Promoted Fanboy

""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

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 (a fan In Universe), Big Name Fan (the ones most likely to be promoted), One of Us, Official Fan Submitted Content.

As noted in the Doctor Who entry below, many long-running franchises (such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Kamen Rider, Marvel Comics, DC Comics and Transformers) have been on for so long that it's only natural that fans would get to work on them.

Star Trek
""Sure as every odd-numbered Star Trek film is shit.""
 * 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.
 * And now, he's made his own sci-fi series.
 * The entire role of Guinan was created because Whoopi Goldberg was a Star Trek the Original Series fan (specifically, Nichelle Nichols was her inspiration to start acting) and wanted on the show.
 * 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).
 * 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.
 * Randy Pausch, who listed being captain of the Enterprise as one of his dreams in "The Last Lecture" appears as a bridge member of the Kelvin. He walks past the captain's chair, says, "Captain, we have visual", and is not seen again.
 * Karl Urban was a hardcore Trekkie growing up. He was cast as Dr. McCoy in the new movie.
 * Simon Pegg is also a major fan of Trek, and he has said that he was placed in the new movie (canonically the eleventh) to disprove comments his character made on the sitcom Spaced:


 * Jolene Blalock (T'Pol of Star Trek Enterprise) was also a Trekkie growing up.
 * In his book "Worlds of Wonder" writer David Gerrold states he was one of these already during the show's original run.
 * Seth Macfarlane is another admitted fan, and he guest started in two episodes of Star Trek Enterprise.
 * Jason Alexander has credited William Shatner for him wanting to be an actor and watched the original series growing up. He guest starred in an episode of Star Trek Voyager and played a comedic version of Kirk in The Ultimate Trek special.
 * Dwight Schultz was a big fan of Star Trek -- in fact, it was the first show he ever watched in color television as a child. He worked with Whoopi Goldberg on the movie The Long Walk Home and told her how big a fan he was of the show and her part in it. She had a word with the writers, resulting in Reg Barclay.
 * Tim Russ, most famous for his role as Lieutenant Tuvok in Star Trek Voyager, was a devoted trekkie long before that and had already had several small roles in other Star Trek series.
 * Almost happened to Tom Hanks, yet another long-time Trekkie, who auditioned for the role of Zephram Cochrane in Star Trek First Contact. He was very disappointed when the role went to James Cromwell.

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.
 * After making Troops, Kevin Rubio went on to write Star Wars comics, and now is working on episodes of Star Wars the Clone Wars.
 * Steve Sansweet, who has the largest personal collection of Star Wars related material in the world, was eventually hired by Lucasfilm itself to be their Director of Content Management and Head of Fan Relations, a position he held from 1996 until 2011.
 * Hayden Christensen always was interested in Darth Vader in his childhood. In Revenge of the Sith the original intention was to have a large stuntman in the Vader suit but Christensen 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. When he strolled onto the set clad in Vader armor, the crew cheered.
 * 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.
 * 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.
 * His character has reappeared twice in season three, despite being killed in his original appearance, due to the non-linear nature of many of season three's episodes, and his character being the sidekick to Ensemble Darkhorse Cad Bane.
 * Most, if not all, of the Star Wars the Clone Wars voice cast have admitted to be long time Star Wars fans, most notable James Arnold Taylor, Dee Bradley Baker and Tom Kane. So is supervising director, Dave Filoni.
 * 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.
 * They have come under fire, however. Particularly when Gary Sarli, Star Wars RPG writer and fellow scientist and Star Wars aficionado, pointed out the huge inconsistencies that went into making the books, specifically how Saxton's calculations for the Base Delta Zero command underestimated the number of ships involved by at least an order of magnitude, the amount of time required by at least an order of magnitude, and overestimated the thoroughness of the attack by about 3 orders of magnitude. Then he used these massively inflated numbers for the basis for almost everything else.
 * Modi is the pseudonym for a Hungarian fan who had been making unofficial maps of the Star Wars galaxy for years. When Lucasfilm decided to publish The Essential Atlas, they hired him to make some draft maps that professional artists would finish. His work ended up being such high quality that they scrapped the "professional artists" plan and just used his maps as is.
 * Grant Imahara was but a wee child when he first saw R2D2 on the silver screen. Almost thirty years and one electrical engineering degree later, he became Artoo (or rather its pilot and main technician).

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. He has 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 2007, Tennant appeared as the Tenth Doctor and in the special episode "Time Crash", Peter Davison guest starred as the Fifth Doctor, with 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."
 * And now that Tennant has married Georgia Moffett -- Peter Davison's daughter, who also had a role as the Tenth Doctor's "daughter" in one episode -- he's gone rocketing past mere "Promoted Fanboy" and it's possible a new Trope needs to be invented just for him.
 * Tennant, like everyone else, loved Sarah Jane Smith. Not only did he get to work with Elisabeth Sladen during "School Reunion," but he got to be the one to give her the heart-melting "Goodbye, my Sarah Jane," that Sarah Jane waited decades for.
 * 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...
 * Sixth Doctor Colin Baker is also a big fan of Doctor Who before and after his run - and still watches the show to this day.. He still is, and has gone on record saying that The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances are the best episodes the series has ever produced.
 * Inverted with Matt Smith, who became a hardcore fan while playing the role. Watching the Second Doctor influenced his costume choice (particularly the bowtie), and he apparently wrote a fanfic where the Doctor meets Albert Einstein. He also apparently called up Steven Moffat in the middle of the night to rave about "Tomb of the Cybermen" after watching it.
 * 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 season. 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 revival television series had an involvement with the AudioVisuals fan audios series starring Nicholas Briggs as his version of the Doctor. One of the more prominent AudioVisuals creators, Gary Russell (who had auditioned by the part of Adric), has script edited for the Whoniverse shows and Briggs has voiced the Daleks, Cybermen and sundry other monsters (in both the new series and Big Finish Doctor Who, the latter of which he is also the executive producer of) and appeared in person in Torchwood: Children of Earth.
 * Neil Gaiman described writing "The Doctor's Wife" as the closest thing to being God he will ever experience (and gushed over both the Moff and Rusty in a blog post after the episode aired).
 * Mark Gatiss is the only person to have the distinction of having written for every "New Who" Doctor and having appeared on the show as an actor twice. If you count Big Finish audios, he has written for seven Doctors, and he's also the only person to play both the Doctor and the Master.
 * Derek Jacobi, who, when he played the Master in the episode "Utopia", announced being in Doctor Who was one of his two unfulfilled ambitions. (The other was being in Coronation Street.)

Transformers
"Waspinator: Not wacko -- wonko! Wonko the Sane!"
 * 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 web comics, is another long-time Transformers fan, who has been hired by Hasbro to produce convention art. He also got to create Shattered Glass Ravage, who has become a canon character.
 * Matt Tieger, the director of the Transformers War for Cybertron series, is a big Transformers fan, in particular of the Dinobot Grimlock. So strong is his admiration for the character that he convinced Hasbro to not scrap the Grimlock so he could include him in the upcoming Fall of Cybertron.
 * 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, and was shot by Beast Wars Megatron at a convention.
 * He was also name-dropped (by his internet handle) in at least one episode.


 * Shane McCarthy, 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 a Nostalgia Filter or you like Darker and Edgier stuff since his story is essentially a grimmer, Decompressed Comic version of the G1 cartoon series.
 * Nick Roche and James Roberts are a pair of UK Transformers fans who became co-writers (with Roche also doing art) for IDW's Transformers comics. Their latest collaboration, Transformers Last Stand of the Wreckers, has been very well received, especially since they have much more fan-friendly asylum-running tendencies than McCarthy.
 * Brazilian voice actor Guilherme Briggs was a Transformers fan in his childhood, and later dubbed Optimus Primal in Beast Machines and all subsequent incarnations of Optimus Prime except Animated.
 * During the Dreamwave Comics period, a lot of Transformers fan-artists were hired to work on the comics, apparently out of love for the series. That didn't go quite well. Most still remain working for IDW and/or Hasbro.
 * Joe Hahn, turntablist and music video director for Linkin Park, is well known to be a fan of the series - Transformers can be found Hahn's DJ booths on stage and even some of the band's cover art. So when Linkin Park end up doing the main themes for the Michael Bay movies...

Kamen Rider

 * 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 All Riders vs. Dai-Shocker; he even appears in-character in the music video for the film's theme song, "The Next Decade".
 * 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 (or it may be just a cross-reference to the Toei Company producing both Pretty Cure and Kamen Rider).
 * Steve Wang and his brother Mike Wang are avid Kamen Rider fans, particularly of the Showa era television series. Then in 2009 they became the co-executive producers, writers, and directors of Kamen Rider Dragon Knight. Steve himself stated in an interview that producing Kamen Rider Dragon Knight was a dream come true for him.
 * Renn Kiriyama, the lead actor in Kamen Rider Double, is like his predecessors a huge Kamen Rider fan. Specifically, he's a fan of Black,
 * Keisuke Kato was also this, he is a big Kamen Rider fan and landed the role of Kamen Rider IXA in Kamen Rider Kiva as Keisuke Nago.

Anime and Manga

 * Many, possibly the majority, of well-known mangaka got their start writing doujinshi; typically starting with fan-fic before moving on to original work. Notable examples below.
 * CLAMP, creators of Cardcaptor Sakura, Chobits, and many other successful manga, started out as a doujinshi circle back in the 80's.
 * Azuma Koyohiko, creator of Azumanga Daioh and Yotsubato started out doing doujinshi based on various shows, including Neon Genesis Evangelion, Tenchi Muyo, and Battle Athletes Victory, and Sailor Moon. He even wrote erotic doujinshi under the pseudonym Joji Jonokuchi.
 * Eiichiro Oda, author of One Piece, was a massive Dragonball 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, Caitlin Glass, and Crispin Freeman.
 * Hell, ADV Films was founded by anime fans who 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.
 * American Dragon Jake Long anyone? Dubbed by fandubbers-gone-pro!
 * Avatar: The Last Airbender? Hey, that one too!
 * Neon Genesis 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 The 08th MS Team... and few later, he voiced Zechs Merquise, Gym Ghingham and Mu La Flaga.
 * Likewise, Kei Shindou was a Cosplay Otaku Girl before she became a seiyuu.
 * After holding panels at some conventions and posting some essays on the Internet, Neon Genesis Evangelion fanboy Sean McCoy was invited by ADV Films to record some of the commentaries for the Platinum release of the series, giving him three full episodes and two special feature segments to share his incredibly elaborate theories (some might say ridiculously elaborate) about the meaning behind the show's abstract symbolism alongside ADV honcho and English dub director Matt Greenfield. Strangely, after this "promotion", he has barely been heard from again.
 * Along similar lines, self-proclaimed "Eva Monkey" Taliesin Jaffe co-recorded commentaries for Death & Rebirth and The End of Evangelion alongside dub director, writer and voice actress Amanda Winn Lee and her husband Jason. Jaffe's situation differed from McCoy's in that Jaffe had actually worked in the anime industry already and voiced extras in the movies, and in that he spent his time on the commentaries offering various suggestions as to what the symbols in the movies could mean, as opposed to detailing his own theories as to what they "do" mean.
 * Mike McFarland, ADR director for the English dubs of the Rebuild of Evangelion films, was a fan of the series for the better part of a decade before he had a chance to actually work on it.
 * The HeartGold/SoulSilver miniarc in Pokémon had Lyra's friend Khoury voiced in the dub by someone who had won a contest: Chris "Kirbopher" Niosi.
 * Mark Simmons and Keith Rhee, two Big Name Fans of Gundam, were hired by Bandai, Simmons working on the localization of several series and Rhee on the official website. Furthermore, the Federation male custom pilots in the Encounters In Space game are named after the two of them.
 * Studio Gainax, who got their start by producing a well-known pair of independent anime shorts (the DAICON III and IV Opening Animations) for a Japanese science fiction convention in 1981 and 1983.
 * Lianne Sentar had been writing over 3,000 stories of Sailor Moon Fan Fiction since she was 13. She was hired to write the Tokyo Pop novel adaptations distributed in North America for only this reason.
 * Jason Griffith managed to accomplish this by accident. According to him, he was a big fan of Sonic the Hedgehog and auditioned for the role of Chris Thorndyke in Sonic X so that he could "know what it's like to be Sonic's human friend". Imagine his surprise when he got the role of Sonic himself.
 * Gackt (already mentioned under Kamen Rider above) is also a huge Gundam fan, having contributed the theme song to the long-dead theme park attraction "Gundam the Ride: A Baoa Qu", recording a remix of "Ai Senshi" from the original series, and even getting a concert audience to chant "Sieg Zeon!" by delivering Garma Zabi's funeral speech from memory. In 2010 he finally got to join the Gundam universe proper by voicing ex-, the Original Generation Final Boss of Gundam Extreme Vs.

Comics
""Last issue? What do you mean, LAST ISSUE? What the hell does that mean? Did you type it wrong? Were you thinking of something else, like maybe the Sub-mariner or the Smurfs? How can there be a last issue when the story is obviously going to continue for years? You're some kind of wrong person. Have it looked into.""
 * Nicolas Cage is a HUGE Ghost Rider fan, who's always wanted to portray the character (he even has him tattooed on his arm). He got his wish, even though that meant he had to cover the tattoo to portray the character.
 * Squicktacularly, he's also a huge Elvis Presley fan who ended up marrying the daughter of the King. He also got to impersonate Elvis himself in Wild At Heart, and jumped off a plane dressed up as Elvis in Honeymoon In Vegas.
 * Kevin Smith is probably the best known promoted fanboy on the planet. The sheer amount of knowledge he has about comics (and in turn how many he's written) is evidence enough.
 * Ian "Potto" Flynn. Current writer for the Archie Sonic comic series, was once a fanboy with 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. He was a lifetime Justice League fanboy who spent his whole career at Marvel. Though he didn't create the Justice League analogue Squadron Supreme, he did write their highly-acclaimed limited series.
 * 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.
 * 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. 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.
 * 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 #1 writer and the man behind some of their most successful books and events as well as the company's Chief Creative Officer.
 * Tristan Huw Jones was a huge fan of the original 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).
 * Dave Gibbons was a fan of Dan Dare as a child. When Dan Dare was revived by Two Thousand AD, he was one of the artists who got to draw it, much to his delight.
 * And of course, the fathers of the superhero genre, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, were reportedly huge, stereotypical nerds in love with science fiction, and with their creation, they ushered in that subgenre of sci-fi/fantasy.
 * Joss Whedon was a fan of Runaways long before he got to write his own arc, and was rather vocally upset at the idea of it ending at 18 issues: the letter he sent was included in the first TPB.


 * Gerard Way (of My Chemical Romance and The Umbrella Academy) interned at DC before he was in a band, and used to see Grant Morrison come into the offices on occasion (and marveled at how he dressed like King Mob). Several years later, Morrison is name-dropping "The Black Parade" and playing the villian in the band's music videos.
 * Matt Frank, an artist who was known for his popular Godzilla Neo fanart, is now doing writing and artwork for offical Godzilla comics.
 * The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe didn't cover everything. Enter the Appendix to the Handbook of the Marvel Universe, a completely unofficial website that tried to chronicle every single thing that the official books either didn't cover at all, or didn't cover to a full extent. The senior staff has since been hired by Marvel Comics to write the newest versions of the OHOTMU.
 * Andrew Garfield is a lifelong Spider-man fan and credits the character with being his inspiration. His co-star in The Amazing Spider-man Rhys Ifans also describes himself as an "Obsessive fan".
 * Unlike the previous actors who played the role, Brandon Routh is a huge fan of Superman. He even dressed as Superman for halloween a year before and had Superman bed sheets as a child.
 * Several people involved in the Marvel Cinematic Universe qualify, but Samuel L Jackson stands out for the way he got the part of Nick Fury. Marvel approached him to ask for his likeness rights for the Ultimate Marvel reimagining of Fury, and Jackson said yes - on the condition that he got first chance to play Fury in a movie.

Film

 * 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.
 * Quentin Tarantino - the video store clerk who watched every single movie ever, and then started directing his own original films.
 * So did Robert Rodriguez, who started with no-budget efforts such as Bedhead to draw attention, that would help him in making bigger things.
 * So did Sam Raimi.
 * Christopher Lee apparently re-reads The Lord of the Rings once a year and was the only one on the film set who has actually met Tolkien. 'Nuff said.
 * Tracie Thoms was a Renthead in her younger years, and ended up cast as Joanne in the feature film.
 * The a Team: Sharlto Copley, full stop.
 * He stated in an interview that he got to show his audition tape ("Things Murdock Would Do in a Hotel Room") to Dwight Schultz, the original Murdock, who both laughed and cried when he saw it. Sharlto must have had a Nerdgasm of epic proportions.
 * Famed aviator and industrialist Howard Hughes was a big fan of movies. So big, in fact, that he bought the film studio RKO Radio Pictures in 1948. Unfortunately for RKO, love for cinema doesn't necessarily equal being a good studio head. Hughes ran RKO into the ground during his seven-year run, firing 75% of the staff in his first few weeks and shutting down production for six months in 1949 in order to investigate the politics of the remaining 25%. Hughes left RKO in 1955, and the studio went out of business two years later.
 * As a child, Brian Blessed used to play Flash Gordon with his brother, and used to actually pretend to be Vultan. Then he got to play Vultan in the movie.
 * Jim Carrey was a Batman fanboy as a child. In The Nineties, he got to play The Riddler in Batman Forever.
 * Billy Dee Williams appeared as Harvey Dent in the 1989 Batman. He was a fan of the comics who signed on hoping to play Two Face in a sequel. Unfortunately, when the time came for Two Face to appear in Batman Forever, he was replaced with Tommy Lee Jones.
 * United States Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) is an avowed fan of Batman, and has since had cameos in Batman and Robin and The Dark Knight: the former as an extra, and the latter as a guest at Bruce Wayne's party who stands up to the Joker. Since he could have been playing himself or an Expy thereof in The Dark Knight, also counts as Politician Guest Star.
 * Noomi Rapace is an admitted fan of the films of Ridley Scott and credited him as an inspiration for her acting career. She would then get the lead role in his film Prometheus.
 * AJ LoCascio has been a huge fan of the Back to The Future films from when he was a kid. He now gets to voice Marty McFly in the Telltale games -- and has also gotten to meet Bob Gale, Christopher Lloyd, and even Claudia Wells. He has yet to make contact with Michael J Fox, though.
 * 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 Harry Potter and 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. 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.
 * In November of 2013, JJ Abrams and Kathleen Kennedy selected two British robot-building fans of Star Wars to be on the official construction crew creating the R2-D2s to be used in the final Star Wars trilogy.

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).
 * Michael Moorcock became editor of the small UK-based pulp magazine Tarzan Adventures when he was just 16
 * 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 HP Lovecraft pastiches; Lovecraft eventually dedicated a story to him.
 * Abigail Breslin, fan of the American Girls Collection, played the main role in the movie about Kit Kittredge.
 * A fair number of Sherlock Holmes fans have gone on to write canonical (or as close to as is possible when the guy who owns the fandom is dead) material that have been published, performed on TV or radio or had some other decent stamp of approval. Working out who was a fan and wasn't is tough since there's a LOT of latter day writers. However, at the very least Stephen King and the above mentioned Issac Asimov have written published Holmes stories and were fans.
 * Kingsley Amis was a noted fan of James Bond, writing a number of books on the subject, and finally was asked to write a canon novel for the series. Similarly, Raymond Benson had been fond enough of the series to write unofficial works before approached to write in canon, and eventually contributed six original novels. Notably, Benson ignored much of the earlier continuity.

Live Action Musical

 * 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.
 * In a recent documentary on Matt Lucas, he mentioned how he had been a lifelong fan of musicals and of Les Miserables in particular, and had always wanted to have a part. He was cast as Thenardier for the 25th anniversary concert.

Live Action TV

 * Michelle Trachtenberg guest starred in the the episode of House MD, "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."
 * She also 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!" Joss's response: "So, next season, more Michelle, less Nick..."
 * 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 Panettiere (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.
 * Jason Segel, a huge Muppet fan (and NPH's co-star on How I Met Your Mother) was selected to write and star in the movie relaunch of the franchise.
 * 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.
 * 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 Shout Out to it a few episodes before she showed up.
 * And then we get Stringer Bell showing 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.
 * Demi Lovato guest-starred on Greys Anatomy, her favorite show.
 * Taylor Swift, another big fan of Grey's, had her song "White Horse" featured in one of the episodes.
 * Junya Ikeda, who portrays Gai Ikari/GokaiSilver in Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger, is a lifelong Super Sentai fan... just like his character. For bonus promotion points, he mentionned that in kindergarten, he wanted to be KibaRanger from Gosei Sentai Dairanger --- Gokaiger's Mega Manning aspect allows for that.
 * Inverted with Nao Nagasawa (Nanami/Hurricane Blue in Ninpuu Sentai Hurricanger), who became a devoted fan of the Super Sentai franchise while playing the role.
 * Rich Koz, the current Svengoolie, who applied for a writing position and became the show's star in both revivals when the original Svengoolie, Jerry G. Bishop, decided he didn't want the job back and gave Koz his blessing.
 * Kevin Smith spent the early '90s watching Degrassi Junior High and Degrassi High on PBS at work, and is a huge fan of the franchise, giving it several Shout Outs in his films and even naming a character in Clerks after his favorite Degrassi character. So when the series was revived, Smith jumped at the chance to direct the last three episodes of the fourth season -- and he wrote himself into a brief romance with Caitlin Ryan, the character he grew up infatuated with.
 * The Megaoptera from Primeval were designed by a 16-year old fan of the show called Carim Nahaboo, who'd won a competition to design the most interesting creature.
 * Missie Good was a Xena: Warrior Princess fan. She wrote some Expanded Universe novels and two episodes of the actual series (season six's "Coming Home" and "Legacy").
 * Rod Roddy, the announcer on The Price Is Right from 1986 to 2003, had previously attended a taping of the show in its early years to seek advice from original announcer Johnny Olson on how to find work as a television announcer.
 * The same thing happened with Rod's successor, Rich Fields, who took over in 2004. Rich attended a taping when he was 18, and during a commercial break, he asked Johnny how he could get an announcing job.
 * Mandel Ilagan was the founder of the newsgroup alt.tv.game-shows and a contestant on the 1998 revival of Match Game. By 2000, he'd become a writer for Greed, and later worked as a producer for Fremantle Media (while there, he created one of Price's pricing games) and then Fox Reality Channel.
 * Joss Whedon is a fan of Glee, and is particularly fond of the character Brittany. When he finally got to direct an episode, he couldn't help but gush about how much he loved the character to actress Heather Morris.
 * This is the entire purpose of The Glee Project: to find a brand new actor and character (and maybe more than one) for at least a guest arc on Season 3.
 * As a kid, John Kassir read and collected Tales From The Crypt comics, which became one of his all-time favorites. Years later after becoming a professional actor, Kassir was called in to audition for and then cast to voice the Crypt Keeper himself.
 * Daniella Monet grew up a huge Nickelodeon fan and said in an interview that getting to work on the hit Nick show Victorious is like a dream come true for her and she sometimes has to pinch herself just to make sure she's not dreaming.

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.
 * Cobain also averted this trope by auditioning to play bass for the Melvins before Nirvana was formed. He was so nervous that he forgot all their songs and ended up settling for being a sometimes roadie for them until his own success. Cobain later co-produced The Melvins' only major label album, Houdini, in 1993.
 * Apparently, Courtney Love managed to convince Kim Gordon to produce the first Hole album by sending her a letter about how much they admired her work and in particular "the SST album".
 * Dave Grohl. And he still somehow manages to convey a "Gee! How lucky am I?" rock geek persona after winning numerous Grammy awards and playing to sold out stadiums (including Wembley!) with Foo Fighters, occasionally with his musical heroes from bands like Led Zeppelin, Queen and Motorhead joining him on stage. Yeah, Mr Grohl has this trope down pat.
 * The whole concept of Grohl's Probot project was working with the metal vocalists he idolized as a teenager (such as Max Cavalera, King Diamond, and again, Lemmy). He also got to play on Killing Joke's 2003 Self Titled Album after being a longtime fan, and apparently declined to be paid for it.
 * 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 (they also shared a manager), 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.
 * Benoît David He became the lead vocalist of a Yes tribute band called Close To The Edge in 1994. In 2008, he was selected by members of the group Yes to stand in for an ailing Jon Anderson
 * Inverted by Trevor Rabin he was putting together a band called Cinema which gradually had more and more members of Yes join. He never wanted the band to be called Yes and did not want to be seen as Steve Howes replacement.
 * 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. Unfortunately, his reception had been rather lukewarm, especially considering his replacement of the late great Cliff Burton, and he eventually left the band due to, among other things, never completely fitting in with them.
 * 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 Malmsteen's 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.
 * Which was then further lampshaded by another member of the band, who said "Actually, we were gonna fire him after the festival"
 * 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.
 * Wisconsin musician Sean Carey joined Justin Vernon's solo project Bon Iver after approaching Vernon during Bon Iver's first show. Carey had "learned all of the drum parts and all of the harmonies," and ended up touring with Vernon for over two years.
 * 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.
 * Ringo Starr joining the band in the first place was both an example and an inversion of this. Starr was a fan of the Beatles in their prefame days and sometimes filled in for Pete Best (their original drummer); but at the same time, Paul and George saw Ringo--then drummer for a more popular band called Rory Storm and the Hurricanes--as cool older kid (by a couple of years, anyway) coming down from on high to help them out. When he finally joined, everyone was happy... for a few years, anyway.
 * Mark Lewisohn went from winning a Beatles trivia contest, to writing the officially-sanctioned book The Beatles Recording Sessions, to writing liner notes for Beatles CDs, to working directly for Paul McCartney.
 * 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.
 * Brian Nelson became a fan of Alice Cooper in the early '70s and owned a huge collection of Alice related stuff before even meeting the man. He eventually got hired as Alice's personal assistant in the early '80s and kept the job until he passed away in 2009. He never stopped collecting and was generally considered to be the biggest Alice Cooper fan in the world.
 * Jon Stewart is a huge Bruce Springsteen fan, was overjoyed to have the chance to interview him on The Daily Show in 2009. Later that year, Stewart gave the presentation speech for Springsteen at the Kennedy Center Honors.
 * Carlos "Indio" Solari, better known in Argentina as the lead singer of the band Patricio Rey y sus Redonditos de Ricota, is a self confessed fan of Andres Calamaro, to the point of even recording a Cover Version of one of his songs in a Cover Album. Also Calamaro himself also loves Solari's work on both his solo career and with his former band. He was invited by Solari to sing on his own album, and then to sing said song, the Cover Version and other songs in a pair of gigs.
 * Zakk Wylde was an enormous Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath fan who got hired to Ozzy's band partly for knowing practically every Ozzy and Sabbath song released at that point. He often cites former Ozzy guitarist Randy Rhoads as his hero and the reason he plays the way he does and he is so devoted in his worship that he played the same model and color guitar as Rhoads (which he had his now trademark black bullseye painted on so the imitation wouldn't be so obvious to Ozzy fans), spent every hour he could mastering Rhoads' songs until he could hit them note by note, even built a shrine to Rhoads in his closet and eventually named his kid after him! To this day he still enthusiastically expresses his love for Rhoads and has a few custom built replicas of Rhoads' other guitars. As for the gig with Ozzy, it lasted for 20 years (with a few breaks) and Ozzy is the godfather of his kids.
 * Helen Love is a bubblegum pop-punk band that writes about almost nothing but the lead singer's crush on Joey Ramone. Joey Ramone did guest vocals on their song Punk Boy.
 * Ron Wood has stated that when he first saw The Rolling Stones, he said to himself that he wanted to be in that band someday. Years later, he became their lead guitarist.
 * Rob Sheridan, current art director for Nine Inch Nails, was lucky enough to be spotted and hired by Trent Reznor thanks to his fansite dedicated to the band.
 * Speaking of Reznor, he's a big fan of David Bowie, and was influenced by the album Low when recording The Downward Spiral. NIN would later tour with Bowie in 1995, and Reznor himself would feature in the video for "I'm Afraid of Americans", which was based around one of his remixes.
 * Ed Crawford was a fan of The Minutemen who heard a false rumor that the band were looking for a new guitarist and vocalist after D. Boon's death, found Mike Watt's phone number, and called to express his interest in trying out. In fact surviving members Watt and George Hurley were still too despondent over Boon's death to even consider continuing to make music. However, Crawford and Mike Watt kept in contact with each other through mail, and Crawford's persistence in wanting the two to keep making music eventually paid off in a big way: He made an unannounced trip from Ohio to California and convinced Watt to let him "audition". He then became the guitarist and vocalist of fIREHOSE, Watt and Hurley's next project.
 * Goth chanteuse Jarboe first heard the band Swans on an Atlanta-area college radio station in the early '80s and liked them so much that she went to the radio station and stole their copy of the record. She later joined the band herself. Swans disbanded in 1997, but reformed in 2010. She was not included in the 2010 lineup, so does that make her a Demoted Fangirl as well?
 * AFI guitarist Jade Puget was originally a fan of the band.
 * Frank Iero of My Chemical Romance. When MCR started, he was in his own band (Pencey Prep), but was such a fan of MCR that he sold merch for them, shared a practice space with them, helped book their first shows, shared his band's van...and eventually he became their second guitarist (and he still claims to be MCR's biggest fan).
 * Da Yoopers, a Michigan-based comedy band, frequently lets local musicians get guest parts on their albums. One of them, "Cowboy" Dan Collins, was promoted to an official member for a few years.
 * Yuri Chinen of Johnny's Entertainment's Hey! Say! Jump! auditioned for the jimusho because he was a huge fan of Satoshi Ohno and wanted to be leader of a Johnny's group like his hero. The two have had photo shoots together in which Ohno looks decidedly uncomfortable with Chinen's way too happy smile
 * NRBQ fan and hobby drummer Tom Ardolino sent a fan letter to the band, which led to a lengthy correspondence with keyboardist/singer/songwriter Terry Adams. When the band's then-drummer Tom Staley elected to sit out the encore at a show that Ardolino attended, Adams invited Ardolino to fill in. When Staley quit in 1974, the others invited Ardolino to replace him full-time, and Ardolino stuck with them for the next three decades.
 * Current Dillinger Escape Plan vocalist Greg Puciato and drummer Billy Rymer were both originally fans of the band before being invited to join.
 * Jane Wiedlin was a fan of Sparks as a teenager, and supposedly was even president of an unofficial Sparks fan club. Once she became well-known in her own right as part of The Go-Gos, she also got to duet with Russell Mael for two songs on Sparks' In Outer Space - "Cool Places" and "Lucky Me, Lucky You".
 * Jeremy Deller collaborated with the Williams Fairey Brass Band to create the album Acid Brass, consisting of brass band covers of classic acid house and techno songs. One of the songs they covered was The KLF's "What Time Is Love". When Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty of the KLF heard the acid brass version of their song at a live performance, they liked it so much that they contacted Jeremy Deller so they could incorporate it into their satirical comeback performance "Fuck the Millennium". Then when they released the "***k the Millennium" CD single, the acid brass version of "What Time Is Love" was included as a b-side.

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 Promoted Fanboys.
 * Rob Naylor was a fairly well known name in the internet wrestling community for quite a while before getting gigs doing commentary for various indy promotions. At one point he was namedropped during an episode of Raw by CM Punk and not long afterwards was officially hired by the WWE. He currently works as the ring announcer for their developmental promotion Florida Championship Wrestling.

Sports

 * Just about every pro-athlete (unless they were raised/groomed from birth by a pro-athlete parent) fits this trope, particularly the "big four" team sports in the United States.
 * 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 example 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.
 * Many of the people involved in running the Scripps National Spelling Bee were winners when they were kids.
 * In a rather odd example, Chilean economist and politician Jaime Estevez was a big fan of the Universidad Catolica soccer club. Guess who is the current executive president of the club?
 * Keith Olbermann has one of the largest collections of baseball cards in the world (over 35,000) and had his first baseball book published when he was 14. He's now a consultant for Topps and writes an official blog for MLB (oh, and does that other thing).
 * F1 champ Lewis Hamilton started angling for his hero Ayrton Senna's seat at by age 9, copying the Brazilian's helmet design and approaching team owner Ron Dennis. And then there's this video.
 * Suk Hyun-Jun of AFC Ajax. He essentially showed up at Ajax's practice fields with a pair cleats and repeatedly asked to join the team. After being allowed to practice with the teams reserve squad the trainers were impressed enough to offer him a 1 year contract.
 * Jon Miller, radio announcer for the San Francisco Giants and former longtime voice of ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball, grew up idolizing announcers like Russ Hodges and Vin Scully and pretending to "call" the simulated baseball games he played on Strat-o-matic as a kid.

Toys

 * Kelly McKiernan, 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.

Video Games and other gaming

 * Tigole and Furor, or Kaplan and Alex Afrasiabi respectively, were famous as elite Ever Quest guild leaders. Both were hired by Blizzard to work on World of Warcraft as game designers.
 * Dave "Fargo" Kosak, artist of a World of Warcraft-inspired webcomic, Flintlockes Guide to Azeroth, was hired to become World of Warcraft's lead quest designer.
 * 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.
 * Another Valve example. Portal was developed in its 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... They did this again, hiring another team from the same game design school for implementation of new gameplay elements in Portal 2 (more precisely, the gels)!
 * Yet Another Valve example: Big Name Fan Makani designed her own version of the (then unseen) Administrator from Team Fortress 2. Valve bought the design off her and made it canon, and then hired her to do the Loose Canon comic for the Engineer update.
 * Left 4 Dead fan and mapmaker Matthew Lourdelet impressed Valve so much with his map pack "Evil Eyes" that they officially hired him to create the "Cold Stream" campaign, and added it to their official rotation of online maps.
 * IceFrog, a developer on Defense of the Ancients, a War Craft 3 mod, was hired by Valve as lead designer on Dota 2, which will now be a game in its own right.
 * Steve "Guinsoo" Feak, creator of Defense of the Ancients, a very popular War Craft 3 mod, became a designer for Riot Games' League of Legends. Steve "Pendragon" Mescon, creator of the DotA fansite www.dota-allstars.com, became the Director of Community Relations at Riot Games. As mentioned in the section on Valve, Dota developer IceFrog, who keeps his real name private, was hired to work on Valve's Dota 2.
 * id Software, whose ranks consist of many developers who started out modding for Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake such as Tim Willits, lead designer of Doom 3 and creative director of the company, who started off his career making custom levels for the original Doom and getting noticed by id.
 * Epic Games, which is still one of the biggest examples about hiring people from their own community. Look at the Unreal page for the details. 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.
 * Neverwinter Nights is all about its custom editor. Bio Ware 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 mod's "official" release in X3: Terran Conflict.
 * And then some modders who worked on Xtended for Terran Conflict were picked up for X3: Albion Prelude.
 * 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 3rd Edition version of D&D's Ravenloft setting, produced by Arthaus under license from WotC, was crafted almost entirely by Promoted Fanboy writers. Arthaus recruited them from the "Kargatane", a web-based group of fanzine writers. (TSR's original Ravenloft design team took its name from an in-game secret police force, the Kargat, and the Kargatane are their brainwashed mook underlings, so....)
 * The best Exalted freelance writers come from the forums; by 2011 it'd got to the point that the majority of the writing team and at least one of the developers had started on the forums.
 * Aurora Nikolaeva made a complete Age of Aquarius career from a fan to a leading developer.
 * Fallout:
 * 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.
 * 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. His appearance in the game might as well be more of a Take That at his Fan Dumbness though.
 * Actor Matthew Perry has stated in interviews that he was a very big fan of Fallout 3 and played the game fanatically to the point his hands started aching. This led to him getting a role in Fallout New Vegas as Benny, a major antagonist.
 * 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.
 * 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.
 * That was only in 2003, though (he, alongside several of SNKP's other artists, also drew art for the Updated Rereleases of '98 and 2002). However, Falcoon did became the producer and main artist for the Alternate Continuity of the main KOF series, the Maximum Impact series. As of late, it seems that he's left the employment of SNKP (for reasons unknown; those who dislike the MI series probably claim that he was Running the Asylum with the somewhat nonsensical/poor plot).
 * 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 rewrite 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.
 * Before that, the developer Castle was just a normal player that managed to get into the development team and became a popular presence in the forum community. A few years after he joined the staff, the Castle character was created and appeared in one of the comics as well as being permanently added to the game as a trainer in Peregrine Island.
 * The player Ascendant became popular in the community for appearing at tram stations at random times and doing elaborate sketches in which Ascendant dealt with cell phone calls to people such as his mother, his agent/uncle, and other people that vexed him. After some time, the devs acknowledged the popularity of the sketches with random NPC dialog that suggested people seeking Ascendant were calling the wrong number. In Issue 19 of the comic, Ascendant appeared (along with fellow Promoted Fanboy Castle) in a short scene with Positron.
 * Capcom enlisting the entire OC Re Mix community for the soundtrack of Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix.
 * Lee Brotherton, who now goes by the stage name Bentley Jones, did video game music remixes on OC Re Mix and would later sing "Dreams of an Absolution" for Sonic the Hedgehog 2006.
 * Same game: Actress Lacey Chabert had been a huge Sonic the Hedgehog fan for some time before landing a role in the English version: Princess Elise.
 * Considering the nature of the game they worked on, Jones lucked out better in the fan reputation department (the game was bashed, but the soundtrack was praised).
 * Several other OC Re Mix musicians have done music for professional games including Jimmy "Big Giant Circles" Hinson (Mass Effect 2), Andrew "zircon" Aversa (Monkey Island 2 Special Edition: LeChuck's Revenge), Jillian "pixietricks" Goldin (Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword), Dain "Beatdrop" Olsen (Dance Dance Revolution series), Daniel Baranowsky (Meat Boy, Canabalt, Super Meat Boy), Will "bustatunez" Roget, II (Star Wars series with Lucas Arts), Jake "virt" Kaufman (Contra 4)
 * 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? Brutal 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... for a short term duration.
 * 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 Pro Skater games.
 * Video game designer 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 sought him for his resume alone (after all, he was responsible for Deus Ex), being unaware of his fanboy aspect at first. Either way, 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, a.k.a. 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.
 * Tony Cannon, a.k.a. Ponder, developed the GGPO netcode to allow fans to play emulated fighting games online without lag time. The system was so successful that Capcom has licensed it and even had Ponder as a consultant for some of their games.
 * 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/forum site, Capcom-Unity. The (SNK Boss) boss of Street Fighter IV, Seth, was named after him as well. He has also been the "Special Fighting/Combat Adviser" for Capcom's fighting games since Street Fighter IV.
 * In a similar (non-Capcom) vein, arcade stick fanatic Mark Julio, a.k.a. Markman, was hired by controller manufacturer MadCatz to work on their Street Fighter IV-branded controllers. Julio's knowledge of arcade sticks and guidance made the company's FightSticks the premier American-manufactured arcade stick for fighting games.
 * 1UP.com's Neidel Crisan used to simply post his own articles on fighting games on sites like Shoryuken.com and iPlayWinner before being hired to do fighting game reviews for the aforementioned site. His reviews on 1UP.com are now considered to be the only ones worth reading when it comes to fighting games.
 * A man currently living the fighting game fan's dream is Mike "MikeZ" Zaimont. Originally known for his expert play of Iron Tager and doing REAL SOVIET DAMAGE (yes, he is the meme starter), he is now the director and lead programmer of his own game -- a Guilty Gear and Marvel vs. Capcom 2-inspired fighting game known as Skullgirls.
 * 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.
 * Although IIDX has still never seen an arcade release stateside, one of the most prominent composers who works on the series visited the Tokyo Game Action arcade in Rhode Island (back when it was still in business) on several occasions to put on a concert for the western fans who were lucky enough to be present. It has recently been discovered that this composer sampled some of the background chatter during this event, and inserted some distorted voice samples into a track called ICARUS in a subsequent release. If you know what to listen for you can actually hear several US east coast community members get namedropped in the game itself. Which is, you know, pretty damn cool.
 * 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.
 * Shizuka Ito follwed suit, working really damn hard to set herself a role in Super Robot Wars, doing several roles in the Mecha genre before getting a role as an Original Character in Super Robot Wars NEO. Now if she wants a role in Gundam Generation, she will have to be voicing at least one role in Gundam (Only one voice actor of the original cast didn't had a Gundam related role. Everyone else did at least one major Gundam Role in their careers)
 * Akeno Watanabe also got similar treatment, landing the role of Ibis Douglas
 * 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 U.S.
 * After the Halo IP was given to 343 Industries, the writers of the Halo-related blog Ascendant Justice got hired to work on several articles on Halo Waypoint concerning Halo canon.
 * Frank O'Connor, head of 343 Industries, is a specific example - he started off as a Halo fan, and is now practically in charge of the Halo canon, and was the general director for Halo Legends.
 * Nate Bihldorff quickly climbed the ranks from studying creative writing in college, to being a playtester for Nintendo, to writing for Nintendo Power, to working on localizing games for Nintendo, and today he is the head honcho of Nintendo of America's acclaimed localization department.
 * Ever since he first started working at Konami, Koji Igarashi was a big fan of the Castlevania series. He got his first opportunity to actually work on one of the games with Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, and he produced most of the games starting with Castlevania: Chronicles.
 * After The Guild 2 Venice stand alone pack was made, several German members of the Guild 2 Modding Forum (Jowood is a German Company) who worked on the major mods of the Guild 2 on The Guild 2 Renaissance which became an official addon approved by Jowood.
 * Aliens: Colonial Marines done by Gearbox Software. This walkthrough has Randy Pitchford mention how they're a bunch of big Aliens nerds (as well as noting how many stole from it, as A Space Marine Is You mentions).
 * Jon Shafer grew up playing Sid Meier's Civilization, became a well-known modder for the later installments, was hired by Firaxis to work on an expansion pack for Civ IV, and is now the lead designer of Civ V. At age 25.
 * Phil Collins is a huge fan of video games, and actually appeared as himself as a non-playable character in Grand Theft Auto Vice City Stories. He provided his voice, and his music was used throughout the game. At the end, his character performs a concert.
 * The more recently added Gas Powered Games forum staff were selected from their community, as opposed to being hired to manage the forums as they originally were. One member, who was really only there because he loved the off-topic board was promoted to a moderator for that very board.
 * Gas Powered Games have also hired a modder known in the community widely for his highly improved Supreme Commander skirmish AI's. He was also one of a pair of modders who created the first uploaded mod, at least as far as is known on the official forums. The other modder he was working with? See the next example.
 * The Transcendence community's websites are run in pretty much the same manner, where the developer promotes members of the community to help out as staff on the sites, ranging from moderators to administrators.
 * The aforementioned Supcom modder? He became one of the administrators of the forums for his work on an unofficial expansion, TX 2 - now known as Transcendence: The Stars Beyond, and has helped develop the back story, balance, and planned content for various factions in the canon universe based off of his own Fanon work.
 * This same person nearly had his ship graphics created for TX 2 licensed for use in an in-development commercial game, though the talks fell through when it was discovered there was an incompatibility between the game's engine and the format his models had been made in, as they were designed simply to be rendered into sprites that Transcendence could use.
 * He then went on to begin development on his own game, while still actively fulfilling his duties in the Transcendence community.
 * Arenanet often use the names of Guild Wars wiki contributors for newly-introduced non-player characters.
 * Matthew Perry once went on Ellen and talked about his love of Fallout 3. He apparently played the games for hundreds of hours, and actually broke his hand from playing it too much. He ended the interview by giving Ellen an Xbox 360 and a copy of the game. He goes on to voice Benny, a major antagonist in Fallout New Vegas.
 * Tsubasa Yonaga was a huge fan of the Tales Series. He was eventually cast as Jude Mathis, the protagonist of Tales of Xillia.
 * Christian "The Taxman" Whitehead, a well-known member of Sonic Retro, created an physics engine that was faithful to the Genesis games, and once even created a tech demo of Sonic CD on the iPhone that proved it was possible to do an iPhone port that was faithful to the original. Now he has been hired by SEGA themselves and his Retro Sonic engine is being used to remake Sonic CD for everything except Nintendo consoles.
 * Stephan "Lordus" Dittrich created a homebrew Sega Genesis emulator for the Nintendo DS. However, after no new releases of said emulator or contact with Lordus on the internet in a couple of years, the Sonic Classic Collection was announced for the DS, a port of the first 3 Sonic games to the platform. It is believed that Dittrich's emulator was used as the base of the Classic Collection, with him being credited as the lead developer.
 * Kana Ueda is a big fan of Halo and other Western FPS. She gets the chance later to voice Saydy in the Japanese version and Alena Vorshevsky in Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 in Japan.
 * IGN's Jessica Chobot has been a huge fan of the Mass Effect series from the beginning and she was recently cast in Mass Effect 3 as Diana Allers, a reporter embedded with the Normandy.
 * Also if Freddy Prinze Jr's enthusiasm is to be believed, he is also this having been cast as James Vega for Mass Effect 3.
 * In Academagia, the developers have included many player-written Adventures and Events as part of DLCs.
 * Escape Velocity: Override began life as a total conversion for Escape Velocity before Ambrosia Software brought the developers on board and released it as a whole game with a few engine upgrades. Likewise, EV Nova was a TC for Override that ended up as a new game (and the first one to be ported to Windows).
 * Uber Haxor Nova's long running Happy Wheels series got the creator's attention and had him voice a new character.
 * Randall "Frigidman" Shaw, who produced several network maps for Marathon 2, as well as later contributing to the total conversion EVIL, was hired to do the Vidmaster's Challenge levels for Infinity, along with some of its multiplayer maps.

Webcomics

 * When the original artist for Erfworld, Jamie Noguchi, left after the end of Book 1, then fan Xin Ye was hired as the new artist after she sent in fanart for one of the intermission updates.
 * Andrew Hussie of MS Paint Adventures wrassled up a sound team consisting of the best composers from the MSPA forum for Homestuck, who compose music for the flash animations. They now have their own indie record label under "What Pumpkin". Later, to widen the variety of art found in flash animations, Hussie gathered an art team to draw various pieces found in animations and sometimes static pages, and they also sell art prints (Ascended Fanart, basically.) of stuff the art team has done. All in all, Hussie's team almost entirely consists of fans with the exception of himself and Lexxie.
 * Also, for each official song that is released a piece of specialized album art accompanies it. Originally all the songs just had the main album artwork, and then there were pictures from the comic itself, but now most of the artwork is drawn by fans.
 * Jeffrey Wells wrote an extremely long and suprisingly good fanfic for the Narbonic comic. It was so good that author Shaenon Garrity not only featured it as filler during most of Narbonic's run but also wound up working with Jeff to write her later comic Skin Horse. Neither of them are exactly sure how, tho.
 * One fan of Enjuhneer cosplayed one of the characters at an anime convention, ran into the creator of the comic, and was put into the comic for being the first cosplayer that the creator had heard of.

Web Original

 * Its Just Some Random Guy is known on YouTube for his I'm a Marvel And Im ADC videos that use Marvel Comics and DC Comics 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.
 * The case of the almighty union of They Might Be Giants and the Homestar Runner creators is an odd one. They're fanboys of each other and came together out of a mutual excitement for the other's work, with the result of the H* R creators doing music videos for TMBG, and TMBG writing and performing music for H* R.
 * Many of the contributors on That Guy With the Glasses started out as fans of The Nostalgia Critic. Almost all of them had been featured as Transmission Awesome's Awesome Blog of the Week before being picked up.
 * Many fashion bloggers, ie: Tavi Gevinson, Brian Boy.
 * James Rolfe is a huge film geek, particularly B and horror movies. He became an amateur filmmaker himself, and after one of his movies involving bashing video games turned him into an internet hit, most of his productions are available on his website, and he does film reviews and countdowns on both his site and Spike TV!
 * He's also making a short appearance in the upcoming remake of Plan Nine From Outer Space.
 * Doug Walker was a huge fan of Animaniacs growing up, and credits the show as a comedic influence. He has since gone on to create essentially an hour-long documentary/tribute to the show featuring interviews with creator Tom Ruegger and several writers.
 * Arglefumph, famous for his Nancy Drew walkthroughs, entered a photo contest to have a cameo in the remake of "Secrets Can Kill." The results of said contest? Well, check out this video. Also qualifies as a funny moment.
 * YouTube personality Tobuscus wrote the immensely popular Assassin's Creed Brotherhood Literal Trailer, which got more views than the original and attracted the attention of Ubisoft, which paid for him to go to E3 2011 and interview the Assassin's Creed Revelations development team. As a result of this, he is now a featured performer at gaming conventions, and his fame has also landed him a voice acting gig.

Western Animation

 * Avatar: The Last Airbender Big Name Fan Johanne Matte AKA Rufftoon became a storyboard artist for the show.
 * Supposedly M Night Shyamalan approached the people behind Avatar to create a live action movie because he was such a huge fan of the show. Based on the outcome, however, you could be forgiven for thinking he had a seething hatred for it.
 * Janet Varney, who plays the voice of Korra, was a big fan of Avatar: The Last Airbender before even hearing about the auditions for the lead role in the sequel. She said in an interview that after she auditioned for the part, she couldn't even watch the original show anymore because it would make her nervous about whether or not she'd land the role of Korra.
 * Raven Molisee's fanarts for Ed, Edd n Eddy got the attention of AKA Cartoons and landed her a job as storyboard animator for the show.
 * Fanartist Nina Matsumoto a.k.a. 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, main character of The Princess and The Frog and also an official Disney Princess, which means that Tiana will forever be in the line up with Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs, Jasmine, Ariel, Belle, Mulan, Pocahontas, Aurora and Cinderella. Magnificent.
 * Similarly, Zachary Levi stated in this making-of video for Tangled that getting to play the hero in a Disney film is like a dream he's still scared he'll wake up from.
 * Also from Tangled is Mandy Moore. She has said in interviews that she grew up loving the Disney Princesses and is thrilled about getting to play one. She has stated that Ariel was in fact her inspiration to start singing in the first place.
 * Also, Jon Cryer has stated that he has always wanted to play a role in a Disney movie, and was ecstatic when he landed the role of Dusty in Planes.
 * Animator Katie Rice was a big fan of Ren and Stimpy growing up, she eventually got to animate for the Adult Party Cartoon version.
 * The majority of the new voice actors for the Looney Tunes characters are big fans of the original theatrical shorts, Bob Bergen in particular went as far as to track down Mel Blanc himself for voice acting lessons.
 * Jason Marsden is a big fan of Disney, he even named his pets after Disney characters, and he got to play Kovu in Lion King 2. At the end of 'behind the microphone' type-thing, he was really jazzed about how he 'can't believe he gets to be in a Disney movie!'
 * He also got to be Max Goof in A Goofy Movie, a role that he continued in for years.
 * An episode of Tiny Toon Adventures, "Buster and Babs Go Hawaiian", was written by Renee Carter, Sarah Creef, and Amy Crosby, who at the time were only 13. As this article from the time reveals, they had sent the script to the show on a lark and by sheer blind luck, the script was actually read and sent along to Steven Spielberg, who decided to run with it. The show called attention to it both within the script (including a gag where Buster argues with the girls about his fear of planes) and in the promotion leading up to it.
 * The episode's Credits Gag: "Please Mail Your Unsolicited Manuscripts Along With A Self-Addressed Envelope To: Some Other Show!"
 * Lauren Faust, who was a fan of My Little Pony toys as a child, was eventually hired to create a cartoon based on the toys, My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic. It's even been said that the characters personalities are the ones she gave them while playing with the toys.
 * This may explain the sheer number of Ascended Memes in the show and Faust being so protective of the fandom.
 * Before that, Lauren Faust was a big fan of The Powerpuff Girls that she BEGGED to be on the production team, she eventually produced, wrote, and directed several episodes, and ultimately wedded Powerpuff Girls creator Craig McCracken.
 * Controversy arose around the Hungarian dub of South Park, when the fans noticed that the dubbing script for one of Season 9's episodes matched the translations of a Fan Sub created (way earlier) by a fan called "vito" word-for-word. Unfortunately, as copyright laws don't quite tend to favor unofficial fan works, the dubbers got away with the deal. But something still happened, as beginning from Season 13, vito has been working on the real scripts for the show as its official translator. And he's also credited under that name.
 * At various times on the bonus features of the Batman: The Animated Series DVDs, the various crew members admit to being "hardcore comic book geeks" who appreciated the old comics. Your Mileage May Vary, but one could say that the fact that they tried to make the series more like the comics they so loved was the main reason that the series is so well-done and fondly remembered.

Audio Dramas

 * Simon Pegg is a big fan of the Strontium Dog comics, and got to voice Johnny in the CD adaptations.

Internet

 * The user Avan on the Furtopia forums - who is also mentioned under the video game folder in the Transcendence entry - is the likely, and only mentioned, candidate to join the staff in the proposition of taking over the free web-hosting services with his own server, with the only other option being to shut down the web-hosting services.
 * Jakayrta became Cornova's beta/co-writer after he left a deep review on the first chapter of Poke Wars: The Incipience.
 * The Internet is full of this: if you're a fan of a long-standing website, you might be surprised at how many of the administrators and/or writers were once lowly commenters on the same site.

Other

 * Ryan O'Connell used to drink lots of wine and read books about wine and, despite a total lack of formal training, he now operates O'Vineyards in the south of France and runs a wine blog that allows him to hang out with all the famous winemakers and wine writers he admired from afar.
 * In 2005, Steve Wade, a Tasmanian-based Saab fan, launched a blog about his favourite car. Six years, 5400 articles and 50,000 comments later, Saab formally credited SaabsUnited with helping to save the company, and employed him in their newly-formed global social media marketing team (based in Melbourne, Australia).
 * Unfortunately it didn't seem to last long or save the company.
 * A list of them appear in this Cracked article.
 * Gossip journalist David "Spec" Mc Clure was fascinated by Audie Murphy's military career and arranged to meet him when Murphy was filming his first supporting role in a film. The two became good friends, with Mc Clure co-writing To Hell and Back, both the book and the movie script, and acting as an informal press agent for Murphy. Murphy's second wife, Pamela, was also something of an Promoted Fangirl. She had been trying to meet him ever since she saw him on the cover of Life magazine in the mid-forties, and finally succeeded in the early fifties. They dated steadily while the divorce from his first wife was finalized, married shortly thereafter, and despite some rough periods remained married until his death.

Fictional Examples

 * In the final episodes of Bamboo Blade, Tama and Rin both achieve Promoted Fangirl status when they get to act in an episode of their favorite Toku show, Blade Braver. They end up taking the position a little too excitedly and completely break away from the script.
 * They get small parts in the movie, in fact, and Tama derails it by instead of being a schoolgirl running scared from Rin's 'Shinaigirl' she picks up a dropped shinai and fights back. It goes on for a while before they're stopped.
 * 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 Red Shirt 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.
 * Meer Campbell from Gundam SEED Destiny was a big fan of Lacus Clyne who also happened to bear a very similar singing voice. Someone noticed, and asked her to be Lacus's replacement.
 * Mikey from Kappa Mikey is one of these. He won a contest or something, and moved to Japan to be part of that show.
 * Grady in Tremors 2 is a fan-boy of Earl's, who talks his way into helping on that film's Graboid-hunt.
 * The Life of Nob T Mouse features a meta example where series writer/artist Zoe Robinson originally made The Life Of Nob T Mouse as a fanfiction comic for The Blobland Band, before meeting the franchise's creator, Hubert Schlongson, and winning ownership off him in a game of poker.
 * Tachimukai in Inazuma Eleven was originally a big fan of Endou, and even learned to be a goalkeeper by watching Endou on video repeatedly and mimicking him. He ends up as Endou's teammate and friend, and even gets to fill in for Endou as goalkeeper on several occasions.
 * In "The Front", an episode of The Simpsons, Bart and Lisa co-write a fan script for an Itchy & Scratchy episode (using Grandpa Simpson as an alias) and end up getting picked up as regular writers, at least until Grandpa grows wise to what kind of show Itchy & Scratchy really is and quits.
 * Aine Yukimura from Sensual Phrase wasn't exactly a fan of the Aucifer band, but she was a prospect song writer with rather... steamy song lyrics. By coincidence, Aucifer singer Sakuya caught a glimpse of them and had his band use these lyrics on-stage. From then on, Aine got hired as the official Aucifer songwriter and hooked up with Sakuya... too bad her dude is, well, rather screwed up, to say it politely.
 * Ryusei Date of Super Robot Wars Alpha and Super Robot Wars Original Generation was a big giant robot fan who ended up getting recruited by the The Federation after realizing his skills in the "Burning PT" video game greatly translated to mecha piloting. That, and his amazing Psychodriver powers.
 * Ayumi Sakagame of Pretty Cure All Stars New Stage was a slight fan of the Pretty Cures when fate decided to decree that she would become, even temporary, a Cure herself.