"I've been sucked into your awful fandom."
— King, The Owl House
A character who starts out not being nerdy is persuaded to try something nerdy and winds up liking it. Unisex Trope, since some of the examples are female — indeed, one of the most common forms portrayed is women watching sports with their significant others (to avoid becoming a Sports Widow) only to end up more fanatical than the boyfriend/husband/what have you.
May result in a character getting into other fandoms as well, since you can't like Star Wars without trying out other science fiction.
Compare Hype Backlash and Hype Aversion should the attempts of conversion fail. Related to I Do Not Like Green Eggs and Ham.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Anime & Manga
- Denji from Chainsaw Man seemed to have become a small movie fan after going on a date to the theaters with Makima. It's not always at the forefront, but he considers a similar activity to be a great idea for a second date and even decides that the Big Bad needs to be eliminated after she decides that bad movies should also be destroyed as part of her plans for utopia.
- Genshiken averts this trope with Saki, who never turns Otaku regardless of how much time she spends hanging out with the club. It's played quite straight with Sasahara's sister Keiko, though, who is completely dismissive of otaku culture until Ohno lends her some Yaoi porno. Keiko enjoys this so much that she eventually fully embraces otaku culture, apparently enjoying her sexuality more as a pervert than in the mainstream.
- The plot of the first part of Otaku no Video, where main character Kubo meets a group of anime Otaku and gradually gets sucked into their world.
- Konata is way bigger an otaku than Kagami in Lucky Star, but there is one scene where Kagami lent Konata a light novel and Konata subsequently buys a ton of other merchandise of that particular series.
- Jeri in Digimon Tamers goes from thinking Digimon is silly to spending a fortune collecting the cards. Finding out Digimon are real probably helped, although many interpret her as having been a closet fan the whole time.
Film
- In The Wizard, the formerly skeptical Sam Woods gets outright addicted to the video games his sons enjoy to the point of almost forgetting about his mission to find two of them before a bounty hunter does. And a reminder that yes, this movie was Merchandise-Driven by Nintendo.
- Throughout the Guardians of the Galaxy movies and their subsequent appearances in the wider Marvel Cinematic Universe, you can tell that the titular team have grown to love 70s and 80s pop music just as much as their leader Peter Quill does.
Literature
- Endo in Endo and Kobayashi Live! The Latest on Tsundere Villainess Lieselotte only started playing the Fictional Romance Game Magikoi because his crush Kobayashi likes it, and hopes they can have more conversational topics. But still, he got to play it for a month and a half before the current story.
- My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!:
- Catarina's love of otome games and otaku culture in her past life is directly stated to be the result of her best friend Atsuko. This process is later repeated when she and Sophia (Atsuko's reincarnation) get Mary interested in romance novels.
- On the other hand, Sophia got her brother Nicol interested in romance novels as well. However, Sophia has a hidden agenda—Nicol has a crush on Catarina, but he is caught in a Friend Versus Lover dilemma as Catarina is betrothed to his Childhood Friend Geordo and wants to find a way to forget Catarina. Specifically, Sophia is recommending Nicol so-called "Stolen Love" novels, where a woman betrothed or promised to another man instead falls in love with someone else. That is exactly what she wants to happen between Nicol, Geordo, and Catarina, not to mention that Sophia also has a crush on Catarina.
Live-Action TV
- On Freaks and Geeks, the title geeks got Daniel into Dungeons & Dragons.
- On Pretty Little Liars, Hanna got into nerdy computer stuff when she started hanging out with Lucas.
- On The Big Bang Theory, Sheldon introduces Penny to Age of Conan and she becomes completely obsessed with it.
- They also introduce her to many scientific concepts, such as Schrödinger's Cat, that she brings up later on her own.
- Not to mention when she retains Star Trek plots (and can use them as metaphors) and quote Star Wars.
- On The IT Crowd, Moss gets Douglas's rowdy business associates to play Dungeons & Dragons with him and Roy. They end up loving it.
- How I Met Your Mother
- Subverted. Try as they might, the guys just can not get the girls to appreciate Star Wars. When Ted is dating Stella, Marshall explains to her that, to Ted, Star Wars is not just a movie, it is a way of life that he has watched and will watch again until the day he dies. If she is only pretending to like it for his sake she will need to keep up this charade forever and will need to endure it on good days and bad, in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, till death do they part. Can she do that?
- It's also played straight, as Barney had never watched Star Wars before Ted and Marshall introduced him to it. He now owns a life-size Stormtrooper.
- In Angel, Gunn was initially very unenthusiastic when Angel invited everyone to the ballet. He ended up loving it. (and Cordelia fell asleep.)
- On Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Rosa makes fun of Terry and Jake for geeking out at a fantasy convention. But when she starts reading a Steampunk novel because the main character resembles her, she admits that it's actually kind of cool.
- On Stranger Things, Erica initially makes fun of the boys for being nerds, but after she gives Dungeons & Dragons a try, she enjoys playing it and has accepted the fact that she's a nerd too.
- Parks and Recreation:
- Ron Swanson is the ultimate anti-social in the series and scavenger hunts and riddles were initially activities he felt were wastes of time. After participating in Leslie Knope's Valentine's Day scavenger hunt that she created for Ben Wyatt, he found himself fully engrossed and later outright giggles at how much he's loving solving riddles, even privately asking Leslie to do something similar for him for his birthday. Throughout the series in later episodes, Ron's love for riddles would become a more openly displayed hobby of his.
- Subverted with Ben concerning Lil' Sebastian. As a someone who didn't grow up in Pawnee, he really doesn't understand the town's obsession with the pony, an obsession that got him derision whenever he expressed his indifference. He would later claim to finally understand the appeal behind Lil' Sebastian but he privately makes it clear that he's doing so for Leslie's sake. Ben's supposed conversion would later be the core of the aforementioned Valentine's Day thing, but the end of the episode makes it clear that Ben still doesn't get it.
Video Games
- Saints Row IV: Matt's loyalty mission involves The Boss using the simulation to help Matt live out a Self-Insert Nyte Blayde fanficti-er "expanded universe fiction". While The Boss is initially annoyed at the mission, they slowly but surely gain interest when Matt explains what the show is about.
Web Comics
- Mark from Weregeek would have been this if he hadn't had a natural predisposition towards geekiness long before he was discovered by the local geek community. He just didn't know that he would make a great geek until he became one.
- Not too long — it was the first time he succumbed to the full moon (Our Weregeeks Are Different).
Web Original
- Whereas on Honorable Hogwarts, Brodie Carinaris had no trouble getting fellow Hot Teacher Bella Banning to appreciate Star Wars.
- While taking a sabbatical from filmmaking, Donnie DuPre from Demo Reel attended an anime convention. Captivated by all that he saw, his dive into the anime medium turns him into a casual fan and helps him in his In-Universe Creator Recovery. All of this done in a Whole-Plot Reference to Lost in Translation (2003).
- Parodied in Yu-Gi-Oh - The Other Abridged Movie. Gary Stu doesn't like the Yu-Gi-Oh! card game and is treated as an absolute pariah who has lost his sense of purpose in life when he's ultimately just a normal kid who simply doesn't like the game. By the end of the movie, he's basically forced by the events of the movie to become converted and declares his love for what he now considers "the greatest game ever invented", even though he has no real reason to and, if he did, was likely more peer pressured into it than anything.
Western Animation
- DuckTales (2017): In "Friendship Hates Magic!", Mrs. Beakley isn't very impressed with Darkwing Duck when Launchpad first shows it to her. By the time they reach the Cliffhanger ending, she's become a die-hard fan.
- In an episode of The Flintstone Kids there was this one time where the brother of one of the kids or something was persuaded to watch an episode of Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels. He loved it.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. In 'Read It And Weep', where Rainbow Dash resists trying the book Twilight suggested she read because she believes reading is for eggheads which Rainbow Dash is definitely not. Eventually, the boredom of being stuck in a hospital room with nothing to do gets to her, and she tries it... and ends up loving it, of course.
- Shows up in an episode of Recess when, due to a broken arm, TJ is forced to spend his recesses inside with the much-maligned "Pale Kids." Warned that a rather diminutive boy named Tiny Sedgwick was previously sentenced to the same fate only to disappear from the playground forever, TJ is of course apprehensive. Meeting the group, he discovers they are merely a group of nerdier kids who spend their free time playing Tabletop RPGs and proceeds to bond with them. Always the bridge builder, TJ proceeds to convince the group's VERY tall leader to spend a recess outside so the other kids aren't so scared of him and his friends. Predictably, local bully Lawson attempts to start trouble with the pale kids, ultimately threatening to do to them what they did to Tiny Sedgwick. This gets him a derisive laugh from the nerds' leader who reveals that HE is Tiny Sedgwick having thrived in his new environment.
- Star vs. the Forces of Evil: In "Friend-enemies", Tom only pretended to be a fan of Mackie Hand and says that Mackie Hand movies are garbage after the ruse is found out. Near the end of the episode, he appears to be genuinely impressed by Mackie Hand's martial arts.
Real Life
- J. J. Abrams' Star Trek (2009) reinvigorated the love of Star Trek for many longtime fans and brought in hordes of new fans from casual viewers. A ton of die-hard Trekkies, however, will tell you that you're not a "true fan" if you only like the Abrams movie.
- The Nostalgia Critic, and by extension Doug Walker, had never heard of Avatar: The Last Airbender and humorously made this point known when people were outraged over his mocking of Mako. Later, in preparation for a review of The Last Airbender, Doug took a look at the entire series for research in what the movie did wrong. It's now his favorite show of all time.
- As a result of his Fan Dumb misrepresenting his character, Mara Wilson used to hate Doug because she thought he was like a Perez Hilton persona. But she was soon convinced that he was a genuinely nice guy (she even squeed over some of his reviews), Critic got one more Humiliation Conga in his long line of many, and everyone found out you don't fuck with her.
- Similarly, Rachel Tietz, who plays Rebecca Stone in Demo Reel, had not seen much of Channel Awesome prior to her audition. She then watched a few episodes of The Nostalgia Critic, and enjoyed what she saw, particularly the Signs review.
- When Jeffrey Katzenberg was named the head of Disney studio in 1984, he admitted that he had little interest in their struggling animation department... but cut to ten years later when their Renaissance was in full swing, and it had become the only department at the studio that he had any interest in. When he resigned from Disney in late 1993, he famously turned down an offer to run the entire DreamWorks SKG studio, choosing instead to only run DreamWorks Animation.
- In the 1980s, veteran game show host Geoff Edwards was called upon to host the game show Starcade, which was based around video games. The original host, Mark Richards, was dismissed by Ted Turner (as the show aired on Superstation WTBS) for knowing nothing about video games. Seeking to avoid that pitfall, Edwards made sure to study up on all the games Starcade had to offer... and ended up becoming a video game fanatic. He'd offer his own tips to the players during the game, and was shown on-camera during a "Starcade Hotline" segment playing, and beating, the Nintendo Hard game Sinistar. He remained a devoted gamer for the rest of his life.
- Daredevil (2015)
- When Charlie Cox got the role of Matt Murdock, he knew very little about the character. In fact, he didn't even know the character was blind until the day before the audition. Over time, he began to read comics to prepare for the role. Now, he's not only a fan of Daredevil, but comics in general and has been campaigning for Marvel to let the character crossover into the MCU films. And he did.
- Deborah Ann Woll (Karen Page) had never read the comics before the show started, so when she was cast as Karen, she started to read the beginning of the comics and the storylines that revolved around Karen, as well as series that she knew season 1 was going to bring up and base storylines around.
- After being cast as Piccolo in Dragonball Evolution, James Marsters watched the anime to study the character. He ended being such a big fan of it that he furiously protested when Piccolo's movie design was significantly different from his original appearance. He would even later voice Zamasu in Dragon Ball Super.
- Renowned comic book painter Alex Ross originally could not care less for the X-Men, even more so for Wolverine who has had less than savory depictions in Ross's books (Earth X had Wolvie as an alcoholic fatass who sits around watching TV all day). Then Bryan Singer's little movie came out and Ross jumped at the chance to be part of a relaunch for the comic line, even
◊ creating◊ redesigns◊. Unfortunately, he wasn't able to be part of what would ultimately become Grant Morrison's run but was still left liking the team more than he initially did.
- Phelous didn't have a great first impression of the 2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon due to Turtles Forever's apparent bias against the 1987 show, of which he was really fond of. After sitting down and actually checking out the show, he's found himself really enjoying it, to the point of finding that Turtles Forever also failed to characterize them correctly, referencing the show to the same degree as the original, and wishing that '03 had a crossover episode with the 2012 cartoon.
- After filming Pokémon Detective Pikachu, Bill Nighy immediately became a Pokémon fanboy, to the point where he bought every single Pokémon guide to learn more about the series. He even called the Pokédex a "masterwork".
- Ryan Reynolds learned who Deadpool was when he was alerted to a specific panel where the character described himself as Reynolds crossed with a shar-pei◊. From there, he dived deep into the comics, got really fond of superheroes, and aimed hard to be cast in any comic book movie he could (thus Blade: Trinity and Green Lantern (2011)) until he eventually found his niche playing the character that got him into it in the first place. Well, that's not to say they got the character right at first, but eventually they would manage it.
- Rebecca Ford, the community manager of Warframe, eventually became a fan of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure due to all the jokes and references to the show made by the community. Even commissioning art of Rhino and Atlas posing as Joseph and Caesar.
- Margot Robbie had such a blast playing Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad (2016) that she immediately looked up any comic featuring the character for material to turn into another movie, just so she could play Harley again. What resulted was her discovering Birds of Prey (a title that barely had anything to do with Harley, mind you), loving what she found, and spearheading production on Birds of Prey (2020).
- Charles Martinet had never heard about Mario when he first auditioned for the part. It eventually became his most famous role (along with Luigi, Wario, Waluigi and others), and one that he loves to play, in every sense of the word (he has stated that Super Mario Maker was his favorite game).
- Star Wars:
- Chris Avellone was fairly ambivalent towards the franchise, having largely lost interest in it when he was young. Then, he was brought on to write Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords and researched the canon in preparation. He ended up finding a new love for the series and became a big fan, particularly praising the first Knights of the Old Republic.
- Werner Herzog took a role in The Mandalorian for purely financial reasons, having never really cared one way or the other about Star Wars before. He quickly came to love the series, praising the Worldbuilding and Practical Effects. Similarly, Bill Burr—who usually prefers harder, more cerebral sci-fi—deeply enjoyed working on the series thanks to its Space Western elements (Westerns being another genre he's a big fan of).
- Despite being cast as Jean Grey, Famke Janssen was apparently not too aware of X-Men lore since it took fans excitedly telling her about The Dark Phoenix Saga for her to read the comics. Needless to say, she thought the storyline was pretty awesome and couldn't wait for the films to eventually adapt it. It's also because of her excitement that she later admitted to thinking X-Men: The Last Stand, which relegated the Dark Phoenix aspects to only one of the many subplots, as a mess.
- LittleKuriboh made plenty of jokes at the expense of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX in his Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series, but came to love the show once he started actually watching it for his LittleKuriboh Watches YGO GX videos.
- In 2023, after watching Shin Kamen Rider (2023), he has since dove deep into the rabbit hole of Kamen Rider, binging shows starting from Zero-One, Ryuki, and Kuuga, plus the then-current show, Gotchard, which also happen to contain similarities to both GX and Yu-Gi-Oh in general. From there, he's started Super Sentai as well. All of which he livetweets, too!
- After Guillermo del Toro introduced him to the manga, James Cameron ended up spending about over a decade trying to get Alita: Battle Angel made.
- Thomas Jane didn't become a comic book fan until accepting the role of The Punisher. Afterwards, he became quite involved in the industry, including founding his own comics company just to self-publish his own work. At one point, he lobbied to star as Jonah Hex, going as far as to hire a makeup artist to do some self-produced costume tests◊. He eventually got the role through DC Showcase: Jonah Hex.
- Sean Connery had no interest in golf until he had to learn to play while filming Goldfinger in order to convincingly keep up with avid golfer Gert Fröbe. Connery ended up falling in love with the game, and it became his most well known hobby, with him participating in numerous tournaments.
- Drew Gooden admitted that he'd bought into the Hype Backlash against Lost as a child and as a result shrugged it off. It wasn't until years later when his wife put the series on as a joke that Drew finally saw what the acclaim was about and now considers it one of the greatest and most groundbreaking television shows of all time.
- Kanye West hadn't heard of Daft Punk prior to doing production work on his 2007 album Graduation, but became a huge fan of them after A-Trak shared him several of their tracks, with "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" being sampled into his own hit track, "Stronger". Not only would Kanye get in touch with them for the song's music video and get them a surprise guest appearance during the 2008 Grammys (marking the duo's first-ever televised live performance), Kanye would also directly collaborate with them for a handful of tracks on his 2013 album, Yeezus. He still holds the duo in high regard, even claiming that while he's proud of "Stronger", even he doesn't think it compares to Daft Punk's original song.
- George Ledoux is a professional voice actor who originally took the MechWarrior 4: Mercenaries job as typical voiceover work. He unexpectedly became a fan favorite as the Large-Ham Announcer Duncan Fisher, who narrates the player's Solaris championship run, often considered the best part of the game. He ended up being requested by fans to play Duncan Fisher in other games, such as Mechwarrior Online, and after teaming up with Fandom VIP Tex of the Black Pants Legion, George has become such a fan of the BattleTech universe that he's gotten fully into the character and has had several stories of Duncan Fisher commissioned, which he reads on his Youtube channel much to the glee of fans.
- Partly a reason why Patrick Stewart went from grouchy Classically-Trained Extra to genuine passionate advocate for Star Trek is because he discovered that a good number of Trekkies became fans of William Shakespeare when they went to see Stewart's performances.
- Michael Bay was not excited when asked to look into doing a Transformers movie, but said that you don't turn down an offer from Steven Spielberg. He went to Hasbro headquarters and was bombarded with concept art of robot titans, inciting the imagination of what he could do with the concept. He had done a number of Car Chase scenes, but none that had robots transforming at 80 miles per hour.
