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"To become a crime fighter you have to study Batman movies. But even better than studying his movies is if you can follow him around and do what he does in real life."
Axe Cop, Axe Cop

Some fans are a cut above the regular otaku. For most, it is as simple as being hired to work in the industry that deals with the media you love, but in fiction, it can take a whole new meaning. The Ascended Fanboy/Fangirl is that lucky one-in-a-million with a hobby based on something imaginary which does not stay imaginary—it turns into reality, and he becomes a part of it himself.

A variation is where it is imaginary to us but not in the context of the world, such as a mecha fan, in a world full of mecha, getting to pilot one.

For those lucky few, they receive the Call to Adventure, and ask: "How high?" Naturally, it is never so easy or glamorous as they thought it would be, but they've got the right stuff, and a whole lot of Beginner's Luck to last them until it comes out. As a side effect, they're usually Genre Savvy, sometimes to the point of excess. Of course you know, they could be wrong.

Often a former The Team Wannabe. Who the fan works for is often their idol. Subtrope of Audience Surrogate. Compare The Knights Who Say "Squee!". Contrast with Loony Fan. See also I Know Mortal Kombat, which often results in this.

Note: This trope is for in-universe examples. For the Real Life counterpart, see Promoted Fanboy.

This has nothing to do with that kind of ascension, at least unless the fan really likes Daniel Jackson.


Examples

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    Advertising 
  • The band "Fozzy" performed a song for the YJ Stinger energy drink called Don't You Wish You Were Me, referencing how lead singer Chris Jericho had achieved two of his dreams, singing in a rock band and being a professional wrestler and had now become "The King Of Energy".
  • The titular character of Ultraman Nice is a massive fanboy of Ultraman Tiga, before earning the power of the Ultras and becoming one of them.

    Anime & Manga 
  • Deconstructed in 20th Century Boys. Kenji's childhood fantasies of evil alien invaders are used by a cult as the basis for taking over the world themselves, forcing him to step into the role of the hero he always saw himself as in the scenarios. It...doesn't work out too well.
  • The entire main cast of AKB0048 is this, as all of the understudies live up to and aspire to one day join the main team.
  • Hiroko in AKB49 – Renai Kinshi Jourei is a huge fan of the idol group AKB48 and aspired to join them. The plot of the manga starts to kick off after she succeeds in passing the auditions to become a trainee member of AKB48.
  • In the final episodes of Bamboo Blade, Tama and Rin both achieve Promoted Fangirl status when they get to act in an episode of their favorite toku show, Blade Braver. They end up taking the position a little too excitedly and completely break away from the script. They get small parts in the movie, in fact, and Tama derails it by instead of being a schoolgirl running scared from Rin's 'Shinaigirl' she picks up a dropped shinai and fights back. It goes on for a while before they're stopped.
  • In Battle Spirits Shonen Toppa Bashin, Toppa Bashin is a huge fanboy of the champion battler, J. When he finds out he's a chosen card battler, as is J, the two get to work together.
  • In Blassreiter, Malek becomes a tragic example when he becomes an Amalgam just like his racing champ hero, Gerd Frentzen.
  • Cross a continent and an ocean to train as a samurai in Japan. That's what Stephanie from Carried by the Wind: Tsukikage Ran wanted to do because she was a fan of a book series. She quickly learns that most samurai are thugs or drunkards or something else disappointing. Instead of being depressed, she decides to "beat the guts" back into them.
  • Aito in The Comic Artist and his Assistants is a downplayed example, and is more similar to a Real Life example of a Promoted Fanboy. How? He is a perverted otaku with a panty shot fetish who became a commercial mangaka whose first work is full of panty shots.
  • Edward from Cowboy Bebop is a fangirl of the eponymous bounty hunters... and becomes part of their group in her introductory episode after she assists them with collecting a bounty.
  • Corrector Yui is about a Magical Girl otaku that is attempting to write such a story herself. Of course, the Call to Adventure makes the perfect inspiration.
  • Mikami Teru of Death Note is a particularly disturbing example of this, being a lawyer who is overjoyed to be chosen by his "god" to kill those people he judges to be unjust. "DELETE!", indeed.
  • All the human character in the Digimon V-Tamer 01's Digimon world were fans of the V-pets except for Rei Saiba. Taichi's the least fanboyish of them, as the other tamers either have more monsters, higher evolved monsters or both and he openly admits to not bothering with the latest line of V-pets, which leaves him unfamiliar with others' monsters.
  • Most of the cast of Digimon Tamers are Ascended Fanboys: Takato, Henry, Kazu, and Kenta were all fans of the Digimon TV show and games before finding out that Digimon were real, and Takato's partner Guilmon is his fanart come to life. Rika was also a card game champion, but her focus on winning and apathy toward everything else made her more of an obsessive player than an actual fan of the franchise. Juri claimed to not like the card game, but was a closet fangirl and even had very rare cards.
  • In Eureka Seven, Renton idolizes Holland and Gekkostate and is thrilled when one of their members literally crash lands in his yard and he eventually gets to join them. This joy is short lived but eventually it gets better.
  • Franmalth of the Tartaros Guild in Fairy Tail is a huge fan of Hades and his guild to the point that he's shilling for Grimoire Heart as being the mightest dark guild back in its day. Lucky for Franmalth, he captures Hades' soul and gets all his powers for himself in addition to being able to take on a warped appearance of Hades.
  • In Fate/kaleid liner PRISMA☆ILLYA, Illya is a major fan of various magical girl anime, then becomes one herself. However, she doesn't enjoy being one at first, as she understands the difference between admiring them on TV and actually being in life or death situations. She later accepts her calling because it allowed her to meet her best friends and she wants to help and protect them, plus being able to fly is a nice perk.
  • In the "Shanghai Dragon" segment of the Genius Party (2007) anthology, a snot-nosed 5-year old outcast discovers a device that can make his doodles come to life. When alien invaders attack, he remembers his favorite Sentai tv series.
  • Genshiken:
    • Several of the characters are like this, though of the more down-to-earth variety. The lot of them are college otaku, obsessed with video games, doujinshi, anime, and manga. As the story runs down to the end, one gets a job as a game designer, another as an assistant editor for a manga magazine, and a third as a manga author and artist, and a fourth is going to design school. They are all, also, quite Genre Savvy.
  • Girls und Panzer's resident Genki Girl Tank Otaku Yukari Akiyama gets to be a crew member of one of her school's tanks, more so one commanded by her idol, a descendant of a famous Tankery family. She also got to take command (albeit temporarily) of another tank.
  • The Gundam franchise has a few examples:
  • Hiiragi Utena, the protagonist of Gushing over Magical Girls is a fan of the Tres Magia magical girl team in her town, wishing she could be just like them. How exciting it was for her when a magical envoy named Venalita offered her exactly just that, transforming Utena into a magical girl herself. Problem is, Venalita conveniently did not inform Utena on which side she would be fighting for...
  • Hilariously averted in HeartCatch Pretty Cure!. While searching for the third Precure, young fairy Potpourri finds Ban, an inspiring manga artist the girls befriended earlier, in the middle of figuring out how his third Precure would act in his comics. Inspired by his devotion, Potpourri decides he would be the third Precure. However, when Ban starts imagining how it would be like, Potpourri panics and bolts as the image hits him.
  • Gun-otaku Kouta Hirano from Highschool of the Dead. He's actually very good at handling the weapons he gushes over, he just didn't expect to need these skills in real life in order to fight zombies. He is often told that some of the things he claims (like being trained by Blackwater USA during a trip to America) make him sound like a manga character.
    • One part of Blackwater's business is firearms and tactical training. All you have to do is pay a few thousand dollars and they'll teach anyone how to shoot military weapons like a professional. Many Japanese gun enthusiasts go on overseas trips just to go shoot guns, especially in Guam.
  • THE iDOLM@STER: Cinderella Girls: in the anime adaptation, Uzuki and Mio worked hard to become idols, and finally catch a break at the start of the series. They can barely contain their excitement when they spot an idol they recognize.
  • Tachimukai in Inazuma Eleven was originally a big fan of Endou, and even learned to be a goalkeeper by watching Endou on video repeatedly and mimicking him. He ends up as Endou's teammate and friend and even gets to fill in for Endou as goalkeeper on several occasions.
  • Aoba from Jinki:Extend is an Ascended Fangirl who loves mecha anime and building models based on them... and ends up piloting a mech herself.
  • In K, several of the squad of adorkable swordsmen in the Blue Clan are revealed to be this in the side story novels and manga. The Blue King himself can show signs of this - the way he practically squees over the ninja in the movie, and over Saruhiko's hidden knives when he first met him.
  • In Kemono Friends, Margay is a huge fan of the Idol Singer group PPP. She becomes their new manager after playing a critical role in the success of a live performance.
  • Akio Suzuka in Koi Koi 7 was and still is a major Sentai fangirl. After the incident that gives her Cyborg superpowers, this allows her a chance to be one of her heroes.
  • Subaru Nakajima of Lyrical Nanoha is the title character's Fangirl and pursued a career in the military so she could be like her idol someday. She ended up working with her on two major cases.
  • Macross Delta: Freyja Wion starts as a huge fan of the idol group Walkure, and even stows away on a cargo freighter to try to join them, which starts off the series. Much to her delight, Walkure ends up recruiting her after she proves to have the ability to counter Var Syndrome like her idols and she ends up getting to perform alongside them.
  • Gai Daigoji of Martian Successor Nadesico, although he's quickly supplanted in skill by the less eager Akito. Akito's greater skill might be due to the fact that he trained throughout the series, and Gai dies in the third episode.
  • The same thing happens to Seiji and his gang in Midori Days, when they get minor parts in a movie starring their favorite actor.
  • In the Monster Rancher anime, the games exist in the show's version of Earth. Main character Genki is a big fan of the games, and when he gets a mysterious CD in the mail, he inserts it into his brand X, PlayStation-like game console (a reference to the actual game in which you put in various CDs to acquire the game's various mons), and the next thing he knows he ends up in the world of Monster Rancher where he travels with a girl named Holly and her assistant Suezo (one of the game's monsters) fighting baddies, and finding mystery discs that contain various monsters.
  • My Hero Academia:
  • The professor from the one-man-band short film Negadon: The Monster from Mars (See it, if just for the CGI alone.) After accidentally killing his daughter during a test run, he squirrels away the giant robot Miroku after the army is embarrassed by the disaster and cancels the project. Though he doesn't want to ever use the robot again because of the terrible memories, it has been kept in prime working condition, and certainly a few of its abilities couldn't have been thought up (or approved) by stuffy PR-hound regulation-happy army generals so he most likely continued work on it on his own free time. When normal military hardware proves ineffective against Negadon, he brings out the mothballed mecha. Also, he looks disturbingly similar to Otakon, only 30 years older.
  • In Neon Genesis Evangelion, military otaku Kensuke Aida is convinced that mechas are the coolest thing EVER and spends nearly the entire series expecting to become a pilot, even begging Shinji to pull some strings (despite the fact that Shinji has no influence whatsoever). He's never picked, of course — but his jock friend Toji, who strongly dislikes NERV, is. In several video game adaptations and Alternate Universe manga, he does, however, get to become an Evangelion pilot.
  • New Game!:
    • Aoba is a big fan of the Fictional Video Game Fairies Story. The series begins with her starting work at the company that makes it.
    • Aoba's Childhood Friend Nene is a downplayed case, she gets to Beta Test the third installment of the same video game.
  • One Piece:
    • Luffy's entire backstory is essentially him fanboying over Shanks, then deciding he's going to be even better than him and putting that into action. He is more likely to find his opponents' destructive powers of doom SOOOO COOL than to find them terrifying. In particular, he seems to like mechas and giant robots (a trait even his shadow-zombie Oars shared). In an ultimate ascended fanboy moment, Mr. 3 made him a wax battle suit so he could hit his poisonous opponent without ending up like he had when he'd tried punching the guy with bare fists. He practically cries from happiness at the opportunity.
    • Masira and Shojo are huge fans of the story Noland the Liar, a fable where an explorer was convicted of lying about finding a city of gold. When they heard that Noland's descendant Montblanc Cricket was searching for proof the city of gold existed, they immediately appointed themselves Cricket's helpers, using their own pirate crews to search the ocean, because Noland claimed the city probably sunk under the sea. After Luffy proves that the city of gold ended up in the sky, they all decide to search for another myth.
    • Arc Villain Hody Jones was a huge fan of the Big Bad of Cocoyasi Village Arc, Arlong, and the Sun Pirates when he was younger.
    • In a Real Life example, The Rootless, the band who created One Day, the 13th opening, wanted to do an opening for One Piece since they started.
    • Bartolomeo is not only a sociopathic asshole who may be worse than Eustass Kid but also a massive fanboy of Luffy ever since Loguetown, having followed Luffy's journey from then on to Marineford before finally setting sail himself and quickly as assigned his own bounty of 150 million Berries. And now he's one of the captains in the "Straw Hat Grand Fleet", a group of pirate captains who after teaming up with the Straw Hats against a common enemy decided they were becoming Luffy's followers whether he agrees to it or not, and his bounty went up to 200 million.
  • Renge from Ouran High School Host Club is a huge otaku who came to Ouran in the first place because Kyouya resembles a character from a dating sim that she obsesses over. She is a part of a romantic comedy, even if Kyouya's not her prince and she isn't the heroine, and she has a blast with the Host Club. Kirimi is too, in a way, despite being a little girl ("reverse harem", indeed).
  • Subverted by Gainer Sanga of Overman King Gainer. While Gainer is a huge fan of giant robot fighting games, he's only piloting a giant robot to save his friends who are going on Exodus, since he understands the difference between Real Life and a video game. It becomes a plot point when his video game rival turned Rival in real life, Cynthia Lane, doesn't understand the difference and is shocked when her fight with Gainer ends with Gainer injured.
  • Noa Izumi from Patlabor yearned for joining the Special Vehicles Unit because she was such a Mecha Show fangirl her dream was piloting a giant robot, even if she knew Labors were not at all like Mazinger Z, Getter Robo or Mobile Suit Gundam. Still, she got pretty disappointed when she was told that no, a Labor does not fly.
  • The Genre Savvy Momoko/Blossom of Powerpuff Girls Z always wanted to be a transforming, justice-defending Magical Girl.
  • Ayumi Sakagame of Pretty Cure All Stars New Stage was a slight fan of the Pretty Cures when fate decided to decree that she would become, even temporary, a Cure herself.
  • Ratman revolves around an interesting subversion. The story takes place 20 Minutes into the Future. Advances in technology have ushered in the era of superheroes. Shuto Katsuragi wants nothing more than to be a great superhero. But things don't go exactly as he planned, as he is kidnapped and tricked into becoming the world's first Anti-Hero.
  • Usagi in Sailor Moon plays with the concept. She was a fan of Codename: Sailor V for much of the early story, especially as she gains a best friend in Sailor V herself down the line, but being given her own superpowers doesn't stop her from just wanting to be normal.
    • In her episode debut, Makoto Kino beats up the Monster of the Week while declaring that she's a huge Sailor Moon fan. Soon enough, she transforms into Sailor Jupiter and becomes a lifelong friend to the Pretty Soldier herself.
  • Aine Yukimura from Sensual Phrase wasn't exactly a fan of the Aucifer band, but she was a prospective songwriter with rather...steamy song lyrics. By coincidence, Aucifer singer Sakuya caught a glimpse of them and had his band use these lyrics on-stage. From then on, Aine got hired as the official Aucifer songwriter and hooked up with Sakuya...too bad her dude is, well, rather screwed up, to say it politely.
  • In the setting of The Seven Deadly Sins, tales of chivalry and epic deeds are not uncommon, so Princess Elizabeth is enthusiastic about following the Sins on their adventure to save the kingdom. (She does wish she could contribute more, though.)
  • Kotetsu T. Kaburagi/Wild Tiger from Tiger & Bunny was a superhero fanboy long before he actually became a superhero himself. When he's feeling down, he cheers himself up by old footage of his favorite hero, Mr. Legend.
  • In Tomica Hyper Rescue Drive Head Kidou Kyuukyuu Keisatsu, Gou Kurumada was a fan of the Drive Head his father was working on and always watched its test runs. He ends up being chosen as its driver.
  • Maho from Wandering Son is a major fan of the model Maiko. She eventually began working at the same modeling agency as her. They're later shown to have become friends.
  • The World God Only Knows:
    • Keima Katsuragi goes from winning dating sims to capturing the hearts of real girls, though he hates it because to him, real girls are inferior to 2D ones.
    • Later on, Elsie, who is a fan of the pop-idol Kanon, has to take her place when the real girl is put into a coma by Vintage. Luckily Elsie has a magic robe that can change her appearance and has memorized all of Kanon's songs and dances, but there are still a few...inconsistencies.
    Elsie: It's a Nekumaru Hellcat!
    Game Show Host: Kanon, stop saying weird things!
  • In Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, Judai (Jaden in English) actually becomes excited when he learns that Shadow Games can make his favorite trading cards come alive when he plays with them, let alone when he learns he can save the world using his deck.
  • Tragically subverted with Z-ONE from Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds, who reveres Yusei Fudo for his sheer determination against the odds. In his soon-to-be apocalyptic future, while researching any method possible to save humanity from the Meklord Emperor Genocide, Z-ONE discovers that the Meklord Emperors are responding to the peoples' greed and decides to create a headset device that will enable him to impersonate Yusei's identity and personality to guide the people away from their selfish desires. This initially works, but he doesn't have enough time to reach out to everybody on the planet and Ener-D starts spinning in reverse, resulting in the ruin of humanity which leaves him, Aporia, Antinomy and Paradox as the Last of Their Kind. He loses all hope in trying to change peoples' ways and resorts to attempting to travel back to the past and destroy Neo Domino City where Ener-D was discovered before the Genocide can occur, thus becoming Yusei's archenemy.
  • Yuri!!! on Ice has Yuuri, who goes from idolizing world champion figure skater Victor to actually competing with him. Later, Victor offers to become Yuuri's coach and they eventually end up as an Official Couple. In fact, he's Victor's fiancé now.
  • Zombie Land Saga: Sakura Minamoto gets to perform alongside her longtime hero, Ai Mizuno. Later on, Sakura's own fan, Maimai, gets to perform a concert alongside the rest of Franchouchou.

    Asian Animation 
  • In BoBoiBoy, Gopal is a fan of the Papa Zola superhero series. When Papa Zola himself ends up in the real world and makes Gopal his disciple, he's absolutely overjoyed.

    Comic Books 
  • 52: One of the primary plot points of the series was the Lex Luthor Everyman Project, which could artificially grant superpowers to normal people. This led to countless citizens gaining superpowers and creating their own hero identities (including, in one Splash Panel that included over a dozen of these new heroes, the superhero Poledancer). Eventually, Luthor creates his own super-team populated by these heroes with Eliza Harmon, who idolized the Teen Titans and all things speed. When she became Trajectory and a member of Luthor's new Infinity, Inc. she never stopped hoping to eventually join the Titans and dreamed of eventually becoming the new Kid Flash. Two pages later...
  • Astro City:
    • Altar Boy starts off as a small-town child who wishes to make his name as a Kid Sidekick.
    • American Chibi is an ascended fangirl. She squees whenever Samaritan compliments her on a job well done, and is absolutely over the moon when he makes her a member of Honor Guard.
    • Wolfspider is a downplayed example — while he grew up watching and admiring Honor Guard, he's really excited to join his childhood cartoon heroes "Queenslaw".
  • Batman:
    • Batman seems to attract ascended fans, despite his constant efforts to keep "amateurs" out of "his "town. Many of his fellow Bat-Family crimefighters were not actively recruited or trained by him. Rather, they became involved on their own and were absorbed into the larger Bat-Family afterwards.
    • Barbara Gordon, the original Batgirl (Not counting Bette "Bat-Girl" Kane), was dressing up in a costume for a Halloween party when she stumbled into crimefighting. Prior to this, she was either disinterested in costumed adventuring or was planning to emulate different superheroes (different continuities as Batgirl: Year One give different backstories, but most at least agree that, whatever her specific plans were, they did not involve bats). That first encounter earned her the label "Batgirl" and she was automatically associated with Batman in the public consciousness. Only her subsequent refusal to stop got Batman involved in training and working with her.
    • Tim Drake also demonstrates this trope. In his origin story, he deduces that Dick Grayson must be Robin because of a signature move they both use, spends several years of his childhood stalking and photographing Robin and Batman, and finally confronts Dick and then Bruce Wayne, insisting that "Batman needs a Robin" when Bruce is endangering himself with recklessness in the wake of Jason Todd's murder.
    • Batman: The Dark Knight Returns: Carrie Kelly, who gets the job as Robin after buying the costume and forcing Batman to let her help return Gotham to its former glory.
    • Batwoman also made the leap from unaffiliated hero to partner. She was already actively engaged in crimefighting on her own, explicitly emulating Batman's theme and code despite having never worked for, trained with, or been authorized by Batman. It was only after she had been patrolling Gotham City for several weeks that she encountered Nightwing and cooperated with him to combat the Religion of Crime. He later gave her a "real" Batarang as a gift, and afterwards, she is shown working and sharing information with Batman.
    • Stephanie Brown went from spoiling her father's crimes and becoming the Spoiler to coming into the Batcave with her own Robin costume to Batgirl. Despite nearly everyone telling her to quit.
    • In Harley's Little Black Book, it's revealed that Harley Quinn of all people is a massive Wonder Woman fangirl, and has been since childhood. She even has a hidden shrine to Wonder Woman in her closet.
    • Batman himself is an ascended fanboy, although for meta reasons. In the first Batman comic, the film he goes to see with his parents is The Mark of Zorro, a character that strongly inspired him.
  • Blue Devil: Eddie Bloomberg was a fanboy of Blue Devil for most of that series, and even went as far as to create his own power suit so he could be Blue Devil's sidekick, Kid Devil. Eddie officially ascended years later when he was turned into a real devil and joined the Teen Titans.
  • Captain Britain and MI13: Faiza Hussain is a superhero fangirl who gets zapped with Skrull Applied Phlebotinum during the Secret Invasion arc and gets superpowers.
  • Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew!: Rodney Rabbit was a writer and artist for his Earth's DC Comics, particularly its top-selling superhero team title "Just'a Lotta Animals". After events are set into motion by visitors Superman and villain Starro the Conqueror, Rodney himself becomes a superhero and forms his own superhero team, the Zoo Crew.
  • Daredevil: Maki Matsumoto became a fan of Bullseye after he inadvertently rescued her when he killed the Yakuza who were planning on selling her into sexual slavery. She would later become Lady Bullseye.
  • Doctor Who Magazine: Izzy Sinclair is a sci-fi geekette turned Doctor Who companion in the comic strip. Destrii, her successor, is an alien who fangirls Earth sci-fi and westerns.
  • Empowered: The eponymous character was apparently enough of a fan of "capes" to major in studying them at college, despite the crappy job prospects. She also wears "Capitan Rivet" underwear in some panels.
  • The Flash:
    • In one of the earliest examples, Barry Allen was a big fan of the Flash from The Golden Age of Comic Books. One bolt of lightning later, you have an Ascended Fanboy, and The Silver Age of Comic Books is born.
    • As was Wally West, who dreamed of being like the Flash as a kid (helped along by a visit from his time-travelling future self). Then, in a repetition of the accident which gave Barry Allen his powers whilst visiting his lab, Wally became Kid Flash, Barry's protege and eventual successor.
    • The first Reverse-Flash is retconned to be one of these Gone Horribly Wrong. Eobard Thawne was a fan of Barry Allen from the future who found ways to replicate his powers, costume, and appearance all with the intention of coming back to the past to run alongside Barry. It only goes wrong when he arrives after Barry's death and Wally has already taken over the role. Addled from time travel and the discovery that he will one day become Professor Zoom, he briefly deludes himself into thinking he is Barry and fools everyone else in the process.
  • Green Lantern: The graphic artist Kyle Rayner.
  • The Hood: Parker Robbins was a fan of Supervillains who later ended up becoming The Hood, one of the Big Bads of the Marvel Universe.
  • The Invisibles: To a certain extent, Ragged Robin, who essentially writes herself into the story using fan fiction. King Mob also comments on how he now gets to live the crazy science fiction/espionage adventures he always dreamed of as a kid. Considering it's no secret that King Mob is just a cooler version of Morrison...
  • Jem and the Holograms (IDW): Blaze is a huge fan of The Misfits. When their lead singer Pizzaz hurts her larynx, the band does auditions for a temporary replacement. Blaze is the one chosen and later becomes the fourth member of the band.
  • Kick-Ass: Kick-Ass who is a massive comic book geek. So is Red Mist, even though he wants to be the villain. Also, Big Daddy; he financed his vigilantism by selling classic comic books like Amazing Fantasy #15...
  • Marvel 2099:
    • Subverted by Spider-Man 2099, Miguel O'Hara may have been inspired to use spider DNA in Alchemax's super-soldier experiments from reading about the original Spider-Man, but he didn't intend to test it on himself, and isn't happy with the results.
    • Also subverted with Hulk 2099: there's a crackpot group called the Knights of the Banner who worship the original Hulk and plan on exposing themselves to gamma radiation. And then Jon Eisenhart, who couldn't care less about Bruce Banner, comes blundering in and gets the effects.
    • Played straight with The Punisher 2099, who was obsessed with Frank Castle's war journal, and Thor 2099, who was a Thorite priest.
  • Marvel Cinematic Universe: The Black Widow comic book prequel to The Avengers had Natasha being stalked by a crazed fan who wanted to kill her and take the Black Widow identity for herself.
  • Marvel Comics 2: To an extent, almost everyone in the MC2 universe, including Spider-Girl herself. Most of them aren't obsessive but they do tend to fangirl/boy their heroes/teams of choice.
  • Ms. Marvel: Kamala Khan was already a fangirl of the fanfic writing, squeeing and obsessing variety before she got exposed to the Terrigen Mists and gained powers. She also decided to take the superhero name (and at first costume and form) of her favorite superheroine.
  • New Warriors:
    • Justice (formerly Marvel Boy) from the New Warriors and later The Avengers. In fact, most of his tenure with the Avengers either consisted of him fanboying over getting to work with A-listers like Captain America or berating himself over not measuring up to his childhood idols.
    • Hindsight Lad managed to track down the Warriors' secret HQ and blackmailed his way onto the team with his knowledge of several of their secret identities. He later earned a legitimate place on the team with his fact-finding skills. Much later, he betrayed the surviving Warriors by secretly leaking several of their identities to an already enraged public, out of a sense of betrayal. This led to one former Warrior being beaten and hospitalized by an angry mob. (Why he felt betrayed or why he'd take such a drastic step to "get even" is never explained adequately. Or explained at all, for that matter.)
  • Plutona: Teddy is a capespotter, tracking the sightings and actions of superheroes as a hobby. On finding the body of the strongest hero he decides to steal her powers and become a new hero himself.
  • Runaways: Victor Mancha was a huge superhero fan. It took the main cast storming his high school field to make him realize he actually had powers of his own. Subverted as he was programmed to be like that.
  • Secret Wars (2015): In Captain Marvel and the Carol Corps, Captain Marvel's former Tag Along Kid Kit is now grown up and a member of the Thor Corps. Kit sums it up by saying she used to idolize Captain Marvel as a child, and now has the power to fly and fight alongside her.
  • Static: Prior to becoming a superhero, Virgil Hawkins was a massive comic book fanboy and thus ends up being pretty Genre Savvy once he becomes a costumed hero. Aside from comic books, it's mentioned that he's a big fan of Pokémon as well. "What can I say? I identify with Pikachu."
  • Sullivan's Sluggers: Duncan considered Casey and his team his childhood heroes. By the time the comic starts, he's one of them.
  • Superman:
    • Superboy-Prime is an odd example: a kid named Clark Kent who grew up reading DC Comics in the real world-like universe known as Earth-Prime, turned out to have powers just like Superman (he was actually Supes's Alternate Universe doppelgänger the whole time), gets caught up in Crisis on Infinite Earths in what must have seemed like a Self-Insert Fic from his perspective, watches his universe die, goes insane, and turns into one of the most dangerous supervillains in The DCU.
    • Superman: Secret Identity is based on much the same premise, but goes in a very different direction and plays with This Is Reality for all it's worth.
  • The Transformers: Last Stand of the Wreckers: Ironfist was a major fanboy of the Wreckers team, writing extensively about them under the name "Fisitron". Then he got to join them for their mission to Garrus-9. This did not go well.
  • Ultimate Marvel:
    • Ultimate Spider-Man: The first Spider-Man, Peter Parker, was a fan of both The Ultimates and most genius people (including in-universe genius, like Tony Stark and Charles Xavier). Miles Morales, the second Spider-Man, is the reverse: he was raised by a superhero-hating father and never paid much attention to heroes and villains. Then when he gets his powers, he gives himself a crash course in the superhero world and retroactively becomes a fan of Peter Parker and vows to honor Peter's memory as the second Spider-Man.
    • Ultimate X-Men: When she first joins the team, Kitty Pryde was a fan of everything they do, as if she had joined the Ultimates. She was also a fan of Spider-Man, and eventually became her girlfriend. For a time.
    • Ultimate Galactus Trilogy: The Ultimate Fantastic Four are fans of the Ultimates, but for different reasons. Reed and Sue? They can tinker with a spaceship alongside Tony Stark and an actual alien life form! Johnny and Ben? They can kick ass with Thor and thrash some aliens!
    • The Ultimates: Bruce Banner had always been a fan of Captain America, the skinny guy who was turned into a supersoldier by a tech that is now lost. Captain America has been found frozen in the Artic, he's somehow still alive, and it's Banner's task to direct the medical efforts to wake him up and heal him. Of course, Bruce's own efforts to replicate the formula that created Cap didn't go well for anyone.
  • Ultra Force: Prime was a superhero fan who actually became a superhero.
  • The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl: Squirrel Girl was an Avengers fan rejected for having the useless power of controlling squirrels. Then she ends up saving Iron Man and defeating Doctor Doom. That would be ascended enough, but then she goes on and beats Thanos, Terrax, Deadpool, Mandarin, and others. She's not only ascended but made her way to the very top of the Marvel universe. She eventually got to (sort of) join the New Avengers as a nanny for Luke Cage and Jessica Jones' daughter. She later becomes a full-fledged member of the New Avengers during All-New, All-Different Marvel.
  • Watchmen: Dan Dreiberg was a longtime supporter of the masked hero Nite Owl who, with the permission of the original, takes up the name and mantle when his hero retires.
  • Wonder Woman:
  • Young Avengers: All the Young Avengers save for Miss America, but particularly Hulkling and Wiccan. Some are also Legacy Characters.

    Comic Strips 

    Fan Works 

    Films — Animation 
  • Fred from Big Hero 6 is a comic book nerd who becomes an actual superhero, and admits that being chased by Yokai is both terrifying and awesome. His suit is based on his favorite kaiju, a monster named Krogar.
    Fred: That mask...the black suit...We're being attacked by a supervillain, people! How cool is that! I mean, it's scary, obviously, but how cool!
  • BoBoiBoy: The Movie: Adu Du and Probe are big fans of the Tengkotak gang and are thrilled to be part of their crew after they help them capture Ochobot. However, their admiration ends when they laugh at Adu Du and Probe's friendship, and the former realises that they're too cruel, even for him.
  • Rhino the hamster from Bolt. To an even greater extent, Rhino's voice actor. Mark Walton, a storyboard artist, laid down a temporary "scratch voice" for the character of Rhino, with the assumption that a professional voice actor would later take the role. As the film moved further along, big-name actors were cast like John Travolta, Malcolm McDowell, and Miley Cyrus. But they couldn't find a professional actor who made a better Rhino than Walton; in the end, Disney ended up calling him back to record the lines professionally, resulting in one of the funniest breakout Disney characters of the decade.
  • Coco: Miguel is extremely excited to meet Ernesto de la Cruz, especially after he tells Miguel that he was born to be a musician. Subverted when Miguel learned Ernesto's true colors, but played straight again when he learned that his actual great-great grandfather was an amazing musician.
  • Epic (2013):
    • The flower kid, who idolized Queen Tara and wants to be just like her, is chosen to be her heir when the pod blooms under the full moon.
    • Grub joins the ranks of the Leafmen by the end of the film.
  • The Incredibles: After Buddy Pine is rejected as a sidekick by Mr. Incredible, he becomes Syndrome, the Big Bad super-villain of the film. He proves to be frighteningly competent, largely from being smart, though this proves in part to be his undoing. Even as a supervillain, Syndrome continues to talk about Mr. Incredible as though he were a character in a favorite comic book, critiquing his actions in terms that will be very familiar to anybody who has ever been in a comic book store.
    Syndrome: You sly dog. You got me monologuing!
  • Incredibles 2: Voyd/Karen, a fangirl of Elastigirl. She eventually helps her hero in the climax of the film by using her portals to help her defeat the villain. The other wannabe Supers can be considered this as well, though their role is not as prominent as Voyd's.
  • In Kung Fu Panda, Po only wants to see his heroes, the Furious Five, compete for the Dragon Scroll. He doesn't imagine that he will be chosen to receive it himself.
  • Kung Fu Panda 2, Po leads the Furious Five, along with Master Shifu and several other famous masters, into a glorious charge against the Big Bad's army of wolves. During the slow-mo leap, you can see his gleeful expression as he looks left and right. Even moreso, this is similar to his dream at the start of the first film.
  • This can even be seen in Kung Fu Panda 3 when Po's father puts on Master Flying Rhino's armor and pulls on a lever. The armor goes into battle mode in a very Iron Man-like sequence. Cue Po exhaling with such a look of admiration on his face and then stating that he just peed a little.
  • Deconstructed by Hal/Titan in Megamind. He secretly despised Metro Man because he thought Roxanne was in love with him. When he got his powers, he attempted to impress Roxanne but when rejected, went on a childish, selfish rampage.
  • My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Magical Movie Night: In "Movie Magic", Rainbow Dash and her friends help save the production of a Daring Do movie by catching a thief who tried to sabotage it by stealing props. As thanks, they get hired as background characters, and Rainbow Dash's character gets to assist Daring Do by throwing her whip to her. As a Daring Do fangirl, it's a dream come true for Rainbow Dash.
  • Roo was usually a minor character in the early Winnie the Pooh animations, usually a bit player for his mother Kanga or Tigger. The Tigger Movie promoted Roo to Supporting Protagonist, with a large portion of the film focused on his Big Brother Worship of Tigger. Disney seemed to like this setup, as nearly all the Disneytoon Studios Pooh features afterwards gave Roo a large role in the main gang's antics, or even had him play the lead character.
  • The LEGO Batman Movie has this happen to Dick Grayson. From an orphan and a Batman fan, to Bruce Wayne's adopted son, to joint custody of Batman and Bruce Wayne, to Robin.
    Dick: A month ago I had no dads, then I had one dad, now I have two dads AND ONE OF THEM IS BATMAN!
  • Animalympics has Bolt Jenkins, an alligator who grew up in the sewers of a big city. When he watched Boris Amphibiensky's high jump world record on TVs in a store front, he decided he wanted to achieve that, too, and made Amphibiensky his role-model. Fast-forward to the first Animalympics: Jenkins gets his first opportunity to compete against Amphibiensky. Not only that, but he manages to beat him right away and become the new world record holder.
  • Barley in Onward is an avid fan of a Dungeons and Dragons-style fantasy game, which he insists is completely historically accurate. One joint birthday present later, all that historical knowledge becomes quite helpful as he and his brother wind up on a genuine old-school quest.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Kevin Flynn from TRON. He was a video-game programmer who ran his own arcade, then gets zapped into the games themselves...
    Flynn: I shouldn't have written all of those tank programs.
  • And then, in TRON: Legacy his son grows up with bedtime stories about the stuff his dad did on the other side of the screen, even having action figures of Tron and Clu on his bookshelf. Twenty years later....
  • A lampshade is hung on this to some extent in Galaxy Quest; early in the film, Tim Allen, as the star of a Star Trek-styled TV show, yells at an enthusiastic fan asking questions about minutiae of the show: "It's not real! None of it is real!" Later on, when it all turns out to be real, their lives are saved by calling on the fan's knowledge.
    Brandon: I just wanted to tell you I thought a lot about what you said. But I want you to know that I'm not a complete brain case, okay? I understand completely that it's just a TV show. I know there's no beryllium sphere, no digital conveyor, no ship...
    Jason Nesmith: (at the same time) It's okay, now listen... Hold it... Just stop for a second! IT'S ALL REAL!
    Brandon: Oh my God, I knew it. I knew it! I knew it!
    • Also the entire Thermian race wears the Hat of Fandom for the Show Within a Show. A specific Thermian, Laliari, also appears at the end of the movie in the credits for its relaunch.
    • Guy Fleegman, who played a Red Shirt in the show during its original run, seems to be a major fan of the show as well and is the emcee for the Galaxy Quest convention. He not only gets to join the rest of the cast for their actual space adventure but he also gets to be part of the show's reboot.
  • The unhappy main character in Takashi Miike's Sentai parody/homage Zebraman dresses up like the title hero of his favourite cancelled TV show as a form of escapism, but eventually does battle aliens.
  • In Rock Star, a passionate fanboy of fictional Heavy Metal band Steel Dragon becomes the group's new lead singer after the original lead singer is fired. The film is loosely based on the story of Tim "Ripper" Owens, who started out in a Judas Priest tribute band and went on to become the lead singer of Judas Priest when original singer Rob Halford took a hiatus from the band.
  • Mark Wahlberg characters act out this trope in at least two different movies — not only Rock Star, but also Invincible, in which a devoted Philadelphia Eagles fan Vince Papale tries out for the team and makes the roster. Not only that, but both films are based on real-life individuals.
  • In Rocky Balboa one of the announcers in the Rocky vs. Mason Dixon fight said he grew up as a Rocky fan and couldn't believe he was actually calling a Rocky match.
  • Also, Rudy, Notre Dame's biggest fan becomes one of its most famous players, just on pure determination.
  • Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022):
    • Det. Ellie Steckler loved Rescue Rangers when she was a kid, and helps them solve a case.
    • DJ Herzogenaurach is a huge fan of Chip 'n Dale and in the credits scene, he's seen doing a cover of the Rescue Rangers theme alongside them.
  • Woody Wilkins in Condorman deliberately sets out to bring fame to his eponymous comic book hero by attempting all the stunts he writes about in Real Life. He convinces his CIA buddy to let him take a "routine" courier mission and winds up involved in the defection of a KGB spy. In a variation of the usual trope, he is actually Wrong Genre Savvy, which is where the Hilarity Ensues.
  • In Streets of Fire, one of Ellen Aim's fans decides to tag along, even giving the heroes crucial information about the Bombers. Then Tom Cody kicks her out.
  • In Super, Frank/the Crimson Bolts's sidekick Libby/Boltie is a huge comic book geek and wants to become a superhero because of it. Subverted with Frank who, despite becoming a superhero, has little knowledge or interest in comics.
  • In JCVD, three fans meet Jean-Claude Van Damme, who plays his own role.
  • In American Dreamer, thanks to Easy Amnesia, Cathy Palmer lives out a life like her favorite novel heroine, and even ends up with the author of those books.
  • The character of Tarrence Hill in My Name Is Nobody is a young gunslinger who wants to help his idol become the ultimate legend among the gunmen of the West, by ending his career in big style. He even calls himself Nobody, so it could always be said that he did all the great feats of his final months with help from Nobody, and Nobody by his side. And that Nobody was able to kill him in a duel because Nobody can draw faster than him.
  • Like the comic that spawned it, Kick-Ass is built on this trope.
  • The Marvel Cinematic Universe features some examples:
    • In The Avengers, Agent Coulson fits this to a T, being a fanboy of the first superhero, Captain America, and becoming the main advocate for the Avengers Initiative, which was planned to be a team of superheroes. And that includes... you guessed it, Captain America.
    • In his own movie, Ant-Man admitted to being a big fan of The Falcon and the Avengers before his and Falcon's brief skirmish (which Scott won), and found out at the end of the film in a Sequel Hook that Falcon was seeking him out to recruit his help. Captain America: Civil War follows up on this, with Scott being recruited to fight alongside his heroes on Captain America's Anti-Accords side during the big airport battle.
    • On a similar note, Spider-Man in the same movie is an Avengers fanboy who is recruited by Tony Stark for the aforementioned airport fight, in his case on Iron Man's Pro-Accords side. Spider-Man: Homecoming follows up on that point, with Peter trying to join the Avengers proper, which he finally does in Avengers: Infinity War.
    • Captain America: The Winter Soldier: Falcon himself is one. When Steve and Nat are on the run from a HYDRA-infiltrated SHIELD, he unhesitatingly offers to shelter them, and then later offers his help when the two Avengers decide to strike back. When Steve initially refuses out of not wanting to bring a retired veteran now living in peace back into deadly action, Sam shuts down any protest with this line.
      Sam: Dude, Captain America needs my help. There's no better reason to get back in.
  • Benjamin in Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, starts as a fan of Hansel and Gretel and collected all their newspaper articles, has a lot of witch data and his dream is to be a witch hunter like them. He gets his chance to help.
  • In Free Enterprise, two friends are obsessed sci-fi fans who are pushing 30. One day, they meet their idol William Shatner. That first meeting ends up destroying their ideal Captain Kirk (especially when he starts rambling about a one-man Julius Caesar musical). By the end, though, both grow up and are shown filming this very movie with William Shatner playing himself.
  • Walter in The Muppets (2011) is a Muppet fan who becomes the newest member of the gang.
  • Grady in Tremors 2: Aftershocks is a fan-boy of Earl's, who talks his way into helping on that film's Graboid-hunt.
  • In Machete Kills, the Big Bad Luther Voz confides that he grew up watching stuff like Star Trek and Star Wars. He got to live the dream when he became a supervillain complete with state of the art equipment resembling stuff from those franchises.
  • Valentine from Kingsman: The Secret Service, as shown in his conversation with Harry over dinner, he absolutely loves the early, campy James Bond films, and used to wish he could be that hero. He didn't get to be that, but he did get to follow the opposite end of the spectrum and is absolutely loving it.
  • The Force Awakens:
    • Kylo Ren is an obsessive Darth Vader fan who has ascended to become the de facto Vader figure in the Star Wars galaxy 30 years after the events of the Original Trilogy. Being his idol's grandson helps. He also may or may not be cosplaying as Revan.
    • Also Rey, who grew up hearing stories about the heroes of the Original Trilogy, and acts geeky when meeting Han Solo.
  • In Sidekicks, Barry is an asthmatic kid who has frequent vivid daydreams of fighting bad guys alongside Chuck Norris. He ends up pulling a The Karate Kid and learning martial arts from an old Chinese man. Even better, during the competition, they are one person short for their team. By sheer chance, the famous actor himself shows up as a celebrity guest. When an old rival annoys him enough, he agrees to join Barry's team to kick the jerk's ass. Barry is, understandably, ecstatic to fight alongside his hero for real.
  • In Logan, Laura read comic books based on the X-Men's adventures, then gets to meet and go on an adventure with Wolverine and Professor X.
  • Audience Surrogate Athena from Kim Possible is a big fangirl of Kim. After showing off her physical prowess to Kim, Kim lets Athena to tag along with her and Ron on a mission. Later subverted when it's revealed that Athena is a robot created by Drakken specifically to befriend and sabotage Kim.
  • The Disney Channel Original Movie Teen Beach Movie has Brady, a huge fan of the 60's teen beach movie musical Wet Side Story. Naturally, when he and his girlfriend get sucked into the movie, he becomes ecstatic, even taking the opportunity to join one of the movie's dance numbers.
  • In The Third Man: Sargent Paine likes Holly Martin's books, and his sincere admiration for him is the cause Holly manages to stay in Viena, frustrating Major Calloway's desire to send Holly home as soon as possible and allowing Holly to initiate his investigation:
    ''Holly Martins, sir? The writer? The author of "Death at the Double X Ranch? I'm so glad to have met you, sir. I've read quite a few of your books. I like a good western. That's what I like about them, sir. You can pick them up and put them down any time."
  • The Matrix Resurrections: Bugs, the rest of the Mnemosyne crew, and Shepherd are all fans of Neo, the hero who sacrificed himself to establish peace between the humans and machines. They are really happy when they get to fight alongside a resurrected Neo, Morpheus, and Trinity.
  • The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent has billionaire cinephile Javi Gutierrez write a screenplay with help from his favorite actor, Nicolas Cage, who also accepts the leading role. The screenplay, adapted from the mayhem the duo gets into during Nick's stay, ends up becoming one crowd-pleaser of a movie.
  • In The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, Bob the mechanic used to be a big fan of the Les Girls drag troupe. He joins the three queens on their journey, and eventually falls in love with former Les Girls performer Bernadette.

    Literature 
  • The Adrien English Mysteries: Adrien loves Mystery Literature so much that he decided to open a bookstore called "Cloak and Dagger" dedicated to them in an Old, Dark House with a Dark Secret, where he hosts a weekly mystery writing workshop called "Partners in Crime." He also happens to be the author of the in-universe Jason Leeland series of mystery novels, which is quite successful.
  • Animorphs features an Ascended Fanboy of God games. That is, of course, The Elimist. Also the campers from The Resistance, who are Star Trek fans on their yearly camp out to look for aliens or something. Not to mention Erek.
  • In The Authorities, Albert has been a huge fan of Q, even since he first saw a James Bond film. That's right, while every other boy his age was dreaming of being a superspy, he was dreaming of inventing crazy gadgets and being one of the few guys to be able to tell Bond off without consequences. His current job involves designing and employing cutting-edge equipment for a private investigative team, financed by a tech billionaire. He also loves quoting his idol and is gleeful when someone plays along.
  • I Became the Villain the Hero Is Obsessed With:
    • Korean Da-in finds himself inside of his favorite comic book, able to interact with his favorite superhero Stardus. In order to get as much attention from her as possible (he enjoys her glares and anger), Da-in decides to take up the Super Villain persona of Egostic and engage in Engineered Heroics against her to build her strength, while murdering the actual serious threats to her. All the while, Da-in still collects memoriavelia, stashes pictures, and runs a fansite dedicated to her, to the annoyance of his female minions.
    • Seo Jayoung is a bored Shut In with Playing with Fire powers who enjoys watching Egostic's terror attack livestreams, commenting on them as an Early-Bird Cameo, before he eventually reaches out to her to recruit her. She spends her off-time loafing around watching Da-in until Dragged by the Collar out to train.
  • Taran of The Chronicles of Prydain dreams of becoming a hero and fighting side-by-side with Prince Gwydion. Eventually, he gets to do so, ends up with a Cool Sword, gets to marry the Princess, slay the Big Bad, and save the kingdom. Also somewhat deconstructed, in that while he wants to be a hero, he at first doesn't realize how much hardship is involved, and that you have to Earn Your Happy Ending.
  • Diary of a Wimpy Kid: In No Brainer, a girl named Lily Stubman who got to ride in a fire truck as part of a PRA auction the previous year ends up being in the truck when it is called to an emergency and helps hold the hose to fight a fire. Greg suspects that the incident mentally scarred her, although she seems to be content in a picture of the fire.
  • Irony had the last laugh on Commander Sam Vimes and Havelock Vetinari in the Discworld book Thud!. Obstructive Bureaucrat A.E. Pessimal was sent by Lord Vetinari to inspect Vimes' operations, and neither man knew Pessimal had always wanted to join the City Watch. Vimes eventually got sick of Pessimal and made him tag along to quell a potential riot, thinking it would make him see things from Vimes's point of view and shut him up. Ironically, Pessimal took to the opportunity once the shell-shock wore off, and after a display of sheer balls (trying to attack a drugged-up troll with his teeth!) that shocked Vimes and even the usually unflappable Vetinari, Vimes decided to poach Pessimal from Vetinari, and the Ascended Fanboy got to live his dream (and do his original job simultaneously).
  • Doctor Who Eighth Doctor Adventures:
  • Joel in the Doctor Who New Adventures novels Return of the Living Dad and The Room With No Doors, both by Kate Orman, is a sci-fi geek and fan of Professor X (the Show Within a Show with suspicious similarities to Doctor Who) who travelled back in time and found himself helping at a halfway house for stranded aliens and the like. At one point he compares himself to the gamer in panel two of the What's New? strip referenced above.
  • Possibly the oldest fictional example is Don Quixote, though rather than waiting for the Call to Adventure to come to him, he took a much more proactive approach to live out his chivalric fantasies.
  • Abraham Van Helsing in the original Dracula novel is either this or Retired Badass, depending on how one reads the hints in his backstory. A "metaphysician and philosopher" who has spent a good chunk of his life gathering arcane knowledge on vampires, then throws himself enthusiastically at the chance to put that knowledge to practical use.
  • The Alphas from The Dresden Files were RPG enthusiasts and college students before they were taught how to become werewolves; now, they're one of the forces that makes sure Chicago stays safe for mortals. In a partial subversion, upon becoming werewolves, most of them went for "tough guy/gal" leather ensembles... only for them to a) look slightly ridiculous and b) turn out to be massively impractical when the time to shapeshift came about. They do get out of that phase, though.
    • Even more with Butters. He starts in Dead Beat (book 7) as a 90-pound Jewish nerd coroner and polka fan that tried to join the police and the army but never got to because he was not physically up to par. As of Skin Game (book 15), he is a great magical theorist and can create magical objects even though he has no magic himself, defended Chicago Batman-style while Harry Dresden and Molly Carpenter were unable to, and ends up becoming a Knight of the Cross when he grabs the broken Fideiacchius and it turns into the Lightsaber of Faith. Thus becoming an Ascended Fanboy from two universes. He is a Jedi Knight of the Cross, you see...
  • In Earthweb by Marc Stiegler, Earth Defense sponsors an arcade game simulating the fight against the planet-bombing Shivas to find new minds fit to lead the real thing.
  • In the Fairy Oak series, Telli was an admirer of Tomelilla, because of all her knowledge and achievements in the field of Magic. She ends up working for her, as the babysitter of her nieces, a scenario she had fantasized about when she decided her career path.
  • Tash Arranda of Galaxy of Fear was fascinated by and idolized the then-extinct Jedi Order, reading everything about it that got past or around The Empire's censorship. She later found that like the Jedi, she was Force-Sensitive, and while in the series she struggles with her talents, years after it is concluded she becomes part of Luke Skywalker's Jedi Order.
  • The Great Greene Heist: Bradley starts out as an office messenger who's in awe of Jackson's legendary capers. He ends up as a trusted member of Jackson's Caper Crew.
  • Guardian Cats and the Lost Books of Alexandria: Marco is a bookworm cat who especially loves adventure stories. His idol is d'Artagnan from The Three Musketeers. One day, his owners accidentally abandon him, leaving Marco to fend for himself on the streets. He eventually makes his way to a library where an old cat asks him if he wants to go on real adventures. Marco jumps the call quickly, though his job as a Guardian isn't as action-packed as a typical adventurer's.
  • Done by Robert A. Heinlein in 1958 in Have Space Suit – Will Travel, where a boy who wants to travel in space, and even enters a contest to win his own spacesuit, gets picked up by aliens and actually does so.
  • The Arrows trilogy is about Talia, a fangirl born in a medieval setting. She loved songs (and books, when they were available) about the brave, capable, egalitarian Heralds who lived far away in the capital. So the day an oddly intelligent white horse showed up to interrupt her Arranged Marriage and take her away to the Heralds' college was the best day of her life. The trope is depicted positively- the Heralds of Talia's fantasies aren't significantly more flawed in real life, nor did she expect that the job would be without danger. Most of all, it gave her comfort and hope during a very harsh childhood.
  • The Ink Black Heart: A man dressed as Superman at a ComicCon ends up helping Robin save a suspect from being run over by a train.
  • The DHIs in The Kingdom Keepers were all fans of Disney before they were chosen to defeat the Overtakers. Although, unlike most examples, they weren't exactly thrilled with their duties.
  • Mike O'Neal, Jr, from the Legacy of the Aldenata, is a science fiction writer at the beginning of the series, and later called into service to help create the Powered Armor and other technology to defend against the Posleen invasion, ultimately becoming a Four-Star Badass.
  • William of Log Horizon was in awe of Debauchery Tea Party and wanted to join them, but they had disbanded before he could. He went on to form one of the most well-respected battle guilds on the Yamato server and eventually became the dominant force in Susukino.
  • Lyle and Lloyd in Geoph Essex's Lovely Assistant: they're even called "the fanboys" for much of the book. They're a geeky, trope savvy pair who not only play major (and effective) roles in the climactic showdown against the Big Bads, but are specifically responsible (thanks to their encyclopedic knowledge of the stuff on this very site) for the good guys working out the clues needed to even show up for that climactic battle.
  • My One-Hit Kill Sister: Asahi is a total fan of isekai stories and always dreamed of being sent to a fantasy world. This happens to him and he gets excited at first... only to find that he did not gain any superpowers or fighting skills and is still a wimpy geek, making him useless as a fighter. Cue him lamenting the unfairness as his sister Maya follows him and does gain incredible power, forcing her to protect him.
  • Nemesis Saga:
    • Ever since he was a kid Endo was a huge fan of Kaiju. When he gets the opportunity to partake in the creation of Nemesis, he is willing to kill to make his dream of seeing an actual kaiju come true.
    • When he watches a kaiju fight in Project Maigo, he is absolutely overflowing with excitement.
  • R. J. Rummel's Never Again series of novels features a rather dark version of this trope. The main character, John Banks (who is an obvious stand-in for Rummel) is a professor of twentieth-century history who gets selected as one of two people to travel to the early part of that century. The dark twist is that Banks studies wars and crimes against humanity, and volunteered to go back in time in order to prevent those events from happening.
  • Catherine Morland believes herself to be this in Northanger Abbey when the huge Gothic novel fan gets a chance to stay in a Gothic mansion. It turns out she's actually Wrong Genre Savvy.
  • Mahiro from Nyaruko: Crawling with Love! gets to experience the less-than-pleasant side of this since his "fandom" is the Cthulhu Mythos, meaning he now has to deal with Eldritch Abominations and other extra-dimensional weirdness, and his only defense is the Crawling Chaos Nyarlathotep — who just so happens to have fallen in Love at First Sight with him. While she may present as a beautiful silver-haired Otaku girl, Mahiro's fully aware that "Nyarko" is really an insanity-inducing cosmic horror, which throws a good bit of cold water on any potential attraction.
  • In William Rotsler's short story "The Raven and the Hawk" (Analog, September 1974) David Fargin is an ineffectual loser, a miner on the colonized outer worlds of our solar system. He's also a devotee of the Raven Blacksword Planetary Romance series, about a heroic adventurer somewhere between Conan the Barbarian and an Errol Flynn type. When he finds an alien base with a telepathic AI spaceship that can replicate anything, he seizes the chance to be somebody and help the people of the worlds beyond Jupiter to free themselves from Earth's authoritarian rule. Now he begins to behave as he knows Raven would, and since he knows the rebels wouldn't listen to a little pipsqueak like David Fargin, he speaks in a deeper register and calls himself "Hawk Hardcase." He becomes a semi-legendary privateer, known for — among other things — boarding merchant vessels to see if they're carrying any new Blacksword novels.
  • David Charleston, the protagonist of The Reckoners Trilogy, aspired to join the titular Reckoners, the setting's resident Cape Busters, ever since, as a child, he witnessed the murder of his father at the hands of a superhuman tyrant. At the beginning of the series, he finds them and persuades them to let him join.
  • Ed Greenwood in Shadows of Doom shows just how casually this may happen to any random kid around Elminster... and how it feels:
    "Lord Elminster! Old Mage! Make magic for us, please! Please! A dragon flying. Only a little one, just for us!"
    [...]"Nay, be not downcast, Jhaleen. I see some things, know ye, in my dreams. Things I know will come to pass, in summers still to come." He leaned close to her, and whispered for her ears alone, "I've seen thee — much taller than now, and stern — riding a dragon."
    She looked into his eyes and saw truth, and her mouth dropped open in awe and trembled just a little in fear. It is one thing to dream of dragons, and quite another to know with cold certainty that someday you will be touching one. More than that; flying high above the ground on a dragon's scaly back, with empty air as high as castles beneath you, and a twisted death below should you fall.
  • Josh from Solar Defenders: The Role of a Shield is a huge Defenders fanboy before abruptly finding himself on the team when he picks up a fallen Defender's Artifact of Power. He uses his obsessive knowledge of the Defenders to be more effective with his powers.
  • Kirito from Sword Art Online. He was a gamer and after he got trapped in and escaped the virtual reality game SAO. The skills he learned from the game allowed him to beat up the guy that kidnapped his girlfriend.
  • Trueman Bradley moved to New York City so he could be just like his hero, the comic book detective Slam Bradley.
  • Subverted in The Twelve Kingdoms, where the main character Youko's classmate Yuuka Sugimoto seems like one of these at first — it doesn't work out so well, she ends up working for the Big Bad, and eventually she learns An Aesop of some sort and goes back home.
  • You (2013): Before getting hired at Black Arts, Matt had devoured just about everything related to their games. Nowadays he's a member of the production team and the company's unofficial lorekeeper.
  • In The Vampire Chronicles, Quinn Blackwood becoming part of Lestat's coven.
  • Post-apocalyptic Victoria has Terry, the former Marine aviator and aviation buff who made a fortune in real estate and fulfilled his dream—buying and restoring a real-life World War II jet bomber. He gets to use it, too, in the Confederate Civil War.
  • Deconstructed in the Warrior Cats spinoff storyline SkyClan and the Stranger. Sol's mother always got him and his siblings to behave by telling them stories of the Sky Warriors, which were the SkyClan cats from the days before the Clan was destroyed. Sol always loved the stories of the Sky Warriors. When his mom left him at the home of a crazy cat lady, he wished that he could become a Sky Warrior, because he thought that if he did, she would come back. After he grew up, he learned that SkyClan had been rebuilt, and wanted nothing more than to become one of its members. Leafstar, SkyClan's leader, let him join, but no matter how much he tried he didn't have what it took. She promised that she would let him become a warrior after he had proved himself, but Sol, fueled by his dreams from kithood, was impatient. To try to become a SkyClan warrior faster, he kidnapped Leafstar's kits, planning to "find" them after she realized they were missing and become a warrior because of it. Leafstar caught him, however, and exiled him, realizing that he had none of the qualities of a true warrior. Because of this, Sol turned against the Clans, and vowed to destroy their Code of Honor to prove that it was worthless.
  • Fredric Brown's story "What Mad Universe" is about a fiction writer who reads a letter from a fan. Then, a strange explosion occurs in front of him... And he is transported to an Alternate Universe where said fan is literally the embodiment of perfection.
  • Wild Cards character Kid Dinosaur was a fan of "Aces" and nuts about dinosaurs. Then he caught the Wild Card Virus, the manifestation of which is often influenced by the subconscious of its victim. You can guess from his name what happened next.
  • Sam Yaeger from Harry Turtledove's Worldwar series starts out as a minor league ballplayer whose best days are behind him far too early. Then his love of pulp science fiction magazines really comes in handy when aliens invade, allowing him to be open-minded enough to easily deal with captured aliens and learn about their race. He eventually becomes one of the most important parts of the war effort. Eight novels (and many decades) later, he ends up having an audience with the Emperor of the Race on their homeworld, something he could only read about in magazines before the invasion.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Hiro Nakamura of Heroes has been a comic book junkie for years when he discovers he has superpowers of his own. It's a bit of a surprise he hasn't put together his own costume yet. He certainly wants to. He also always wanted to be his childhood hero Takezo Kensei and kiss the princess he saves. He got the chance in season 2. Hiro is also a literal Ascended Fanboy, according to his father:
    Kaito: I have waited a long time for a Nakamura to ascend.
  • A twisted version of the trope occurs in The Flash (2014), similar to the newer comic books of Flash: In the future, Eobard Thawne was a great fan of Barry Allen/The Flash and was inspired to become a speedster himself. Once he finds out he is destinied to become Barry's Arch-Enemy, the Reverse-Flash, he rolls with it.
  • Stargate-verse:
    • Lt. Col. Mitchell from Stargate SG-1 can be considered such and is sometimes actually referred to as Lt. Col. Fanboy in fannish circles. He has memorized all their mission reports and will occasionally recite passages at top speed. He is known to have had the dream of joining SG-1 to learn from them but was instead given leadership of said team after being shot down saving their lives, and Major General Jack O'Neill, the original leader of SG-1, promising Mitchell any command he wants if he's successful in his physical therapy. Double subverted in that when Lt. Col. Mitchell first received command of SG-1 he merely inherited the group's name and its TO&E, all the original members which he idolized had moved on to other things at that point. He managed to convince most of them to come back though. Which is probably why the other SG-1 members didn't mind him taking over the team (not that Jackson or Teal'c, being non-military, could've been put in command anyway, and Lt. Col. Carter didn't return to the team until months after Mitchell arrived). In addition, the job isn't quite perfect as Daniel and Teal'c are often annoyed by his relative inexperience. Said inexperience has also led to him receiving more than his fair share of scaths during his time on the team.
    • Really, Daniel Jackson is one as well. He's not a speculative fiction fanboy, sure, but having his outlandish theories about Egyptology proven true must have tickled his fancy. Actually, he counts for bonus points on this one, doesn't he?
    • Eli Wallace from Stargate Universe, who is recruited solely because of how much of a fanboy he is. He's also heavily implied to be the intended avatar for the audience.
      • Well, being a fanboy and also being able to crack a complex puzzle written in a language he didn't understand, hidden in a popular online game in the hope that someone would come along and solve it.
    • Joe Spencer from the SG-1 episode "Citizen Joe" also counts. He's been watching SG-1's adventures for years using alien phlebotinum he stumbled across, and he is suitably starstruck when he meets SG-1 in person. The whole episode is essentially "What if one of SG-1's viewers existed in-universe?"
  • Power Rangers:
    • Justin from Power Rangers Turbo can certainly qualify, especially considering his response to gaining the mantle of the Blue Turbo Ranger.
    • Mack from Power Rangers Operation Overdrive might be a more pronounced example, with his specific love of adventure books and sneaking off with the morpher intended for his Adventurer Archaeologist father.
    • Dustin from Power Rangers Ninja Storm is a less pronounced example; he's a comic book fan whose reaction to receiving the power was "I knew it! Power Rangers are real!" but motocross is still his major interest.
    • There's more. Computer/sci-fi geek Ethan from Power Rangers: Dino Thunder looked about to faint when he found out he'd be a Ranger, and Power Rangers Mystic Force's Chip has been shown to be a fan of superheroes and fantasy. The main Power Rangers Jungle Fury Power Trio also had big grins on their faces (or at least Theo did) when their mentor brought up the Rangers, just before they were presented with their own morphers. Subverted in Power Rangers S.P.D., where fanboy Boom is almost the only one who doesn't get a morpher at some point.
    • Power Rangers Wild Force shows Cole reacting like a typical fanboy when he meets the previous Red Rangers, even wiping a sweaty palm on his hands when he goes to shake hands with Jason.
    • Flynn from Power Rangers RPM was someone who had a lot of moral principles and a deep admiration for superheroes but before the Venjix attacks he couldn't channel his desires in a meaningful way without getting into trouble. After risking his life to save a group of refuges trapped outside the dome he impressed the higher ups so much that he became the Blue Ranger. His father even lampshaded that after years of telling Flynn superheroes don't exist it turns out he was looking at one all along.
    • And then we get to Power Rangers Dino Fury... in which four of the five rangers were major fans before becoming rangers, and the fifth is an alien from 65 million years ago who had only ever heard rumors about the Morphin Grid before becoming a Ranger himself. Turns into meta when it turns out that four of the five actors were fans of the franchise before being cast and the fifth had heard about it but not watched it due to circumstances (Tessa Rao, having grown up in New Zealand, where Power Rangers wasn't aired due to fears of violence.)
  • From Super Sentai we have Gai Ikari/Gokai Silver from Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger, a Super Sentai fan who, after nearly sacrificing his life to save a child, is given the Gokai Cellular and Gokai Silver Ranger Key from the three fallen Sixth Rangers, Dragon Ranger, Time Fire, and Abare Killer.
    • And now we have Hikonin Sentai Akibaranger, where three otaku are made into an unofficial Sentai team. Nobuo Akagi/Akiba Red in particular is a massive Super Sentai fanboy.
  • Riku Asakura from Ultraman Geed, who was unaware that he was, in fact, the human form of the eponymous Ultra until the series began. However, he's a pretty big fan of Tokusatsu (especially Show Within a Show Donshine), so it was a pretty for awesome for him.
  • In Beetleborgs, the leads' fanboyism is what kicks off the plot. When offered a wish to be granted, they ask to become their favorite superheroes from the Big Bad Beetleborgs comic book. But heroes are no good without villains opposing them, leading them to appear in the real world as well...
  • Detective Kate Beckett in Castle is a (closet) fan of the mystery novels of Richard Castle, who as a result of their 'partnership' has found herself the basis for Detective Nikki Heat, the protagonist of his latest novels. By later seasons, Beckett is his girlfriend, so she has definitely taken it to the next level.
  • Macy on Jonas is Jonas's biggest fan and runs their fan club. And luckily she goes to school with them and is best friends with their stylist. As a result, she goes from acting like a buffoon around them to becoming one of their closest friends, and eventually start dating one of them.
  • Doctor Who:
    • In the Easter 2009 Special, "Planet of the Dead", Malcolm comes off as one of these — even applying for the job as UNIT's Scientific Adviser because he knew it was the position held by the Doctor way back when. He nearly dies of sheer bliss when he merely gets to talk to The Doctor over the phone.
    • Osgood, another UNIT scientist, from the 50th Anniversary special wears a scarf resembling the one that was (or that may actually be the original) trademark of the Fourth Doctor and to a lesser extent the show as a whole and has to be reminded to breathe into her inhaler when the prospect of meeting the Doctor and seeing the TARDIS comes up. It's likely UNIT's only requirement for hiring scientists is "must be a massive fan of the guy who used to have this job and occasionally still consults for us".
    • Grant Gordon in "The Return of Doctor Mysterio". A huge fan of comic books, he accidentally ingests a wish-granting gemstone, given to him by the Doctor. Fast-forward 24 years, Grant is a genuine superhero called the Ghost with Superman-like powers.
  • Game of Thrones:
    • Ser Alton Lannister is a huge fan of Ser Jaime Lannister. He states that the one day he squired for Jaime was the best day of his life. Jaime, in turn, confesses to Alton he's an Ascended Fanboy of Old Master Ser Barristan Selmy.
    • In one of the Histories and Lore featurettes, Bran talks about his love for Old Nan's scary stories, and how he's now in one.
    • Brienne's one request from King Renly is to join his Kingsguard and keep him safe from all harm. Later, it is revealed she has a pretty big crush on him.
  • JAG: Last season addition Lieutenant Catherine Graves is a fan of crime and mystery novels. Even though she is not a lawyer, being savvy of those genres turns out to be quite useful on several occasions.
  • On a Community episode, after repeatedly obsessing about it, Abed mentions actually becoming an extra on Cougar Town, which he did actually appear on.
  • In the episode "Hollywood Babylon" of Supernatural, Dean, who is a big fan of an actress named Tara Benchley, gets to be a production assistant on a horror movie starring her.
  • Pretty much the basic premise of Sonny with a Chance.
  • On Las Vegas, a fan of Wayne Newton who recently lost his job was invited to come up and sing along with him. He proved so adept at it, he was made a Wayne Newton cover singer in the same hotel.
  • In the finale of Mimpi Metropolitan, Alan, who is a big fan of the Indonesian band Noah, gets to join their tour as a roadie.
  • Marvel Cinematic Universe:
    • Hawkeye: The audience is introduced to Kate Bishop via flashback to the finale battle of The Avengers, showing how Clint Barton saved her life which inspires her to herself train at archery. During the events of the series she not only meets her idol Hawkeye but also gets the chance to join him on a mission and becoming his crimefighting partner.
    • Ms Marvel: Similarly to her comic book portrayal, Kamala Khan is absolutely bananas over the Avengers: writing fanfics, creating YouTube videos, cosplaying as her idol, Carol Danvers, and daydreaming of becoming a superhero. Then she gets powers and becomes a superhero for real, finding out in the process that it's a lot harder than she imagined.
  • Vera from Viudas e hijos del Rock and Roll. She was a fan of Argentine rock in general, to the point that she became a music journalist. And one day, she discovered that Roby, the legend of Rock, was his lost father!
  • In Spartacus: Blood and Sand Varro is a big fan of gladiators who becomes one himself to pay off his massive debts, most of which came from betting on fights. His extensive knowledge of the gladiators' backstories allows him to serve as Mr. Exposition.
  • In Arrow, Barry Allen shows up in one episode on his quest for "the impossible" and admits to being a huge fan of Oliver's. He then gets his own show and becomes the Flash, a superhero in his own right. In several later episodes, he works alongside Oliver as an equal.
  • An entire country became this for the Eurovision Song Contest. Australia has been dedicated fans of the contest since 1983, so in 2015, as part of the contest's 60th anniversary, Australia was given a slot in the final and came in 5th place with Guy Sebastian. Because of the good result, they were brought back to compete for real in the semifinals for the 2016 contest, with Dami Im who took Australia all the way to second place. The EBU eventually made a deal with Australian network SBS for the country to stay in the Contest until 2023, with a further extension to be negotiated beyond that.
  • On Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Nog is a fan of the elite Space Cadet group Red Squad, having wanted to join them when he was at Starfleet Academy. His dream comes true in "Valiant" when Red Squad rescues him and Jake with their own warship (the titular Valiant) and Cadet-turned-Captain Watters makes Nog their chief engineer for a mission to locate and destroy a Dominion battleship. The mission proves to be a complete failure—the Valiant is destroyed with Nog, Jake, and Red Squad member Collins being the only survivors.
  • Sebastian Stark of Shark has elements of this. He's a very successful lawyer, but the mock courtroom in his basement is stocked with items from both famous trials and famous movies about trials.
    Stark: The panels you're walking on covered the floor of the United States Supreme Court for 68 years. ... Oh, (that chair) looked a lot better when Clarence Darrow sat in it during the Scopes Monkey Trial. That lamp was on Ito's desk during OJ. This jury box is from the set of To Kill a Mockingbird.
  • The Talk has an example of this which is very rare for a talk show. Rapper Eve who was one of the many ladies auditioning on air to be Aisha Tyler's replacement got the job. She admitted it to her hometown's CBS news station that she is a fan of the show. Eve also has another one of those moments on February 9, 2018; Gina Rodriguez made a guest appearance to promote her series Jane the Virgin while the ladies of The Talk made a guest appearance on that night's episode "Chapter Seventy-Four" in which Eve admitted to Rodriguez she is a huge fan of Jane the Virgin and was honored to be in that episode with her fellow co-hosts.
  • Shoestring: Eddie Shoestring read massive amounts of detective fiction while recovering from a nervous breakdown in a mental hospital. He became a licensed PI after he was released.
  • The eponymous Ultra from Ultraman Z is a fanboy to the older hero, Ultraman Zero. He ends up becoming Zero's trainee and sidekick prior to the events of the series.
  • V.I.P.: "Hard Vals Night" Val is a fan of Lit who she winds up having to protect from jewel theives and arms dealers while they hide out at VIP headquarters. She also helps them rehearse for an upcoming concert. The icing on the cake comes at the end where she gets to star in their latest music video as a giantess who the band serenades until she eats them all.
  • Odd Squad:
    • Olive is an absolutely huge fan of the Burly Bears, a local sports team who plays in a wide variety of sports from basketball to hockey. So when Coach Roberts comes to Precinct 13579 as a client and she lays eyes on him for the first time, she's understandably ecstatic and throws any semblance of her usual serious and stern demeanor out the window. From there, it's a snowball effect — the rest of the players of the Bears basketball team are brought to the precinct where Olive gets to meet them and get their autographs, she and Otto are given two tickets to tomorrow's game as a thank-you for helping the team, and to top it all off, she gets to play in the game itself as one of the players, using her hand-stitched #99 jersey to cure the Bears of their bad luck and lead the team to a win against the Rambunctious Rams — their first win in a while. The episode "Disorder in the Court" would later have her become the personal student of Coach Roberts, who gives her javelin lessons.
    • On a similar note, Otto is a huge fan of Soundcheck, a boy band akin to the likes of One Direction who sing Silly Love Songs chock-full of Word Salad Lyrics. He manages to become an ascended fanboy twice — once in "Soundcheck", where he took the place of Danny T. and recorded a music video for "Gonna Add One", and another in "Soundcheck Part Deux", where he gets to perform with all four band members at a concert, along with Olive (who, herself, isn't a fangirl, but employs the "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" philosophy and takes part in the concert anyway).
    • Jeremy, a client whom the Odd Squad Mobile Unit helps in the aptly-named episode "Jeremy", is a big fan of them and wishes to join them. After helping to stop Monsieur Papier-Mache, he gets his wish when Opal decides to recommend him to the Odd Squad Academy.
    • Deconstructed in "Monumental Oddness". Omar's love and passion for traveling the world and collecting souvenirs causes him to earn a spot in the travel magazine The Shmumbertimes giving a top-25 list of his favorite monuments, which, in turn, leads him to be invited to speak at the 19th Annual Snowglobe Convention. However, it isn't just the heroes and innocent citizens who know about his fame — villains do too, as evidenced by Stu Venir, a villain who uses Omar's list to wreak havoc around the world and steal monuments by turning them into keychains.

    Music 
  • The Foreigner song "Jukebox Hero" is about a kid who is inspired to become a rock star after sneaking into a concert.
  • In the fictional universe of the Tenacious D television series and movie, Lee is one of these. That may be the case in real life as well.
  • In Wagner's opera The Flying Dutchman, young Senta fantasizes about meeting the legendary Dutchman and freeing him from his curse through the power of her love. Then one day...

    Podcasts 
  • In the first season finale of Brimstone Valley Mall, demon-loving, occult enthusiast goths Damien, Raven, and Trainee all sell their souls to Mammon and become demons themselves.
  • In the Cool Kids Table game Hogwarts: The New Class, Jake, Matt, and Shannon all play themselves as fans of Harry Potter who get to go through Hogwarts (though that doesn't stop them from pointing out the inconsistencies and poor-logic of the world). Shannon is especially excited to get officially sorted into Ravenclaw. Subverted with Josh who, though he has read some books and seen some movies, is not as familiar with it as the other three kids.
  • Scott of Podcast: The Ride was a massive fan of Fry's Electronics, specifically the chain's diverse and elaborate theming, to the extent that he filmed an HD Shot-for-Shot Remake of a very dated space shuttle launch video unique to his local store in Anaheim, California. After several months of jokingly campaigning on Twitter, Scott managed to get in contact with the chain's management, which permitted him to replace the store's video with his own and host a fan event there... two days before the store permanently closed, and just a few weeks before the COVID-19 Pandemic would break out and lead to the end of the entire chain.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Mage: The Awakening has a a sort of literal, deliberate, in-universe example of this in the Grimoire of Grimoires sourcebook: the Ancient Lands pentalogy, a five-book fantasy series that's wildly popular in unAwakened society, but also contains just enough actual magical knowledge that it's been known to Awaken the occasional Sleeper and teach them their first few spells. It was written by son of a Free Council mage who saw the Diamond orders as repressive, and the whole series is essentially a critique of their worldviews. The books and their fans are depicted in a fairly positive light; Mages who Awaken by reading the books tend to have idealistic, anti-authoritarian streaks that drive them to do great things.

    Theater 
  • Adaptation Expansion makes the title character in the 2013 musical Charlie and the Chocolate Factory one of these. In all versions of the story, everybody is curious about what Willy Wonka's mysterious factory is like, but in this version, Charlie Bucket's fascination with it is more personal. He is in awe of the Living Legend's amazing creations and feats and, inspired by them, has developed quite a few ideas of his own for whimsical candies. But as a poor little kid, he doesn't have the means to realize them, so his "I Want" Song "A Letter to Mr. Willy Wonka" has him send a list of some of these ideas to Mr. Wonka in hopes that perhaps the great sweetmaker does. In the end, of course, Charlie becomes Mr. Wonka's heir...
  • In The Club, Ted Parker is a lifelong fan of the club who is now (due to his wealth) club president.

    Video Games 
  • In Blitz: The League II, H.J. Latshaw was originally a Philadelphia Brawlers fan who got in a fight in the stands. Instead of kicking him out and moving on, the team gave him a tryout. He is now their Team Captain.
  • The Drakengard 3 character Accord is a robot sent back from the future to record historical events. She loves her job. So much, in fact, that she grows to sympathize with The Heroine and manipulate the timeline towards a better ending for her. In Accord's spare time, she tries to mimic the weapon stories that are a staple of the series.
    I thought this sounded familiar… it’s a weapon story I penned myself! My fan weapon story! How embarrassing! No, no more of that.
  • Metal Gear Solid:
    • Subverted with Otacon, a lonely Otaku who is determined to become one of these by building himself a real-life Humongous Mecha like in the anime he loved — of course, it turns out that the mecha is going to be a new type of nuclear weapons platform and he'd let his desire to live in fiction overshadow his logic. And then it's Double Subverted when Otacon ends up becoming the sidekick of an action hero-esque soldier and ends up living the otaku fantasy after all.
    • Otacon's the most obvious, but this actually applies to most of the cast. Ocelot is a Spaghetti Western Otaku who was modelled after Lee Van Cleef, can do ridiculous gunplay tricks with his revolver and pull off complicated Man With No Name-style backstabbing Batman Gambit, and wears spurs all the time. Major Zero is a James Bond fanboy who is also a British spy going by an initial codename ("O") and ends up masterminding a Cold War assassination gambit to kill another superspy. Snake makes various references to movies throughout the games, even giving his name as Iroquois (meaning "rattlesnake") Pliskin at one point, and he's based heavily on Eighties Action Hero characters. The cutest example is probably Little John, a little boy who loves ninja manga and sci-fi about robots, and discovers at the end of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots that his dad is a robot ninja. Score.
    • Raiden is a complicated example that plays the trope dead straight and deconstructs it from every possible angle.
      • As seen in codec with Kevin in Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, he recounts his history with Snake to his friends in Maverick, calling Snake as the hero of Outer Heaven uprising, Zanzibar Land disturbance, Shadow Moses incident, Big Shell incident, and his contribution in stopping Liquid Ocelot's insurrection. He also mentions that he was the best combat soldier Raiden had ever seen. Ends up getting teased as a Snake fanboy, though mostly out of disappointment no one else working at Maverick got to meet him.
      • Raiden's history doing VR training is analogised to being a video gamer; he is placed into a recreation of the first game, in an attempt to turn him into a main character of a video game with no real qualities other than hyper-competent obedience. The only reason he gets out of the simulation with any part of himself alive is his love of Solid Snake, the kind of love a video gamer has for their favourite character in the story of a game. And he gets to go Back-to-Back Badasses with him and eventually become one of the few people Snake considers a true friend!
      • This is invoked in Revengeance, where it's specified that as part of dealing with what happened to his body and identity after 4, Raiden got really into samurai movies and started looking to samurai philosophy to express his feelings about his life.
      • Raiden's movie fanboyism, however, started out far darker. As a child soldier, he was forced to watch 1980s action movies ("the kind with macho guys and big guns") with the goal of making him want to be just like those characters. Presumably, at some point in his life, it was working.
  • Super Robot Wars:
    • Shin Super Robot Wars: Ryusei Date is a Humongous Mecha otaku who pilots the machines he's admired so much. In Original Generation, he gains an Evil Counterpart, Tenzan Nakajima. Tenzan, however, is a deconstruction of this trope as, unlike Ryusei, who grows up and understands the situation he's in while holding on to his hobbies, Tenzan is lost between fantasy and reality, his last words he can just hit continue and his HP will be restored and he can rule the world once he level grinds enough.
    • Noriko usually joins him in squeeing over all the Super Robots the heroes are carting around. And then she pilots the GunBuster.
    • Super Robot Wars Z gives us a rare villainous one in the form of THE Edel Bernal.
    • Like all kids of Nouvelle Tokyo City, Wataru is a huge fan of The Brave Express Team in Super Robot Wars X, and claims he based his clay model of Ryujinmaru off of Might Gaine. Meeting with Might Senpuuji and his team is like meeting a superstar for Wataru.
  • The King of Fighters:
    • Shingo Yabuki idolized Kyo Kusanagi so much that he vigorously trained so that he could join him in the titular tournament. While he may never shoot fire (somebody apparently never told him that Kusanagi powers are hereditary), he was strong enough to win a few tournaments and survive against Riot of the Blood Iori.
    • In the EX duology, he gets a Distaff Counterpart in Moe Habana, another huge fan of Kyo that based her own fighting style all around that of her idol's. And much like Shingo, after a chance encounter with Kyo she ends up fighting side-by-side with him.
  • Sakura Kasugano from Street Fighter trained to catch up to her idol Ryu, and eventually fought him. She was even able to use the Hadoken, an impressive feat for a martial arts student with no training partner. Oddly enough, in one comic continuity before she started fangirling Ryu, Sakura was a huge fan of E. Honda, the sumo wrestler, and training to be like him. Including lamenting just how much weight she still had to gain. She still respects Honda, as shown in her Mini-Boss fight with him in Alpha 3... just not as much.
  • Advanced V.G. II: Tamao Mitsurugi joined the VG Tournament for the express purpose of meeting the woman she'd chosen to model herself after: Yuka Takeuchi. And not only met her heroine, but Yuka was also moved by Tamao's fighting spirit and agreed to become her "Sempai".
  • Viewtiful Joe's title character is Captain Blue's biggest fan and grew up watching Blue's movies and collecting his action figures. Needless to say, he quickly accepted when Blue granted him powers and the chance to be the hero. And let's not even get started on his Squee at meeting the Tatsunoko heroes in Tatsunoko vs. Capcom. Nor his Squee towards the Marvel heroes in Marvel vs. Capcom 3.
  • Inverted in Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice. Almaz is a descended fanboy after his hero-idolizing tendencies gave him the wonderfully suicidal idea that he should follow in legendary hero Aurum's footsteps and go slay the Overlord of the Netherworld. No more than a couple of chapters later, he's now unwillingly serving as the lab rat of the Overlord's son, and wondering what the hell he was thinking. There's also the fact that the "hero" in question is actually the Big Bad of the game.
  • Alex from Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete, who is a worshipper of the Dragonmaster Dyne, is a textbook example of this trope as he gets to be the dragonmaster and save the girl and the world.
  • Fire Emblem:
    • Between Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn games, Kieran (the most patriotic character in the series, including the ones who fall under My Country, Right or Wrong) is promoted to 2nd in command of the Royal Knights (one of Crimea's highest military positions).
    • In Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War, one of the substitute characters is a pegasus knight named Femina. The girl had been raised hearing stories about the amazing knight Sigurd and his companion Ferry; she doesn't get to work with her idols since they're dead, but becomes one of the companions of Sigurd's son Celice.
  • The Engine 001 action RPG Voyage for Vengeance has a man in one of the cities who loves Shadowrun so much that he started his own shadow running the organization which the player can eventually work for.
  • Final Fantasy:
    • Cloud Strife from Final Fantasy VII: He starts out as a fan of the legendary Sephiroth who goes out to join the same organization that made the Super Soldiers of whom Sephiroth is a part, spends a lot of time delusionally thinking he made it to Super-Soldier rank, and somehow ends up leading the only group that can save the world from a now even more powerful Sephiroth.
    • According to the Ultimania guide, as a child Seifer Almasy from Final Fantasy VIII saw a movie about a knight protecting a sorceress, which inspired both his "romantic dream" of becoming a sorceress's knight and his decision to train with the gunblade. The hero of the movie was played by Laguna Loire, the father of Seifer's rival Squall Leonhart.
    • Prince Noctis of Final Fantasy XV is a fan of the Assassin's Creed series, which in Eos is based off of a figure of myth from Lestallum. In the Assassin's Festival DLC event, when the Niflheim Empire attacks Lestallum looking for him during the festivities, he ends up defeating the Niffs with a Lucian twist on Assassin warfare.
  • Morgan LeFlay from Tales of Monkey Island has apparently been following the career of Guybrush Threepwood, Mighty Pirate, since he first defeated LeChuck, and is honored to cross swords with her idol.
    • She clearly wants more than just "cross swords" with him. Unfortunately for her, Guybrush is devoted to Elaine and is completely oblivious to Morgan's advances.
  • Liberty Lad from Freedom Force starts off as an obnoxious Loony Fan that follows the heroes around and needs to be protected in a quasi-escort mission. Eventually, he ends up taking a bullet for his hero that possesses superhuman endurance and is largely immune to bullets, gets a magical operation, and turns into Liberty Lad.
    • Dwight Arrow, AKA Bullet, has always loved the comics of his favorite hero Sky King, a Jet Pack-wearing Badass Normal from The '40s. This inspired him to join the US Air Force and become a jet fighter pilot, the self-styled "Fastest Man in the Sky". After getting hit with Energy X and getting Super-Speed, he finally has a chance to become a superhero like his idol. For bonus points, he ends up going back in time and helping the Sky King get his jetpack working for the first time (by using the information from the comic books).
  • Stephanie Morgan of Backyard Sports says in the original Backyard Baseball that she wants to be in the hall of fame next to Cal Ripken Jr. In the 2001 version, Morgan and Ripken are both playable, so you can make this happen yourself.
  • Jann Lee from Dead or Alive. He's that good and arrogant in using his Jeet Kune Do because when he was little, he used to watch Bruce Lee movies all the time as a mean to escape the harsh reality of being bullied by the locals for being a weakling. He Took a Level in Badass as a result.
  • Mass Effect:
    • Mass Effect 2 has Legion, a geth who is implied to look up to Shepard; it used a piece of his / her old armor for field repair to its platform and becomes kind of evasive if you ask why. Compare to Conrad Verner.
    • Kasumi as well. Cerberus tried to find her and when she found out, she did some investigating to find out they have Shepard brought Back from the Dead, and from there she offered a fee, introduced herself to Shepard as a fan, left the emotional baggage other crew members have behind and only asked that Shepard consider helping her on a heist to recover her lover's greybox.
  • Left 4 Dead Zoey is a fan of zombie apocalypse films, now she faces of a real zombie apocalypse.
  • Travis Touchdown of No More Heroes. "MOE~" In the second game, Travis meets his own Ascended Fan, Kimmy Howell.
  • Raz, the protagonist of Psychonauts, basically memorized all of the in-universe True Psychic Tales comics before getting a chance to actually become a Psychonaut.
  • Goombario from the first Paper Mario introduces himself as Mario's number one fan. He joins Mario in his quest as his first partner. Kooper is similarly introduced as a fan of the explorer Kolorado, and gets the opportunity to join him on an expedition during the ending sequence.
  • According to the collector's edition strategy guide for Fallout: New Vegas, there are hints of this for the young Caesar. He starts out a fan of comic books (he may mention the Grognak the Barbarian series in-game), action/adventure, and history, which culminates in finding texts on the nitty-gritty of the Roman Empire: "Such adventure! And intrigue! And cool uniforms!" He proceeds to swipe it whole-cloth for his own would-be empire.
  • 9-volt and 18-volt from WarioWare are the biggest Nintendo fanboys, making Nintendo microgames and owning everything Nintendo worked on. And 9-volt was working for Wario until WarioWare: D.I.Y. for unknown reasons and 18-volt still works for him.
  • The player Loganius from Champions Online with his character Duratok Gorehowl. He won an official costume contest and his price was being made an official character. Players can now buy a "Sidekick Device" that summons an NPC Duratok to your side for the duration of one hour.
  • Luke Triton, in the Professor Layton games, is a variant on the trope. In Unwound Future, he remarks that he's a big fan of the Sherlock Holmes stories and has read them all many times... which makes his role as The Watson to the Professor's Holmes all the more fitting.
  • Eddie Riggs from Brütal Legend. At the beginning of the game, he's a professional roadie bemoaning how modern music is progressively less and less metal... then he's Trapped in Another World where absolutely everything is based on heavy metal in the most over-the-top way possible.
    Eddie: Y'know, I haven't mentioned it yet but this place is nuts!
  • In the Grand Theft Auto V mission "Meltdown", Jimmy, a hardcore fan of FPS games, gets to live one out when he saves Michael's life and then teabags the guy who tried to kill him. Only it turns out that, since Jimmy couldn't see what he was doing in the darkened hall, he was actually teabagging Michael.
  • In the Future GPX Cyber Formula PlayStation game, Seiichirou Shiba is a huge fan of Hayato as a young boy and he watches him win the 10th GP finals and the championship. Years later he becomes a racer, joins the secondary team of Hayato's team and competes in a race with him.
  • Ryusei Date of Super Robot Wars Alpha and Super Robot Wars: Original Generation was a big giant robot fan who ended up getting recruited by the The Federation after realizing his skills in the "Burning PT" video game greatly translated to mecha piloting. That, and his amazing Psychodriver powers.
  • The Jagged Alliance-series had Tex Colburn, a Japanese (not Japanese-American, Japanese) Spaghetti Western fan, who strode into battle in a cowboy hat and with two revolvers in his hands. It is revealed in "Jagged Alliance 2" that he hung up his guns to star in several acclaimed Japanese westerns, such as "Attack of the Clydesdales" and "Much Dust, Many Bullets".
  • According to the backstory of Earth 2150, the founder of the Lunar Corporation was a young scientist, who has dreamed of becoming an astronaut since he was a little boy (then again, most kids do). Several decades later, he finds himself working a low-level lab job with no prospects of space. Deciding that enough is enough, he goes to a number of wealthy investors and, through sheer passion, manages to secure financing for a new company, dedicated to putting humanity into space. The company puts the first private Space Station in orbit, followed by another shortly after. Then he realizes that World War III is imminent and puts every company resource into building a permanent colony on the Moon. The colony is settled not long before the first nukes fly on Earth. By 2150, LC is powerful enough to go toe-to-toe with the world's superpowers (the Eurasian Dynasty and the United Civilized States). By 2160, they are engaged in a war across the Solar System with the ED.
  • From Dirty Bomb, If one takes Vassili's quotes at Face Value (Things like "I'm like an aimbot, only in real life"), he used to be an FPS gamer. Now, he's a badass, slightly Ax-Crazy Private Military Contractor.
  • The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: Erik is a young Farm Boy from the village of Rorikstead who dreams of being an adventurer like the Dragonborn, but can't afford the equipment, and besides his father won't allow him to go out of concern. The Dragonborn can offer to pay for his armor so he can go adventuring, or just threaten his father into paying for it, but in either case, Erik will adopt the moniker Erik the Slayer and become a recruitable companion, fighting at the Dragonborn's side. The character is a tribute to a real-life Oblivion fan named Erik West, known as "Immok the Slayer" on the forums, who sadly died of cancer in May 2011.
  • Saints Row: The Third: The Boss is extremely excited to work for Burt Reynolds.
    • Female Voice 1, going by the number of movie references, is evidently a film buff. She's basically living out a gangster version of Scarface (1983) with the action upped by a hundred.
  • In Sakura Wars (2019), the main heroine, Sakura Amamiya, grew up admiring Sakura Shinguji and the original Imperial Combat Revue. By the time her Childhood Friend Seijuro Kamiyama meets her in 1940, Sakura has already become a full-time member of the revue.
  • A number of second-generation Overwatch members were big fans of the original team. Pharah mentions having had a poster of Reinhardt (though her mother Ana, another Overwatch member, didn't want her to join), while Winston built a rocket to take him from the moon to the Earth just to join up.
  • Marina from Splatoon 2 idolizes the Squid Sisters due to their "performance" at the end of the first game being the catalyst that convinced her to seek a life outside of designing war machines for the Octarian military, and she goes on to have her own successful Idol Singer career as a member of Off the Hook. She's on the verge of squeeing when she gets the chance to perform alongside them in a live hologram concert.
  • Miles "Tails" Prower from Sonic the Hedgehog. One day he ran into Sonic and started following him out of curiosity. This curiosity quickly evolved into admiration, wishing to become as cool, capable as confident as him. At first Sonic ignored him, but the two would eventually go on to become Heterosexual Life-Partners. His relationship with Sonic helped him break out of his shell and become his most trusted ally.
  • Yakuza Kiwami 2 has a substory about Sugano, a former fanboy who became the new director for the Yakuza Sunset film franchise and initially showed enthusiasm into making Yakuza Sunset 3, only for it to be lambasted by the fans and he considers quitting over this. Kazuma Kiryu, a semi-retired yakuza himself, watches the movie and praises his music direction and poignant interpersonal character drama, then helps to improve in the areas of action and accuracy about yakuza customs, while encouraging him to stick to his strengths and not live in the shadow of the previous director.

    Visual Novels 
  • Mika Hashimoto of Shining Song Starnova is an otaku who decided to emulate the heroine of her favorite anime by becoming an Idol Singer. In her own route, she gets to star as that heroine in a live-action TV adaptation of the anime, much to her initial glee. Then it all goes downhill.
  • Sasuke of Ikemen Sengoku is a history buff of Japan's Sengoku Period who idolizes many of the famous Sengoku warlords, especially Ieyasu Tokugawa. When a wormhole sends him back in time to that very same Sengoku period, he can barely restrain himself from BSODing with fanboy glee whenever he crosses paths with one of these warlords in spite of him working on the opposite side of most of them. One hilarious scene in his route has him rope the female main character into chasing Ieyasu through town just to get his autograph (all while Ieyasu has no clue why some weird guy wants him to write his name down on a piece of paper).
  • In Heart of the Woods, Morgan Fischer is a fan of the Vlog Series Taranormal, who ends up inviting Tara Bryck, the producer of the show, and Madison "Maddie" Raines, her manager, to Eysenfeld to investigate supernatural phenomena there. Early on, Morgan innocently asks if Tara's looking for another assistant, unaware that Madison recently announced her resignation or that it caused friction between Madison and Tara, but when the mood turns awkward, claims she was just joking. In the good ending, Madison, who's made up with Tara, decides to go back to film school, and plans on teaching Morgan to take over her duties.

    Webcomics 
  • Sol and Kei in Circumstances of the Revenant Braves are otaku that end up with superpowers.
  • Thoroughly deconstructed in Fans!, where all of the heroes (and several of the villains) were of this type. It was most poignantly subverted with a character actually known in-story as Tim the Fanboy, who had become a fan of the previous heroic fans, only to turn on them when he felt they had let him down.
  • Muko from Furry Fight Chronicles was a fan of furry fighting before the story began, with the fight of the first chapter being the first furry fighting match she ever saw. The premise of the comic deals with Muko's path to becoming a Combagal.
  • In the Korean webcomic, Tale of Eun Aran, we find out after Aran is gifted with superhuman fighting skills and power that he would spend his days playing games and daydreaming about fighting evil.
  • Parson Gotti from Erfworld is sucked into the title universe at a typically ironic moment (right after saying "See if I could, like, literally escape into one of these games, I'd do it in a second. Just snap my fingers and teleport right in? Absolutely. Bam! Seeya!"). This occurs with the memorable sound effect, "PLOT!"
  • The Gamer: Han is an Ordinary High-School Student who loves RPGs and wakes up one day to find that his life has become an RPG Mechanics 'Verse, in which he can see everyone's stats and levels, and he can also tangibly increase both his strength and knowledge by performing menial tasks and grinding. Things become even more exciting for him later on when he finds out that there are other people out there with strange powers who often do battle.
  • MegaTokyo's Piro (the character, not the author avatar) is an Ascended Fanboy: he is currently dating the idolized voice actress of a character in one of the Dating Sims he's a fan of. He's also doing the art for the game now. Her fans actually hail him as an Ascended Fanboy at one point, electing him as their leader. Piro seems in equal parts terrified, sickened and proud, not least because their excesses are no worse than what he would have done in their position.
  • The Way to Your Heart:
    • Ultra-fanboy Eizo gets many encounters with his idols in the band Orochi thanks to his friendship with Yumi, leading up to him flying with the band to Hawaii for the wedding of Shuya and Musashi and even sharing a hotel room with the band members... albeit drooling and tied up to keep him under control.
    • Yumi herself goes from knowing nothing about visual kei, to adoring Orochi's music, to dating the drummer. Quite an ascension!
  • Subverted in Sparkling Generation Valkyrie Yuuki where a Magical Girl fan becomes something akin to a Magical Girl herself and is not happy, mainly because said fan was male until these powers were activated. In fact, it was Hermod's idea to hide inside a DVD because he thought a Magical Girl Anime fan would make an ideal candidate to become the next valkyrie. Obviously, it didn't work out as planned.
  • Quentyn of Tales of the Questor started out as a fan of the wonder-tales about the legendary Questors, before becoming a Questor himself. He even at one point uses his fan knowledge to find a way to defeat a plague of wights.
  • El Goonish Shive has Dex, the most unkempt regular of Justin's comic shop. Upon waking up at the place he can't remember visiting and in a rather strange company he found himself in a "familiar" environment:
    Dex: A furry... A black mage... And... haven't I seen you cosplaying as Chun-Li?
  • Walter from Dubious Company is an ascended pirate. As a kid, he would read pirate comics during class. As an adult, he got a degree in Magitek engineering, built his own Cool Airship and became a pirate. He has increasing degrees of success before the main plot built up.
  • Sequential Art has a sad and simple creature — penguin Pip, comic- and movie- obsessed geek. Who has to become "PIP DANGEROUS!". Later a bunch of Flying Martian Trashcans wrecked his house and while the resident Mad Scientist team followed them to orbit, he discovers a crowd of bored Denizens and a stash of space fighters they built in the basement — Denizens are impressive and tend to imitate what they see, so watching Star Wars and Think Tank weaponizing stuff when left unattended...
  • Euryale of Wapsi Square has heard about what the rest of the cast has done, and thinks they're the most awesome people ever. When she finally got the chance to meet her heroes, she was quite excited.
  • uranianUmbra of Homestuck is shown to be a fan of the cast — by creating Fan Art, Fan Fiction, and Epileptic Trees. Word of God confirms that the character is meant to be an "obnoxious fandom avatar".
  • Sage Freehaven became one in Las Lindas and became the canon love interest to the lepord woman with the biggest breasts in the comic.
    • And it looks like he might be set up as an artist for the same Dating Sim game she's voice acting in.
  • Sydney, the protagonist of Grrl Power, is a highly active (and hyperactive) comics geek who becomes a superhero.
  • In Sandra on the Rocks:
    • Sandra was a fan of the "Carmen Chamelia" videogame in her youth. During the story, she ends up modelling as Carmen for the reboot of the game. She does have to take a crash course in contemporary geekery, though.
    • Marie is a general gamer fangirl who also gets some Motion Capture work at a games company — and thus ends up working alongside her heroine, Sandra.
  • Ménage à 3: Gary starts the comic as a geek working in a call centre, with dreams of a career in comics art. He eventually gets some encouragement and training from his artistic idol, though that plotline fizzles out. Then, he swings a job interview with a videogames company. (In both cases, although Gary seems to be quite talented, the key is who he knows, not what he knows.)
  • Eli in Survivor: Fan Characters is an exaggerated version. Deconstructed, as the result of him seeing "flags" or foreshadowing is him inadvertently doing everything in his power to make it happen rather than trying to change it. He allowed himself to get so caught up in sensing edits to the point where he ended up allowing Angel to win.
  • Cucumber Quest has Princess Nautilus, who lives and breathes the ancient legends of the Nightmare Knight, above and beyond what's called for in her family's stewardship of the information. She's positively gleeful when she meets Cucumber and realizes he needs her to act as Ms. Exposition and eagerly joins him on the quest. (Now if she could just remember the legends better...)
  • Silver the Hedgehog in Sonic the Comic – Online! grew up listening to stories of the legendary hero Tails and collected magazines of him. Eventually Silver himself began fighting Ilbis however it eventually was decided he should travel back in time seventy years to defeat Ilbis while he was (relatively) weak. Silver gets to meet his childhood hero Tails as a kit... However, it turns out the history books are wrong. Sonic was the hero, not Tails (who is more-or-less just a sidekick). Silver doesn't know of Sonic because record books fail to note him; he became a fugitive partway into Sonic the Comic Online. It turns out "Ilbis" is actually Super Sonic, Sonic's Superpowered Evil Side. Silver is considerably confused at the revelations.
  • Mechagical Girl Lisa ANT: Lisa is a magical-girl fan who gets recruited to be a magical girl.
  • Sleepless Domain: Cassidy idolized the Magical Girls that protected the city, with her particularly idolizing Heartful Punch, and fervently wished she would become one herself. She eventually awakened as Flash Cut and even began to hang out with HP. However, she never seemed to make the transition from 'fangirl' to 'friend' in her mind, so when HP cut off their friendship over Cassidy going Clingy Jealous Girl and attacking Undine physically and with accusations that she was behind the Team Alchemical disaster, Cassidy took it badly.
  • Super Rivals: Cindi, aka Thunder Bunny, was stoked to work alongside her personal hero, Awesome Girl on a "secret mission", and was broken-hearted when it seemed like Awesome Girl had set her up. However, she later learned it was actually Madame Mischief from the real Awesome Girl.

    Web Original 
  • Red Panda Adventures:
    • Kit Baxter starts out as a fan and is hired by the Red Panda's alter ego to be his chauffeur. One she's sure if who he is, and Kit blackmails her way into becoming his sidekick, the Flying Squirrel. Later in the series, the Red Panda and Flying Squirrel become husband and wife.
    • Harry Kelly starts out a little boy who gets caught up in one of the Red Panda's cases in "Into the Darkness". He gets sworn in as one of the Red Panda's agents and amply proves himself, but he doesn't truly ascend until the final chronological arc, in which he's a young man, just back from World War II and possessing superpowers of his own. At this point, the Red Panda is convinced to formally train Harry and he eventually becomes the Black Eagle, the Red Panda's successor as superhero of Toronto.
  • Warrick Kaine of The Descendants grew up dreaming of becoming a Gadgeteer Genius Badass Normal. Then one day he discovered that instead, he'd grown up to be Extra-ore-dinary.
  • Stereo, Phono and Minijack, the appropriately named FanBoyz, are the three biggest fans of the Legion of Extraordinary Dancers, a group their classmates are sure doesn't exist. They post dance videos of themselves on the internet in an effort to get the LXD's attention, hoping to join them. Imagine their surprise when they each receive an invitation to join.
  • The Tandy Arena has Vikki Pertierra going from Warhammer 40,000 to Arena moderator, among other things.
  • Many Agents of the Anti-Cliché and Mary-Sue Elimination Society started out as simple fans of the Society before deciding to join.
  • A number of characters in Survival of the Fittest, both on the main site and the Minis, have watched clips of previous seasons, whether out of some degree of Bile Fascination, weird interests, or both. They tend to be Wrong Genre Savvy as much as being genuinely Genre Savvy. In addition, Virtua has Katie Tanaka, a western movie Fangirl who ends up in its Wild West setting.
  • The Guild: Codex gets a job with the creator of The Game at the end of season 5.
  • In one of the A Day in the Limelight "Interlude" episodes of Wormnote , we see a forum thread on the in-universe website Parahumans Online in which a longtime fan of Bitch/Hellhound/Rachel ask how one might hypothetically become a minion. Said fan posts later in the thread to say it turned out "Harder than I thought but all good."
  • Mega-Girl of the Whateley Universe is a lifetime New Yorker (her father is a cop) who is a huge fan of the Empire City Guard, the city's top superhero group. Once she turns fourteen and gets superpowers (she's a major Flying Brick) she lobbies constantly for them to let her join up. In the Whateley Universe, it's illegal for people to superhero before they turn eighteen, so right now she's just a huge headache for the Empire City Guard.note 
  • In We Are Our Avatars, Argentum wanted to become a superhero because he watched it on TV. Thankfully, he's rich, and had the Ultimate Gene.
  • Noob, has a few cases:
    • Judge Dead was a player before becoming a Game Master in the backstory.
    • Omega Zell eventually joins Justice guild in Season 4/the skip between novels 4 and 5.
    • Arthéon gets a job controlling a game character/boss in the fourth novel/Season 5.
  • Takahata101 from Team Four Star has officially become one with the release of Dragon Ball Xenoverse. Voice #8 for male created characters is literally him as Ghost Nappa.
  • Ben Heckendorn of The Ben Heck Show fame ascended from pinball fanboy to full-fledged designer when he created the world's first indie pinball machine, the Bill Paxton Pinball. But his big break came when the Spooky Pinball podcast contacted him and commissioned him to design and prototype a comedy-horror themed pinball table, to be commercially sold. Thus America's Most Haunted was born and his ascension was complete.
  • The blog SERA 00 features many girls who were fans of idols or SERA00 before becoming members.
  • Stacey the tooth fairy, as in literally ascended. She was once a normal girl, but when she noticed she got letters each time she lost a tooth, she started writing them back, eventually resulting her to be this. Her plush lion also got the treatment.
  • Played with regarding Hyper Fangirl and The Nostalgia Critic. She starts off as a Once-ler fangirl who quickly becomes a fan of the Critic (as in, falls in obsessive love with him). Despite not being interested in her at all, the Critic calls her in to help with the next review (comparing the two Spider-Man movie franchises) because she's a Spider-Man fan too. However, the rest of her appearances have her break in and eventually kidnap the Critic, forcing him to let her review a movie with him. After some Character Development, though, she gets called in more often to review movies with Critic or at least offer an alternate opinion from his.

    Western Animation 
  • In Avengers Assemble, The Falcon is a Captain America fanboy who gets to fight alongside his idol after becoming a costumed hero.
  • Joey Felt from Atomic Puppet was Captain Atomic's biggest fan and becomes his successor and partner in crimefighting when he finds that Captain Atomic is now a talking sock puppet, which he can put on his hand to become Atomic Puppet.
  • Batman himself is revealed to be one in Batman: The Animated Series episode "Beware The Gray Ghost". As a kid, Bruce used to watch episodes of the superhero TV series called The Gray Ghost with his father, and this was an influence on his decision to become a superhero. Batman reveals this to the actor who played Gray Ghost (voiced by Adam West), who expresses relief that the show did some good in the world.
    Simon Trent: (amazed) So... it wasn't all for nothing.
  • Batman: The Brave and the Bold:
    • The Joker himself is guilty of this towards the Weeper. To be fair, it was the father of modern, gimmicked supervillainy, so he had a good reason to Squee.
    • Blue Beetle is another example. He idolizes Batman and most of the other superheroes he comes across and takes photos of the JLA Satellite after being inducted into the Justice League.
  • Booster from Buzz Lightyear of Star Command. In the pilot movie, he starts as being the janitor of Star Command's headquarters station and a major fan of the Space Rangers (Buzz especially) and is studying the manual so that one day he can take and pass the Academy entrance exam. Due to various hijinx, he ends up with Buzz and new ranger Mira Nova on Planet Z and helps them thwart Evil Emperor Zurg's scheme, leading to him being made a Space Ranger himself.
  • This is the entire concept of the 80s cartoon series Captain N: The Game Master. Kevin Keene was a huge Nintendo gamer when he gets sucked into his TV while playing Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!. He finds out that he is the hero Trapped in TV Land and he works alongside some of his favorite game legends, like Kid Icarus, Simon Belmont, Link, Bayou Billy, and Mega Man.
  • Codename: Kids Next Door:
    • Numbuh 3's consistently obsessed with these stuffed animals called "Rainbow Monkeys" (which appear to be popular in general, but she's the most notable fan in the series) and anything related to them. In the Series Finale, it's revealed that, as an adult, she ultimately became the head of the Rainbow Monkey-corporation.note 
    • The premise of "Operation: R.E.C.R.U.I.T." centers around a KND superfan named Bobby who wants to join their ranks. Sector V accepts and puts him through an uncharacteristically rough Training from Hell. The end of the episode reveals that "Bobby" was really just The Interesting Twins from Beneath the Mountain in a Mobile-Suit Human, and they were attempting to infiltrate the Kids Next Door. Of course, Sector V had known all along.
  • DuckTales (2017):
    • Huey, Dewey and Louie idolize the adventurous "bajillionaire" Scrooge McDuck and are elated when they learn he's actually their great-uncle. They eventually help to rekindle his adventurous spirit and join him on his newest exploits.
    • Webby, the granddaughter of Scrooge's housekeeper, is an avid fan of his adventures and dreams of being an adventurer herself. She befriends his grandnephews and accompanies them on his latest quests. And in the finale, it turns out she's a blood relative, being Scrooge's daughter via F.O.W.L. cloning plot.
    • In "The Duck Knight Returns!", Launchpad befriends an up-and-coming actor who is chosen to play Darkwing Duck in a grim 'n gritty reboot movie, and like Launchpad is a huge fan of the original show, which he credits as inspiring him through a difficult childhood. After a series of events ends up cancelling the movie, Launchpad convinces him to actually be Darkwing for real. The actor's name? Drake Mallard.
  • Bo of The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants starts as simply a fan of George and Harold's comic books. By the end of his debut episode, he's both one of their closest friends and their CTO (cheif toy officer).
  • Extreme Ghostbusters:
    • Garrett was a die-hard fan of the originals, which was why he signed up for Egon's class. Roland also qualifies. Being a techie, he was quite fascinated by Ecto-1 and their hardware in general. And then they suddenly become the Ghostbusters themselves...
    • Kylie is perhaps a bigger fan than any of her teammates, loving anything about the supernatural and being a Hero-Worshipper to Egon Spengler, so much so that she was accused of being Hot for Teacher in an early episode. Really, the only person in the whole team that wasn't a fanboy of sorts is Eduardo who took Egon's class because he thought it was an easy grade.
  • Freakazoid! actually has a character called Fan Boy, who tries desperately to find someone who would let him be their sidekick. Freak only manages to shake him by pawning him off on Mark Hamill. Word of God says he was based on Promoted Fanboy Paul Dini.
  • This is the premise of Futurama. A lot of humor in the early episodes drew on Fry's expectations of the future as a sci-fi fanboy and how much the actual future either did or did not fit them.
  • Harley Quinn (2019): Even before joining the Joker as his top enforcer as Harley Quinn, Harleen Quinzel was so fascinated by him that she wrote a thesis on the evil clown.
  • Inspector Gadget: Corporal Capeman, an overweight "superhero," joins forces with Gadget in the second season. Astonishingly, he's even dumber than Gadget.
  • Wind Dragon, Samurai's Captain Ersatz in Justice League Unlimited. Longshadow (Apache Chief's Captain Ersatz) even more so; several times he's shown to be eager to join the Justice League, and when they make him an honorary member at the end of the episode he's absolutely overjoyed.
  • Mikey from Kappa Mikey is one of these. He won a contest or something and moved to Japan to be part of that show.
  • Season 3 Big Bad Zaheer from The Legend of Korra is a villainous example. He was a dedicated student of Air Nomad culture who followed a more violent interpretation of its teachings. Then the Harmonic Convergence makes him an airbender. He sees his new power as a gift from the heavens and a sign that his goals are righteous. There's also Otaku, who was an Air Acolyte that devoted himself to Air Nomad philosophy before gaining airbending abilities through Harmonic Convergence.
  • Miraculous Ladybug:
    • Adrien is a Lonely Rich Kid whose father basically never let him out of the house. Comics where superheroes went on exciting adventures and fought monsters were his only outlet...so when a kwami materialized in Adrien's room to give him superpowers, he had a pretty good idea of what was happening. (This is why his transformation pose looks so cheesy- he's been practicing.) This trope makes him both kinda jealous of the magic, and the team's moral center- he's the most insistent that if they're going to be heroes they should act like heroes.
    • Alya is a huge fan of superhero comics as well as an aspiring journalist, so when actual superheroes appeared in Paris she jumped at the chance to document their adventures. When she eventually gets to use a Miraculous herself, she's ecstatic.
  • In Marvel's Spider-Man, Peter Parker idolizes the adult superheroes like Black Widow and Iron Man. Likewise, this version of Miles Morales is a fan of Spider-Man who gains spider powers of his own.
  • Molly of Denali: In "Operation Sleepover," Tooey's hero Eugene Pike has asked him to write an article on sled dog care for his blog. Tooey takes this charge very seriously.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
    • Rainbow Dash's ultimate goal. She idolizes the pegasus stunt flyer group the Wonderbolts and aspires above all else to join them, ultimately succeeding in the sixth season, and eventually ends up in Spitfire's position as Captain by the time of the show's Distant Finale. Later, she learns that her favorite literature hero, Daring Do, is actually based on a real person, and gets to help her on a mission and get included in her next book.
    • Cheese Sandwich was inspired by Pinkie Pie to become a party pony just like her, and eventually became good enough to have an ultimately friendly rivalry with her and eventually married her.
  • OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes: As a young adult, Carol Kincaid was a big fan of the superhero team P.O.I.N.T., and her favorite member was Laserblast, on whom she had a Celeb Crush. Thanks to her own power and skill, she then got to join P.O.I.N.T. as junior member Silver Spark, and almost immediately caught Laserblast's attention and began dating him not long after.
  • Phineas and Ferb has Irving, a clear fanboy who seems to have perfect knowledge of the two brothers adventures and catchphrases... to the point that one must ask how the hell he could possibly know so much about the show's history. He started as a one-off character but is starting to appear almost as much as Phineas and Ferb's other friends. It's been extended to the point that it's been revealed he's had hidden cameras all over Danville, chronicling their adventures, including the first one.
  • Princess Morbucks from The Powerpuff Girls was a huge fan of the Powerpuffs who was jealous that they wouldn't let her join their group. She responded by using her money to get her own suit built with the same powers and became a super-villain dedicated to defeating the Powerpuff Girls. She's been a pretty formidable opponent in some episodes.
  • Razzberry Jazzberry Jam:
    • Annie becomes one at the end of “Billie’s Biggest Fan” when she performs with the Jazzberries in one of their shows.
    • Kaz from the second season is another young fan of the band who gets to be taught (very rudimentary) music theory by Billie and even performs with the band at the end of her debut (read: only) episode.
  • Enzo of ReBoot is a textbook example, being obsessed with the guardians, and Bob in particular. He is given the basic Guardian protocols by Bob before the Season 2 ending. However in the comic after Season 4 he is now a Cadet with his very own Gadget Watch.
  • From the Sam & Max: Freelance Police cartoon, it's Lorne, "The Friend for Liiife!"
  • In Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century, Inspector Beth Lestrade goes from being a Sherlockian to being the supervising officer of Sherlock Holmes. And, in the end, marries Holmes.
  • The Simpsons:
    • In the episode "The Front", Bart and Lisa co-write a fan script for an Itchy & Scratchy episode (using Grandpa Simpson as an alias) and end up getting picked up as regular writers, at least until Grandpa grows wise to what kind of show Itchy & Scratchy really is and quits.
    • In the episode "Once Upon a Time in Springfield", the actress who plays Princess Penelope is shown to have been a lifelong fan of Krusty and the two then have a romantic relationship.
  • An episode of South Park featured Kenny playing a video game, only to find out the game was created by angels so they could find out who would be the best person in the world at leading their army against Satan.
  • Static and Gear in Static Shock are this; they are comic book geeks and get really excited when they finally meet the Justice League and get to visit the JL tower. They never really planned on becoming superheroes themselves until Static got his powers. Gear gives him the idea of becoming a superhero, and it's pretty much all for fun for the two of them until the Special Episodes. Gear wishes he had powers after a while, then figures out two seasons later that he had had them all this time, they just weren't as flashy as Static's. He immediately joins Static in fighting crime.
  • In Teen Titans (2003), the meta-tastic villain Control Freak is the Titans' self-proclaimed Number One Fan. He is a caricature of the stereotypical lank-haired, overweight geek, complete with overfondness for lightsabers and trenchcoats. One of his two feature episodes is chock-full of fandom references, up to and including online ship-wars. Control Freak is also tremendously disappointed in one of these episodes to discover that the Titans East (a group of C-listers he's never even heard of before) are substituting for the "real" Titans while they're away on a long-term mission, and thus the gadgets he'd designed specifically to challenge the Titans were wasted. As the Titans East have completely different powers, he escapes and comes up with new weapons to fight them... and becomes a fanboy of the Titans East as well once they defeat him. He also becomes disappointed when he finds out that the Teen Titans don't even consider him an actual villain when he discovers their list of villains and doesn't find himself listed but instead finds The Puppet King's name- a villain they had only encountered once.
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987) has Zack, a bratty kid with aspirations of being the fifth turtle.
  • Total Drama:
    • The Loony Fan Sierra of World Tour is one of these. She claims she knows everything about the cast and participates in the season.
    • Zoey, as her first confessional in Revenge of the Island, would indicate.
    • Pahkitew Island introduces Ella, who says in her audition tape that she joined because she loved World Tour and its musical elements.
    • The same season has Topher, a massive fanboy of Chris McLean who constantly praises his ability to stir up drama and make insane challenges. However, he secretly intended to seize Chris position as host for himself.
    • Priya from the reboot series isn't one herself; her parents, on the other hand, were huge fans of the first season and that they literally gave birth to her for the sole purpose of having her compete and win on Total Drama. And sure enough, she's the first official winner of the reboot series.
  • In The Venture Brothers, Monarch Henchman 21 obviously longs to be one of these. Very closely gets there when he discovers a prototype lightsaber among Dr. Venture's yard sale. He buys it (with his boss' money) and subsequently challenges Dr. Venture's badass bodyguard Brock Samson to a fight, only to find out the "lightsaber" is just a hologram. Such is life in the Venture universe.
  • What If…? (2021): In the second episode, Korath is a big fan of Star-Lord (being T'Challa instead of Peter Quill) and acts like a geeky fanboy when he finally meets him, despite being on a mission by Ronan to stop him. He even asks to join the Ravagers, with T'Challa deciding to accept him after knocking him out. Korath spends the rest of the episode in awe that he's on a real mission with Star-Lord, and constantly says "Classic Star-Lord" when impressed by his plans.
  • Young Justice (2010):
    • Impulse comes across as a massive superhero fanboy, though his demeanor is at least partly meant to hide the fact that he comes from a Bad Future where most of Earth's superheroes are supposedly dead.
    • Inverted with Captain Marvel. Despite being an established member of the Justice League, he really wants to hang out with the members of Young Justice (because he's really just a kid, and thinks the teenage heroes are cool), making him something of a descended fanboy.


 
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Alternative Title(s): Ascended Fangirl, Ascended Fan

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Margay becomes PPP's manager (Kemono Friends)

Due to helping them in their debut performance, Princess tells their fan Margay that she's now the oficcial PPP's manager

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