Goose's death. His callsign would also be used for Tom Skerritt's character, Mike "Viper" Metcalf.
  • For Top Gun: Maverick, the advisor role would be taken by Navy Captain Brian Ferguson, who like Pettigrew before him, was also a TOPGUN instructor. Ferguson would work with Tom Cruise, Jerry Bruckheimer, and Joseph Kosinski to coordinate the aerial sequences to ensure they were both spectacular and safe for the crew, as well as assist in assuring realism in the script, story, and uniforms worn by the cast. Ferguson also makes a brief cameo in the film as the pilot who thanks Maverick at the Hard Deck bar.
• Transformers (2007): Not only was the film Backed by the Pentagon, the film also relied on technical advisors to help Josh Duhamel and Tyrese Gibson prepare for their roles as William Lennox and Robert Epps respectively, during their three days of basic training at Fort Irwin, California. Harry Humphries, a former Navy SEAL, was one of these advisors assisting them.

Literature

• Most novels by Dominique Lapierre are this trope, especially the ones written with Larry Collins. For example, for The Fifth Horseman, Lapierre and Collins asked several nuclear physicians, policemen, public transportation operatives, and even pickpockets about some key points for the story, which involved Libyan agents smuggling a thermonuclear bomb into New York City.
• John le Carré is well known for this, and his acknowledgments pages are always entertaining for the presence of journalists, technical experts, diplomats, arms dealers, etc. — many of which he states he cannot name. He began traveling to the various locations in his novels, beginning with The Honourable Schoolboy, which he set in Southeast Asia when virtually every country there was undergoing some kind of civil war.
• Max Brooks did an extensive amount of research for his Zombie Apocalypse novel World War Z, interviewing police officers, Federal agents, and FEMA personnel. Amusingly, he remarked that everyone he interviewed had put at least some thought into what would happen or what they would do in the event of a Zombie Apocalypse. This is in part because a lot of real-world agencies use the concept as a theoretical example of an Outside-Context Problem, to ensure they can deal with unexpected emergencies.

Live-Action TV

• The Big Bang Theory, being a show about three extremely nerdy scientists (and an engineer), pays unusual amounts of attention to getting scientific jargon and such correct. All of the equations seen in the background are accurate and scientifically provable due to be handled by Dr. David Saltzberg, a professor of physics from UCLA. He even earned some writing credits for the episodes when the science was especially important to the story.
  • Additionally, actress Mayim Bialik (who plays Amy Farrah Fowler) has a Ph.D. in neuroscience, and assisted Saltzberg whenever biology was involved in the show.
• Burn Notice has Michael Wilson as a consultant regarding the inner workings of CIA missions and how spies operate. It is likely the main character Michael Westen was named after him. Show creator and showrunner Matt Nix has explained that nearly every episode involves them coming up with a scenario to put the characters through and then asking advice from Wilson on how he would go about the situation himself.
• CSI: Combined with Cast the Expert. Actor David Berman, who plays assistant M.E. David Phillips, had worked as a real-life coroner for a time, so he was the head researcher/consultant for the autopsy scenes on the show.
• Designated Survivor: Combined with Cast the Expert and Actor Allusion. Actor Kal Penn, who played White House Press Secretary Seth Wright in the show, also served as a consultant, given that he had actual experience working in the White House, specifically as the associate director for the Office of Public Engagement for the Obama Administration.
• Doctor Who: While the extent of the matter is disputed by the show's own staff, Ian Levine, a record producer and longtime fan of the show, is commonly reported to have served as an unofficial "continuity advisor" during much of the '80s to bolster producer John Nathan-Turner's attempts at appealing to hardcore fans. According to these reports, Levine's job was to both maintain the accuracy of continuity nods and callbacks and suggest new elements in these categories, most significantly co-writing "Attack of the Cybermen", a Sequel Episode to "The Tenth Planet", "The Tomb of the Cybermen", and "Resurrection of the Daleks". Levine stayed on board until Season 23, leaving midway through its production due to his discontent with the casting of Bonnie Langford as companion Mel Bush.
• M*A*S*H brought on Dr. Walter D. Dishell as a medical advisor to insure the scenes that take place in the O.R. were as accurate as possible; Dishell himself mentioned that more often than not the writers or actors would ask him more about attitude than the technical aspect (such as how would a doctor break news to a patient that he had to amputate a leg). Dishell also worked on the spin-offs AfterMASH and Trapper John, M.D..
• NYPD Blue: Series consultant Bill Clark, later also Executive Producer, is a former New York detective Steven Bochco met and wrote the show around. Original main protagonist John Kelley's investigative style is patterned after Clark's, and Clark shares several biographical points with the other main protagonist Andy Sipowicz.
• Orphan Black: This series revolves around human cloning and biotechnology that is more advanced than anything that currently exists. Scientific consultant Dr. Cosima Herter ensured the technology featured was scientifically sound and theoretically plausible. Dr. Herter also discussed with the showrunners the ethical implications of such technology being created, which factored into how certain storylines were written. One of the main characters, Cosima Niehaus, is based on and named after Dr. Herter.
• Rutherford Falls has an In-Universe example in the second season. Terry and Reagan, who are Native Americans of the fictional Minishonka people, are brought on to be cultural consultants for Adirondack, a Yellowstone-like Show Within a Show that prominently features Native Americans. However, their concerns about the offensive and appropriative portrayals in the script are ignored by the writers and directors. Eventually, Terry gives up on cultural accuracy and instead encourages a very stereotypical depiction of Native Americans (such as Tipis and Totem Poles and Braids, Beads and Buckskins), which brings on negative attention to the production.
• Scrubs had several consultants, their names in fact inspired several character names on the show, particularly Dr. Jonathan Doris for main character John Dorian, and was called "The Real JD" on set.
• Star Trek: Voyager: Jamake Highwater was hired as a "Native American culture advisor" to help write for Commander Chakotay. Unfortunately, they failed to adequately vet his credentials: Highwater, real name Jackie Marks, had been exposed over a decade earlier in The Washington Post for fraudulently claiming a Native American background for business purposes, resulting in Chakotay embodying just about every Magical Native American stereotype known to Hollywood.

Music

• For Robert Palmer's music video "Addicted to Love" they brought in a professional musician to teach the models how to pretend to play guitar, drums, and keyboard. He gave up and left after about an hour.

Video Games

• Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown's plot revolves around a Space Elevator, and the producers of the game have consulted with an actual Japanese company that plans to build a space elevator (most likely Obayashi Corporation) to ensure that the game's depiction is accurate to real life.
• The 1993 game, The Amazing Spider-Man 3: Invasion of the Spider-Slayers, lists Cos Lazouras as the game's "Spidey consultant" in its credits.
• Ubisoft is known to consult historical experts in the course of developing the Assassin's Creed series in order to keep the games as historically accurate as possible while leaving room for some artistic license in how they depict said events.
  • For Assassin's Creed III, which features Connor, a half-British, half-Mohawk Assassin, they hired Thomas Deer from the Kanien’kehá:ka Onkwawén:na Raotitióhkwa Language and Cultural Center to basically keep them in line. He advised them on what was and what was not appropriate to depict, as well as coached voice actor Noah Watts ^note Who actually does have Native American ancestry, and is a member of the Crow and Blackfeet nations in the Mohawk language.
• Call of Duty:
  • To help develop Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare's narrative, Sledgehammer Games worked with military advisors, futurologists, and a scenario planner from the US Department of Defense and asked them what they believed to be the biggest source of conflict for the future, to which the consensus was that in the form of a private military company gone rogue, forming the basis of the Atlas Corporation.
  • For Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019), Infinity Ward consulted with retired Navy SEALs Steve Sanders and Mitch Hall for both the levels and overall narrative, giving advice on how soldiers should move through spaces and react to a given scenario, as well as help create a story that would ring true to soldiers like them.
  • Sledgehammer Games consulted with World War II historian Marty Morgan for Call of Duty: WWII and Call of Duty: Vanguard, assisting them in their research and studying of material, including traveling to key points throughout Europe and traveling routes taken by soldiers in order to capture the essence of the war and make it as authentic as possible.
• Psychonauts 2 hired a mental health expert to make sure the game's portrayals of mental health disorders were both accurate and empathic, in contrast to the original game's Unfortunate Implications that depicted mental issues as Single-Issue Psychoses that could be solved by having a psychic kid locate the part of one's mind representing their neuroses and beat it up.

Web Video

• Various sub-series of the YouTube Edutainment Show channel Crash Course brought in different writing consultants from the respective scientific fields they covered.

Western Animation

• Avatar: The Last Airbender: Martial artist Sifu Kisu served as the show's martial arts consultant in order to relate the four bending arts to real-life martial arts, such as Tai chi for waterbending and Hung gar for earthbending, giving them a sense of authenticity.
• DuckTales (2017): Della Duck is depicted as having a handmade prosthetic leg after losing it in a rocket crash. To accurately portray her as an amputee in terms of design and movement, Jack Richmond and Tonya Osborne-Simpson of the Amputee Coalition were tapped as consultants.
• Looney Tunes: Parodied in A Gander at Mother Goose, where the opening credits read "Technical Advisor: Mother Goose".
• Thunderbirds Are Go: The episode "Heavy Metal", in which Brains' speech impediment reappears when he's under stress, credits a speech therapist as a consultant. This is particularly noticeable because the show generally doesn't bother with technical advisors, being the kind of adventure show that doesn't let real life get in the way of a good story (the main plot of "Heavy Metal", for instance, involves a depiction of Gravity Sucks that would make a physics consultant weep with laughter).