Promoted Fanboy - Television Tropes & Idioms

My entire career has been a secret plan to get this job. I applied before but I got knocked back because the BBC wanted someone else. Also I was seven.
— Steven Moffat, upon being named lead writer/producer for Doctor Who

When I finally had a copy of the finished, printed, lettered, colored U$#219 in my hands, with a complete $crooge adventure credited to being both written and drawn by "Don Rosa"? After I had dreamed of that so much all my life... and I mean ALL my life, from my earliest memory... dreamed of it so much that I copied Barks stories just for my own amusement as a child? How did I feel? Words fail to express it.
— Don Rosa

Some fans have all the luck. Somehow they've managed to be a part of the very industry—or even sometimes the exact show—that they're a fan of. This can range from the minor, such as a Contest Winner Cameo, to the point where the fan has creative control and is Running The Asylum.

Compare Ascended Fanboy, which would be about the show actually happening to them, like a Star Trek fan being beamed onto a real starship and joining the crew. See also Big Name Fan; they're the ones most likely to be promoted, and One Of Us.

Examples:

Real Life

Star Trek

A lot of folks who appear on Star Trek get roles because they are big fans of the show(s).
- Star Trek The Motion Picture had a scene where a lot of fans were used as extras. The unions really complained about this one.
Ronald Moore arranged a tour of the Star Trek The Next Generation set through his girlfriend and managed to pass a script to one of Gene Roddenberry's assistants while there. By the show's final season, he was head writer.
Gabriel Koerner, amateur 3d artist and huge Trek fan was interviewed for the documentary Trekkies in 1997. Fast forward eight years, and he was working on the CGI team for the fourth season of Star Trek Enterprise, as well as the new Battlestar Galactica (created and produced by the above-mentioned Ron Moore).
Director Bryan Singer revealed to Patrick Stewart that he was a Trek fan, and therefore Stewart arranged for him a quick cameo in Star Trek Nemesis.
Allegedly when Paramount learned Tyler Perry, of Madea fame, was a Trek fan, they got him a guest appearance in the 11th film as the Dean of Starfleet Academy.
- This is also how Zachary Quinto who plays Sylar on Heroes got the part of young Spock in the new movie.
- It is very possible that this is part of the reason the new movie was made. Writer Roberto Orci considers himself quite the hardcore Trekkie.
Karl Urban was a hardcore Trekker growing up. He was cast as Dr. McCoy in the new movie.

Star Wars

Mark Hamill was a comics and sci-fi fan before playing the part of Luke Skywalker and becoming a voice actor for characters like The Joker.
Ryan Weiber, one of the creators of the popular Star Wars fanfilms "Ryan Vs Dorkman". While he doesn't work for George Lucas or ILM, he did work for LucasGames for a time; currently he is doing special effects work in Hollywood, notably on Heroes.
- His partner, Michael Scott, is also a budding filmmaker.
Matt Sloan, the voice of Chad Vader on the Youtube series by the same name, was eventually noticed for his uncanny impression of Darth Vader and eventually landed a role as Darth Vader himself in various video game spinoffs of the Star Wars franchise, specifically The Force Unleashed, the Empire At War expansion, and Vader's Guest Fighter appearance in Soulcalibur IV. And later having Vader act as the Banker (albeit staying visible) in a Deal Or No Deal special.
Kevin Rubio is one of the more excellent examples. After making Troops, he then went on to write Star Wars comics, and now is working on episodes of Star Wars The Clone Wars.
Another Star Wars example: Steve Sansweet, who probably has the largest personal collection of SW related material in the world, was eventually hired by Lucasfilm itself to be their Director of Content Management and Head of Fan Relations.
Hayden Christensen always was interested in Vader in his childhood. In Revenge Of The Sith the original intention was to have a large stuntman in the Vader suit but Christiansen convinced them to build the suit for him and use various camera tricks to make him appear to be the 6'8 David Prowse size.
Another Star Wars example: In 2005-2008, Star Wars fan club members competed to write databank entries for obscure characters that weren't covered previously, or covered very slightly. The winning writers of the entries were then rewarded with having their ideas be a part of Star Wars canon.
- And it got even better for some. As of June 2009, three of those authors were later hired by the company to write short fiction stories for the website.
In 2003 a fan named Ara Roselani met Timothy Zahn at a convention. She was cosplaying as the Chiss Admiral Thrawn in his white uniform, and they became friends. When Zahn wrote Outbound Flight he included the character Ar'alani, a female Chiss admiral in a white uniform.
Yet another Star Wars example: it's no secret that Seth Green is a big fan (Prime evidence: Robot Chicken). He recently voiced a one-off character in season two of Star Wars The Clone Wars.
Curtis Saxton, physics PhD and writer of the infamous Star Wars Technical Commentaries, a very extensive site meant to figure out how the physics of the universe worked, was hired as a technical advisor for the prequels and eventually wrote some of the various Incredible Cross-Sections books, giving the Star Wars fans a massive edge in the Star Wars VS Star Trek debates in the process.

Doctor Who

Since Doctor Who has been running since 1963 (hiatus not withstanding), there's an entire generation of people who loved the show enough to be considered fans and work their way into the industry and onto the staff. Some of the more recent fans were even born after the show had started running. Though some of them also ended up Running The Asylum.

Matthew Waterhouse had been a Doctor Who fan before he got the role of Adric and had a letter published in an early issue of Doctor Who Magazine (before getting the part).
David Tennant said that it was because of Doctor Who and particularly, Peter Davison's performance as the Fifth Doctor that he wanted to be the Doctor. He even got into acting specifically to play the Doctor. In 2005, Tennant appeared as the Tenth Doctor and in the special episode "Time Crash", Peter Davison himself guest-appeared as the Tenth Doctor met his earlier self. Promoted Fanboy in the extreme!
- Indeed, that special is really little more than an excuse for David Tennant to gush at how much he loves Peter Davison, while they're both in character. At one point, the 5th Doctor takes a close look at the 10th and laments "Oh no. You're a fan!" Near the end, the 10th tells the 5th that he "was [his] Doctor."
  - Building off of Tennant's Promotion? The Fifth Doctor, Peter Davison himself, was also this - having been a massive fan of the Second Doctor's run on the series. That's right, the Second Doctor crafted the Fifth Doctor, who in turn crafted the Tenth Doctor. Expect another Doctor in about 20 to 30 years based on Tennant... oh, and Sixth Doctor Colin Baker is also a big fan of Doctor Who - and still watches the show to this day.
  - Colin Baker is more of a Demoted Fan - after being fired from his role as the Doctor, he's gone on to write and star in Doctor Who fan fiction. (I kid, I kid.)
John Barrowman was also a big fan and also describes himself as an Otaku.
Russell T Davies, the ex-lead writer and ex-producer of the new series, was also a tremendous fan and had actually sent in scripts during the show's original run. For years he'd stated that the only reason he would return to working for the BBC was if they were to start up Doctor Who again and let him run it. He also seems to have a knack for pulling in other Who fans to work on the revived series.
Douglas Adams was a huge Doctor Who fan. He wrote three Doctor Who stories in the late Seventies ("The Pirate Planet", "City of Death" and the uncompleted "Shada") and was the show's script editor for the 1979 series. He had written the Affectionate Parody play Doctor Which while at school. The Krikkit storyline of The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy had also originated as a proposed Doctor Who television script or movie screenplay.
There's a reason there's a Steven Moffat quote at the top of this page.
Many of the people writing for the Doctor Who Expanded Universe and the current series had an involvement with the Audio Visuals fan audios series starring Nicholas Briggs as his version of the Doctor. One of the more prominent Audio Visuals creators, Gary Russell (who had auditioned by the part of Adric), has script edited for the Whoniverse shows and Briggs has voiced the Daleks and sundry other monsters and appeared in person in Torchwood: Children of Earth.
Subversion: Freema Agyeman was more a Trekker.

Harry Potter

Evanna Lynch grew up as one of the biggest fans of the Harry Potter series, even going so far as to name her cats after characters in the books. When she was selected to play Luna Lovegood in the Order of the Phoenix movie, her resemblance to the character went a long way toward hyping the movie for fans. Her performance, lauded as one of the best in the film series, led to even more praise for her and the movie.
- Seriously: She was such a huge fan (and aware of her resemblance to Luna) that she made herself a custom Luna Lovegood outfit for Halloween, complete with homemade radish earrings. Then she wore the earrings to the audition. Then she wore the earrings — which, again, she made because she was that big a fan of Luna — in the movie, as Luna. Ms. Lynch is the ultimate Promoted Fangirl.

Transformers

Brad Swaile, who voiced Kicker in Transformers Energon, is a fan of Transformers and was eager to get a role on the series. Tough luck, Brad.
In something between this and Running The Asylum: Derrick J. Wyatt, the lead character designer of Transformers Animated, is also a huge Transformers fan.
Random sector locations in Beast Wars were named after fans from the forums.
There's also Hirofumi Ichikawa, who started off writing doujinshi and was particularly influential in introducing Japanese fans to the original portrayals of the Beast Wars, as opposed to the somewhat less than faithful Japanese dub. He has since been hired by Takara to write a fair number of toy bios, comics, and guidebooks, and even got to design toys for the Super Link and Galaxy Force lines.
David Willis, author of the Walkyverse webcomics, is another long-time Transformers fan, who has been hired by Hasbro to produce convention art.
Josh Nizzi produced a movie-inspired design for the Constructicon Dump Truck Long Haul. He was not only brought on to Hasbro, but Long Haul was the first new design for the Revenge of the Fallen toyline and he went on to design several more for the movie.
Benson Yee, a Big Name Fan in the community, was approached on usenet by the Beast Wars writers for his expertise in Transformers Generation 1. He received a consultant credit for key mythology-heavy episodes.
Shane Mc Carthy, a small name writer and another asylum runner was hired by IDW publishing to take over the transformers comic series from veteran Simon Furman.However, he did not have Wyatt's popularity, mostly due to his writing and the attitude he shows when someone critiques his work.YMMV, though especially if you have nostalgia filter, or you like grimdark since his story is essentially a darker and edgier version of the G1 cartoon series

General Film Industry

Peter Jackson started to experiment with special effects as a teenager, inspired by such artists as Willis O'Brien, got all the way to making his own high-budget version of King Kong.
The Geek God first was just another fan of various b-movies, and then got to ennoble the whole genre.
So did Robert Rodriguez, who started with no-budget efforts such as Bedhead to draw atention, that would help him in making bigger things.
So did Sam Raimi.

General Comics

Apparently, DCU writer Paul Dini really liked writing the character Zatanna, a stage magician/superhero. He's married to a stage magician who looks a lot like Zatanna.
Nicolas Cage is a HUGE Ghost Rider fan, who's always wanted to portray the character (he even has Ghost Rider tattooed on his arm). He got his wish (they incidentally had to cover the tattoo for him to portray the character).
- Squicktacularly, he's also a huge Elvis Presley fan who ended up marrying the daughter of the King.
  - Why is that squicky? It's not like he phantasises the King while he's... Oh. Ooooh, yikes.
  - He also got to impersonate Elvis in Wild at Heart.
Kevin Smith is probably the best known promoted fanboy on the planet. The sheer amount of knowledge he knows about comics (and in turn how many he's written) is probably evidence enough.
Ian "Potto" Flynn. current writer for the Archie Sonic comic series, was once a fanboy who did his own fan comic. Other notables from the Sonic The Hedgehog fandom who went into doing stuff for the line are J. Axer and Dawn Best.
Mark Gruenwald. Somewhat subverted in that he was a lifetime Justice League fanboy who spent his whole career at Marvel.
- Though he did create the Justice League analogue "Squadron Supreme".
  - Gruenwald didn't create the Squadron Supreme, he only wrote their definitive story.
Jim Shooter started writing Legion Of Super Heroes when he was 13. He's been in the industry ever since, including becoming Marvel's editor-in-chief.
Dear Lord Don Rosa. Like so many people of his age he was a big fan of The Good Duck Artist. While he didn't get any education in art or narration, he wrote and painted Donald Duck series for various fanzines, as well as several LTE:s. He even corresponded to Carl Barks himself from time to time. After a new publishing company got the license to make Donald Duck comics, Don Rosa applied for the job as an artist by sending in a mail, there he wrote that he was born to make new Donald Duck stories in the spirit of the old Carl Barks comics. He got the job, added some massive Continuity Porn to the series (against Barks' wishes) and dedicated all his stories to Carl Barks.
- He has stated that the day he met Barks was the best day of his life. Which isn't surprising, as he had tried to meet him in person for several years.
E. Nelson Bridwell of Pre Crisis Superman comics got the job of his dreams and loved every minute of it.
Mark Waid. This is his studio.
- Gruenwald, Bridwell and Shooter are some of Waid's major influences.
Geoff Johns first suggested to DC that Superboy should be a clone of Clark Kent and Lex Luthor in a fan letter as a kid. Now he's basically DC's #2 writer behind Grant Morrison.
Tristan Huw Jones was a huge fan of the original Mirage Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics as a kid in the 1980s; when Mirage relaunched the series in the 2000s, he became one of the main writers (and frequently hailed as one of the best of that crop).

General Manga and Anime

Eiichiro Oda, author of One Piece, was a massive Dragon Ball fan; heck, he loved all of Akira Toriyama's works, and that's what inspired him to become a manga artist. Eventually, he ended up working at Shonen Jump, the same magazine that Dragon Ball was published in, and even collaborated with Toriyama on a DBZ/One Piece crossover manga.
Shiori Teshirogi, the author who writes the Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas manga, is actually a shoujo author who once met Kurumada. Saint Seiya was always her favorite series and she jumped at the chance of making a new story when Kurumada pitched the idea to her, and what was originally thought to end up being a rather brief series has exploded in popularity. To put it simply, she is writing a non-canon doujin, getting paid for it, and getting an OVA deal for it. Not bad for someone's first shonen story.
Shoji Kawamori was an aeronautical engineer who had a family member on Macross production crew. Apparently he has an addiction to those little wooden Mensa puzzles that are all about compressing multiple components into objects with much smaller external surface areas. When toy companies realized he "had a gift" most designers still can't do elegantly today (IE: transformations tuck limbs against the body and end up looking blocky), he was making more selling transforming robot designs than he was in the very dry aerospace business. Needless to say, he works as a Humongous Mecha designer now.
Some actors in anime dubbing were anime fans before getting work as Voice Actors, including Greg Ayres and Caitlin Glass.
- Hell, ADV Films was founded by anime fans that promoted themselves.
- These days, fandub BNFs like Cristina Valenzuela are part of anime dubbing casts - sometimes reprising roles.
- And talking on fandub, it also has happened on Latin America, most especially in Chile.
  - Jake Long anyone? Dubbed by fandubbers-gone-pro!
  - Avatar? Hey, that one too!
  - Evangelion? The same girl fan-dubbed the opening (and of course it hasn't been broadcasted officially, but...)
- Rather subverted by good ol' Vic Mignogna (alias the number-one fan of Ed Elric). Don't ever dare to call him "shorty".
  - Though he plays the trope straight in a different area — he recently directed an episode of Star Trek Phase 2.
- Ultra-famous seiyuu Takehito Koyasu is a long-time Mobile Suit Gundam fanboy. In the early 90's, he had a tiny and unnamed voice role in Gundam The 8th Platoon... and few later, he voiced Zechs Merquise, Gym Ghingham and Mwu La Fllaga.
  - Likewise, Kei Shindou was a Cosplay Otaku Girl before she became a seiyuu.

General Literature

Famous author Isaac Asimov became interested in the Science Fiction pulp magazines sold in his family's candy stores when he was a child. He began writing when he was eleven, and managed to get published when he was nineteen ("Marooned Off Vesta", 1939).
Brandon Sanderson was a huge fanboy of The Wheel Of Time, and was picked to finish the series after Robert Jordan's death.
Robert Bloch, author of Psycho, started his career with Lovecraft pastiches; Lovecraft eventually dedicated a story to him.

General Live Action TV

Michelle Trachtenberg guest starred in the the episode of House, M.D., "Safe". She revealed on the December 22, 2006, episode of Late Night With Conan O'Brien that House is her favorite show, she is friends with one of the producers and she asked to be a guest star. Trachtenberg also said she has a crush on Hugh Laurie, and during the scene in the elevator in which House searches her genital area for a tick, Trachtenberg said she played a joke on Laurie by putting a note between her legs that read "I Love You."
In the 2008 American Gladiators, promotion to Gladiator in the second season was one of the grand prizes.
Kristen Bell (of Veronica Mars fame) was a big Heroes fan and friends with co-stars Zachary Quinto (Sylar) and Hayden Panetierre (Claire) before appearing as Elle Bishop in season two.
Actor/comedian/author John Hodgman, a Battlestar Galactica fan who wrote a New York Times Magazine article about the franchise in 2005, got a cameo as a neurosurgeon on the show's final season.
Almost the half of the Muppeters from Sesame Street: Or their interest of puppetry starts with Sesame Street (Kevin Clash (Elmo), and Steve Whitmire (Ernie)), or they have interest in Sesame Street as a show (Joey Mazzarino (Murray Monster)) or they liked puppetry for other reason, but their puppeter hero is Jim Henson (Caroll Spinney (Big Bird)).
- Neil Patrick Harris, who guest starred an episode, is also a big Muppet fan.
J Michael Straczynski, once a science fiction fanboy extrordinaire, became a major science-fiction pioneer with Babylon Five, which arguably changed the genre (on television, at any rate) permanently.
A graphic artist and Mad Men fan who goes by the moniker "Dyna Moe" created cartoon illustrations of the show, including a Christmas card for her friend Rich Sommer, a member of the supporting cast. She posted many of her other Mad Men-inspired pieces online. In advance of the third season, AMC gave Dyna the opportunity to use her fan-art in promotions for the show, particularly an online avatar-generator.
Michelle Trachtenberg claims to have been a huge fan of Buffy The Vampire Slayer before joining the cast as Dawn Summers, and was even quoted gushing to Joss Whedon: "There was never a Buffy episode that sucked. I love you!"
Masahiro Inoue, the lead actor in Kamen Rider Decade, is a long-time Kamen Rider fan, especially Black and Black RX (Hell, he's even part of the franchise's Periphery Demographic both before and after Decade). When Decade's journey took him to Black RX's World, Inoue made a blog post in which he effectively geeked out over the entire situation.
- Inoue's co-star Ryouta Murai got this quite literally. As a child he was a huge fan of Kamen Rider Kuuga; jump ahead nine years, and he gets to be Kuuga (well, an Alternate Universe incarnation of the character) in Decade.
  - Decade promoted another long-time fan, pop musician Gackt, by giving him the role of Badass Normal Joji Yuki, AKA Riderman in The Movie; he even appears in-character in the music video for the film's theme song, "The Next Decade".
- On a related note Yoko Honna, better known as the Bottle Fairy Sumeragi had a reocurring role in Black and Black RX as a child. Years later, Futari Wa Pretty Cure aired and she has adopted many Kamen Rider concepts to her character Nagisa.
This worked both ways with Amy Ryan's recurring role on The Office. Ryan was a big fan of the show and the people behind the show were all big fans of The Wire, even throwing a shoutout to it a few episodes before she showed up.
Hamish Blake and Andy Lee were fans of Rove Live in high school. Today they are probably the best reason to watch the show.
Johnny Depp got to be in his favourite The Fast Show sketch.
Richard Hammond was a devoted follower of the original Top Gear when he went to audition for the revival with Jeremy Clarkson. He claims that he finished the audition thinking what a great job it would be and fiercely envying whatever lucky sod finally got it. (He did.)
Elizabeth Taylor was a fan of General Hospital, so in 1981, she called the executive producer and asked for a cameo role. She got the role of Helena Cassadine.

General Video Games and other gaming

Valve likes to hire the makers of successful fan-made mods. Both the makers of Team Fortress and Counter Strike have been hired in this fashion. Also hired was Adam Foster, who single-handedly created the Minerva: Metastasis single-player map.
- The same goes for id Software, whose ranks consist of many developers who started out modding for Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake.
  - This is somewhat common in the industry. Another example would be Lusted, long time Total War modder and author of one of Medieval 2's largest mods, who was hired by Creative Assembly to work on their next TW game.
  - Another Valve example. Portal was developed in it's earliest guise by a team of game design students as part of their course. Valve liked it so much, they reportedly hired the students to make a full version for the company. You no doubt know the rest...
Neverwinter Nights is all about its custom editor. Bioware regularly skims the community for their most famous works and offers them jobs. Some groups formed around mod-making may also develop into studios, such as Ossian Studios.
Dominic Armato was a fan of the first two Monkey Island games, which may have given him his edge over the other guy when they were casting Guybrush Threepwood's voice actor.
Wizards of the Coast held a contest in 2006 where the winner got a job designing for Magic The Gathering. More notably, the three finalists (Ken Nagle, Graeme Hopkins, and Alexis Janson) impressed Mark Rosewater so much that all three are now working at WotC. So are at least three more participants.
- Earlier, and even more remarkable: A Magic player named Gregory Marques showed up at the sidelines of a major tournament in 2003 with his own custom-designed expansion set of Magic cards, cheerfully inviting fellow players to try his cards out and give him feedback. Rosewater was impressed with Marques' design ambitions, and he had Wizards of the Coast hire him to join the design team of an actual set (which ended up becoming Fifth Dawn).
- Heck, Mark Rosewater himself was once a mere fanboy. Also, many other members of Wizards R are former Pro Tour players.
A few modders that worked on the Xtended Mod for X3: Reunion were picked up by Egosoft to develop the mods "official" release in X3: Terran Conflict.
The RPG industry is, by its nature, full of people who started out as customers and 'ascended' to become pro writers, usually by way of lots of unpaid work.
- Vin Diesel is a huge Dungeons And Dragons fan, who got to write the introduction to Wizard of the Coast's D&D 30th anniversary book.
- The best Exalted freelance writers come from the forums; the developer sees people who regularly come up with awesome fluff and crunch and gives them contracts. Given fan response to a lot of the stuff written by in-house staff, this is almost guaranteed to be a Cue Cullen for any book they work on.
The Unwashed Villagers, a group of Interplay's original Fallout forum goers who dealt with spammers and trolls, were included in a special encounter in Fallout 2 where they battle a notorious troll of the forums.
Nintendo Power writer Steven Grimm gave Animal Crossing: Wild World an amazing 9.5 review and mentioned that he loved the game. Nearly three years later, you can spot his name in the credits of Animal Crossing: City Folk.
Tim Willits, Lead designer of id Software, started off his career making custom levels for the original Doom and getting noticed by them. He has since worked on the whole Quake series, as well as Doom 3.
Falcoon used to draw fan art for fighting game series like Street Fighter and The King Of Fighters. Now he draws canon art for the latter.
The Kingdom Hearts Japanese-only novelizations have been stated by Tetsuya Nomura to be non-canonical and simply, like the manga, an adaptation authorized by Square. However, the novel writer, Tomoco Kanamaki, became a promoted fangirl when she was brought on to write the scenario for Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days (however, in fears of any Running The Asylum happening, Nomura did actually edit and re-write the whole thing himself after she was through.)
Several Fan Translation translators have moved onto actual game or anime translations, including Clyde Mandelin, aka Tomato (Mother 3, Bahamut Lagoon, Star Ocean), who now works for FU Nimation, and Nora Stevens Heath (Live A Live) who is a freelancer and has done work on Kingdom Hearts II and Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions.
City Of Heroes has Dr. Aeon, the new developer in charge of the Mission Architect system, who was a longtime player and prolific author on that system.
Lee Brotherton, who now goes by the stage name Bentley Jones, did video game music remixes on OC Remix and would later sing "Dreams of an Absolution" for Sonic The Hedgehog 2006. Tough luck landing promotion on an Obvious Beta, Lee.
- Same game: Actress Lacey Chabert had been a Sonic The Hedgehog fan for some time before landing a role in the English version: Princess Elise. Ouch.
Another case of OC Remix fanboy(s) promotion: Capcom enlisting the entire community for the soundtrack of Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix.
Successful entrepreneurs sometimes succeed in the very themes they wanted to be in since childhood or work on what they've wanted since joining the workforce. Tycho and Gabe of Penny Arcade are gamers who now host an exposition for gamers and make games with Hothead Games.
Jack Black loves Psychonauts and wanted to develop his own game. The result? Brütal Legend.
Ben Croshaw AKA Yahtzee made, considered and ranted about games for years, and begged the industry at large for a job before coming up with Zero Punctuation. One month later he's in The Escapist and at some point he ended up writing for PC Gamer as well.
Nobuhiro Watsuki, creator of popular anime and manga such as Rurouni Kenshin, Buso Renkin and Gun Blaze West, mentioned early in Rurouni Kenshin that he is hooked on the Samurai Shodown series and bought a Neo Geo CD just to play it. In 2003, SNK hired him to design new characters for Samurai Shodown V.
Reportedly, this is how Neversoft took over development of the Guitar Hero series: when Activision bought RedOctane but MTV bought Harmonix (the series' original developers), Activision was apparently wondering what to do with the Guitar Hero license, at which point Neversoft stood up and said "Hey, we're such big fans of Guitar Hero that we played it on breaks while we were working on Tony Hawk! We can totally do it!" Reactions to their treatment of the series has been, well, mixed (It didn't help that Rock Band was, and still is, looming over the horizon at the same time.) but it worked out in Activision's favor big time.
- They'd already done one big shoutout - Judy Nails (the indie chick from the first two games, not the bouncy bosomed thing Neversoft turned her into) was an unlockable character in one of the Tony Hawk games.
Roshambo, a then-moderator of No Mutants Allowed who was vocal of his criticisms of Fallout: Tactics during production, was included in said game as a crazy old man and Brotherhood of Steel paladin who warned the Brotherhood of Steel elders that the storms would bring down the airships, which they did. However, as explained on the Small Name Big Ego page, his appearance in the game is perhaps more of a Take That at his Fan Dumbness.
Video game desginer Warren Spector is a long-time Disney geek; by his own admission though, he kept that a secret, mainly because of the Animation Age Ghetto. The fact that Disney managed to get a big fan like him on board a project that aims to make Mickey Mouse relevant in this present era was coincidental; they seeked him for his resume alone^*
^{After all, he was responsible for Deus Ex.}
, being unaware of his fanboy aspect at first. Either way, from what we know of the game so far, he put his geekiness to extremely good use there.
Much like the Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix example above, a couple of old school Street Fighter players have gone on to bigger things:
- Joey Cuellar, aka Mr. Wizard, runs Shoryuken.com as well as the Evo Championship Series. The latter has gone on to become one of the biggest fighting game tournaments in the world.
- David Sirlin was the lead designer for the afforementioned HD Remix.
- Probably the biggest success is Seth "S-Kill" Killian who now works for Capcom as their Community Manager and runs their official blog site, Capcom-Unity. The (SNK) boss of Street Fighter IV, Seth, was named after him as well.
DM Ashura originally started out making fan remixes and original stepcharts for Dance Dance Revolution simulators, then one of his songs won a contest to get into an official DDR home version. He's had several more songs in DDR since then, plus one in an arcade version of beatmania IIDX.
The Mechwarrior series is being rebooted by Jordan Weiseman, who started the (critically acclaimed) series himself and has bought back the license from Microsoft themselves.
Hikaru Midorikawa himself loves the Super Robot Wars series and he even voices his characters for free! And he gets to voice the FIRST Original Character of Banpresto.
The pinball industry has Lyman F. Sheats, Jr., who was one of the best pinball players during his time, and, after a stint of programming games at Data East Pinball, he went to Williams/Midway to program Brian Eddy's Attack from Mars and Medieval Madness. Currently, he works as a programmer at Stern Pinball, the last remaining pinball company in the US.

General Western Animation

Avatar The Last Airbender Big Name Fan Johanne Matte AKA Rufftoon became a storyboard artist for the show.
- There's also Serena Williams, an admitted fan of the show, making a voice appearance.
Fanartist Nina Matsumoto AKA Spacecoyote drew a manga-styled picture of The Simpsons' cast. The pic quickly became an internet sensation, to the point where it caught the eyes of someone at Bongo Comics (publishers of The Simpsons' comic books), leading to her drawing an entire story ("Bartomu") for Bongo's 2008 Free Comic Book Day special (and promises of more work to come).
- Including a Death Note parody for the recent Treehouse Of Horror, which managed to win an Eisner Award.
- She is currently writing Yokaidan, a comic published through Del Ray Manga.
As this article revealed, a lot of the people working behind Godzilla The Series grew up with Godzilla and were huge fans of the character. This is one of the big reasons why the cartoon turned out to be a lot more faithful to the original Japanese franchise compared to the American movie it was spun off from.
Anika Noni Rose has stated that working for Disney, in any part at all, was her big dream. Then she is given the part of Tiana, an official Disney Princess (which means that Tiana will forever be in the line up with Snow White, Jasmine, Ariel, Belle, Mulan, Pocahontas, Aurora, and Cinderella), in The Princess And The Frog. Magnificent.

Music

Nirvana's Kurt Cobain was a huge fan of indie rock music and his journals were filled with lists of his favorite bands and albums. After he became famous, made sure to never go an interview without gushing over some obscure twee pop or punk band that he adored. In fact, his love of bands like The Raincoats, Beat Happening, The Meat Puppets, Shonen Knife, Young Marble Giants, Melvins, Scratch Acid, Gang of Four and Millions of Dead Cops gained these bands (many of them long broken up) a major resurgence and increased album sales. His favorite band of all time, Scottish twee pop act the Vaselines, were signed to Sub Pop several years after they broke up for the release of a greatest hits album that was created solely from consumer interest spurred by Cobain's constant praise of the band. He even named his daughter after their guitarist Frances Mckee.
Russian keyboard player and Yes fan Igor Khoroshev got to do session work, and then became a full-time member of Yes (1997 - 2002) as a result of sending them a demo tape. Come to that, the Buggles (vocalist Trevor Horn and keyboardist Geoff Downes) were both Yes fans, were both pleased when they were asked to contribute to the group, and both stunned to find out that they were to replace the departed Jon Anderson and Rick Wakeman.
Dan Whitesides, current drummer of the Alternative/Punk rock band The Used, was reportedly a big fan of the band since its debut album and was thrilled to be let in as the drummer.
John Frusciante, a devoted follower of the Red Hot Chili Peppers during their early career, became the band's guitarist in 1988.
Also the case for Steve Mazur, who became Our Lady Peace's guitarist in 2002.
So is the case of former Metallica bassist Jason Newsted.
And then there's Zak Starkey, who was a childhood pupil of Keith Moon, and grew up to take his place in The Who for their tours in the '90s and 2000s.
- Keith Moon is almost an example himself: he was in the audience at one of the Who's early gigs, marched up onto the stage after their set finished, and announced that he could drum better than their (soon to be fired, as it turned out) drummer could. He was invited to prove it, and did.
  - And then he collapsed at a concert and The Who got a fan from the audience to be the drummer for the rest of the show.
Mark Webber, the secretary for the fan club of British alternative rock band Pulp became the band's guitarist in 1995.
The ultimate promoted fanboy in music is probably Tim "Ripper" Owens (AKA, The Man of a Thousand Bands) of Judas Priest, Iced Earth, Yngwie Malmsteens Rising Force and Beyond Fear. He was a singer in a Judas Priest tribute band, and took over as lead singer after Rob Halford left the band.
- Later, after being fired from Judas Priest to make room for Halford, he joined Iced Earth, another band he is apparently a fan of. He was then fired from Iced Earth to make room for his Iced Earth predecessor. Later, he lampshaded his tendencies to get fired from bands in an interview with That Metal Show by joking that he started his solo project so he could have a band he couldn't get fired from.
Quite possibly surpassing Ripper Owens is Henry Rollins. Rollins was a Black Flag fan who, while watching a show, was invited to go up onstage and sing "Clocked In." Eventually, he was offered an opportunity to be the band's fourth singer and he accepted. Rollins was the longest-serving and the most well known Black Flag vocalist.
Arnel Pineda was asked to join the hard rock band Journey after Neal Schonn (guitarist) saw some of his vocal covers on Youtube.
A lot of modern pop-rock bands stem from this. A major example is the group Panic! At the Disco, who stalked Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy on the internet before Wentz signed them to his label.
One can only imagine how awesome Lim Jeong-hyun, a.k.a. Funtwo (of "Canon Rock" fame, the dude in the Youtube video simply titled "guitar" and arguably the first Youtube celebrity) must have felt when he got to play a live concert with Joe Satriani.
The members of Disturbed are all massive fans of Pantera. Imagine their suprise when the Abbot brothers joined them on-stage to perform a cover of Walk for the first time (this became a semi-tradition whenever the Abbots were nearby).
Not exactly a literal example, but it still fits: The Beatles were working on the song "Across the Universe", but Lennon wasn't satisfied with how it was turning out. McCartney suggested they bring in two female fans loitering around Abbey Road Studios, Lizzie Bravo and Gayleen Pease, to do backing vocals. While their backing vocals did end up on the original version of "Across the Universe", Lennon wasn't satisfied with this development. Phil Spector later erased the backing vocals for the version that ended up on Let It Be, replacing them with a choir.
- A slightly better, though still-not-quite-right example: Jimmy Nicol got to be a Beatle for about two weeks when, during a tour, Ringo Starr had to be hospitalized with tonsilitis.
Dan Aykroyd was a huge' fan of Chicago blues music, and ended up introducing his friend John Belushi to the genre (Belushi's previous musical interest tended toward heavy metal and southern rock). The two ended up forming the Blues Brothers band as a sideline, and as a result revitalized interest in the blues as a musical form when the movie was released.

Professional Wrestling

Count 'em, just count 'em. Mick Foley watching Jimmy Snuka jump off the top of the cage, Edge being in the crowd to watch Hulk Hogan and the Ultimate Warrior battle at Wrestlemania VI, Shawn Michaels and his "Boyhood Dream", every single thing John Cena says these days... it might be easier to count the wrestlers who aren't Ascended Fanboys.
All the winners and some of the other participants as well of WWE's Tough Enough.

Sports

ESPN held the "Dream Job" contest, where the winner would become a Sports Center talent. Mike Hall, who won the first contest, now works for the Big Ten Network
Bill James, baseball statistician, got his start developing his Sabermetrics system of baseball statistics while a night watchman in a pork products factory. In 2002, he was hired by the Boston Red Sox and helped them pick up two World Series trophies in 2004 and 2007.
- He's not even the biggest exampe on the Red Sox. Theo Epstein grew up less then a mile from Fenway Park and dreamed of working for the team his whole life. Then he was hired on as the General Manager (the youngest in history) and assembled those same Championship squads.

Other/To Be Categorized

Just some Random Guy is known on You Tube for his I'm a Marvel and I'm a DC videos that use Marvel and DC action figures to parody spots comparing Marvel and DC movies in the style of the "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" ads. While not hired by Marvel or DC, he was hired by New York Comic Con to do bits in the style of his videos, which were approved by Marvel..
Andy Mientus was known for being the creator and maintainer of the first Spring Awakening group on Facebook, which had been granted official status. Several years later he was cast in the touring production of the show as Hanschen.
Abigail Breslin, fan of the American Girls Collection played the main role in the movie about Kit Kittredge.
Kelly Mc Kiernan, once an administrator/webmaster for the Bionicle fansite and forum BZ Power, was temporarily hired by Lego (the makers of Bionicle) in 2007 to serve as webmaster for the official Bionicle while the then-current webmaster was on maternity leave. Even after the main webmaster returned to work in 2009, he stayed on at Lego as the toy line's co-webmaster.

Fictional

In the final episodes of Bamboo Blade, Tama and Rin both achieve Promoted Fangirl status when they get to act in an episode of their favorite toku show, Blade Braver. They end up taking the position a little too excitedly and completely break away from the script.
The same thing happens to Seiji and his gang in Midori Days, when they get minor parts in a movie starring their favorite actor.
Several of the characters of Genshiken are like this, though of the more down-to-earth variety. The lot of them are college otaku, obsessed with video games, doujinshi, anime, and manga. As the story runs down to the end, one gets a job as a game designer, another as an assistant editor for a manga magazine, and a third as a manga author and artist. They are all, also, quite Genre Savvy.
- Don't forget that costume-making king Tanaka is going to design school after graduation.
Laliari from Galaxy Quest, from an alien species which wears the Hat of Fandom for the Show Within A Show, appears at the end of the movie in the credits for its relaunch.
- Guy Fleegman, who played a Redshirt in the show during its original run, is essentially this as well.
On Las Vegas, a fan of Wayne Newton who recently lost his job was invited to come up and sing along with him. He proved so adept at it, he was made a Wayne Newton cover singer in the same hotel.
Megatokyo's Piro, an American otaku with a special fixation on the Dating Sim, ends up dating (on-and-off) a seiyuu who sometimes works in them.
- And it looks like he might be set up as an artist for the same Dating Sim game she's voice acting in.
Pretty much the basic premise of Sonny With A Chance.
In the fictional universe of the Tenacious D television series and movie, Lee is one of these. That may be the case in real life as well.