There are many, many good-looking and famous people out there who are also geeks and nerds... which is exactly what we are. Most of them keep their geekish tendencies hidden. Some don't care.
The literal version of Hollywood Nerd. You can take the most vicious and dangerous badass action hero and when they go on a talk show to promote their new movie, a line slips that they hadn't been getting much sleep because of them playing the latest video game.
See also Ascended Fanboy and Promoted Fanboy. Also see Comics Rule Everything Around Me.
It probably isn't necessary to list every single genre fantasy or sci-fi writer here, though. Yes, we can assume that, say, Terry Pratchett or George R. R. Martin are gigantic fantasy geeks; it isn't necessary to say it... in fact, listing the fantasy or sci-fi writers who aren't geeks would be shorter. Probably because such a creature likely doesn't exist (except perhapsTerry Goodkind).
Not related to One of Our Own.
Examples:
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Athletic Eggheads
Tim Duncan: de facto leader of the San Antonio Spurs, widely acknowledged as the best power forward of all time, one of the 50 greatest basketball players of all time, two-time MVP, four championship rings... Oh, and he has a degree in Psychology, loves Renaissance fairs, he's into Video Games, and he plays Dungeons & Dragons.
NBA Centers and twin brothers Brook and Robin Lopez are both huge fans of Comics, Disneyland, and Michael Jackson. They can even be found at Comic Con.
Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling plays war games and MMORPGs. Originally, Schilling planned to start an MMORPG company after his retirement from baseball; he wound up starting Green Monster Games (now 38 Studios) before he retired. Once, when Schilling used to pitch for Arizona, he was rocked for two homers in the same game by former teammate Doug Glanville. After the game Doug dedicated that beating to the memory of Bing-bong, his Everquest character that Schilling had left to die. Schilling has such a good relationship with Sony Online Entertainment that he asked them to add his likeness into EverQuest 2 for a charity event. The developers agreed, and put his voice, face, and likeness into the game, complete with his jersey's number painted on his red armor. This very character would later become a permanent part of the game under the name of "Clint Gilcrush". He also founded the company Multi-Man Publishing specifically to keep his wargame of choice, Advanced Squad Leader, in print following Hasbro's purchase of Avalon Hill. The man is dedicated.
1996 #1 NFL draft pick and former Tampa Bay Buccaneer Marcus Jones, currently a mixed martial artist on season 10 of The Ultimate Fighter, is by his own admission "passionate" about Dungeons & Dragons and comic books. He also likes to garden, but that doesn't count.
Former Australian cricket captain and now commentator Bill Lawry got the nickname "The Phantom" because he was a huge fan of the character, and kept a stash of Phantom comics in the team locker room.
Josh Barnett, heavyweight MMA fighter, had Ai wo Torimodose as his entrance theme while he was working in PRIDE. He also made a statement after the match more along the lines of "My Hokuto Shinken will never be as good as Kenshiro's so I have to keep working on my Nanto Seiken."
Lightweight Mixed Martial Artist Joe Lauzon has a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science and used to be a Network Administrator. Also a fanatical Call of Duty player.
Chicago Bears Linebaker Lance Briggs is a huge fan of comic books, especially of The Darkness, X-Men, Pitt, and Silver Surfer. A big enough fan that comic books are more or less all he talks about, though he tries to be discreet about his hobby. When asked which super hero he would be he just sighed, rolled his eyes and said: "Well, I wouldn't wear tights. I would have leadership qualities. I would love to be a mind reader. That would be my power. But no tights. A snug fit, but no tights. What color costume? You want to hear me say orange and blue. No, something dark. I would be strong, dark, macho. A medium build. I would wear a loose jacket, a contemporary costume. I am not a tights guy, man. You get caught in tights, and you cannot get out." The sign of a true comic book geek.
Anaheim Ducks enforcer George Parros played college hockey at Princeton where he majored in economics and wrote his senior thesis on, get this, the West Coast longshoremen's labor dispute. He also played fantasy hockey and was really into video games (especially Final Fantasy and Street Fighter) while in college, really likes 80's hair metal, and watches a lot of Family Guy. Basically, he's the opposite of what one would think an enforcer would be.
Shaquille O'Neal is a big Superman fan and has a tattoo of Superman's symbol. Presumably, this influenced his decision to do the Steel movie.
MMA fighter Shane Carwin has an engineering degree and continues to work in that field despite being a top ranked heavyweight.
Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Chad Ochocinco was so eager to get his hands on an early copy of Call of Duty: Black Ops that he offered Bengals season tickets to anyone who could get it for him.
New York Yankees pitcher C.C. Sabathia is a serious video game enthusiast. Recently, he warned against the dangers of haphazardly chucking small explosives in a PSA for one of his favorites.
A number of professional race drivers play racing video games, either for training and/or for fun. Most commonly mentioned is Gran Turismo. Players include Tanner Foust (Formula Drift), Sebastian Loeb (WRC and Lemans), and Sebastian Vettel (Formula One).
A growing number of the Arsenal squad, most notably Cesc Fabregas, Theo Walcott, Samir Nasri and Jack Wilshere, are very keen gamers, especially of the FIFA series. Walcott even joked about what button Fabregas had pressed to pass to him to set him up to score against Chelsea during a live interview on Sky Sports.
Arizona Cardinals/Kansas City Cheifs Wide Receiver Steve Breaston is a huge fan of comic books, he was even able to have a meeting with Todd McFarlane who lives in Arizona. He also writes poetry.
Film Nerds
Vin Diesel, of all people, is really big into Dungeons & Dragons. He's actually so into Tabletop RPGs that he's written his own campaign setting, and one of his several tattoos is the name of his player character. He's also quite the avid video gamer and started his own video game production company Tigon Studios, releasing The Chronicles Of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay, a game considered to be much better than the movie it was a prequel to. He's also written the preface to a hardbound collection of D&D artwork (Thirty Years of Adventure: A Celebration of Dungeons & Dragons published by Wizards of the Coasts, current publishers of D&D). He once answered the interview question "Jedi or Sith?" with "I'd beChaotic Neutral".
On that note, Dame Judi Dench, who DMs D&D campaigns with her grandchildren. And seriously, how awesome would a game session narrated by her be? No wonder Vin wanted her in on it.
If there's anyone that could be described as a full-fledged nerd, it's Christian Bale. Hell, he's got everything in him to be a troper: he plays games, especially Super Mario Bros., he watches Anime among all things, even dubbed an Oscar-nominated one at that... Oh, and he goes to the Internet (Specifically YouTube among other places) to watch people talk about him. Hollywood Nerd at full effect indeed.
It's both ironic and funny when you think about his role in Terminator Salvation. Because as we all know, John Connor was quite a geek in his teenage day too (from what we can see in the second film at least).
He's also a fan of Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn. When he played the voice of King Haggard in the animated movie, he brought a paperback copy of the novel with him to the story meetings, and used a highlighter pen on several passages of dialogue that he felt were mandatory for the storyline.
And he was one of the people working on an album featuring poems (both read and sung as songs) and songs inspired by short stories of Edgar Allan Poe - he sung the song "Elanore" and read out "The Raven". (sadly the album was only published in Germany)
He has also displayed a liking of Manowar. That's right, folks, THE Rated M for Manly band. To elaborate, he has narrated 'Battle Hymns MMXI', Manowar's reissued album.
Robert Downey, Jr. has said himself that he has had nerdgasms. One suspects he would have had at least one when he was chosen to play Iron Man. (Terrence Howard, who played James Rhodes in the first movie only, was also a big fan of Iron Man, and Gwyneth Paltrow simply borrowed some of the comic collection that belongs to her husband, Coldplay lead singer Chris Martin).
Rosario Dawson is an avid comic book fan, particularly of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac. In fact, she's the co-creator of a series called Occult Crimes Taskforce. She is also an avid Star Trek fan who admits to speaking Klingon.
It's even better than that for being an anime fan. In One Hour Photo, the Neon Genesis Evangelion toy he gives to the little boy is his, and that line about "It being one of the good guys..." was a little stealth joke by him (apparently he must hate Asuka). He also auditioned for the role of Gendo in Rebuild. What could have been....
It's also been heavily implied that he's a goon. At least, he correctly answered the "stairs" question.
He's also gone on record saying that if they ever make a Live-Action Adaptation of Pokémon, he wants to play Professor Oak.
And he expressed interest in playing The Joker for both the Burton film AND the Nolan film!
And in a recent interview he said he wants to be Riddler and if he can't be Riddler he at least wants to be a random loony in Arkham Asylum. The guy desperately wants to be in a Batman movie in any role possible (don't we all?).
Williams is also a huge fan of classic cartoons, especially the works of Chuck Jones. He wrote a forward to Jones' autobiography, "Chuck Amuck", presented Jones with an honorary Lifetime Achievement Oscar, and hired him to produce some animated footage that was used in the movie Mrs. Doubtfire.
Robin also stated he plays Battlefield 2 as a sniper, and the 2 stands for "2 in the morning".
Nicolas Cage. Sold a truly gigantimous comic book collection during his marriage to Lisa Marie Presley. Named his kid Kal-El. Collects geodes. Has a tattoo of Ghost Rider. Might have played Superman, had Superman Lives not fallen through. Hell, he takes his screen name from Luke Cage, Power Man! It's a gag very close to the truth in comic-fan circles, that his role as Johnny "Help, my head's on fire!" Blaze was the result of auditioning for every comic book movie going until they gave him one.
Apparently, playing Dr. Tenma in the recent CGI adaptation of Astro Boy was something he wanted to do for a very long time.
According to David X. Cohen, Cage spends large sums of money collecting trilobites.
Jessica Alba plays MMORPGs. She even responded to a random blinking challenge video in some site. Imagine, staring at that beauty for several minutes.
She's on a website called beatmyrecord, and as of late, nobody has yet to beat her staring challenge of 1 minute 32 seconds.
The website is ibeatyou and it's her husband Cash Warren's website.
Steven Spielberg is apparently into video games and Transformers, which he got into playing with his kids. He once famously said, "I will accept video games as a story-telling medium when someone can honestly say, 'I cried at level 17.'" *
Peter Jackson allegedly got hooked on Halo 2 online multiplayer during the production of King Kong, leading to his attempts to adapt or work on a Halo property.
He also has a friendship with the Perry Twins (the two original sculptors for Games Workshop, and is taking sculpting lessons from them in his spare time.
Ben Affleck played DnD as a kid with his best friend Matt Damon. He's also a major comic book fan, especially of Daredevil, so much so that he jumped at a chance to play the character in the movie adaption.
Apparently, Affleck is also a big Duke Nukem fan, and there was a rumor at one point he was gonna play him in a movie. A rumor, mind you.
I think it's fair to say that being friends with Kevin Smith automatically qualifies you for this page.
Samuel L. Jackson, actor, bad motherfucker, and comic book collector. His most prized collection, original copies of the Lone Wolf and Cub manga. Has a framed picture of Ultimate Nick Fury in his living room and actually asked if he could portray him in Iron Man and the upcoming Avengers movie (which then got extended into a nine-film contract with Marvel). Which makes sense, since Ultimate Nick Fury was based on him in the first place. Word is that he allowed them to base Ultimate Nick Fury on him so that if they put Nick Fury in a movie he'd have an excuse to play him. He also asked to be in the Star Wars prequel trilogy, is a huge anime fan (Voice actor for Afro Samurai), and may or may not be an excellent chess player. He actually had the initials BMF etched into his light saber. He also plays EVE Online, and was the voice of Tenpenny in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
Actress and model Jaime King told Jimmy Kimmel she loved science fiction. She also displayed greater-than-usual knowledge of Star Wars, and she's married to the director of Fanboys.
Ryan Reynolds is a pretty big fan of Deadpool, the character he is now known for playing in X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Well, until Wade Wilson is converted into Deadpool, at which point Scott Adkins takes over).
Take this as you will, but Reeves is the single-biggest reason that a Cowboy Bebop movie was even greenlit. He's traveled to Japan many times to pitch the concept and eventually it was accepted. So you have Reeves to thank for a movie even being made... but his role as Spike is pretty much set in stone because of this.
Of course, given how extremely emotional Spike is constantly, this is expected to be a tragedy.
YMMV considering some find Spike very subtlety emotional, and Keanu as...well, again YMMV on whether he can pull of subtle emotions vs blandness.
Jack Black is also known to be a big video game fan. One of the reasons that he got involved in Brütal Legend was that he liked Psychonauts.
Neil Blomkamp, director of District 9, plays video games.
James Woods is an avid video gamer, as he noted during a press interview for Kingdom Hearts II. He attended MIT, although he dropped out shortly before graduation to pursue an acting career. He is also a gadget nut; he appeared on an episode of Conan O'Brien with a digital camera to post pictures on his blog - back in 2001, before every celebrity and their mother had a blog and/or Twitter account.
He's also supposed to be a big Star Wars fan and has talked about wanting to be Luke Skywalker.
And on top of 'on top of all this' he recently asked to be shown around the Stargate Universe set when he was at the studio... then asked to be sent a screening of the first episode, because he loved Stargate.
There was an interview where Reese Witherspoon mentioned that Jake won over her son, a big Batman fan, by giving him toys and such Maggie had gotten from The Dark Knight set.
While filming the Prince of Persia film, Jake played through the game a few times, to get the feel of the Prince's movements, and occasionally asked filmmakers if they could get a specific move in.
Zach Snyder is a huge comic fan, to the degree that he originally refused to direct the adaptation of Watchmen — because he agreed with the fandom's general opinion that the book was inextricably tied to the comic book medium itself, and was thus unfilmable. He only reconsidered when he realized that his refusal just meant that the studio would get somebody else, and that somebody else probably wouldn't share his reverence for the original novel (and would thus be more amenable to Executive Meddling).
Robert Rodriguez was such a huge fan of Sin City that he shot a scene from Booze, Broads, and Bullets in his basement, and then showed it to Frank goddamn Miller as proof that he could make a loyal adaptation of the comics.
He also started playing video games with his kids in order to make Spy Kids 3 more realistic.
Watch Eli Roth in anylist show about horror movies; you can tell he's still amazed he gets to make horror movies for a living.
He also attends the Ain't It Cool News annual film festival Butt-Numb-a-Thon (a 24 hour straight showing of classic and new films in Austin, TX) religiously...whether or not he has a film to promote.
James Cameron has such a strong desire to make a Battle Angel Alita movie, that he already has a fleshed out script and more than 1 year of design work completed. Unfortunately, he's not certain when he'll ever get around to actually making it.
"I haven’t. I’ve been traveling. I think this is what happened with people and Avatar. I want to see Inception the right way. I’m not going to watch it on an airplane. I’m not going to grab it on the run. I want to have that experience."
Paul Giamatti is an avid collector of comics and rare books, particularly the works of H.P. Lovecraft.
Kristen Bell may fall into this trope; she does enjoy Comic Con and other displays of nerdiness.
She was also very excited to be involved in the Assassin's Creed series, being a gamer herself.
Cate Blanchett openly admitted that she took the role of Galadriel mainly because she got to wear pointy ears. She later kept them - and had them bronzed.
John August recently started a post on his blog by casually mentioning he had just been playing Battle for Wesnoth. He went on to say that while reading up on the scenario he had just finished, he found his way to our page for All of the Other Reindeer...and so he titled his post after it. He wrote, "If you haven’t spent an afternoon clicking through TV Tropes, it’s well worth the time suck." So double points (this and TV Tropes Trollers) for Mr. August!
In the section right above that, the article mentions his love of Star Trek.
Whoopi Goldberg is an avid sci-fi fan who asked to be cast on Star Trek: The Next Generation in literally whatever part they could think up for her even if she was just in the background doing the cleaning. She also hosted the Battlestar Galactica finale panel at the UN for the show's fans.
Though ironically, she became a Star Trek fan after seeing Nichelle Nichols as Uhura who "wasn't a maid."
Not just a fan: Nichelle Nichols as Uhura was what made her want to be an actress in the first place.
Kevin Grevioux, best known for playing the lycan Raze in the Underworld films, is the one who originally came up with the setting and co-wrote, has a degree in microbiology and was studying for his master's in genetic engineering, writes comic books and founded two comic studios, and still looks and sounds like he could kick your ass.
Kevin Smith often references comic books and Star Wars in his films and mentions various other nerdy interests of his Evening With Kevin Smith movies.
Not far enough, friend: He named his daughter Harley Quinn.
He founded a charitable organization named The Wayne Foundation, after both Wayne Gretzky, and Bruce Wayne's fictional charity.
Being a friend or close associate may automatically grant One of Us status. Seriously, just listen to any random show on the Smodcast Internet Radio network.
Speaking of Star Wars, Mark Hamill was originallyTiger Beat material. You wouldn't think one saving throw by Fox Studios to hire an indie film maker would make its main star more known for voicing video games. He's also written graphic novels. And of course, it's never "How was Corvette Summer?" or "I loved you in The Big Red One." It always goes back to that one farm boy. That, or The Joker.
A possibly apocryphal story that turned up in Starlog a while back described security briefly losing Mark Hamill at a press junket where they were promoting the first Star Wars film prior to its release. Why? He had heard that one of his favorite writers for Cinefantastique was a guest and rushed down to meet them.
Gabourey Sidibe, star of Precious, described herself as being a "creepy fangirl" of the original novel and therefore highly interested in getting the film version right. One of the many things that makes her awesome.
Joan Collins has said she is a big fan of Scrabble.
Richard Corliss, longtime film critic for TIME magazine, has been a fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000 since its inception, and often wrote about it in his columns.
Guillermo Del Toro is a pacifist - and he thinks BioShock has one of the most immersive worlds out there. He enjoys Left 4 Dead partly because he had an idea very similar to the game, and someone else made. Once, at a book signing, he even defended video games as an art form, and teased a massive game he's working on, called Insane and having "Lovecraftian" influences. And by "massive", we mean it'll take two or three years to finish; the tentative release date is in 2013.
In a featurette for his episode of Stephen King's Nightmares and Dreamscapes, while talking about his character, William H Macy makes a Firesign Theatre reference (in particular, Nick Danger).
Vic Mignogna, probably best known for voicing Edward in Fullmetal Alchemist, is a diehard Star Trek nerd. He conducts panels at conventions in which he challenges the audience to stump him at original series trivia. By his own admission, he used to tape-record the audio of TOS episodes and fall asleep listening to them at night, and got his mother to teach him to sew just so he could make a Trek costume to wear to conventions. He plays racquetball with Michael "Worf" Dorn, and at Genericon 2011, he informed those attending his Trek panel that he went to see the film reboot with Dorn because "what's more awesome than seeing the Star Trek movie with Worf?"
He also regards himself as a Promoted Fanboy, since he now does conventions with George Takei and Nichelle Nichols and the other actors he grew up revering, and he has to outwardly be cool and calm when on the inside he's freaking out because Sulu knows his name.
There's a picture floating around the internet of someone who looks very much like Ellen Page holding a sign up that says "Hi /b/"
Edgar Wright has been quoted as saying on his TV show Spaced, "It's a show by geeks, for geeks." Also, he casually mentions the difference between the Green Goblin and Hobgoblin on the commentary track to Hot Fuzz.
Horror producer and director Oren Peli was a video game designer before becoming a director. In fact, his work as a video game designer basically paid for Paranormal Activity.
Tom Hanks is a big Star Trek fan and wanted to play Zephram Cochrane in Star Trek: First Contact but was already committed to a different film. Furthermore, he's a huge space nerd; Ron Howard commented on Hanks' knowledge of the US space program during the making of From the Earth to the Moon.
Andrew Garfield is a fan of Spider-Man, at least judging by this bit at SDCC where he took to the Q&A mic in a fan-made costume, gushing about how excited he was to be at his first Comic-Con and how inspirational Spider-Man was to him growing up. May also count as Ascended Fanboy.
Freddie Prinze Jr. of I Know What You Did Last Summer and the television series 24 said in a Game Trailers interview about his character in MassEffect 3 mentioned that he is a big sci-fi and video game nerd. Makes sense, considering who he's married to...
He's also a huge pro wrestling fan and appeared at WWE events numerous times before officially being brought in as a writer for the Smackdown brand. He parted ways with the WWE in 2009 but around a year later came back as a producer and director.
Max Landis, son of famed director John Landis and scriptwriter for Chronicle, is at the very least aware of TV Tropes, as can be seen by him comment here.
Martin also based the Wild Cards series on the Superworld tabletop RPG campaign that he and fellow local writers were involved in at the time.
Every Author in the Literary Anthology Geektastic!is a self-proclaimed geek in one way or another.
Terry Pratchett, author of the Discworld novels is known to be a fan of games such as Half-Life 2 and fan-missions of Thief and has had a part in developing the early game versions of his books. Also his daughter Rhianna Pratchett is a writer for video games such as the Overlord series, Heavenly Sword and Mirror's Edge. Check out his review of the Tomb Raider film on the VideoGameMoviesSuck quotes page. The really big clue might have been the fact that he is the author of fantasy novels that parody other fantasy novels as well as other, nerdier, things.
Pterry is a very serious fan of classic genre SF, and was a fixture in British SF fandom for years before he became a famous writer.
Confirmed by the Annotated Pratchett File. In fact, Foul Ole Ron's catchphrase "millennium hand and shrimp" came about as the result of running TMBG lyrics and a Chinese restaurant menu through a Markov-chain text generator.
About Pratchett as a gamer, there's the quote about the (terracotta) Red Army in Interesting Times:
"What? Lemmings? Merely because the red army can fight, dig, march and climb and is controlled by little icons? Can't imagine how anyone thought that... Not only did I wipe Lemmings from my hard disc, I overwrote it so's I couldn't get it back."
There is also a suspicion, noted by fans versed in both ouevres, that Terry has more than a passing knowledge of the works of that great Gothic/heavy rock band, the Blue Öyster Cult. The family motto Latinified for the extended Mort family is in itself a dead giveaway: Non Timetis Messor, or Have No Timidity Towards He Who Brings In The Harvest. The song itself is used as a running gag throughout Hogfather, and evidence has been garnered from the books that points to homage references to other BÖC songs. Interestingly enough, the band themselves may be aware of Pratchett and may have reciprocated the homage, or paid homage of their own. Take a look at the back cover of Cult Classics and then go read Reaper Man. See here:- [1].
And of course, there's the Yetis, which in his world can meditate, live out the next few minutes, die, and then time-jump back into their meditative self with the knowledge of what is going to kill them. In other words, quicksave and quickload.
By the way, he also has a hobby of growing carnivorous plants.
And he says he used to play Dungeons & Dragons and Blood Bowl. The former is pretty evident in the earlier books.
The Luggage is based on a magic item he invented while DM'ing- a chest on legs with infinite storage space that does what you tell it. Exactly what you tell it. Wonderful, until you forget to tell it to stop at the cliff edge...
Well, there's a few stories, all originating from Pratchett himself, about the origin of The Luggage. Another version is that he was inspired by rolling suitcases at an airport that you tugged with a leash. Pterry has said even he doesn't really remember which version is true.
He also wrote the only episode of Babylon 5 in Seasons 3, 4, or 5 on which J. Michael Straczynski received no writing credit ("Day of the Dead").
British RPG magazine Imagine was his first publisher with two of his early short stories, Featherquest in 1984 (#14) and How to Sell the Ponti Bridge in 1985 (#24).
Mystery novelist and conservative commentator Andrew Klavan has made it clear that he enjoys videogames, and occasionally reviews themon his website. He's also made a reference to BioShock in one episode of his TV show, Klavan on the Culture.
Stephen King is pretty nerdy. He loves comic books, writes fanfiction (check out Nightmares and Dreamscapes — it has a Sherlock Holmes story, one or two Lovecraft-themed stories, and a story based on a picture in a Chris Van Allsburg book), and plays in a band composed entirely of authors, including Dave Barry and Amy Tan.
He was willing to risk death threats after saying that publicly.
Lois McMaster Bujold started out writing Star Trek fanfic as a teenager. Later she published a fanzine. Until she became afraid of confusing her ideas with readers, she regularly read fanfics of her own work. She used to hook up a reel-to-reel tape recorder to record the episodes, audio-only (mother: "You girls are going to be so embarrassed when you grow up and remember how you acted over this program.")
All right, we expect science fiction, fantasy, and horror authors to be geeks, but how about purveyors of "Proper Literature"? During an interview with Paul Gambaccini (see below), Umberto Eco expressed a wish to write Green Lantern. Thus far, DC haven't taken him up on it.
Another "Proper Literature" one: A.S. Byatt is a Discworld fan.
Ms. Rowling, I think, speaks to an adult generation that hasn't known, and doesn't care about, mystery. They are inhabitants of urban jungles, not of the real wild. They don't have the skills to tell ersatz magic from the real thing, for as children they daily invested the ersatz with what imagination they had.
Eight years on and it's approaching Never Live It Down status, unfortunately; it's still brought up in discussions about literary snobbery. Telling millions of adult readers that their lives must be confined to "the worlds of soaps, reality TV, and celebrity gossip" was not the best way to express her disapproval of the books.
Scottish thriller writer Ian Rankin wrote an arc for Hellblazer, named "Dark Entries".
Daniel Suarez gets so many of the technical details right in his novel Daemon that he's obviously an accomplished hacker in his own right. So much so that you have to wonder how much practical research he may have done on how to write a Daemon like the one in the book...
If Douglas Adams was still alive with his wholly technologically obsessed self, he would be more than a match for Stephen Fry in the race of fanboying over Apple products - according to Fry, he was the owner of the first ever Apple computer in the UK (though some say Fry bought the first one). And before that, he was a huge fan of Doctor Who, having written affectionate parodies when he was younger before actually writing for the show, and if his books aren't referencing a band (particularly the Beatles), then you probably aren't reading Douglas Adams. Perhaps his nerdiness was just too much for the space-time continuum and he had to be removed.
Jim Butcher, of The Dresden Files, qualifies. He quotes on the forums. He's clearly researched everything. He's a big fan of Tolkien. In fact, he even mentioned that if Balrogs were to appear in the Dresden Files, they would have wings, since that's more annoying for Harry. That's not what makes this. No, what makes this is that he hangs out in boffer LARPs, and had already made Harry Dresden on City of Heroes, along with Murphy and Marcone.
He was also involved in a very hands-on capacity in developing a Dresden Files pen-and-paper RPG, and specifically added mechanics to the novels before he intended to so they could be added to the game. He's also gone on record that, despite being an avid RPG gamer, he will never play in a Dresden Files game as he would be that guy in the game. "That IS how it works and I'll put it in the next book just to prove it!"
Several of the Codexalera books are dedicated to his old MUCK.
He also named a character in the Dresden Files after one from Warhammer Fantasy Battle. Heinrich Kemmler, if you were wondering.
Naomi Novik, author of the Temeraire series, openly admits that she wrote Fan Fic for about ten years before becoming a published historical fantasy author.
Slash fanfic. Think about that, then go re-read ... any of the Temeraire books.
She's also a founding member and current chair of the Organisation for Transformative Works, a fan-run organisation dedicated to ensuring that "all fannish works are recognized as legal and transformative and are accepted as a legitimate creative activity" and defending said works from legal challenges. One of its major projects is an open-source fanfic archive.
She was also reportedly once the Director (head honcho) of Transformers 2005 MUSH, possibly the oldest still-running Transformers MUSH. She supposedly (at least) played Soundwave.
J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis were both huge fans of epic fantasy and grew frustrated that no one seemed to be writing it anymore. Finally they both decided "If no one else is going to write the books we want to read, we'll just write them ourselves."
No mention of John Green? Between him and his brother Hank, they founded a community known as Nerdfighters. So not only does he take Proud to Be a Geek to a high level, he uses the Vlogbrothers videos to teach you how to insult like Shakespeare, educate you about the French revolution/Giraffe sex/Obamacare/ect, and do other decidedly nerdy things.
H.P. Lovecraft himself was a voracious Speculative Fiction reader before "science fiction" was even a term, wrote monographs on the subject, and spent much of his life corresponding and trading ideas with other geeks who shared this interest. Moreover, he considered literary devices, stylistic techniques and allusions to be Serious Business; had he been born a hundred years later, he'd probably be troping about Cosmic Horror stories on this site right now!
Sportswriter Bill Simmons is a massive nerd, and spent so much of his column crossing over sports and pop culture that ESPN spun off Grantland.com so that he and others could continue. He's written lengthy articles on John Madden Football (coining the page quote for Rubber Band A.I.), The Wire, Jersey Shore, Survivor, Rocky, and Teen Wolf. The latter being notable because he actually calculated the stat lines for the basketball scenes.
Andrzej Sapkowski, creator of The Witcher books is huge fan of King Arthur and everything related to it. Once he and another writer took over a panel at convention and turned it into a duel who can prove to have greater knowledge about Sienkiewicz Trilogy. He also has a recommendation list of fantasy novels he thinks every true fan of the genre should give a try. Said list consiste a one hundred positions at this point and all series, even the long running ones like Discworld, are listed as just one position. And that's just books he liked.
DragonForce pretty much has Videogame effects as a trademark in their music, and have admited a passion towards videogames, which makes them total geeks, and therefore, One of Us.
Basshunter's song DOTA (from the album LOL <(^^,)>) is about the Warcraft 3 mod Defense of the Ancients. The same album features Boten Anna (translated as Now You're Gone), a song about an IRC bot.
The Ramones were notably proud that apart from the usual punks, their fanbase was made up of Freaks and Geeks, as their music wasn't very popular in an era of overblown stadium rock bands like Boston and Kiss. A lot of their songs dealt with teenage alienation and they were notably freaks and geeks themselves (Though maybe not Johnny, though he was an anti-social outcast too). One of their most notable songs is Pinhead, a general tribute to their fans that also pays respect to the film Freaks. Gabba, Gabba, We accept you, we accept you, ONE OF US!
Dexter Holland, lead singer of the punk band The Offspring, handsome, blond, valedictorian from high school, master's degree in molecular biology, applied for a Ph.D. on the same field but turned it down in order to focus on his band.
He's not the only punk rock science nerd. The most notable being Greg Graffin, lead singer of legendary punk act Bad Religion and a respected science professor at UCLA (he splits his time between the two).
Another person in this category would be Milo Aukerman of The Descendents: The album Milo Goes To College was so named because he had decided that once the album was finished, he'd take a few years off from the band to study Biology at the University of California. He now has a doctorate in biochemistry, and splits his time between the band and his academic research.
Matthew Sweet was an anime fan before it was popular. His 1991 music video Girlfriend was composed almost entirely of scenes from Space Adventure Cobra. Lum from Urusei Yatsura (whom he reportedly has a tattoo of) was featured prominently in his "I'll Be Waiting" video.
Trey Azagthoth, guitarist for American death metal band Morbid Angel, is also a fan of video games and anime. And if you think he's into gory stuff just because he's in a death metal band, you couldn't be more mistaken. One of his favorite animes is... Sailor Moon! You haven't read wrong.
Brian May, lead guitarist of Queen, while not famously attractive, was ranked as the 39th greatest guitarist of all time by Rolling Stone. In 2007 he received a Ph.D. in astrophysics with a thesis titled "A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud." He allegedly did all the work for himself, because he didn't want a "honorary degree" — he wanted to finish the doctorate he'd put aside when his hobby (the band) suddenly became profitable.
"Not famously attractive"? Plenty of people will disagree with that statement...
Queen was once known as the "best-educated band in rock", with each member holding a college diploma.
To elaborate: in addition to Brian's studies in astrophysics, bass player John Deacon holds a degree in electrical engineering (which he famously applied to build a practice amp for Brian out of an old speaker and odd bits of trashed circuitry), Roger Taylor studied dentistry, and Freddie had a background in art, which he applied to the band when he designed the Queen crest (appears on several of their '70s albums, but probably best displayed on the covers for A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races.
Elvis Presley was apparently a comic book fan, and, as the legend goes, based the capes he wore onstage (and maybe even his hairstyle) on that of Captain Marvel Jr.
"I wave my private parts at your aunties. Thankyouverymuch."
Kanye West has worked geekiness into his music every now and then. The music video for "Stronger" contains shot-for-shot remakes of scenes from AKIRA.
The "Stronger" video also references the Leiji Matsumoto-produced anime-styled music video for Daft Punk's "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger," also known as a segment of the movie Interstella 5555.
Plus, Kanye mentioned that he used to make eroges.
"Good morning, look at the valedictorian/Scared of the future while I hop in the Delorean." — From Kanye's track "Good Morning."
Speaking of "Good Morning", the music video was actually produced by anime studio OLM, the same one responsible for Pokemon and Berserk.
Lupe Fiasco is a dyed in the wool nerd and will casually drop references to things such as Lupin III, which he mentioned on Kanye's "Touch The Sky".
While we're on the subject of Fiasco, he has dropped lines that reference Excalibur, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Final Fantasy, Street Fighter, Gundam, Sonic the Hedgehog, Super Mario Bros., Robin Hood, Spider-Man (in the same verse)... his to-be-released song Army Girl samples a remixed Street Fighter track. There's even a picture of him dressed as Darth Vader (minus the helmet, plus a gold watch). Just look up "Darth Fiasco".
He's got Vader in the top left corner of a mixtape cover as well.
Speaking of covers, has anyone seen just what's on "Food and Liquor"? Among the floating stuff, he's got a Nintendo DS and a Halo copy. And in the video for "I Gotcha", he's playing a classic joystick console.
A final thing to slap the Official Seal of Nerdiness: Everything you see on Food and Liquor? The DS, the games, the action figures...he said those were things he carried around everyday.
The RZA, of the Wu Tang Clan, is a gigantic comic book geek. Not only is there an entire chapter in The Wu-Tang Manual devoted to the influence of comics in the Wu-Tang mythos (actual quote: "When I started to form the Wu-Tang Clan — around the end of my comics collection — I stopped thinking of myself as Silver Surfer and I started to think I was Galactus"), he actually created his own superhero alter-ego, Bobby Digital, as whom he not only recorded multiple albums but actually strongly considered fighting crime as. "I had the car and I had the suit. I was getting ready to go out at nighttime and right some wrongs. That was my plan — like on some Green -Hornet shit." Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) is full of nerdy references, starting from the title, which is a reference to classical Kung Fu movie The 36 Chambers of Shaolin. In one song, the gang refers to the group as "Voltron, and RZA is the head".
The RZA is such an afficionado that he appears on the commentary track for 36 Chambers of Shaolin with a man who is credited as a "martial arts film expert", and yet the entire commentary is RZA making salient points and referencing obscure works that this "expert" has never heard of. RZA's passion and knowledge on the track is palpable, and really quite endearing.
The RZA is not the only comic geek in the Wu-Tang Clan. Method Man and Ghostface Killa often refer to themselves as Johnny Blaze and Tony Stark, respectively.
Method Man has a whole library full of thousands of comic books.
The cover art for GZA's second album, Liquid Swords, was done by Denys Cowan (Batman, The Flash, Green Arrow, etc).
Ghostface Killah is a massive chess fan. Dude's pretty damn good.
Ghostface Killah, Raekwon and Method Man hired Chris Bachalo (X-men, Sandman, Death, Captain America, etc) to do no less than THREE different covers for their album "Wu-massacre".
Canadian pop singer Lights is a huge World of Warcraft player (she plays a Death Knight, which is rather funny given her image); she's written an entire song that's discreetly about the game. The only line that will definitely tip you off if you know what it means is "I'm not the hunter, I'm not the marked".
Singer and musical artist Hikaru Utada is an avid fan of Tetris, and is quite skilled at it too. She was invited to an official Tetris DS tournament, and after an obvious case of Damn You, Muscle Memory in her first two matches, she managed to win 26 of the following 28 matches for an overall 26-4 record.
Maybe not a huge surprise that They Might Be Giants are a little geeky, but they have a suite of bonus tracks on one album which are all about the Planet of the Apes films.
"The sun is a mass of incandescent gas"? Note that it was changed to "The sun is a miasma of incandescent plasma", to reflect the change in scientific consensus, if this troper remembers correctly.
The music video for 'Experimental Film' was a Homestar Runner cartoon.
Pharrell Williams really does love sci-fi, cartoons and Carl Sagan. He is also a Trekkie, throwin' up the Vulcan Salute in various music videos and co-founding a record label named Star Trak Entertainment, as well as a group called N.E.R.D.
The man studied Political Science at Harvard, and works out the settings of his effect pedals using graphs and charts. He is quite possibly the geekiest guitarist to ever rock out a stadium...
Gackt, J-rock artist, voice actor, and real-life bishonen is a huge fan of Mobile Suit Gundam. He once managed to swing an article about building gunpla in a music magazine, and led a massive audience of screaming teenage girls in a chant of "Sieg Zeon" after reciting Gihren's speech at Garma's funeral.
And that he was present for the unveiling of the new life-sized Gundam statue in Japan.
His single "Ai Senshi" is the title song for Gundam vs Gundam Next.
He's also a fan of Kamen Rider, and in addition to penning "Journey Through the Decade" for Decade, he portrayed Joji Yuki, AKA Riderman in the Decade movie All Riders vs. Dai-Shocker. And he performed the theme for that, too.
It is also a fact that Gackt voiced Genesis, one of the main characters of Crisis Core. The character's appearance was even based off him.
Gackt is, obviously, well known in Japan for being a fan of the Final Fantasy series. He even refers to Squall Leonhart as "Gackt2".
Although many fans mistakenly believe Squall is based off Gackt, Squall's design actually predates Gackt's shift to that style of dressing. Squall is in fact based on River Phoenix.
When Internet Co. was making the Vocaloid Gackpoid out of his voice, they decided they needed a picture for the mascot character (which was standard for the Japanese Vocaloids). Kentarou Miura, who made the manga Berserk, was hired. Gackt was apparently such a fan of Berserk that he specifically requested to get another copy of the pictures even though he'd be away for filming at the time. (Ironically, Miura was willing to offer free service because he liked Nico Nico Douga that much.)
Not only did he appear in Bujingai: The Forsaken City, he provided the voice of the main character, did all of the motion capture for their ridiculous Wuxia swordfighting stunts, and helped to flesh out the setting and story himself. It's basically Gackt: The Game.
He's also a self-proclaimed fan of Berserk and was picked by Kentaro Miura himself to voice in the commercial promoting the new OV As for the series.
Led Zeppelin. You doubt this? Listen to the song "The Battle of Evermore". For that matter, "Ramble On" specifically namechecks Gollum and Mordor.
Robert Plant (singer and lyricist) was into Tolkien as well as Celtic mythology. Guitarist Jimmy Page, on the other hand, liked the occult and Aleister Crowley.
Robert Plant even named his dog "Strider".
Before Led Zeppelin, Plant was in a band called "Hobbstweedle".
Although it's not the case, you can find plenty of blogs and forums claiming that "Stairway To Heaven" is about The Lord of the Rings.
In 2009, Marshall "Eminem" Mathers was interviewed on Jonathan Ross's chat show. Part of the interview was spent discussing the rapper's interest in (and cameo appearances in) comics. After the interview, Ross invited Eminem back to his house to look through his comic collection◊. Which, judging by what we saw in The BBC's documentary on Steve Ditko below, is rather extensive.
Not to mention he had almost every video game console known to man. He even had a PS2 months before it came out, along with a PS3 later on. Not to mention his love for anything with Disney's name on it.
This entry on Mandy Moore's Twitter page is cause for a certain degree of optimism....
Oh, she's got a weirdo streak a mile wide. She covered New-Wavey XTC at one point, and is a big fan of outsider musician Jandek. She just had really good handlers back when her career was peaking. Now that's she married to crazy country singer Ryan Adams (himself an avid 80's gamer), I don't think she cares anymore.
Not an exactly well known personality, but it's still worth mentioning Disarmonia Mundi harsh vocalist Claudio Ravinale once posted a thread on the band's message board about MMORPGs. See for yourself.
Dream Theater's John Petrucci is an avid gamer, and won't tour without his favorite console, the Sega Saturn. He actually composed some music for a Saturn game, as well.
Marc Bolan, elfin, pre-Bowie glam god of T. Rex fame, was a notorious fantasy lover, who actually forced his original drummer to change his name to Steve Peregrin Took.
Underground rapper MF DOOM is quite possibly one of the most obvious cases. His main persona is basically a hip-hop version of Doctor Doom, almost never appearing without a metallic Doom mask. Nerdy references get dropped in his lyrics throughout, including (but certainly not limited to) Super Mario Bros., Star Trek, Donkey Kong, loads and loads of comic book series, Transformers, Godzilla, and so on. Hell, he even uses some samples from video games and animated series.
Del tha Funkee Homosapien is another fantastic example from the rap world. Gaming is a common subject in his raps, but in the song "Proto Culture", he talks about getting calluses from playing Asteroids, using the Power Glove, not being able to beat the original Ninja Gaiden because his mom wouldn't answer the phone, owning the first issue of Nintendo Power with maps of The Legend of Zelda, bragging about his collection of rare Sega games, playing Bushido Blade 2 and Tenchu, the output of Capcom and SNK, importing Xenogears from Japan, killing cops in Grand Theft Auto and getting a Sega Dreamcast before anyone else did. Unsurprisingly, this track and so many others use a lot of video game samples.
He stated specifically in interviews that the inspiration for his concept album Deltron 3030 was the premise of Mega Man X: Himself, updated to a futuristic reality.
Said album includes shouts out to Ghost in the Shell, Neo-Tokyo, and several programming languages.
One of the band's most popular songs is called "What A Horrible Night To Have A Curse", a Shout Out to Castlevania.
On the note of Underground Rappers, Random largely made a name for himself in the underground by making the Mega Ran and Mega Ran 9 albums, which are based off of (and sample the music tracks of) the Mega Man games.
On one of his newest albums, check out Epoch, as he namechecks just about every major game from the last twenty years over a slightly slowed down version of the Epoch music from Chrono Trigger. And For the Gamers, it's completely evident that he's one of us.
Joe Satriani, whose music includes references to Star Trek ("Borg Sex", "Party on the Enterprise", which, after legal discussion regarding samples of sound FX from the Enterprise fell through, was renamed "Crowd Chant"), Kurt Vonnegut ("Ice 9"), the Silver Surfer ("Surfing With The Alien", "Back To Shalla-Bal", and "The Power Cosmic 2000", as well as his custom Ibanez with a bas-relief of the Silver Surfer from the album cover of Surfing With the Alien.), and space travel ("Redshift Riders", based on "the idea that in the future, when people can travel throughout space, they will theoretically take advantage of the cosmological redshift effect so they can be swung around large planetary objects and get across the universe a lot faster than normal."). He also has a song about a giant robot that learns to rock.
Eddie Argos, the lead singer of Art Brut, is a huge DC Comics fan, especially Booster Gold. There was an interview with him on the radio during which he and the host started geeking out over upcoming comics for like five minutes.
Tony Kakko of Sonata Arctica is a World of Warcraft player. In fact, he got the idea for the title of the Sonata Arctica album The Days of Grays from one of his guild members.
There was an article in Rolling Stone where Serj Tankian of System of a Down confessed to being a huge Dungeons & Dragons geek and in search of a good DM.
The Strokes once interupted their own concert to do the theme song from Thundercats.
Neil Peart of Rush at least used to be, if the songs Rivendell and The Necromancer are any indication.
According to an issue of Hit Parader, Slipknot/Stone Sour vocalist Corey Taylor is an avid comic book fanatic, especially of Spider-Man.
My Chemical Romance are massive video game geeks and comic book nerds. Lead singer Gerard Way is also the author of the comic series The Umbrella Academy.
The band is a big fan of Grant Morrison and had him appear as a super villain in their video for Art Is The Weapon.
Lots of celebrities will write a comic series at sometime or another. Gerard Way though is an Eisner winner, the highest award in comic books.
He also sang in and wrote the ending song for Advent Children Complete (at least in the Japanese version).
Not to mention he majored in Cartooning in college.
As well as interning at DC's Vertigo imprint (during Grant Morrison's run on Doom Patrol, no less) and at Cartoon Network.
Gerard Way also collects Warhammer, name dropping Rogue Trader and Necromunda in the process.
Bloodhag are a metal band who advocate literacy and reading. All their songs are Biographies of Sci Fi and Fantasy authors. One of them is a Librarian.
Tom Scholz, founder of arena rock band Boston, has a Masters degree in Mechanical Engineering from MIT; and was the founder of Scholz Research & Development (now owned by Dunlop Mfg Inc), the company behind the majority of the electronics used by the band; including the well-known Rockman amplifier and effects system.
He developed the sound system for the Polaroid Land Camera. The band used "Better rocking through science" as a motto.
Voltaire is a huge Trekkie, and he even recorded an entire EP of (very, veryNSFW) Star Trek songs called Banned on Vulcan. When he performed some of them at a concert, he admitted he wasn't sure if he was going to play them since Trek is so far removed from his usual subject matter, but then he realized "Goths are just Trekkies in black". He also had a song parodying Star Wars called Cantina.
Phil Lesh of The Grateful Dead was originally a classical music composition major at Mills College, studying with avant-garde composer Luciano Berio as his teacher and minimalist pioneer Steve Reich as a fellow student. He supposedly gave that up for rock after a traumatic experience listening to Mahler's Sixth Symphony while under the influence of LSD. Even so, he claimed his bass-playing style was more influenced by Bach than by blues or R&B.
John Entwistle, bassist for The Who, started out his musical training as a "band geek" of sorts, playing principal horn in the Middlesex Youth Symphony when he was a kid. In some early interviews with the band, Entwistle still cited classical composers like Wagner when asked about his favorite musicians.
The first record Zappa loved as a teen was Ionisation by Edgard Varčse. He would play it as a test, to see whether someone was cool (though it's easy to imagine he may have enjoyed the more-common reaction: baffled revulsion).
Zappa was also a big fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and it's said that he and the MST3K crew were in talks to make a movie together before he died.
Ronni Le Tekro, guitarist of TNT is a fan of Halo, even collaborating with a choir in performing music from the series. It should be noted he hates Guitar Hero however.
Machinae Supremacy is quite possibly the only band that rivals Blind Guardian in geekiness. Their songs tend to sit in three camps. The first is a political camp that attacks the RIAA and those who blindly allow corporate corruption to affect music and art. The second is based on various pieces of media with songs based on Serial Experiments Lain ("The Wired"), The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask ("Missing Link"), World of Warcraft ("Loot, Burn, Rape, Kill, Repeat") and He-Man and the Masters of the Universe ("Return to Snake Mountain") among others. The third camp is covering famous pop songs simply because it's funny. Their work has been featured prominently in In The Groove and they wrote and performed the soundtrack to the indie game Jets N Guns. To top it all off, they happily avert Digital Piracy Is Evil and are proud supporters of The Pirate Bay in their ongoing legal battle.
Given the fact that they have songs named Action Girl and Crouching Camper, Hidden Sniper, there's a good chance that at least one member of the band is a troper.
Of Disturbed, David Draiman is an avid gamer, saying his all-time favorite is the Resident Evil series. Also, the band liked Spawn enough to choose Todd McFarlane for their Ten Thousand Fists album artwork, then later to animate the video for their cover of Land of Confusion. They later went seeking out the former Top Cow artist David Finch to design the artwork for Indestructible. Recently they've commissioned Raymond Swanland for their most recent album, Asylum, popular with Dark Horse Comics and Magic: The Gathering illustrations. On that note, the band has their owngamer tag on Xbox Live to invite fans to gaming sessions.
George Harrison was an IMMENSE Monty Python fan. Apparently, he saw the very first Monty Python episode while the Beatles were doing "Let It Be," and the recording session had been all chaotic and George was depressed — but watching Monty Python made him feel like that the spirit of fun and whimsy that used to be in the Beatles had been reborn in Python. He wrote a letter to the BBC that night, begging them to keep Python on the air. ...Later, he befriended the Pythons, and when their producer pulled out two days before filming on Life of Brian was about to start, George put up the money himself. But even though they were all friends, according to Michael Palin, sometimes George would drive them a little crazy by sometimes quoting Python sketches in an effort to get them to "do" the sketch with him. Michael Palin even claims that sometimes George Harrison, who always loved the "Lumberjack" sketch, would use the alias "Jack Lumber" while traveling.
Highly plausible, given his fondness for being credited on albums under punny pseudonyms such as "Son of Harry".
George Harrison also did walk-on parts in Eric Idle's post-Python work, Rutland Weekend Television, and in the Rutles movie.
For a bunch of gangsta rappers, the rap group Slaughterhouse likes to reference Voltron and comic books a whole lot in their lyrics. Joe Budden even compares himself to E. Honda at one point in a song.
New Age singer Enya has a track titled "Lothlórien" from a good ten years before the Lord of the Rings movies. (She also appeared on the soundtrack thereof.)
And to top it all off, Bandai has announced that a Linkin Park themed Gundam will be packaged with the deluxe edition of A Thousand Suns. Whether or not this will be exclusive to Japan has yet to be determined.
On the gaming front, Mike got bored while recording A Thousand Suns and hooked up a NES so he could play Metroid in his home studio and the entire band are pretty big fans of Halo, hosting tournaments between themselves and touring partners on a dedicated bus.
And of course, the entire genre of Nerdcore Rap. One of the best examples may be MC Frontalot's "It Is Pitch Dark", containing references to a substantial number of Infocom's games.
MC Frontalot one-upped this by teaming up with Jick to create a new quest in order to promote his latest album; the first ten players to complete the quest received a free copy of the CD.
Pretty much every member of Breaking Benjamin is a gamer.
Considering they recorded the song "Blow Me Away" for Halo 2 and even asked a crowd at a concert if they were excited about Halo 3 coming out, this is pretty much self explanatory.
Radiohead, alternative rock weirdos, made a list of their favorite (or at least Jonny's favorite) video games in a recent blog entry on their website. Among those games are Half-Life, Goldeneye, the artsy fartsy Ico, and the indie darling ''Cave Story'
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Not to mention the Greenwood brothers love for Astro Boy. Both have worn shirts with the character on it and Jonny has an astroboy sticker on one of his guitars
Jonny is also a huge contemporary classical music nerd, drawing influences from such composers as Stockhausen and Penderecki. This shows in his scores for movies such as There Will Be Blood.
The members of power pop band Hellogoodbye are pretty big gamers, going as far as taking a mobile gaming rig with them on every tour. Keyboard and guitar player Joseph Marro wrote an editorial about it on Kotaku.
Adam "Nergal" Darski from the Death Metal band Behemoth is a major history nerd. He studied history and mythology in college for 6 years and is licensed to be a museum curator.
The j-rock band Bump of Chicken are avid gamers and anime fans, to the point that they wrote a song about Rei Ayanami.
They also performed the song "Karma" for the Tales of the Abyss anime opening. It can be found here.
Ed Robertson from Bare Naked Ladies is a gamer and a fan of Red vs. Blue. He even worked with Rooster Teeth when he voiced Captain Butch Flowers on Red vs. Blue and played the title role in Captain Dynamic, a promotional series for City of Heroes.
Plus, the band got Rooster Teeth to do some PSAs for use during a tour.
Will "will.i.am" Adams of the Black Eyed Peas had a C-list X-Men character written into X-Men Origins: Wolverine for him to play, because if he couldn't play Nightcrawler, he wanted to be someone with the same powers. And really, even without the references to SF (including Transformers) in their lyrics, any group which has giant dancing mecha in their videos deserves to be on this list.
Nightwish songs include references to Dragonlance, Lord of the Rings, and an entire Epic Rocking nerdgasm over the Disney Animated Canon, and Marco has confessed to loving video games. Band leader and keyboardist Tuomas Holopainen always has a figurine of Captain Jack Sparrow, whom he resembles, tied to the front of his keyboards during concerts.
Pop Idol winner Leona Lewis based her current tour around Labyrinth.
The Mars Volta. Both Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Cedric Bixler-Zavala are big (old-school!) Doctor Who fans, citing it as an influence in their work. It also runs in Omar's family: Brothers Marcel and Marfred front a band called Zechs Marquise.
Hayley Williams of Paramore recently displayed her love for anime by cosplaying during a performance.
Andrew W.K.: He released an entire album of Gundam covers, "Gundam Rock", to celebrate the series' 30th anniversary.
He's also a massive Thomas Ligotti fan (Cosmic Horror FTW!), plays bass with art-folk weirdos Current 93 and debuted with a cassette of experimental synth music on a record label run by the guys from Wolf Eyes. Yeah, he is.
Not only did his signature song, "Party Hard", become a meme on 4chan, but he's a self-professed /b/tard himself. And reads Encyclopedia Dramatica.
Owen Pallett, who made string arrangements for Mika, The Last Shadow Puppets, Arcade Fire,Beirut, Pet Shop Boys and Grizzly Bear, has also made some albums as a solo artist. The name? Final Fantasy. Not to forget, he references Zelda in the song "He Poos Clouds".
Trent Reznor is a huge Quake/Doom fan, so much that he composed the music for the first Quake game. He also played the Zelda theme in a concert and had openly admitted a massive videogame addiction.
Founder/On and off Frontman Matt Good of From First To Last is a huge World of Warcraft nerd.
Twisted Sister vocalist Dee Snider is a huge gamer. He's made special appearances on Xbox Live at certain points, and on a VH-1 special once told a story about how his son accidently erased his save file in the original Legend of Zelda.
He also got to appear in the intro to Singstar 80's in his Twisted Sister gear.
Korn's vocalist Jonathan Davis is, or was a confessed World of Warcraft addict. He also made plans for a music celebrity-themed fighting game called Pop Scars, which never got past preliminary development.
It almost goes without saying that "Weird Al" Yankovic is One of Us. The video for "White And Nerdy" alone has enough content to outgeek at least any two other examples on this list. That said, he's dropped enough hints in various appearances through the years that everyone knew decades before that video.
Irish thrashers Gama Bomb are pretty big nerds, as evidenced by their writing songs about Final Fight and Robocop, among others.
Despite being cheesy and ham-fistedly religious enough to seem like the second coming of Carman, Christian rapper KJ-52 could almost be considered a Nerdcore emcee due to his Proud to Be a Geek status and references to old school video games, Homestar Runner and other decidedly nerdy things.
Various members of the post-rock group Mogwai can be seen in various points in a documentary about the recording of their 5th album playing on Nintendo DS, and one member can be seen with a Asuka Langley sticker on his laptop.
Brad Paisley has made his nerdiness known on "Online" and "Welcome to the Future", among others. The video for "Start a Band" also makes several (accurate) Guitar Hero references.
All Time Low frontman Alex Gaskarth is a StarCraft fan and his Twitter account contains a few gems of geekiness, including a pickup line involving Minecraft. Also, the background image for his profile is of Captain Planet.
Jason Mraz seems to be something of a gamer. The lyrics for The Dynamo of Volition:
Gnarls Barkley performed for an MTV show in Star Wars Costumes.
Christina Grimmie. As if her YouTube username (zeldaxlove64) didn't explain everything already, she has NES sounds in her song "Counting." And that doesn't even touch the fringe of her One of Us-ness.
Their first album, Tight, was mixed on an Atari computer.
One of the songs from Jimmy Urine and Steve, Righ?s' side project, The Left Rights, is titled "Genesis 16:12." It's a giant homage to the 16 bit gaming era, and the console wars. Another song, titled "I Like The Smell of My Amiga," with its heavily digitized vocals, is possibly a reference to Amiga computers.
They wrote a comic book detailing various crazy stories from past tours.
Tommy Scott collects sci-fi movie figurines and shops at Forbidden Planet. His bandmate Franny Griffiths is an avid gamer - he once stated that the best present he'd ever received from a fan is a Sonic the Hedgehog game, and he's also into Call of Duty and Pro Evolution Soccer.
Dutch hardstyle artist Headhunterz is very fond of using memes and is very happy to tell you that he "took an arrow to the knee".
He also made a Skyrim themed track, Dragonborn, which he released as a freebie.
Acoustic guitarist Andy Mckee owns a Wii, a 360 and quite a few PC games. he absolutely loves Starsiege: Tribes. Video Games and guitar are apparently the only two hobbies he has.
Canadian electronic music artist deadmau5 might just be the nerdiest musician ever. He has a host of gaming related tattoos, including hearts from Legend of Zelda, a Space Invader, a Creeper, and even Shigeru Miyamoto's signature. He even owns a replica of the Master Sword and Hylian Shield, which proudly hangs on his wall. He also is a major internet nerd and a huge troll, and often quotes memes in his livestream. He even incorporates video game elements and graphics in his live shows. He also taught himself computer programming, web design and programming, 3D modeling (which is the source for the mau5head he performs in), and flash animation, among other talents.
The following is a list of things that inspires Rob Zombie: vintage horror movies, pornos, exploitation films, comic books, star trek, star wars etc. so yeah, Zombie's a huge geek.
Taro Aso, former Prime Minister of Japan, is a fan of Rozen Maiden. Otaku have nicknamed him "Rozen Aso" and claim him as one of their own, and this is referenced in Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei.
During Takaaki Mitsuhashi's 2010 campaign for the House of Councillors, he cosplayed as Gendo Ikari.
Junichiro Koizumi. Huge Elvis Presley and X Japan fanboy. To the degree of using "Forever Love" as background music for several political campaign ads for the Liberal Democratic Party during the 2001 elections.
He also voiced Ultraman King in the Ultra Series movie Ultra Galaxy Mega Monster Battle. His son and successor of his position in the LDP, Shinjiro Koizumi also count, as he was the one who convinced his father to do the voicing. That is one awesome father-son combination.
Considering the Japanese as a whole, it's likely that most positions in the government are filled with otaku of one level or another.
Don't forget the Spider-Man Obama crossover thing.
It was also pretty well publicized that he and Michelle bought their daughters a Wii for Christmas. Poking fun at his failed attempt at bowling during the campaign, he joked that he was much better at Wii Sports Bowling than real life. Gamers everywhere rejoiced — well, except those too-"hardcore"-for-Wii gamers.
During Obama's visit to Poland at the end of May 2011, Prime Minister Donald Tusk gave him the collector's edition of The Witcher 2 Assassins Of Kings as a gift.
There's also that Newsweek behind-the-scenes special (misquoted at the bottom of the first paragraph) where he was observed by one of their reporters making his wife roll her eyes at a joke about her belt having dilithium crystals on it.
And he is now going to show up in a MythBusters episode where they try to make the solar powered death ray work for the third time. The stated goal of the appearance is to encourage science and technology education.
Speaking of death rays... Obama named Stephen Chu Secretary of Energy. Chu is known for his strong critic of fossil fuels, for the Nobel Prize he earned for cooling atoms with laser: basically, the US president hired the inventor of the Ice Beam to fight against Global Warming
Not to mention Michelle herself; she was the salutatorian of her high school. Although she pales in comparison to Barack's nerdiness, that's still pretty damn nerdy.
Speaking of heads of state, Obama isn't the only one — King Abdullah II of Jordan is an acknowledged fan of Star Trek, and even guest-starred on Star Trek: Voyager when he was still a prince. Later, when Michael Bay was going to film Revenge of the Fallen in Jordan, he ordered 38 military helicopters to transport the equipment to Petra, allowing the film crew those overhead shots of the same ruins that appeared in Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade. Turns out His Majesty is a big fan of Transformers and loves the franchise.
King Abdullah has recently announced the creation of a Star Trek theme park to be built in his country, which he will be funding.
Jens Stoltenberg, the current Prime minister of Norway, is a gamer. He specifically likes games like Age of Empires and Total War because it involves building a society. It also involves killing lots of people. Should the Finns and the Swedes be watching their borders?
Although it's probably a stretch to describe her as a geek or a nerd, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II is reportedly a big fan of Doctor Who. She's also a Wrench Wench (or at least she was during World War II).
About the Doctor Who thing... SHE'S BRITISH! OF COURSE SHE'D BE A FAN!
To elaborate from that: Note that Michael Grade was the only BBC controller to have never been knighted. Michael Grade is also the man most people consider to be responsible of the cancellation of the classic series. Take from that what you will.
She's also a techie; at an age (born in 1926) where many people have long since stopped keeping pace with new technology, she is an avid BlackBerry user. Let the speculation as to whether she and Obama exchanged private numbers begin!
And in the 1970s, she sent what's considered to be the first email in the UK...
Note that when Obama first met with her, he considered an iPod to be an appropriate gift for her — and she already had one.
It's not just that: the iPod was her idea, as she had mentioned that hers was a generation or two out of date.
Not to mention that it was her idea to televise her coronation (television then having only one channel that went off the air by the evening and still not as popular as radio), which gained popularity by the coronation.
Elizabeth's son and heir Charles is, if anything, an even bigger nerd than his mother. Among other things, he is, as Prince of Wales, the highest ranking noble Monty Python fan.
Queen Margrethe II of Denmark is a major Lord of the Rings fan, and has illustrated several editions of the Danish translation. She also studied archaeology when she went to uni, and remains an avid amateur archaeologist.
Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont is a huge Batman fan. In fact, he lent his voice to an episode of Batman: The Animated Series, and had a cameo in both Batman & Robin and The Dark Knight(here it is). He gets props for donating the money he earned from those gigs to the Montpelier public library.
To clarify, he requested the cameo spots.
Kim Jong Il, according to rumors, loved all kind of genre movies. He even ordered a South Korean director kidnapped to make them. Okay, so he's half "one of us", half "one of the James Bond villains". He actually loves all the Bond films, except (surprise, surprise) Die Another Day.
Former Vice President Al Gore is a member of the MST3k Information Club.
And an avowed fan of Frank Zappa, stating so on the congressional record during the PMRC hearings, and a clip of the statement was used by Zappa himself in an audio collage on the hearings.
Oh, and he's also had a couple guest appearances on Futurama. Although how much of that is nerdity and how much is the fact that his daughter is one of the writers is uncertain.
Senator and former presidential candidate John McCain is a fan of 24 and appeared in an uncredited split-second cameo as a CTU suit.
He's also said on-record that his favorite superhero is Batman.
In a speech on the floor of the Senate, McCain used a rather stiff reference to The Lord of the Rings to criticize some fellow Republicans for, as he saw it, playing at being heroes. The kicker was when one that he named, former Senate candidate Sharon Angle, responded in kind and took being called a Hobbit as a badge of honor.
Alan Grayson, in reference to Dick Cheney, recently said "On the Internet there's an acronym that's used to apply to situations like this. It's called STFU."
He recently sent out a fundraising email based entirely around how the recent Green Lantern film could have been better if it had included an iconic exchange from the Dennis O'Neil/Neal Adams run on the comic.
Radicial Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, best known for being a pain in the ass to the US in Iraq, received the derisive nickname "Mullah Atari" in seminary because he was gaming when he should have been studying.
Lee Teng-Hui, the first native Taiwanese to become president of said country and later its first democratically-elected leader, is quite the "Japanophile", along with many men and women of his generation, having graduated with honors from Kyoto University and volunteered for the Japanese Army in 1944. Geekier, he's a known otaku and after his retirement, cosplayed as the hawkish principal (with a similar military background to his own) from Sakigake!! Otokojuku to promote Japanese cinema and the show.
By the way, this was one of many reasons why the Chinese and Taiwan mainlanders hated him.
Libertarian leaning Republican congressman Ron Paul has compared neo-conservatives to Orcs for their aggressive foreign policy. He has also made references to a Batman comic book where Batman rescues the work of von Mises from the Nazis.
And according to XKCD he has a zeppelin that he uses to duel with Cory Doctorow and can evolve into Tron Paul complete with light cycle .
Rick Snyder, Republican candidate for governor of Michigan, is a huge fan of Star Wars, Mythbusters, Good Eats, and classic rock. Heck, he even calls himself a nerd in his own campaign tagline.
With a resume like that, he naturally won the election.
Uday and Qusay Hussein were apparently such huge Star Wars fans that they based some of the helmets on Imperial helmets.
On the American side, the military regularly makes Star Wars allusions. There are projects codenamed "X-wing" and "Death Star." Many soldiers are Fandalorians, to the point of units getting tattoos that say "vode an".
Common in many western militaries. During the late 80s-early 90s, the one show guaranteed to fill a television lounge on a Canadian base? The newest episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Note that a fair bit of that public display of artistry was done in response to Mr. Harper's public defamatory statements about Canadian artists during the 2008 campaign. In other words, he's trying his best to look like One of Us.
The First Minister of Scotland Alex Salmond, a self-described Star Trek "obsessive," was awarded an honourary membership of the Starfleet fan organisation in 2010.
Former U.S. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, arch-conservative politician, activist, pundit, and Presidential candidate, spends much of his free time reading spy novels and reviewing them on Amazon. A somewhat tame example, but a lot more than you'd expect from a 67-year-old Southerner. And never let it be said that his reviews are half-assed; at one point, he was an Amazon Top 500 Reviewer.
In addition to reviewing books, he also writes them. Not just the typical political punditry books, either, but best-selling Civil WarAlternate History novels. It's about as close to Fan Fiction as can be without quite going over.
Gaius Julius Caesar wrote fan fiction about Hercules (the Superman of his day) in his youth.
Former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain has quotedPokémon 2000 in debates and and his announcement of dropping out of the campaign (where he did actually mention it was from Pokémon), and his 9-9-9 plan may have been inspired bySimCity. Whether he's a nerd or just has a nerd in the family he's soaked this stuff in from is uncertain, however, and an interview where he seemed to say that Superman used Kryptonite like Batman used gadgets would make the latter seem more probable.
Alfred The Great was a prince from a semi-civilized country where almost every noble was a Jerk Jock by inclination. He studied classical literature, wrote about theology, and sent many a savage plundering Northman to his doom. He was a nerd with a sword.
Radio Rejects
Howard Stern,is a big fan of science fiction and comic books, even saying that he only watches TV shows and movies about superheroes. He also plays chess every day.
TV Dweebs
Conan O'Brien is a professional nerd and has been filmed engaging in geek-out sessions with Stephen Colbert.
He is also a huge fan of Claremont-era X-Men, and has stated in some interviews that he based the character of Buffy Summers at least in part on Kitty Pryde. Word is that when Joe Quesada asked him to write "Astonishing X-Men", Whedon's main demand was that he wanted to write Kitty as a main team member.
Not to mention he was a fanboy of Doctor Who back when he was three, and it was his desire to play the Doctor that led him to acting in the first place.
Stephen Colbert is a huge fan of fantasy/SF, particularly Lord of the Rings (he read the novels long before the movies came out) and played Dungeons & Dragons in high school. He also owns a replica of Captain America's shield, which can be seen on his show and, on finding out that Barack Obama collects comics, signed a copy of the Colbert-Spiderman crossover for him. It is being kept on the Shelves of Honor until such time as Obama takes the bait and comes on the show to get it.
Some CNN reporters needed a stock image of Satan as the backdrop for their encouragement coverage of the 06/06/06 "hysteria." They used an illustration of the Balrog from a 1977 Lord of the Rings calendar, prompting Stephen to explain, "Devils and Balrogs are totally different. Devils are angels who refused to serve God and instead followed Satan into hell. Balrogs are Maiar who refused to serve Eru and instead followed Morgoth into Thangorodrim. Get your facts straight, CNN!" The best part? Stephen noticed it himself. He just happened to recognize the illustration because he has the calendar.
In this clip Stephen shows off some of his Lord of the Rings collection including a huge statue of Sauron, a replica of the ring of power, and a limited edition Lord of the Rings Pinball Machine
And just to underline the overall point, he listens to Neutral Milk Hotel. Huzzah!
Tina Fey is also an admitted fan of Star Wars. She and the other writers of 30 Rock manage to work a reference into just about every episode.
Both halves of That Mitchell and Webb Look, as evidenced by their Affectionate Parody of Star Trek. David Mitchell has admitted that as a child he would watch The Original Series with a pocket calculator that he would pretend was a communicator, and talk to the crew.
As far as Doctor Who, many of the cast and crew count as Promoted Fanboys. Freema Agyeman has said that growing up her house was a "Star Trek household". Before joining the cast of Doctor Who, she apparently attended Trek conventions. In TNG StarFleet uniform... Earlier, Sophie Aldred (who had played Ace) had, before joining the cast, joined a fan club for Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's puppet productions like Thunderbirds.
Not to mention the fact that David Tennant started acting just so he could play the Doctor some day! David Tennant has been asked for obscure information on Doctor Who several times and always comes up with the goods, once on a TV chat show to find the audience member worthy of asking him a question (the host's idea). Also, in his Diary footage on the DVDs you can see him with action figures from Star Wars in the background and a shelf full of The West Wing. Actually, just listen to his interviews, he is probably the eptimome of One of Us.
Steven Moffatmentions that he played Tomb Raider and Halo (though the latter more for the lore and Scenery Porn than the shooting), among others, and once had a Doctor WhoWAD for Doom. It should also be telling that his era on the show also marks the first serious attempt at a WhoLicensed Game (The Adventure Games), under the supervision of himself and Charles Cecil of Broken Sword fame...
Eleventh Doctor Matt Smith has admitted to writing Doctor Whofanfic in order to better understand his character.
Although he was never a Doctor Who fanboy, Christopher Eccleston admitted in an interview before Series 1 aired that he'd been talking to fans and understood their obsessiveness because he gets that way about certain types of music, including blues and reggae. He's also a huge fan of the Manchester-based band I Am Kloot, and he has managed to appear in two of their music videos, including "Proof," where it's just him staring at the camera.
And he had a significant role in two seasons of The Guild!
Ronald D. Moore (best known for his reboot of Battlestar Galactica) was a Promoted Fanboy initially before he became a speculative fiction giant in his own right. Initially he got a writing gig on Star Trek: The Next Generation solely because he happened to be lucky enough to have a girlfriend who worked on the sets and who passed his fan script over to one of the actual writers. The rest, as they say, is history. He also has said in an interview that he was looking forward to Star Trek (2009), since it would be the first time in a long while that he's watching it as a fan and not a writer.
Simon Pegg seems have achieved the ultimate geek dream, both making an appearance in Doctor Who and having a role in Star Trek (2009). Edgar Wright is also getting to direct his own superhero movie in Ant Man. But before that, the quite geeky Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.
Simon Pegg's own ultimate geek dream was when, after making Shaun of the Dead, George Romero asked him to take a cameo in Land of the Dead. It meant he couldn't take the role he'd originally been offered in Doctor Who, but as he put it in an interview, "When you've just spent three years of your life essentially writing a love letter to someone, you HAVE to come when they call you." (He eventually took a role later in the Doctor Who season.)
Mike Myers based his Saturday Night Live "Lothar of the Hill People" sketches on his favorite D&D character.
Masi Oka: The number of video game references stuffed into Heroes and the associated "alternate reality" portion of it might possibly have given this away. One gets the feeling Masi Oka would have specifically requested a time-traveling character, due to his love of Chrono Trigger — or, possibly, as another reference to Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, which Heroes has quite a few of. At least some of that must be due to having Jeph Loeb (a well known comic book writer) as a co-writer for the show.
Before he was on Heroes, Oka was a digital effects artist for Industrial Light & Magic and among his credits are all three Star Wars prequel films. After he began his acting career in 2000, he juggled his two jobs until he had to quit his beloved job at ILM to star in Heroes.
Seth Green is a big Star Wars fan. No surprise there. He's also into video games, although he admits he sucks big time in any game ever made because he lacks the coordination. Guest stars in the music video for "Weird Al" Yankovic's White and Nerdy. That action figure collection Al's dancing in front of? His. And he's Joker, the pilot of the SSV Normandy, in the video game Mass Effect.
The action figure collection Al's dancing in front of actually "merely" consisted of a couple of figures that his Robot Chicken partner, Matt Senreich, happened to have lying in the back of his car. Seth's real collection is allegedly big enough to earn its own storage facility.
One can also tell by Robot Chicken that he certainly has quite the nerdly knowledge of video games to make jokes that gamers would get the most and if his newest project Titan Maximum is to go by, he's also a fan of Humongous Mecha series.
Patrick Stewart, Captain Picard, Professor X, and a classically-trained Shakespearean Actor, is a huge fan of the comic series Transmetropolitan. He wrote the introduction to one of the collections, and his production company offered to option the rights. He almost voiced Spider in an animated series, and then there's this:
Warren Ellis: "I know Patrick could nail Spider. So does Wendy [Stewart], who just cringes in those moments when Patrick begins to channel Spider, standing on tables and proclaiming Spider to be his role model and personal god..."
On that note, Ellis himself browses 4chan, which shouldn't really be too much of a shock to anyone familiar with his work.
Patrick Stewart is also an avid collector of Beavis And Butthead merchandise.
"Both the very smart and the very stupid are fans of Beavis And Butthead, for entirely different reasons."
Not to mention prolific voice-acting work with Anime dubs (Nausicaa and Steam Boy springing to mind first).
When he first saw Red Dwarf on TV he thought it was plagiarising his show and whilst he was calling up his lawyer he started laughing; something The Next Generation would hardly make him do. Been a fan ever since.
This video shows him expressing his love for modern technology (except for Twitter) and his fear that if he starts playing video games he'll become addicted to them. If he's not confirmed as a nerd by now then this is the proof.
Eric Kripke, creator of Supernatural, is a huge fan of the Hellblazer comics, and he actually tried to get the character of John Constantine onto the show for an episode or two. That seems to have fallen through, so he created Castiel the Bad AssAngel.
Let's not forget the love for Good Omens, aka Crowley's cameo on Supernatural.
Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki, the stars of Supernatural, are the goofiest pranksters this side of Bart Simpson, and Jensen has admitted to looking at SupernaturalFan Fic. Okay, considering the amount of Wincest fic out there, that explains the completely squicked-out look Jensen had on his face when Jared was describing the slashfic about them in the fandom-recursive Season 4 episode "The Monster at the End of this Book".
Summer Glau is said to like science fiction movies, and judging from the TV shows and films she's been in, one starts to suspect this is true. Apparently she was a big TNG fan and at a Star Trek convention she almost cried when she met Marina Sirtis. She's also apparently a DC comics fan (even showing up to conventions wearing comic shirts) and jumped at the chance to voice Supergirl in Superman/Batman: Apocalypse.
Word is that she tried out for the part of Kitty Pryde in X-Men 3 (which ultimately went to Ellen Page). During her audition, she used some dialogue written for Kitty by Joss Whedon for his run on Astonishing X-Men.
So, the fandom goes both ways (Bungie employees are well-known Firefly Fanboys and huge fans of him in particular, having one of the random things said in the tab be "Nathan Fillion returns our phone calls.").
Fillion's likeness and voice are now immortalized as Buck in Halo 3: ODST. How would you like to play a game where you're talking to yourself?
Enver Gjokaj, Ensemble Darkhorse of Dollhouse, is a MASSIVE BSG fan. Also, considering that he got his BA in English, you know the man read him up some fantasy in high school.
Michelle Rodriguez is an avid gamer. The Resident EvilDVD Commentary confirms it (as well as making her and Milla Jovovich sound like a pair of 16-year old girls at a slumber party.)
How about the way he always refers to the Kardashians as the "Cardassians?"
Jon Stewart, in response to Fox claiming "Who knows what went on behind closed doors" when Obama met Hugo Chavez, said something along the lines of "And now marks Fox News moving from political commentary... to fanfiction."
Jon's also a gamer, and has talked about being a Mac user and playing Doom with one hand (so the other one can man a bong) in his standup. (See also the Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson entry below.)
Jon also made a number of (fairly accurate) Dungeons & Dragons references in response to Rumsfeld saying you couldn't just "wave a magic wand" and make everything better in Iraq. "Remember; you're either with us, or you're with the orcs."
Second-hand example- his son is a fan of Power Rangers, and Jon has thus made a few references to it on his show- once getting the chance to bring it up in context while discussing a political scandal that involved series creator Haim Saban, and also using phrases from Power Rangers Jungle Fury to psych himself up for election coverage.
Zachary Levi (Chuck) is practically glued to his own games console. So much so that he and fellow Chuck star Joshua Gomez Morgan Grimes ran up to Adam Baldwin squeeing at having heard his voice in a game.
One can only imagine the reaction they must have had to Yvonne Strahovski's role in Mass Effect 2.
Well, if either romanced Miranda... awkward.
Chuck did a Shout Out to Mass Effect, by having Yvonne wearing a black catsuit & Talking about suicide missions.
Joshua Gomez is no slouch in the video game voice department himself, having worked on Call of Duty 2, Final Fantasy X-2, and BioShock, among others.
Josh Gomez's real life older brother Rick Gomez voices none other than Zack Fair.
In his nightly news program, Keith Olbermann frequently quotes or alludes to Monty Python (and has had John Cleese as a guest more than once), and criticized dire right-wing projections concerning President Obama's budget as requiring truly staggering precognition: to wit, the projections extend through 2080, "seventeen years after we first make contact with the planet Vulcan" (according to Star Trek: First Contact). He also loves baseball and has one of the largest baseball card collections in the country. He also runs a blog for Major League Baseball
Not entirely surprising, since he started his broadcasting career as a TV sportscaster.
He usually introduces his Oddball segment by noting the anniversary of some obscure, often times nerdy piece of trivia. As well, during one particular clip featuring a home-made beer serving robot he quipped: "You just give the command and Optimus Prime here will pour you a cold one."
He's also a fan of MST3K, probably the quintessential geek show.
Rachel Maddow from the Rachel Maddow Show has a Moment of Geek segment on her political show.
She also wrote the opening to the Batwoman: Elegy trade paperback.
British TV presenter and radio DJ Jonathan Ross is a big comics fan. He auctioned his copy of ''Amazing Fantasy'' #15 for charity, presented a BBC documentary about Steve Ditko (which ended with him and Neil Gaiman finally meeting the artist), and also co-presented an award at the San Diego Comic-Con alongside (or should I say... face to face with) Neil Gaiman. His 1988 Channel 4 TV series The Incredibly Strange Film Show was a well-informed guide to international cult film directors - including Tsui Hark, Ray Dennis Steckler, and Ted Mikels - who were, in the pre-internet age, still obscure in the UK outside a tiny minority of film geeks.
He also hosted a BBC 3 show called Japanorama, which is exactly what it sounds like. And yes, it included interviews with various mangaka and Japanese film directors.
Also, Nazanin Boniadi (How I Met Your Mother): She has an Honors degree from UCI in Biological sciences; she also won the Chang Pin-Chun Undergraduate Research Award for molecular research involving cancer treatment and heart transplant rejection and was assistant editor-in-chief of UCI's medical newspaper.
Stephen Fry. Gadget addict, one of the first Mac owners in the UK (sharing his Apple obsession with his friend Douglas Adams). He also wrote a piece in Doctor Who Magazine claiming that missing the second episode of "An Unearthly Child" was the worst moment of his life and "nothing that has happened since has ever, or could ever, make up for it".
He is also purportedly the last surviving person to know the answer to Why 42?
Don't forget going out of his way to do a 25-th birthday tribute to the GNU project, suggesting that he may be an avid Linux user as much as he is an Apple fan.
Dara Ó Briain, who, based on his Twitter feed, seems to be planning to use either All Your Base or "The cake is a lie" on Mock the Week, to add to his existing catalogue of internet references. He also has a college degree in physics.
He has also hosted a number of BAFTA game award ceremonies.
David Wain (of Superjail! and The State fame) recently joined DeviantArt. He spends his time there adding sexy fanart of his character to his favourites. It's... unsettling.
She was also quite ecstatic upon getting John de Lancie as a character for the second season, stating that she's a Trekkie herself.
C.H. Greenblatt, creator of Chowder, is the same. He maintains a blog with his art and other news on the show, and it has a surprisingly large number of updates for someone working on a major cartoon.
She also used to contribute videos to The Escapist, and she's a co-star on The Angry Joe Show.
Richard Dean Anderson is a huge fan of The Simpsons and sprinkled references to the show throughout the majority of his run on Stargate SG-1. This culminated in a tit-for-tat guest star spot where Dan Castellaneta (Homer's voice actor) appeared on SG-1, and Anderson appeared on The Simpsons.
Not only that, but in Jerry's apartment from the show there's always a Superman figurine on his shelf and he references Superman constantly in the show.
Unsure if it's only the product of the commercial he stars in, but Mr. T, Memetic Badass extraordinaire, has appeared in a pair of World of Warcraft ads, extolling the virtues of his Night-Elf Mohawk, and displaying the Mohawk Grenades, the fruits of his skills as a "computer hacka'!"
David Hewlett. The man is a complete Doctor Who nut, and has freely admitted to torrenting the shit out of the episodes as they appear (even namechecking Mad Martha at one point). In fact, the only reason he didn't launch at the role when Eccleston left was because he was already tied into Stargate Atlantis at the time. He's also previously run his own web design company, and is a self-confessed Linux nerd.
Another BBC DJ who's a comics fan is American-born Paul Gambaccini. How much of a comics geek? Enough that there's a character in The Flashnamed after him: Paul Gambi, tailor to Flash's Rogues Gallery. He and Jonathan Ross used to co-own a comics shop, on the site of the original Forbidden Planet shop.
Dan Harmon, creator of NBC's Community, has recently posted several Tweets on his Twitter account revealing an in depth knowledge of Dragon Age: Origins.
iCarly's Nathan Kress apparently is also a tech nut (though not as much as his character) according to this interview from 2008.
During his Creator Breakdown, Dave Chappelle stated that one of the things he did to recuperate was play World Of Warcraft excessively.
Craig Ferguson, of The Late Late Show, is a self-proclaimed Doctor Who nut. He recently spent quite a bit of time nerding out about it with Chris Hardwick on the Nerdist podcast, including having an argument over Old School Daleks, and who is better, Matt Smith or David Tennant. (Ferguson prefers Smith.)
Recently, one of his guests was a Dalek. A friggin' DALEK. Awesome.
One of the writing staff of NCIS is most likely a Doctor Who nerd, as one episode has a member of the team comparing the inside of a trailer to the TARDIS.
Chris Colfer - Kurt Hummel on Glee - has called himself "a huge huge nerd." He is an admitted fan of Star Trek, Ninja Turtles, and X-Men, and is a fan of A Very Potter Musical from way back. Darren Criss didn't believe him about that last - until Chris started randomly quoting the show at the drop of a hat. Yeah, Chris Colfer is officially a nerd.
Need proof? He showed off his sword skills on Friday Night.
Darren Criss used Chewbacca as his senior quote. 'Nuff said.
The guy also covers Disney songs on his guitar, waxes poetic about Avatar: The Last Airbender and stars in and (co-wrote) A Very Potter Musical — it's amazing that anyone could be unaware of his utterly fabulous nerdiness.
Danica McKellar. Remember Winnie from The Wonder Years? She graduated summa cum laude from UCLA, majoring in mathematics, co-authored a scientific paper and has her name attached to the "Chayes-McKellar-Winn theorem". And judging from the covers for her books "Math Doesn't Suck", "Kiss My Math", and "Hot X: Algebra Exposed" (aimed at middle-school girls to encourage math proficiency), she's still pretty damn attractive.
Judging from the covers for her books? She talked about her academic achievements while posing for Stuff magazine.◊ And yes, she's still got it.
Matthew Perry, who played Chandler Bing on Friends, has famously stated that he "[plays] the Fallout 3" to the point that his hands started cramping for playing so much. He later on voiced Benny in Fallout: New Vegas.
According to the commentary track for TOW Ross Got High on the Season 6 DVD set, all six of the main actors/actresses on Friends are video game players. They would often play Playstation 1 games like Twisted Metal 2 (which made its way into that same episode) during breaks when shooting episodes.
Ephraim Ellis, who played abusive boyfriend Rick Murray on Degrassi: The Next Generation, is a self-described theater nerd, and used to collaborate on a webcomic called The Stairwell.
All four members of The League of Gentlemen are huge horror fans. The DVD commentaries show how many subtle horror references are painstakingly used in their show.
Mark Gatiss in particular has presented a BBC 4 documentary on the history of horror films (each episode of which was followed by his favourite films from that particular era) and has written for and acted in numerous episodes of the new Doctor Who and co-wrote Sherlock which, despite being set in the modern day, is actually one of the most faithful adaptations of the original books.
John Rogers, creator of Leverage, is a huge nerd, as are various members of his writing staff. Just look at the aliases Hardison thinks up.
In addition to that, he's posted tales from a D20 Modern game he ran between projects to ENWorld, has contributed to Dungeons & Dragons books, and is now writing the D&D comic for IDW.
Colin Morgan of Merlin is a fan of Discworld and has mentioned in an interview that he'd love to play Mort if they ever adapted it.
Colin Morgan as Mort?! NERDGASM.
Adam Savage is a geek to rival all geeks. When he's booked at a convention, he sews his own costumes and spends the time he's not doing panels wandering around.
He's also known for making models for fun, including the most accurate reproduction of The Maltese Falcon.
Jim Halterman: (serious tone) When you’re working with Michael, what is energized?
Candice Accola: [laughs] We energize. We got it from the Star Trek remake. Whenever they’re getting ready to disintegrate [or teleport] they say ‘Energize!’ Whenever we’re in the mood to get a laugh or something we’ll both just give each other a little nod and go ‘Energize!’
Cobie Smulders is a huge comic book fan, even having a fan question drawn into a issue of Fables.
Game show host Geoff Edwards, host of the video game-themed game show Starcade, said that he came to like video games while hosting it, and often stayed after hours to beat the other staff members' high scores. He still partakes to this day.
Molly C Quinn of Castle is a huge fan of Star Trek,even showing up to Comic con in a red uniform.She was very excited to work with Jonathan Frakes (Will Riker) when He directed episodes.
She also dressed up as a Mal from Fireflyfor one con◊. Nathan Fillion, of course, is her on-screen father.
Matthew Grey Gubler from Criminal Minds actually does the magic tricks his character (Spencer Reid) does.
Paget Brewster also apparently became a serial killer geek after getting on the show and her "research" for her role (Emily Prentiss)has left her scarily knowledgeable about the topic.
Derrick J. Wyatt, character designer for Teen Titans, Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated, and most notably Transformers Animated, has both a personal blog and a deviantART account through which he frequently engages in spirited discussion with his fans. He's particularly crazy about Transformers, with Animated having been an absolute dream job for him; he used it as an opportunity to show off his ridiculous knowledge of things like 20-year-old Japanese-exclusive toy characters and stick them into the backgrounds of episodes.
EmilyRose, star of the Syfy series Haven and Elena Fisher in the Uncharted series, has been playing video games since Super Mario Bros. back on the NES, and is a fantastic Halo player. She also plays Uncharted (of course).
Katie McGrath is a huge fantasy and sci-buff and gushed over the fact that her Morgana action figure is exactly the right size to fit inside her model Millenium Falcon.
Kristian Nairn, most famous for playing Hodor in Game Of Thrones, is an avid gamer (he plays World of Warcraft on European AND American servers!), a professional DJ, and a fan of the books on which the TV series was based.
Jon Pertwee was a massive fan of animation. How massive, you ask? He actually, apparently, severely strained his friendship with British comedian (and fellow animation fan) Spike Milligan over whether or not Aladdin was "the greatest movie of all time."
Meet Jim Beaver, of Supernatural. Better known as Bobby Singer. He has reviewed over 1,460 movies on IMDB[2], wrote a Biography on George Reeves investigating his death, and is present in his forum topics in IMDB. (his name is Jimb-4.)
Please note: The word 'trope' and the usage and reference to tropes existed long before this wiki was ever conceived. For the sake of clarity, let's only include actual mentions or links to the wiki itself.
The good people at Arcadia Commentaries have made references to this site quite a few times.
Less than six hours after the creation of the Disney's Anne Frank page, she tweeted "I AM EDITING THE SHIT OUT OF THIS".
Nella and Elisa, her co-writers and supporting cast, were interviewed by TGWTG podcaster Random Odds. He admitted that he'd tried out TV Tropes but couldn't understand it, and was mocked by his guests and his girlfriend for it. (Discussing the Stuffed into the Fridge trope, Elisa says that you have get the trope definitions right "or the tropers will get you".)
Chuck Sonnenberg, also known as SF Debris, has frequently cited TV Tropes in his videos (once referring to Unfortunate Implications when an episode of Voyager featured a black man and an Asian man being kept from fighting only by the efforts of a white woman, and later indirectly referring to the now-deleted trope The Okona after reviewing "The Outrageous Okona"). Upon reviewing the VOY episode "Life Line", he gave the episode a score of 10, and noted "Alert TV Tropes!", as it was prominently noted on his page that he hadn't yet given any episode of Voyager that score, despite giving TNG, DS9, and even Enterprise the same courtesy.
The people behind Irregular Webcomic! and Darths & Droids often reference this wiki. David Morgan-Mar is a registered contributor who sometimes pops up in the forums.
The author of Cwen's Quest has added tropes to his comic more than once to better illustrate example of tropes his comics was listed on but didn't fit as well. One of the bonus stories even covers the creation of a literal Planetof Hats.
Critical Dave often refers to tropes and links to the site.
Charles Bhepin, author of Shinji and Warhammer 40K, occasionally includes references to TV Tropes in his work. Some are subtle, but he's not above having a character come right out and say "You Fail Biology Forever" when appropriate. Outside of the story, he acknowledged TV Tropes as a source of inspiration and an aid for writing his story more believably.
xkcd once did a Shout Out, which makes sense considering how geeky the webcomic is anyway. The Colbert Bump-style traffic spike actually tanked the TV Tropes servers for a few days.
Raocow has referenced this site in his Lets Plays and has participated in a few discussions. On a smaller note, Slowbeef of Retsupurae popped by to answer some questions about how the Something Awful LP threads are occasionally blocked off to non-subscribers, and both him and Diabetus have mentioned the site in passing a few times.
On the subject of Lets Plays, ProtonJon is also a confirmed troper.
As are numerous posters on the free Let's Play Forum, such as NotPigeon and Kadorhal.
At least one member of the dev team of The Nameless Mod is a troper, since the work page for its parent game Deus Ex can be found on a datapad in the game.
Eastwood and Silversword of Exterminatus Now are both registered Tropers.
Jim Butcher has mentioned TV Tropes on his Twitter, stating that he's tried to read through the pages for The Dresden Files but does not have enough time.
Alicorn, who writes Luminosity, requested that her reader army add tropes to the page for Luminosity and give proper links back to it. As her Christmas present.
Tab Kimpton, the author of Khaos Komix, has confirmed that he visits this site by linking to a trope in the webcomic's "about" page. (With a pot hole, in fact!)
The author of Spinnerette is almost certainly a troper, since the change to Comicpress that invalidated all old links was accompanied by advice that this wiki of ours could "suck on that", and a security guard who managed a pretty impressive showing was granted a jacket marked "CMOA" in his next appearance.
Bryan Lee O'Malley has explicitly mentioned TV Tropes in his twitter feed at least once.
UK synthpop band Spray have songs called "Everything's Better With Muppets" and "I Always Wanted To Say 'I Always Wanted to Say That'". The second one could be a coincidence, but it's about a Rule Abiding Rebel, and is pretty trope heavy.
An article on the official Magic: The Gathering website on the history of the "Hill Giant" creature archetype (3/3 for 3C) described the original Hill Giant as the "Trope Namer".
Mark "Maro" Rosewater, the Head Designer of Magic, has gone on record, in a post on Tales from the Pit, as a TV Tropes fan. Complete with a link to that very article.
Andrew Hussie is a subversion, he's well aware of Tv Tropes and was speculated for a while to read the WMG threads but came outright and said that he dislikes Tv Tropes.
No Black Plume—both Curly and Aubrey are huge nerds, and at least Curly is known to be a frequenter of TV Tropes.
Rick Griffin, of Housepets!, has on occasion mentioned tropes by name, and at one time made an understandably brief (he does have other things to do, after all) appearance in the TV Tropes forum thread discussing his strip.
Caroline Lawrence is the author of The Roman Mysteries and The Western Mysteries. She has linked the TV Tropes pages for her works on her Facebook and Twitter accounts. She also contributes to a blog called The History Girls and wrote an article about cross-dressing categories on TV Tropes. Linked here.
The Gaming Pixie often throws out trope names (including some less than common ones) by the handful while doing her reviews.
Popular Youtuber Peanut3423 has referenced TV Tropes multiple times in his countdowns. One notable example of this is when he referred to Rundas as the series's Ensemble Darkhorse.
Dungeons and Dragons and other role-playing games pop up regularly in Something Positive. The author even created a 3.0 monster and posted it on his site.
The authors of Hell Inc tweet about video games and the characters play a Dungeons and Dragons game.
John Kossler, author of The Word Weary, plays Dungeons and Dragons (even going so far as to base the campaign his characters play on one he played with his friends) and often tweets about his love of chess. His About section states he is a fan of TV Tropes.
Wrestling Weenies
WWE wrestler Gregory "Hurricane" Helms' love of the Green Lantern is well-documented (not the least of which by the Green Lantern Corps logo tattooed on his shoulder), and his total fanboy obsession was actually his gimmick for a short time after entering WWE (before the character jumped completely off the deep-end and became a campy Super Hero). His website also features a piece of art by himself, showing The Hurricane delivering his Finishing Move to Captain Marvel as Black Adam looks on approvingly.
A lot of WWE wrestlers are gamers. Cody Rhodes has the Triforce on his boots. He even admitted to playing Zelda every year.
Specifically, he's admitted that every year he plays A Link To The Past from start to finish without saving or quitting play. THAT defines a geek right there.
He's also a huge comic book fan and has said his favorite characters are Archangel, Omega Red, Cyclops and the Inhumans. He has a cabinet of the Konami X-Men arcade game at his house, he once said he'd want Patriot from the Young Avengers as a member of Legacy, and that he'd want to wrestle Black Panther in a cage match.
The Miz and John Morrison have talked about the new WWE games in detail with game sites like IGN.
More recently, he debuted a pair of Riddler trunks on Superstars(which he then went on to wear in the Royal Rumble, as well as the following Monday Night Raw), with the question marks all over, and his "Kofi-face" logo wearing the Riddler's hat and mask. He also mentioned in a recent WWE magazine interview that the one pair of trunks he had made that he has never worn, was a Red and Black Harley Quinn one.
Montel Vontavious Porter, better known as MVP, based one of his early finishers off of an Eddie Gordo move. It was named Malicious Intent.
Wrestler George "The Animal" Steele has a Bachelor of Science degree and a Master's Degree from Michigan State University.
Dwayne Johnson is a big video game geek. So much so that his interview with Jon Stewart for The Daily Show, ostensibly to promote the then-new Doom movie, eventually became the two of them just talking about the games instead. During an interview about the movie, when the subject of the BFG came up, Dwayne insisted on calling it the "Big Fucking Gun" rather than the "Bio-Force Gun" (the name used in the movie).
WWE's Chris Jericho is such a geek, he named his son Ash, sings for a metal band in a persona called Moongoose McQueen (named for Steve McQueen, of course), and has recorded with Dream Theater and Iron Maiden.
Rumor has it, he once met Rob Reiner and alienated him by geeking out about This Is Spinal Tap.
More recently, in an interview, he was deliriously happy over the fact that his most recent WWE contract included a tour bus and driver, because it meant he would finally have time to play video games while on the road. He describes himself as a retrogamer, but is very eager to catch up to the modern day.
Former WWE wrestler Scott Levy - best known as Raven - is a member of MENSA and a huge comic book fan. While in ECW, he often wrestled wearing T-shirts of comics from DC's Vertigo Comics imprint (usually The Sandman). He has also been spotted wearing a Daredevil shirt on occasion. He also co-wrote issue #14 of the Spider-Man limited series Spider-Man's Tangled Web
WWE's Hornswoggle is a big fan of The Muppet Show and it shows. He has tattoos of Animal, Statler and Waldorf, Beaker, and Sweetums, has all the Muppet Show seasons on DVD and has watched them three times and has paid 250 dollars for a rare Muppets Monopoly board game.
WWE Smackdown color man Matt Striker betrays his anime geekdom with every nickname he bestows upon a wrestler. "Neon Genesis" Yoshi Tatsu, indeed. His commentary also has him proudly displaying his Comic Book geekery ("Avengers Assemble, this is Secret Wars!"), not mention his vast knowledge of professional wrestling history is starting to reach J.R.-levelContinuity Porn. And now he's revealed that he named his cats after the Midnight Express. Yup, geek.
Independent wrestling promotion CHIKARA pretty much runs on this. Mike Quackenbush, their booker/head trainer/owner/wrestler/jack-of-all-trades is a diehard comic book and pop culture junkie and it shows. Much of the DVD covers are homages to famous comic book covers, their shows have titles that are references to They Might Be Giants, Talking Heads, Blackadder, and everything in between, and the booking itself basically patterns itself after continuity-heavy TV shows along the lines of Lost (which Quackenbush is also, unsurprisingly, a huge fan of).
Recently, he also sided against Roger Ebert in the "games as art" debate, proclaiming such games as Red Dead Redemption and Uncharted 2 to indeed be art. He also called Uncharted 2 "the best action flick I've seen all year".
WWE NXT rookie A.J. Lee is a huge fan of video games, anime and comic books. She regularly tweets about her love of all of them, especially the X-Men (her favorite story is the Dark Phoenix Saga), she has a dog named after Kagome from InuYasha and in a promo video there were clearly visible action figures of Yuna and Meryl Silverburgh. This carries over into her wrestling persona; she describes herself as a "geek goddess", and in a Halloween costume battle royal, she dressed as Kitana and actually attempted a fan lift.
The Big Show has said in an interview that when he goes home he "grabs an Ice Tea, goes to his room and plays Call of Duty, it's therapy for me.". He also has a tour bus with TV's and Xboxes hooked to them.
Zack Ryder seems to collect a number of action figures (a Ghostbusters Peter Venkman figure makes at least one appearance in each episode of his Youtube webseries, along with one of Dolph Ziggler), and likes Star Wars (so much so that he's made more than a few Star Wars references, and made out with someone dressed as Princess Leia. He's also dressed as Han Solo. Again, this has occurred in all of his webisodes )
Jhonen Vasquez, creator of JTHM and Invader Zim, is a huge video game addict, even saying (as of Comic Con '05) that he has gaming systems from the Dreamcast to the Xbox 360; and is a fan of Zelda, Metroid, Bioshock, and Alone in the Dark, just to name a few. He's also a big fan of the Alien movies, even giving a homage to them in an Invader Zim episode, "Lice".
Former porn star Jessica Steinhauser (better known as Asia Carrera) is a member of Mensa, a classically trained pianist who performed at Carnegie Hall as a child, builds her own computers, and plays Unreal Tournament.
Her review of one version of Photoshop was published in Maximum PC magazine. On a side note, she has discounted Sharon Stone's claim to being a member of Mensa.
Loads of porn actors and actresses are secret geeks. For example Stoya is a huge sci-fi fan and has been an IT nerd since a very early age.
Avena Lee has the Dragon Ball dragon tattooed on her lower back.
Nicki Hunter has Comi Con on her yearly list along with the AVN Expo, and even starred in a porn parody of James Camerons Avatar.
There's a pornstar named April O'Neil. If that wasn't enough, she is a Doctor Who fan and played Deanna Troi in a parody, which she considered a dream role.
Ana Marie Cox, Daily Beast reporter and frequent guest on the Rachel Maddow show, has been known to make Firefly references on her Twitter.
She and John Hodgman also toasted each other "So Say We All" on Twitter at the end of the series Battlestar Galactica.
While we're on the subject of bloggers, at least half The Atlantic's bloggers right now are geeks, self-confessed or otherwise. The most blatant example is Ta-Nehisi Coates, who rolls with the Horde, enough to write about it for Time. Business Editor Megan McArdle is also a gamer, though to what extent is unknown (She loves Civ, at least). Chief blogger Andrew Sullivan, being English-born, is an obvious Doctor Who and Monty Python fan. Josh Green is limited to music geekery, enough to put up a fight with a music website. The rest (Ambinder, Fallows, Goldberg, and Crooks) remain uncertain (unless you count Fallows's beer fanaticism as geekery).
Many, many current high-stakes poker players got their start in Magic: The Gathering; David Williams is the most famous of those. Justified in that many of the skills used in Magic translate very well to poker.
Former Obsidian writer Annie Carlson joined the RPG Codex forums initially for a topic about a post about a comment she made on the official forums; even after leaving the company, she is still a regular poster (apparently the forums lack of filter and her tendency to "use fuck like a comma" work with each-other).
Bill Amend, creator of Foxtrot, has a degree in physics from Amherst and avidly plays World of Warcraft, often making accurate jokes about both. Not to mention other video games, internet memes and just about any aspect of nerd culture you can reference in a family friendly comic. Bill Amend may well be the geekiest daily weekly cartoonist out there.
David Gaider, who wrote a lot of the script for Baldur's Gate, has written fanfiction for his own video game (including a Seinfeld crossover) and posted it on fan forums. Occasionally he'll review fics and help out with fan mod dialogue.
He's also a huge Joss Whedon fanboy, to the point that he based several characters in Dragon Age on Whedon characters (Alistair as Xander being the most obvious), and liberally sprinkled the game with Buffy Speak and subtle references to Whedon's shows.
Hikaru Midorikawa, the seiyuu of Heero Yuy, is apparently a very huge fan of the Super Robot Wars series. Amongst the activities he has done in the SRW community includes:
Making up a blog in the main staff's site.
Keep watching about the possibility of a new SRW game out, if it does, go there and volunteer to become a beta-tester and if he can, do extra lines for characters he voiced. Usually for free.
Paul Krugman, who received the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel (it is technically not a Nobel Prize) in 2008. It is not unusual for those with a Ph.D. to be nerds but he deserves a special mention. Reasons: 1) His interest in economics began when he read Isaac Asimov's Foundation books. He wanted to, just as in the book, be one of the social scientists "who understand the true dynamics save civilization". Since psychohistory does not exist, he turned to the closest thing, economics. 2) He posted thisLOLcat on his blog upon leaving for Sweden to get his Nobel prize. 3) This video. 4) To cheer himself up he once wrote The Theory of Interstellar Trade, a paper where he outlines how trade between different star system might work. It does among other things take up how time dilation could affect economics. And he's a Buffy fan!
He also did a panel at the 2009 Worldcon with Charles Stross, of whom he is a fan. Also he wrote this with he says is the closest thing to science fiction he's wrote http://mit.edu/krugman/www/BACKWRD2.html
Shane Acker, director of the Academy Award nominated short 9 as well as the feature film based on it, appears to be a bit of an anime fan as he stated during a talked with Elijah Wood on Currrent that he liked films such as Akira and Princess Mononoke.
Judging by the voice heard in theseads for the upcoming MAGFEST...
Now if only he'll do the "Balls are inert" meme in his most Duke Nukem-ish voice possible...
The astronaut Steven Swanson is such a big Firefly fan that he added a copy of the box set and Serenity to the International Space Station library.
For perspective on how significant this is, it costs several million dollars per pound to bring stuff up there, and even there, space is really, really, really at a premium.
Brad Dourif, the actor who played Saavedro in Myst III: Exile, took the job because he was a diehard Myst fan.
Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku is a huge fan of the sci-fi genre. He has a show on the Science Channel dedicated to explaining how various types of genre goodies, like robots and lightsabers could be brought to reality.
Another seiyuu who likes video games: Kana Ueda. She owns an Xbox 360, likes playing Halo 3, is apparently pretty skilled at it. So much that Microsoft held an event so Halo players can meet her online... and get themselves fragged by her, or frag her in a friendly match.
She also voiced Saydy in the Japanese version of Halo 3: ODST and she will provide some voice work for the Japanese version of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.
Rie Tanaka is a big fan of online games and she even provided voice acting in many Japanese, Korean and American online games like Final Fantasy XIV (the Mi'qotes), Cosmic Break (Icy), and, just like with Kana Ueda, she will work in the Japanese version of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.
Isaiah Mustafa, the actor from The Man Your Man Could Smell Like commercials (he's on a horse), is a general paragon of manliness... and he absolutely loves comic books. He has said that he'd love to play Luke Cage in a movie. He also did a video response to Anonymous, complete with referencing the meme "Delicious Cake".
Joe Kucan, known to gamers as the actor who portrays Kane in Command & Conquer, noted that he is an avid fan of the games and is known to be very friendly to people who've met him. The fanbase rejoiced when it was announced that he would reprise the role for Tiberium Wars and Tiberian Twilight.
Scientists discovered a gene that causes an embryo to grow spikes like a hedgehog, so they called it a hedgehog gene. Then they discovered the protein that the gene produces, so of course they called it Sonic Hedgehog.
It gets better: Another group of scientists found a potential antagonist to the protein in question, and decided to name it "Robotnikinin".
Stephen Hawking is a big Star Trek fan, and requested to sit in the captain's chair during his guest spot on The Next Generation. He also said of the warp core while touring the engineering set, "I'm working on that." He also had a guest appearance portraying himself in a scene where Data plays poker while conversing with three great physicists on the holodeck (the others being actors portraying Issac Newton and Albert Einstein).
Hidenori Kusaka, creator of the Pokémon Special manga, doesn't get any inside info from Game Freak to help him out on his series. Instead, he plays the games when they come out and figures out which parts he wants to incorporate into the story. Some of his author notes have him squeeing over whatever new features the games have.
Several members of That Guy With The Glasses are big fans of Red Dwarf - Linkara and Spoony frequently reference the show in their videos, Doug Walker cites it as his third-favorite television show (behind Home Movies and Daria) and Rob Walker has stated that Santa Christ was inspired by Ace Rimmer.
David Hayter, best known for being Solid Snake, is the only actor in MGS to have played and beaten said game. He also speaks fluent Japanese, has named his only daughter Natasha after the character in the Marvel comic book Black Widow, and once stated in an anime convention that he was present because he was "a big fan of Fushigi Yuugi" (he voiced Tamahome over there).
And, of course, he wrote the script for the Watchmen film adaptation.
The recent Miss USA winner Alyssa Campanella was revealed to be a huge Star Wars fan, even answering a few suprise trivia questions correctly, and going as far as admitting that if she knew she'd be quizzed on Star Wars, she would've worn her hair with Princess Lea's Odangos.
Hungarian voice actor and translator Dániel Hamvas proudly admits he puts all the time spent on the net to good use by incorporating the latest slang, Leet Lingo and cuss words into his translations, or those that he supervises. His most famous and renowned "contributions" are the strikingly colorful scripts of Family Guy (where he also plays the role of Chris) and The Boondocks, and he also appears to be an all-round geek, in a good sense.
The mid-'90s staff of Disney Adventures absolutely LOVED showing off their nerd cred in the magazine. For the better part of the decade, it was difficult to find an issue that didn't have some kind of reference to Star Trek, The X-Files, and/or Star Wars.
The comics editors were HUGE outspoken fans of indie comics, and managed to put (among other things) Evan Dorkin's Kid Blastoff! and Jeff Smith's Bone into the magazine.
