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Artists (Painters, Architects, and Sculptors)
- Pieter Bruegel the Elder was enormously influenced by Hieronymus Bosch. One of Bruegel's early paintings, "De Dulle Griet" ("Mad Meg") shows a Hellish scene right that is very Boschesque.
- Salvador Dalí adored Buster Keaton and The Marx Brothers. He even gave a speech at a Surrealist Movement meeting dressed in a diving suit, because he had seen the Keaton movie "The Navigator" recently, in which Keaton does the same. He also painted a portrait of Harpo Marx.
- Dali was also obsessed with Johannes Vermeer, Diego Velazquez and the painting "L' Angelus" by Jean-François Millet and recreated these images several times in his own paintings.
- Andy Warhol once said: "Hergé's work had a tremendous influence on my work, as much as Walt Disney did." Warhol and Hergé met later in life and as a tribute, Warhol painted Hergé's portrait in several styles, rather than Tintin's.
- Roy Lichtenstein was a huge Tintin fan too.
- Paul Delprat the Prince of Wy painted◊ the Moe Anthropomorphism representing his "land" in Hetalia: Axis Powers.
- It's canon now. Guy must be happy.
- Not only that... "There is no line on the www that has made Wy more proud than 'One Of Us: Prince Paul Of Wy' on Axis Powers TV Tropes'." He's a Troper. And very, very awesome.
- René Magritte was a huge fan of Edgar Allan Poe. A copy of The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket can be seen in his painting La Reproduction Interdite'. The title of the painting Le Domain d' Arnheim was inspired by the Poe short story of the same name.
- H. R. Giger loved authors like Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Samuel Beckett, Franz Kafka, and Ingmar Bergman.
- Marcel Duchamp, one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, was a Chess nerd, one of the top French players of his generation. He co-wrote a technical book about a rare type of chess endgame position. There’s a story about his young bride who, in retaliation to his obsession for the game, got up one night when he was asleep and glued the chess pieces to the board. They were divorced soon thereafter.
Government and Military
- NASA is a big fan of Star Trek and Babylon 5.
- Frank Frazetta has many fans for his Death Dealer painting. The US Army's III Corps made it their mascot and even has a statue of the character in their Corps Headquarters.
Business people
- Roberto Calvi, head of the Vatican Bank, was obsessed with the novel The Godfather and carried a copy along with him everywhere he went. To him, it was the only book that tells you how the world is really run. He would have known because he was heavily involved in mafia intrigues, which eventually brought him into debt troubles. In 1982 he went missing and his body was found hanging on top of a bridge in London, which ironically would inspire the character Kenzig in The Godfather III, who is murdered by the Mafia in the same fashion.
- Isaiah Mustafa, the actor from The Man Your Man Could Smell Like commercials (he's on a horse), is a general paragon of manliness... and he absolutely loves comic books. He has said that he'd love to play Luke Cage in a movie. He also did a video response to Anonymous, complete with referencing the meme "Delicious Cake".
- Denny's is one of the few casual family restaurant chains that are quite open and free with their own social networking such as Facebook and Twitter. Their official Twitter account made an interesting Photoshop response to potato girl when someone posted her as their "official mascot".
- Looks like Denny's isn't the only one. It seems that Nature Valley, a company known for their granola bars, have the PR to be anime geeks themselves.
- Arby's Twitter account put a lot of references to video game and anime works.
- Billionaire Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is reputedly a geek who learns Chinese by himselfnote , owns and drives a VW Golf GTi.
- Warren Buffett, one of the wealthiest and most successful investors and businessmen in the world, is a big Breaking Bad fan, even writing papers about what people can learn about business from watching the show and dressing up as Walter White.
- The Betty Crocker corporation (or at least their Twitter publicists) have admitted to being Homestuck fans (the company plays a villainous role in the webcomic).
- Steve Ritchie, a pinball designer so influential in his industry that he gets to pick his own themes (and he always picks a theme he's personally into), has recently chosen Star Trek and Game of Thrones. For the latter, he admits to having read every book that has been released and seen every episode of the TV show at least five times each.
- It's not that surprising for the founder of a tech company to be a geek, but Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is a huge Trekkie, crediting the Star Trek computer as an inspiration for Alexa. He also appeared in Star Trek Beyond as a Federation official.
- Unsurprisingly given how many tech-based companies he has under his belt, Elon Musk is quite the nerd himself, at one point changing his Twitter profile picture to Edward Elric, appearing As Himself on The Simpsons and hosting Meme Review with Justin Roiland. He is also a notorious Twitter shitposter, to the point that Twitter once locked his account out of concerns that it had been hacked, because they simply couldn't believe that the sentences "i <3 anime" and "I own a chibi Wolverine" could come out of a multibillionnaire's mouth. Infamously, he has also once posted fanart of Touhou Project character Kagerou Imaizumi, although he mislabeled her as a Cat Girl, many fans believe (not without reason, given his history) that was an intentional act of trolling and that he is actually a closet Touhou fan.
- This carries over into Tesla itself; the company's cars are known for several Easter eggs that reference works like Back to the Future, Monty Python, Rick and Morty, and Spaceballs, among others.
Comic Strip Artists
- Tintin creator Hergé loved the novels of Jules Verne and Alexandre Dumas and considered Sherlock Holmes and Treasure Island to be among his favorite books. He was also inspired by early American comic strips like Bringing Up Father, Krazy Kat and The Katzenjammer Kids. The influence of early slapstick comedians like Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton is also evident in his work. Herge's main inspiration was French comic strip artist Alain Saint-Ogan, best known for "Zig et Puce". Later, when the magazine "Tintin" was founded Hergé even managed to publish "Zig et Puce" in Tintin and gave his idol much publicity. Hergé was also a known collector and admirer of modern painting and sculpture and later in life he expressed his love for the music of Jacques Brel, Georges Brassens, The Beatles, and Pink Floyd.
- Albert Uderzo, best known for Asterix, is a gigantic fan of Walt Disney and Carl Barks. His scriptwriter, René Goscinny, enjoyed watching Walt Disney and Tex Avery cartoons and was very much influenced by MAD Magazine.
- Gotlib is a huge Tex Avery fan. His creation Gai-Luron is even an Expy of Droopy.
- Charles M. Schulz, best known for Peanuts, watched Citizen Kane more than 40 times. The biopic "Good Ol' Charles Schulz" examines Schulz' personal life through his obsession over this movie.
- Bill Amend, creator of FoxTrot, has a degree in physics from Amherst and avidly plays World of Warcraft, often making accurate jokes about both. Not to mention other video games, internet memes and just about any aspect of nerd culture you can reference in a family friendly comic. Bill Amend may well be the geekiest
dailyweekly cartoonist out there.- The fact he did a Penny Arcade comic probably speaks for itself...
- And xkcd too
- ... and PvP (Patreon locked.)
- Hidenori Kusaka, creator of the Pokémon Adventures manga, doesn't get any inside info from Game Freak to help him out on his series. Instead, he plays the games when they come out and figures out which parts he wants to incorporate into the story. Some of his author notes have him squeeing over whatever new features the games have.
- The mid-'90s staff of Disney Adventures absolutely loved showing off their nerd cred in the magazine. For the better part of the decade, it was difficult to find an issue that didn't have some kind of reference to Star Trek, The X-Files, and/or Star Wars.
- The comics editors were huge outspoken fans of indie comics, and managed to put (among other things) Evan Dorkin's Kid Blastoff! and Jeff Smith's Bone into the magazine.
- Gabe Newell, head of Valve Software, said in an interview once that he was a brony. The internet's reaction was exactly what one would expect.
- This sequence of strips from Dork Tower relishes in it.
- This strip from Weregeek.
- Carl Barks said he was very influenced by Prince Valiant, particularly Harold Foster's drawing style. He also liked the drawing style of Flash Gordon by Alex Raymond, even though Barks felt the stories lacked humor and were "really awful stories".
- Robert Crumb has been a comic book fan ever since he was young, with Carl Barks as his personal hero. He also loved the early 1950 MAD Magazine under command of Harvey Kurtzman and the Popeye comics by E.C. Segar. Apart from that Crumb has a passion for everything from the 1920s and 1930s. He has a huge collection of old Jazz, Blues, Bluegrass, Country Music records dating from this time period and even said it's one of the few things that gives him a love for humanity. Crumb also loves The Little Rascals, The Marx Brothers, Laurel and Hardy and Woody Allen. When the Dutch cover band the Beau Hunks released a CD with music from the Hal Roach comedies of the 1920s and 1930s Crumb went on record saying: "This is something I've been looking for all my life!" He even allowed this quote to be printed on the CD and some of his artwork to be used to decorate the CD.
- Art Spiegelman has written several essays about comic strips and their creators, a passion that goes back to his youth. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, in his hometown New York City Spiegelman fell into a long depression, with only old newspaper comics from the early 20th century being able to cheer him up. He also likes Comedian Harmonists and played their music constantly while working on Maus.
- Willy Vandersteen (Suske en Wiske) was a huge fan of adventure and fantasy novels ever since his youth, which inspired many of his own stories. He also admired Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Hergé lent him a huge compliment by comparing Vandersteen's comics to Bruegel.
- Marc Sleen (Nero) is a huge art lover, from Hieronymus Bosch, Pieter Bruegel the Elder to James Ensor, and the novels and poetry of T. S. Eliot. He is also an avid reader of philosophy and poetry and would let his characters quote lines regularly.
- Pom (Piet Pienter En Bert Bibber) had two personal heroes: Hergé and André Franquin.
- Merho (De Kiekeboes) loves Laurel and Hardy so much that he referenced the duo in many of his stories. He has also given countless other comedians a cameo in his albums.
- Willy Linthout (Urbanus) is a gigantic collector of comic strips and associated merchandise. Fellow comedian and scenarist Urbanus shares the same passion. In fact, this was the reason why they started their creative collaboration in the first place. They also reference other comic strips frequently in their stories, to the point that you could make an entire list with pop culture references in each album.
- Urbanus himself also has three major heroes: Woody Allen, Bob Dylan and Marc Sleen (Nero), the latter with whom he shared a personal friendship.
- André Franquin (Gaston Lagaffe) and Morris (Lucky Luke) were both huge fans of jazz and animated cartoons.
- Martin Lodewijk (Agent327), despite being Dutch, is tremendously influenced by Belgian Comics. He calls Willy Vandersteen (Suske en Wiske) and Marc Sleen (Nero) his personal heroes. Though he equally loves other comics just as much.
- Jef Nys (Jommeke) was a huge fan of Walt Disney, especially Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. He also named City Lights his favorite movie of all time.
- Jean-Claude Fournier was a huge fan of André Franquin's take on Spirou & Fantasio to the point of drawing Fan Art. Not only did this get him into contact with Franquin himself, but he was offered to take over as Franquin's immediate successor — and happily accepted.
- Likewise, what landed comic legend Don Rosa his job as a writer and artist in the Disney Ducks Comic Universe was being one of the biggest Carl Barks fans under the sun. He wove such numbers of Continuity Porn from Barks' comics into his own that his idol himself tried desperately to tell him to tone it down. To no avail. It's fair to say that Rosa's comics border would qualify as both Fan Fiction and Fan Art if they weren't official.
Criminals
This section is where obsession over something becomes Misaimed Fandom:
- There is an ongoing debate about the effect of watching too many violent films and TV series. Over the years several criminals have done copy-cat crimes, inspired by stuff they saw on TV or in the cinema. Though truth be told, they were usually all mentally unstable from the start and came from dysfunctional backgrounds.
- It has been said that quite some real-life Mafiosi love The Godfather. The inauguration of the new "don" by kissing his hand was an invention of author Mario Puzo but has become a staple with real-life Mafiosi ever since.
- Charles Manson was a fan of The Beatles and The Beach Boys and read "hidden messages" in their lyrics.
- There has been some speculation that Osama bin Laden named his organization, al-Qaeda (which means "base" or "foundation"), after... the sci-fi novel Foundation by Isaac Asimov.
- Also, he was apparently a big fan of 9/11 conspiracy theories.
- Strangely enough, a declassified CIA document revealed that among other items held in his compound, bin Laden had a Playstation 2 with copies of Final Fantasy VII, Resident Evil, an anime based on The Storm Riders, Batman: Gotham Knight, and Antz.
- Both Mark David Chapman (assassin of John Lennon) and John W. Hinckley, Jr. (who tried to shoot Ronald Reagan) were obsessed with the novel The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger. Though some conspiracy theories have pondered if this was genuine affection or just being subject to brainwashing. Hinckley also watched Taxi Driver so much that he tried assassinating Reagan in order to impress Jodie Foster, just like De Niro's character committed an assassination to seemingly win over Foster's character in the movie.
- Assassin Robert John Bardo, who murdered actress Rebecca Shaeffer, was also arrested with a copy of The Catcher in the Rye in his coat. During his trial he claimed he was inspired to kill thanks to the track "Exit" on the U2 album The Joshua Tree.
- Serial killer Richard Ramirez was a tremendous fan of AC/DC. When the police arrested him he wore a T-shirt of the band and left a hat of the group at one of the crime scenes. He specifically loved "Night Prowler" from Highway to Hell and nicknamed himself "The Night Stalker". Naturally, all this was bad publicity for the group, who were targeted by Moral Guardians for having "inspired" Ramirez' crimes.
- Serial killer and necrophiliac rapist Jeffrey Dahmer was a fan of Black Sabbath, blasting their music through the speakers when he was in the army spending time in the barracks.
- Unsurprisingly, Dahmer was also a horror movie nerd; his favorite film was The Exorcist III. He was also a big Star Wars fan and his favorite character was Emperor Palpatine.
- Wayne Williams, who murdered several children, once asked for cassettes with music by B.B. King, Bobby Bland, Tyrone Davis, and Z.Z. Hill to be sent to his prison cell.
- Arthur Shawcross, aka the "Genevese River Killer" and notorious murderer of prostitutes, was a fan of GG Allin.
- Serial murderer John Wayne Gacy, aka "the Killer Clown", read William S. Burroughs and listened to REO Speedwagon. GG Allin even visited John Wayne Gacy while he was in prison.
- Ronnie Biggs, an accomplice of the Great Train Robbery and refugee in South America from 1965 until 2001, once recorded a single with The Sex Pistols, "Nobody Is Innocent" (1978). The band literally visited him in his hiding place, though without Johnny Rotten, who had already left the band at that point and would distance himself in the strongest possible terms from this Refuge in Audacity stunt.
- Al Capone was a music lover. He frequently visited the opera, had jazz pianist Fats Waller more or less forced to perform at his birthday party in 1926 and cited "Rhapsody In Blue" by George Gershwin as his favorite piece. When Capone was in prison he wrote several sappy love songs. His favorite film was City Streets (1931), a gangster movie with Gary Cooper. He also loved Fatty Arbuckle and had a photo of the comedian hung on a wall of his apartment until his death.
- Infamously, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who murdered thirteen people and then themselves at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999, were massive fans of Doom, leading to a backlash from Moral Guardians against the game and against video game violence in general. Harris was even involved in the game's modding community, leading to speculation that some of the maps he created were based on the school. While they did make custom-made levels, they were not designed like this.
- Harris and Klebold were also avid fans of Industrial Metal listening to Nine Inch Nails, KMFDM, and Rammstein. The pair were also avid movie geeks, code naming their massacre "NBK" after the movie Natural Born Killers, and in their taped recordings bragged that movie producers would fight over getting the rights to their story and speculated that Steven Spielberg or Quentin Tarantino would be the one to make the movie. Naturally, this caused alternative music and violent movies to get flak from Moral Guardians as well.
- Ironically, they were accused of being inspired by Marilyn Manson...even though it was eventually revealed they hated his music.
Economists
- Paul Krugman, who received the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel (it is technically not a Nobel Prize) in 2008. It is not unusual for those with a Ph.D. to be nerds but he deserves a special mention. Reasons: 1) His interest in economics began when he read Isaac Asimov's Foundation Series. He wanted to, just as in the book, be one of the social scientists "who understand the true dynamics save civilization". Since psychohistory does not exist, he turned to the closest thing, economics. 2) He posted this LOLcat on his blog upon leaving for Sweden to get his Nobel prize. 3) This video. 4) To cheer himself up he once wrote The Theory of Interstellar Trade, a paper where he outlines how trade between different star system might work. It does among other things take up how time dilation could affect economics. And he's a Buffy fan!
- He also did a panel at the 2009 Worldcon with Charles Stross, of whom he is a fan. Also, he wrote this with he says is the closest thing to science fiction he's written: http://mit.edu/krugman/www/BACKWRD2.html
- Wired did an interview with him about science fiction, in which he revealed himself to be a fan of everything from Iain Banks to Robert Jordan.
- Karl Marx was a pretty big geek as well. His favorite authors were Aeschylus, William Shakespeare, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Honoré de Balzac. He also loved Tristram Shandy and attempted to write a novel in that style. He and Friedrich Engels bonded over their love for Balzac and they planned to write a book about him, with Engels saying that Balzac taught them more about economics than any writer.
- Noah Smith is known as something of an Occidental Otaku, and frequently discusses foreign pop culture in his analyses alongside more solid economic analysis.
Models
- The Miss USA winner Alyssa Campanella was revealed to be a huge Star Wars fan, even answering a few surprise trivia questions correctly, and going as far as admitting that if she knew she'd be quizzed on Star Wars, she would've worn her hair with Princess Leia's Odangos.
- The original America's Next Top Model winner, Adrianne Curry, is a hardcore World of Warcraft player and a very dedicated cosplayer.
- Canadian glamour model Marie-Claude Bourbonnais is at least as well known for her costume design skills as for her short, spiky blonde hair and her, um, super powers.
- She also indulges in a little cosplay. Here she is◊ as Ryofu from Ikki Tousen.
- Dita Von Teese collects vintage china tea sets and classic cars.
- Miss Universe 2015 Pia Wurtzbach admitted to being a fan of Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts, based on her Reddit AMA.
- Chrissy Teigen is a passionate fan of Animal Crossing, as evidenced by her extended Twitter rant lambasting the free-to-play mechanics in Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp as a disgrace to the series.
- Karlie Kloss is a computer programmer, and in 2016 launched a summer camp program called Kode with Klossy to get teenage girls interested in computer science and software engineering.
Radio Presenters
- Howard Stern is a big fan of science fiction and comic books, even saying that he only watches TV shows and movies about superheroes. He also plays chess every day.
- Opie & Anthony
- Anthony Cumia is a longtime PC gamer. He and many of the comedians who appeared regularly would also discuss video games on occasion. This even led to them doing voice work in several games developed by Rockstar Games.
- Comedian Jim Norton is a massive Ozzy Osbourne fan, which has led to him developing a close relationship with Ozzy and his wife Sharon, including being invited to Ozzy's birthday party.
- Peter Sagal, host of the news trivia game show ''Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me!'', dropped so many Game of Thrones references that the powers that be created a Game of Thrones podcast with the hosts of Nerdette ("We're all a little nerdy about something!") partly so he could get it out of his system every week.
- Their theme music was composed and performed by Blue Police Box.
Scientists
- Albert Einstein was such a huge fan of Time For Beany that one time he interrupted a meeting because a new episode was about to start. He also loved reading Karl May and liked the Professor character in the comedy shows of Sid Caesar.
- Theoretical physicist and futurist Dr. Michio Kaku is a big science fiction fan, even hosting a show called "Sci-Fi Science" where he would figure out how to theoretically achieve popular sci-fi tropes in real life such as traveling to a parallel universe, building an artificial planet, and even building a lightsaber and destroying a Death Star among others.
- His biggest inspiration was Flash Gordon. Not Flash Gordon himself, but the scientist that was always helping Flash Gordon.
- Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson is a huge comic book fanboy and Star Trek fan who frequently references both in his lectures and during his television appearances.
- The astronaut Steven Swanson is such a big Firefly fan that he added a copy of the box set and Serenity to the International Space Station library.
- For perspective on how significant this is, it costs several million dollars per pound to bring stuff up there, and even there, space is really, really, really at a premium.
- As a child, Ronald McNair refused to leave the local segregated library without being allowed to check out his books. Although police were called, he was allowed to check out the books. The whole incident occurred after he saw Uhura on Star Trek and decided he wanted to be a black astronaut like her and figured he needed to study hard. McNair became the second African-American Astronaut to fly in space. Following his death in the Challenger incident, the library was named in his honor and even published a children's book about McNair's determination to check out his books.
- Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti supervised the installation of an espresso machine aboard the ISS, during which she was photographed wearing a Starfleet uniform and said "There's coffee in that nebula". She and Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaperlov also made reference to the fact that they were on ISS Mission 42. During the mission, Leonard Nimoy died and was commemorated by the crew; Cristoforetti giving the Vulcan Salute while wearing a Starfleet pin, and American astronaut Terry Virts gave the salute while passing over Boston, Nimoy's hometown.
- Scientists discovered a gene that causes an embryo to grow spikes like a hedgehog, so they called it a hedgehog gene. Then they discovered the protein that the gene produces, so of course, they called it Sonic Hedgehog. It gets better: Another group of scientists found a potential antagonist to the protein in question, and decided to name it "Robotnikinin". And better: Sonic Hedgehog was later joined by Pikachurin, so named because it is "nimble".
- Upon discovery of a new planet, Kuiper Belt Object, or landform on a celestial body, before it gets named formally expect the discoverers to name it after something from science fiction or fantasy.
- Scientists found a planet that orbited around two suns. They promptly named it Tatooine.
- An asteroid is named Apophis. Two of the scientists who discovered it admitted to being Stargate fans.
- When the dwarf planet now officially named Eris was discovered to also have a moon, it was immediately called Xena and the moon, Gabrielle (the moon is now named Dysnomia, after the Greek goddess of lawlessness).
- The New Horizons team that informally named features on Pluto and Charon, as well, as taking suggestions from the public, went to town with the naming: Pluto has regions named Cthulhu, Morgoth and Balrog as well as a canyon named Sun Wukong. Charon takes it to 11 since all the features there are named after fictional characters or places from science fiction: canyons named Macross, Tardis, Serenity and Nostromo; craters named Kirk, Sulu, Uhura, Spock, Ripley, Skywalker, Vader, and Organa; and regions named Gallifrey and Vulcan.
- Stephen Hawking was a big Star Trek fan, and requested to sit in the captain's chair during his guest spot on Star Trek: The Next Generation. He also said of the warp core while touring the engineering set, "I'm working on that." He had a guest appearance portraying himself in the opening scene of "Descent: Part I", where Data plays poker while conversing with three great physicists on the holodeck (the others being actors portraying Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein). Making him the only person to "play" themselves in Star Trek.
- Hawking also loved Futurama and named The Simpsons "the best show on TV ever." Naturally, he also was a special guest voice in both series.
- But he also stated that his favorite SF franchise of all is Red Dwarf.
- Hawking also loved Futurama and named The Simpsons "the best show on TV ever." Naturally, he also was a special guest voice in both series.
- Mathematician Kurt Gödel, best known for his incompleteness theorems, was a huge Disney fan and fascinated by Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. He even tried to get Albert Einstein interested in the movie but failed. Eventually Gödel's fascination with this film resulted in an obsessive fear of being poisoned, like what happened to Snow White. He would only eat food that his wife prepared for him. When she was hospitalized for six months in 1977 and could no longer cook his meals, Gödel simply starved to death because he refused to eat.
- British scientist Alan Turing also enjoyed "Snow White", especially the scène where the wicked witch holds the poisoned apple. He even used to quote from her song: “Dip the apple in the brew / Let the Sleeping Death seep through.”. His fascination also has a disturbing afternote: Turing committed suicide the same way by injecting cyanide into an apple and then eat it.
- CERN are aware of Steins;Gate. They are tired of getting asked about their plans for world domination in public Q&A sessions, thank you very much.
- When asked in a 1930 interview, Thomas Edison named the infamous The Birth of a Nation as his favorite movie of all time.
Video Game Creators and Actors
- Charles Martinet, the voice of the Mario Brothers, created a Vine account dedicated to videos of him with his Mario and Luigi figures, talking in their voices; he likes playing with toys just as much as his fans and isn't afraid to show it.
- Xander Mobus, voicing the Announcer and Master Hand in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, is also known to this with his amiibo on Youtube, where he roleplays the amiibo character fighting Master Hand.
- Hideo Kojima, creator of the Metal Gear series, is a hardcore cinephile: this can be clearly seen in his games, which are inspired by action movies. His twitter feed also shows him picking up new movies left and right. He's also a huge fan of James Bond and David Bowie.
- David Hayter, best known for being Solid Snake, is the one of the few Metal Gear Solid voice actors to have played and finished said gamenote . He also speaks fluent Japanese, has named his only daughter Natasha after the character in the Marvel comic book Black Widow, and once stated in an anime convention that he was present because he was "a big fan of Fushigi Yuugi" (he voiced Tamahome over there).
- And, of course, he wrote the script for the Watchmen film adaptation.
- He also wrote the scripts for the first two parts in the X-Men Film Series, and played a security guard in the first movie.
- And he's also aware of the web-series thing, particularly the Awesome Series. When he's in a con with Egoraptor, Hayter was kind enough to use his Snake-voice to say one of the lines in Metal Gear Awesome: "OhMyGodHotnessIWannaBangYou!"
- When the League of Legends subreddit's rallying threatened to upend the status quo in the 2013 GameFAQs Character Battle, the regulars on the contest board went to insane lengths trying to find ways to counterrally, eventually trying to appeal to famous people to help. David answered the call in spectacular fashion.
- Stefanie Joosten who plays Quiet in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is not only a gamer but a longtime fan of the Metal Gear franchise. When auditioning for an "undisclosed video game" she actually figured out that it was for a Metal Gear game when she recognized series creator Hideo Kojima during the audition. Additionally, she also streamed the game on her own Twitch and YouTube channels.
- Yoji Shinkawa, the mecha designer for Zone of the Enders, is a big fan of Gradius. He imagined the protruding front sections of the Vic Viper to be like the legs of a Transforming Mecha, an idea he got to realize in The 2nd Runner when he included the Vic Viper as the mecha of choice for Leo Stenbuck.
- Lucas Gilbertson, the voice of Zero barring in Marvel vs. Capcom 3, apparently shares our pain from the Narmy dub of Mega Man X4, so he redubs it himself.
- Joe Kucan, known to gamers as the actor who portrays Kane in Command & Conquer, noted that he is an avid fan of the games and is known to be very friendly to people who've met him. The fanbase rejoiced when it was announced that he would reprise the role for Tiberium Wars and Tiberian Twilight.
- John J. Dick, voice of Serious Sam, posts on the Serious Zone forums under the handle "booger". Among his most famous posts were the threads in which he allowed fans to suggest lines for him, which he then read and recorded in Sam's voice.
- Game and anime voice actor Matthew Mercer is a big fan of the Resident Evil series, his favorite character being Leon Kennedy, whom he got to voice in Resident Evil 6.
- He's also a big fan of Super Smash Bros., having created the web series There Will Be Brawl. He eventually got to do voice acting for the 3DS, Wii U, and Ultimate iterations of the series, reprising his role as Chrom in Robin's Final Smash, an Easter Egg conversation with Palutena, and in the latter, as a playable character.
- Another Ascended Fanboy moment for him: He's been a fan of Jojos Bizarre Adventure since 1996, and got to portray one of its most iconic characters, Jotaro Kujo, in the dub.
- Once admitted to uttering "It's High Noon..." into the voice chat during a game of Overwatch to freak out his teammates. Mercer is, of course, the voice of McCree.
- David Gaider, who wrote a lot of the script for Baldur's Gate, has written fanfiction for his own video game (including a Seinfeld crossover) and posted it on fan forums. Occasionally he'll review fics and help out with fan mod dialogue.
- He's also a huge Joss Whedon fanboy, to the point that he based several characters in Dragon Age: Origins on Whedon characters (Alistair as Xander being the most obvious), and liberally sprinkled the game with Buffy Speak and subtle references to Whedon's shows.
- Katsuhiro Harada, creator of Tekken, is a big fan of The Idolmaster. His favorite character is Iori Minase, whose birthday once celebrated by showing off some of her memorabilia and changing his twitter icon to her face.
- Most of the voice cast from Skullgirls, including Danielle McRae (Painwheel), Laura Post (Valentine), and Erin Fitzgerald (Parasoul), are big gamers. McRae and Post often even play their own characters in League of Legends.
- The above-mentioned Danielle McRae and Erin Fitzgerald are particularly big fans of Overwatch, so much so that they run a podcast called "Waifus of Overwatch". McRae's favorite characters are Widowmaker and Zarya.
- On a similar note, Kimlinh Tran, the voice actress of Ms. Fortune, is also the voice actress of Sombra and D.Va in the Overwatch AWNN crew.
- Jennifer Hale, the voice of Commander Shepard, loves science fiction. In particular, because of her love for Battlestar Galactica (2003), she was even the one who recommended Tricia Helfer to play EDI and Michael Hogan to play Bailey in Mass Effect 2. She also makes a point of researching any technical subject that any of her characters are going to talk about, such as quantum physics for Bioshock Infinite. This is both because she wants to sound convincing when talking about them and because she is just fascinated by them.
- After being exposed to a gamer fanbase from his voice roles as Albert Wesker in Resident Evil, D.C. Douglas has proven time and time again through his twitter and youtube accounts that he as definitely in touch with his fans among the Resident Evil and Mass Effect (where he voices Legion) fanbases.
- How much does he love Wesker? He had a convention event dedicated to reading Lemon fanfics of Wesker. Yeah, that much.
- Soraya Saga, freelance scenario writer for Final Fantasy VI, Xenogears and Xenosaga is a huge Transformers fan and publicly draws fanart for it.
- Whoever is responsible for quests with titles such as Fission Mailed, Foal Life Consequences, Mindless Violins, Shown Their Work, or We'll Fix It In Post in the fan-game Legends of Equestria.
- Late Nintendo president Satoru Iwata professed to be an executive with the mind of a programmer and the heart of a gamer. In one TV appearance, he explained the Nintendo Hard qualities of old-school games by saying that developers like himself were in the habit of playing long hours in a game in order to debug it, and frequently found themselves making the game harder to give themselves a challenge.
- The game music site OverClocked ReMix created an album in tribute to Mr. Iwata's work, appropriately entitling it Heart of a Gamer.
- Cristina Valenzuela, best known for voicing Noel Vermillion in BlazBlue, has covered numerous video game related songs (like "Bad Apple!!", probably the most well-known English version of it) and has often lent her voice to Fan Works surrounding characters she voices, like fandubbing a Noel-centric Blazen! strip or doing some voices for Homura in Madoka Abridged.
- Troy Baker, who has done many voices for video games, such as Booker Dewitt in BioShock Infinite, had to tackle the role of replacing Mark Hamill as The Joker in Batman: Arkham Origins. To prove he could do this he read lines from The Killing Joke at the San Diego Comic Con, absolutely nailed it, and the crowd went wild. He did this because he is a huge fan of comics, and also a huge fan of Hamill's portrayal of The Joker.
- Yasumi Matsuno is a huge fan of Queen and Star Wars. Recently as of 2009, he became a fan of A Song of Ice and Fire and as luck would have it, the official Game of Thrones twitter account watches him back.
- Almir Listo, one of the developers of PAYDAY: The Heist and PAYDAY 2 admitted that he's a big fan of Filthy Frank.
- David Bateson proclaims himself to be Agent 47's biggest fan. Among the games in the series, his favorite is Hitman 2: Silent Assassin. Though in later years he just got so caught up in his acting work that he just couldn't have the time to play the games he loves.
- Utako Yoshino, who has worked on a few Sonic the Hedgehog and Puyo Puyo games, is an avid Dungeons & Dragons player. This actually influenced a scene in Puyo Puyo!! 20th Anniversary where, with no prompting whatsoever, Maguro tells Risukuma that he worries about the dwindling popularity of tabletop gaming. Utako Yoshino is also a fan of Michael Ende's books, to the point that she named her dog after him.
- Suda51 is a sef-professed megafan of The Legend of Zelda, having played and beaten almost every game in the series (save for the Game Boy titles).
- Tribute Games, which created notable indie games like Mercenary Kings and Panzer Paladin, is just about all staffed with big Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fans (that sneaked in references in the two aforementioned games). Besides their founders Jean-Francois Major, Jonathan Lavigne and Justin Cyr having worked on the Game Boy Advance version of TMNT under Ubisoft Montreal, the company itself would go on to make Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge, a brand-new 1987 cartoon arcade Beat 'em Up homage, after they spent roughly 10 years trying to persuade Nickelodeon.
Web Original folk
- The Angry Video Game Nerd and Cinemassacre: James Rolfe is a huge horror movie fan. He has a huge collection of movies and really likes the Universal Horror and Hammer Horror franchise. Apart from that, he is very fond of practical special effects makers, which explains his glee over the original King Kong (1933) and Ray Harryhausen. Musically he is a huge AC/DC fan. He is also fond of Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Judas Priest, Led Zeppelin, Metallica, The Who, The Offspring, Queen, Guns N' Roses, Pink Floyd, ZZ Top, The Rolling Stones (Band), Iron Maiden, Rob Zombie, tool, Primus, System of a Down, Boston, Survivor, Van Halen, Slayer, Def Leppard, Heart, Aerosmith, Rush, Mötley Crüe, The Misfits, The Ramones, Blue Öyster Cult, Whitesnake and Motörhead.
- Like many young creative people Rolfe started out making home movies as a child. He is still doing it today and the production values of his movies have seriously improved. Apart from that, he hosted an annual haunted house in his parent's garage.
- In his Cinemassacre series he devoted many tribute episodes to franchises, actors or directors he likes: Jackie Chan, Rocky, Godzilla, Frankenstein, Dracula, Back to the Future,... He also made a tribute video to the horror TV show Monster Vision and the TV channel Turner Classic Movies.
- Brad Jones is, of course, a huge fan of exploitation and other sorts of B-movies. He likes Pierre Kirby movies and considers Bruno Mattei his favorite exploitation director. But he also takes pride in watching all Nicolas Cage movies he can get his hands on. Brad is obviously a huge fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000, but he references countless other films and TV series in his projects, some so obscure that you have to consult an encyclopedia.
- Jones is also a James Bond fan and surprisingly likes George Lazenby the best.
- He also said that his favorite novel is Less Than Zero and his favorite author Bret Easton Ellis.
- Several members of Channel Awesome are big fans of Red Dwarf - Linkara and Spoony frequently reference the show in their videos, Doug Walker cites it as his favorite live-action show, and fourth-favorite television show overall (behind Home Movies, Daria and Avatar: The Last Airbender) and Rob Walker has stated that Santa Christ was inspired by Ace Rimmer.
- The Nostalgia Critic: Doug Walker is such a massive Batman fan that he named the 1989 Batman film and The Dark Knight two of his favorite movies, Batman as his second most favorite fictional character ever, cited Batman: The Animated Series as one of his favorite TV shows ever and frequently discusses and references the franchise in his videos and editorials. It gets to the point that he will dress himself up as Batman whenever he can.
- Doug is also a gigantic Looney Tunes fan and especially loves Daffy Duck. Other stuff he has a particularly strong love for are Blackadder, Monty Python's Flying Circus, Cowboy Bebop, South Park, The Simpsons and Animaniacs. Doug has managed to interview and invite most of Animaniacs writers and actors to provide cameos to some of his reviews. It's the show that appears most frequently on the Nostalgia Critic's Top 11 lists.
- The Walkers are also fans of Avatar: The Last Airbender. Whilst Doug is only a recent convert to the show (which he initially watched primarily for research for a review of The Last Airbender), his brother Rob (who co-writes The Nostalgia Critic) has been a fan for quite some time, and when asked about his opinion of the show, his response was "I'm the one who's been telling [Doug] to watch it for the past 5 years."
- Doug also stated in a recent Facebook post that since he's started watching it, he's "in love" with Gravity Falls.
- In one of Doug's Gravity Falls Vlogs, Rob reveals that he's something of an Anime fan, possessing some knowledge of Japanese Dating Sims and mentions having watched Welcome to the NHK.
- He frequently quotes Spaceballs (as shown here) and Ghostbusters (1984) in everyday conversation, although his favorite comedy is actually Hot Fuzz. He's also very fond of mocking The Phantom Menace or just referencing Star Wars in general, even though it's not one of his favorite movies.
- By default, the franchise whose videos he's made the most about is Adventure Time! as he made vlogs for over a hundred episodes.
- The Nostalgia Chick: Lindsay Ellis is a huge J. R. R. Tolkien fan and follows all movies Spike Lee makes. She also has a guilty pleasure for every movie starring robots.
- Atop the Fourth Wall: Lewis Lovhaug has many passions outside of comic books - Star Trek, Doctor Who, Pokémon, Power Rangers (hence why he also does History of Power Rangers), several horror movies, several British sitcoms, etc. And he's been known to Cos Play in his videos whenever the comic gives him the opportunity to do so.
- In addition, he's a huge fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000, and often pulls out an appropriate clip as a response to the stupidity of the comics.
- James A Janisse (aka Dead Meat) is a fan of WWE, The Simpsons, Star Wars and Billy Madison. He has even made reference supercuts to them
- Online film critic James Berardinelli is a self admitted geek, having from youth been a fan of such things as Star Wars, Star Trek, Doctor Who, Monty Python, Dungeons & Dragons, and more. He's even written a trilogy of fantasy novels found here, here, and here.
- Foster Dad John, who runs The Critter Room (a live webcam stream depicting mother cats raising their litters) is a big geek, naming some of the toys used by the kittens The TARDIS and The Enterprise, as well as often speaking at length about the tech he uses to record and broadcast the livestream.
- While we're on the subject of bloggers, at least half The Atlantic's bloggers right now are geeks, self-confessed or otherwise. The most blatant example is Ta-Nehisi Coates, who rolls with the Horde, enough to write about it for Time. Business Editor Megan McArdle is also a gamer, though to what extent is unknown (She loves Civ, at least). Chief blogger Andrew Sullivan, being English-born, is an obvious Doctor Who and Monty Python fan. Josh Green is limited to music geekery, enough to put up a fight with a music website. The rest (Ambinder, Fallows, Goldberg, and Crooks) remain uncertain (unless you count Fallows's beer fanaticism as geekery).
- Tabzz is a professional League of Legends AD Carry player, he also happens to be an anime geek. Here's his MAL profile.
- Kami is also a League of Legends pro player from Brazil who plays Touhou to practice his reflexes while in queue.
- Maddox likes Fist of the North Star. Who knows why?
- Matthew Santoro is a fan of Harry Potter.
- Mr Mendo is a huge fan of classic hip-hop.
- Daniel Sulzbach, AKA MrRepzion, is a fan of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1978), Harry Potter, Star Wars, My Chemical Romance, and Pokémon.
- Duncan of A Couple Of Cunts In The Countryside definitely qualifies, as does Computer Joe.
- Irish LetsPlayer Sean McLoughlin, better known as Jacksepticeye, is a fan of many types of video games (as one might expect), particularly Shadow of the Colossus. He also enjoys the work of H.P. Lovecraft.
- YouTube ASMR video maker Heather Feather is a fan of the Portal games, having used Aperture as inspiration for a science corporation in some of her roleplay videos. In some of them, she quotes Cave Johnson's recordings, including the famous "Lemons" rant. She has also made {{Shout Out}s to Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, Alien, Queen, Rihanna and more. And she does a pretty amazing impersonation of GlaDOS.
- Josh N. Hadley, podcast maker best known for Radiodrome, is deeply passionate about movies and TV series, though his nostalgia is mostly concentrated between the 1970s and early 1990s and focused on works outside the mainstream. He sincerely likes John Carpenter, especially Videodrome whose film trailer music he uses as the theme of "Radiodrome". And, last but not least, he is not just a movie fan. He also reads novelizations of books and compares them to what the movie directors made of them. He's such a huge fan of the Alien and Predator series that he even owned the technical manuals.
- Diamanda Hagan is a huge fan of Diamanda Galás and Nina Hagen, after whom she named her pseudonym.
- Jim Sterling, of Jimquisition fame, is a passionate gaming enthusiast: two of their top favorite series are Kirby and Dynasty Warriors (the latter of which they spent an entire episode calling "the Citizen Kane of Gaming"). They are also a big fan of the Alien series, so much so that they opened an episode on the infamous Aliens: Colonial Marines by beating the snot out of a copy of said game with the dildo-bat from Saints Row: The Third. They have also grown incredibly fond of Sega's Yakuza series and consider the spin-off game Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise one of their favorite games (on top of the love they already have for Fist of the North Star).
- Rooster Teeth's entire raison d'etre is that they're geeky folks who openly love video games and pop culture. After all, Red vs. Blue started as a Halo fan series and snowballed from there.
- Andy Diamos is a doctorate alumnus of Arizona State University whose ongoing research includes a vaccine for norovirus. You may know him better as Super Mario Maker (and assorted Mario hacks) streamer CarlSagan42.
- The late Edd Gould, creator of Eddsworld, was a Whovian, a brony, a Homestuck and an Adventure Time fan.
- TREY the Explainer, who usually makes videos about science, has shown more than once that he's a big fan of Jojos Bizarre Adventure. He sprinkles references to it in his videos and on Twitter cosplayed as Diavolo for Halloween in 2019.
- Mike Robinson aka Mister X of Geek Juice Media can talk for hours on film theory and is a huge fan of The Prisoner (1967), Star Trek (especially Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), Doctor Who and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy among other things. The man is very well-versed in popular culture.
- His colleauge "Alex Jowski" also shares his love of Star Trek and Doctor Who.
- VOMS Project
- Tomoshika is a big fan of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. Her quoting Echoes Act 3 ("Let's kill the ho!") helped popularize VOMS to a western audience.
- Pikamee is a big fan of Sonic the Hedgehog, and also played Skyrim while attending school.
- YouTuber Anna Brisbin (aka Brizzy Voices) loves Disney, Harry Potter (to the point she met J. K. Rowling and gave her a hug), The Batman series (especially the character of Harley Quinn), Dungeons and Dragons, fantasy and gaming.
- Arwyn, the "little girl" that appeared in some of the Homestar Runner puppet stuff, is now a huge fan of Homestuck and Touhou Project among other things.
- In addition to his interest in nerdy movies and TV shows, the podcaster and author Mike Duncan has also admitted to spending a lot of time on This Very Wiki while researching clichés for his satirical noir novel The Five-Sided Cross.
- Kson On Air absolutely loves the Like a Dragon series, deeming Kazuma Kiryu to be her "husbando" and taking inspiration from the series for her Vtuber lore. Getting to be involved in the series — as an FMV cabaret club hostess in Gaiden and an Ink Suit Actress in Infinite Wealth (in English and Japanese no less) was a dream come true for her.
- Relatability to the audience is a core part of the appeal of many V-tubers. Just within hololive, Kiryu Coco commonly reviews Hololive memes and is herself basically a shitposter in idol form, Houshou Marine is a massive fan of the Touhou franchise and has made her own parodies of Touhou songs that are blatantly inspired by the works of IOSYS, Amelia Watson of the EN branch is a toxic FPS gamer who cracks Your Mom jokes, and the list goes on and on.
- Storytime animator Rebecca Parham of Let Me Explain Studios has admitted time and time again to being a huge fangirl of musical theatre and several of her YouTube colleagues, and is an unashamed regular visitor of the Disney Theme Parks. On top of that, she attended art school to get into the animation industry prior to making it big as a YouTuber. She also really likes Pokémon and other Nintendo franchises.