Even Heroes Have Heroes



"Negi: You certainly seem very happy, Tosaka-san. I've never seen you like this before. Tosaka: (holding an autographed picture of Jack Rakan) Damn right I am! What are you, stupid? To gladiators like me, he is a freakin' god, you know?! Like a goddamn deity walking the earth!"

- Mahou Sensei Negima, ch. 256

Maybe you think that answering The Call and becoming a hero may put our dear protagonists in a more elevated and level-headed position, and that they should not feel the need to admire anyone. Now they have the power and the nice toys and even some fans of their own.

However, what we forget is that our dear protagonists used to have a life before (or even besides) their duties, and are still individual people with likings and all. Maybe they Jumped At the Call because they wanted to be like their beloved childhood hero, or had some of their decisions shaped by the "philosophy of life" of their idol. The person they admire and want to follow didn't have to be a "true" superhero, though. Could be a favorite celebrity, Idol Singer, or something else. Maybe that doesn't even have to be a person; just an object, an animal (small cute creatures are a particular favorite), a show, even a particular attitude.

So, why we should be surprised that they still Squee over their idols? Given the circumstances, we should not be surprised whenever a Superhero, Magical Girl, Teen Superspy, etc. starts acting like a Fan Boy/Fan Girl over something or someone.

Often, this is followed by Fan Disillusionment when the Hero discovers the Squee object is actually either mean, fake, or not without his own problems. This can lead to an Anvilicious Aesop on not becoming a fanboy/fangirl; conversely, it can lead to An Aesop that the hero is, after all, a human being.

Another common plot is for the best current hero to squee and be all "I'm Your Biggest Fan!" over a childhood idol, perhaps telling him that he was the inspiration that got him where he is. The hero's fans are often quite embarrassed by the way they treated what they assumed was an insignificant elderly person.

Compare Audience Surrogate, Fan of Underdog, Like a God to Me, Ascended Fanboy, Promoted Fanboy, Hero Worshipper.

Anime & Manga

 * The girls of Wedding Peach are like this with Yanagiba.
 * Rena of Higurashi no Naku Koro ni is a Kawaiiko who often spouts the phrase "I wanna take you home!" whenever Rika or Satoko do something cute. Any familiarity with Higurashi no Naku Koro ni will allow you to understand how much this conflicts with the general mood of the story.
 * In the Ratman manga, towards the end of issue one. Shuto had to break into Kizaki Manor, home of the president of the hero association! Obviously, things didn't go quite as planned. Eventually, an A-ranked hero is called onto the scene. Upon seeing him, Shouto forgets that he's in his Anti-Hero mode, and asks for an autograph. Of course, the hero turns out to be a Jerkass who only does it because the job pays well and comes with respect from the general public. Considering that this series takes place in a world full of superheroes, and the fact that the story is a kid that wants to be a superhero but is recruited to be the world's first Anti-Hero (against his will), this was bound to happen.
 * In Tokyo Mew Mew, Mint fangirls over Zakuro.
 * Judai of Yu-Gi-Oh GX started Of course, in terms of the card game,  is still a freaking legend.
 * Excel Saga
 * Excel and Hyatt squee before agent Key, much to Il Palazzo's displeasure.
 * And of course there's Excel's (and later Elgala's) obsession with Il Palazzo, which goes well beyond platonic admiration. Hyatt on the other hand is too busy either dying or drugging herself up to squee over anyone.
 * Soifon from Bleach towards Yoruichi, when the Broken Pedestal deal is resolved. "Oooooh, Yoruichi-sama!"
 * Subaru over her idol, the title character of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha.
 * One Piece: Major Sergeant Tashigi is pretty much fangirling on the inside over Zoro on this page. There's kind of a double-subversion going on, though. She immediately presumed he was a bad person upon finding out he was a pirate, but doesn't realize that Zoro is still a good guy, and is still all what she was squeeing over earlier and far, far more. To clarify a couple of key points: First, she thought Zoro was a bad guy even before finding out he was a pirate (because bounty hunters clearly are only slightly less reprehensible than pirates). Second, at that point in the story, she didn't know that the guy buying swords was Zoro. Yeah...
 * Subverted in Death Note. When Misa meets L, (giving Light the chance to get L's real name) at first he just stares at her thoughtfully and then, when he recognizes her, starts acting all fanboy-ish over the idol, drawing the attention of everyone around. It turns out that.
 * In very early Sailor Moon, the very first Sailor to appear is "Sailor V". Usagi often acts as a V fangirl, even after becoming Sailor Moon. (In several episodes she's shown at an arcade playing the Sailor V video game!) Eventually V is revealed to be Sailor Venus, who joins the other Sailors, prompting a few star-struck moments before things settle down.
 * Negi of Mahou Sensei Negima tends to do this when he meets any of his father's friends.
 * Mink of Dragon Half is always squeeing over idol(/dragon-slayer) Dick Saucer. At the end of the manga, Dick Saucer meets his idol, Ruath the Red Lightning, renowned dragon-slayer. And he discovers that A) Ruath retired to marry a dragon, and B) the dragon-girl he's been trying to kill the entire series is his idol's daughter. So since his idol did it, Dick ends up marrying Mink. Dick and Mink are still gushing over each other after 8 years of marriage.
 * Galaxy Fraulein Yuna: Kagurazaka Yuna is an epic Fan Girl of the Masked Maiden Polylina... who's really played by one of her friends (and former enemy), Lia. (In the game where Polylina is introduced, this started out as a full-on crush, or at least sounded like one.)
 * Transformers Energon
 * Mirage (the upgraded form of Tidal Wave) squees over Galvatron, to the point of cheerleading with a pink heart visible on screen with him. This is the English dub; in the Japanese original, it was a running gag of him being outright Gay for Galvatron (with lines along the lines of "nobody loves Galvatron more than I do!"). Given this information, the fact that Tidal Wave was specifically modified to be able to powerlink with Galvatron (a process that involves an intermingling of sparks) becomes a bit more worrisome.
 * Ironhide began the series fanboying the veterans of Transformers Armada, especially Hot Shot. Later in the series, a trio of younger 'bots fanboy him..
 * In Robotech/Genesis Climber Mospeada Scott/Stick Bernard has always admired Colonel Jonathan Wolfe/Major Jonathan ever since he was a kid. When Bernard finds his hero still alive on Earth and doing guerrilla warfare against the Invid, he becomes ecstatic, and he eagerly accepts the offer to join the Colonel/Major's team.
 * Princess Cornelia from Code Geass can go pretty much into Fan Girl mode when you mention her idol, Empress Marianne.
 * In Tiger and Bunny, Wild Tiger/Kotetsu T. Kaburagi is a rather vocal fan of Sternbild's first superhero, Mr. Legend. Ends up on a Broken Pedestal when Kotetsu is told that
 * A villainous variant occurs in Fate/Zero; Uryuu, the demented serial killer, accidentally summons Caster, and soon goes into total fanboy mode when he discovers that Caster is even more enamored with disturbing violence than he is, and has various superpowers to assist in his creatively horrific mutilations.

Comic Books
"Spidey: Plus it's, like, you're standing there and I'm nerding out on the inside. [...] Permission to freak out openly...?"
 * Captain America (comics)
 * Cap has been shown, not quite squeeing, but when, fresh after becoming a Super Soldier, he meets FDR, he seems to fanboy, just a little.
 * Captain America gets these himself quite often. If you're a young supe meeting him for the first time, your knees be bucklin'.
 * In Avengers Classic #11, Cap does a Sherlock Scan of Spider-Man, and they get their first good talk.


 * And there's also another Captain America (comics) and Spider-Man Team Up, where it is very easy to believe that Spidey is not just squeeing at Cap, but crushing.
 * Spidey has got this treatment himself a few times. Mattie Franklin (one of the Spider-Women) was a total Spidey fangirl.
 * Superman
 * Likewise, during a Time Travel story, the Post-Crisis Superman once shook FDR's hand, and got quite emotional, if only in his thought balloons.
 * In the same story, Superman sees Doctor Fate, Dr. Mid-Nite, The Spectre, and Jay Garrick through a skylight and spends about a page fanboying to himself and wondering if he'll really ruin the timeline that badly if he just pops in for a moment to meet them.
 * It's fairly common in DC crossovers for almost every character created after 1980 to have this reaction when they meet Superman.
 * The Pre Crisis Lex Luthor felt this way about Albert Einstein. After all, this was Mad Scientist Lex, and Einstein had been his childhood hero. Luthor would commemorate Einstein's birthday each year by traveling to some pivotal location from Einstein's life for a visit (spending one day working in Einstein's old patent office, for instance). It took Superman years to figure out why Lex was behaving so oddly, until he made the connection, at which point he was genuinely touched. Notably, Lex couldn't bring himself to do anything genuinely wicked on that day, out of respect for his hero. Notably, this story was written by Elliot S! Maggin, who always treated Lex with more tragic sympathy than other writers did; and Einstein is Maggin's personal hero.
 * When the Justice League of America came down on Young Justice, Arrowette's first reaction was stunned surprise that the Justice League concerned themselves with them. (Making it all the more dramatic when she slowly realized that they were being unjust, complaining that the young superheroes were acting young, and then turned on them, telling them off in a manner that reduced them to stunned silence. And then stormed off into the kitchen to hyperventilate.)
 * In one Green Arrow story, Ollie narrates about having to restrain himself from squeeing over Batman—but only after "swooning in fanboy drool". Yes, those are Ollie's words.
 * Young Avengers
 * In Dark Reign: Young Avengers, upon meeting Norman Osborn superperson artist Coat-of-Arms has one of these moments. She (literally) lets out a "Squee!", then proceeds to go into super-fangirl mode, gushing about how she admires Norman's "works" while showing him paintings she did of some of his more infamous moments (including killing Gwen Stacey). This pisses Norman off and, for a brief moment, he loses his composure and flips out on her. The fact he "went into Green Goblin mode" makes her completely ecstatic.
 * Most of the Young Avengers are total fanboys or fangirls, especially Wiccan and Hulkling.
 * In Booster Gold, time travellers had got Sinestro to come to Earth ahead of schedule, so that he would meet Guy Gardner and cause disaster, by telling him that he would no longer be the greatest of the Green Lanterns. Booster had to stop him. After a brief attempt at fighting, Booster tries, "But I'm your greatest fan!" He gushes over him, tells him that he knows in his heart he can never be replaced, and convinces him that it was a plot by his enemies to find out what he feared. This meeting would go on to have a notable consequence: Sinestro asks Booster what Corps he belongs to, leading him to make up the name "Sinestro Corps" on the spot. This gets Sinestro thinking...
 * Victor Mancha of Runaways got really excited about meeting the X-Men. Strangely, he was much calmer about meeting Spider-Man, who he cited as his favorite superhero in his very first appearance.
 * Batman
 * Batman himself calls The Shadow his greatest influence when they meet in Batman #253.
 * Tim Drake (the third Robin) was more-or-less an ascended Batman fanboy. An amateur detective, he deduced the secret identities of Batman and the first Robin, Dick Grayson. Following Jason Todd (the second Robin)'s death, he forced Batman into making him Robin, believing that Batman needed a sidekick to keep him stable. A later issue of Birds of Prey showed that Tim was also a huge fan of (the second) Blue Beetle.
 * Similarly, Dick Grayson, the first Robin, first Nightwing, and second Batman, has been shown, both in and outside of current canon, to be a huge Superman fanboy, more outwardly so when he was still Robin.
 * Deadpool literally said "FANBOY SQUEE!" when he met Thor.

Fan Works

 * Fanfic example: In M. McGregor's The Wonderland Subject, central to which is an interdimensional crossover between Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the Ultimate Marvel universe, Xander and Jean Grey have several instances of mutual squeeing over each other—he, because he's a big-time comic book fan; she, because she's a fan of a long-running Broadway musical version of Buffy native to her version of Earth.
 * In Kyon: Big Damn Hero, Koizumi acts like this towards the writer of Brave Detective Sasha novel series, Ryuugu Rena. Rena herself has her typical reaction over Yuki cosplaying as Sasha.
 * In Ace Combat: The Equestrian War, Medley acts like this toward Rainbow Dash. In a mild manner, but nonetheless.

Films -- Animation
"Crash: You are Super Weasel! Eddie: Ultra Weasel! Diego: Diesel Weasel!"
 * In Kung Fu Panda, Po is exploding with delight over getting to hang out with the Furious Five. The Five don't quite share his enthusiasm.
 * In Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, Crash and Eddie (and to a lesser extent, Diego) become obsessed with the Crazy Survivalist Buck.


 * In Cars, Lightning McQueen goes Squee over Doc Hudson when he realizes he was a great race car in his day. Leading to the painful scene where none of Doc's friends will believe him, and Doc watches, knows he is telling the truth, and says nothing.

Films -- Live-Action
"Riker: Someone once said, "Don't try to be a great man. Just be a man, and let history make its own judgements." Cochrane: That's rhetorical nonsense. Who said that? Riker: You did. Ten years from now."
 * Star Trek: First Contact, the second TNG film, has the crew traveling back to the mid 21st century and meeting Zefram Cochrane, the man who invented warp drive and pretty much founded the utopian principles of the Star Trek universe. Much of the crew expects to meet a living saint, and instead discover Cochrane to be a raging drunk who cares more about money than anything else. Other crewmen, like Riker, either didn't have such expectations or just got used to the reality faster. Although Riker does get the best line about Cochrane's attitude:

"Tallahassee: There's, like, five people left on the planet and one of'em is"
 * Barclay and Geordi are obviously the most taken with him. Barclay has to drum up the courage to ask to shake Cochrane's hand and immediately dissolves in ecstatic babbling, while Geordi waxes so eloquent about how "Zefram Cochrane" is the first chapter in the introductory text for the required warp field course at Starfleet Academy, the grand 20-foot-statue of Cochrane that was built on the launch site, etc, that Cochrane freaks out and tries to escape from the launch party because it's too much pressure.
 * Lars von Trier gets to work with and even impersonate his lifetime mentor and role model Jørgen Leth in a documentary film called The Five Obstructions.
 * Tallahassee from Zombieland. When he meets he drops the badass and starts Squee-ing like a fangirl.


 * The Avengers: Agent Coulson spends a good part of the film trying to makes Captain America (comics) sign his trading cards.

Literature

 * Ted Mallory of Diana Wynne Jones' novels Deep Secret and The Merlin Conspiracy is a big-name fantasy author and a detective novel fanboy.
 * A much more restrained than usual version of this is seen with Caspian in CS Lewis' Prince Caspian. The film less so.
 * Many, many characters behave this way toward Gilderoy Lockhart in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, to the point where Harry—the actual hero of the series—gets forced to spend a detention helping the man answer his fan mail. Lockhart's general incompetence, though, implies that he doesn't deserve his fame; he eventually reveals that . Bizarrely, Ron and Harry never seem to mention his secret to anyone, so Lockhart's fame is mostly intact....
 * In Honor Harrington the hero of the Royal Manticoran Navy is Saginami. The Grayson's hero is naturally the founder of their religion whose opinions affect them even in baseball rules(such as a deep prejudice against allowing designated hitters). Honor Harrington herself naturally admires numerous naval heroes.

Live-Action TV
""Cause you know what Doctor? You were my Doctor!""
 * In Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, Usagi is a big fan of Minako Aino, who also happens to be Sailor V's real identity, though Usagi doesn't find this out until very late on in this version.
 * Doctor Who
 * In the special "Time Crash", the Tenth Doctor fanboys over himself (the Fifth Doctor). By the end it's pretty clear that it's really David Tennant and Steven Moffat who are doing it to Peter Davison.


 * I just snogged Madame de Pompadour!
 * The Tenth Doctor was pretty star-struck by William Shakespeare in "The Shakespeare Code".
 * And Agatha Christie in "The Unicorn and the Wasp".
 * Waaay back in the classic show's third season, Steven and Dodo literally squeed when they found out they were in the Old West.
 * The Ninth Doctor got very excited about meeting Charles Dickens in "The Unquiet Dead".
 * The Doctor and Rose meeting Queen Victoria in "Tooth and Claw".
 * "The Waters of Mars" does an interesting one when the Doctor meets Adelaide Brooke, captain of the first human base on Mars, in 2059. To him, she's another historical figure he particularly admires, and he hates that her death is a Foregone Conclusion he can't prevent without breaking the laws of time. The audience, not being Time Lords, can't really appreciate this in the same way, whereas it's very obvious how much the Doctor wants to save her, so it's easy to be tempted along with him—which is of course the point.
 * Vincent van Gogh can be added to the tally as of the fifth series. Eleven and Amy are no more subtle than Ten and Rose in their squeeing, much to Vincent's confusion.
 * In the various Power Rangers reunion shows, the current team will sometimes fanboy the previous, longer-established team. In fact, the Galaxy Rangers even referred to the Space Rangers as simply "the Power Rangers" while fanboying. Of course, everyone practically drools over Tommy, and Cole went even more gaga over the original Red Ranger, Jason.
 * In Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger, Sixth Ranger Gai is a complete and total Super Sentai fanboy, and will flip out whenever he meets one of the older team members (and then ask for an autograph). On a couple of occasions they have fun with this; when he meets Abaranger's Yukito he fanboys, but then he sees Emiri and says "...And somebody I don't know!", and when the team meets Ohranger's Momo Maruo, she herself fangirls a little.
 * He has to be subtle about it to avoid violating the Temporal Prime Directive, but Ben Sisko of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is pretty darn squeeful about getting to meet Captain Kirk in "Trials and Tribble-ations".
 * Of course, everyone was doing some sort of squeeing over the TOS crew (or at least the big three). O'Brien was pretty proud that he lied to Captain Kirk, and even Worf said "It would be an honor to meet him" in a tone that can only be described as the Klingon equivalent to squeeing.
 * Speaking of Worf, he's met 3 of his personal heroes; Kahless, Kor, and Martok (the real one), and while Klingons don't exactly squee per se, his reaction on meeting all of them has been more of the aforementioned Klingon equivalent.
 * Star Trek: Kirk himself is no stranger to this trope. He pretty much acted the same way when he got to meet Lincoln
 * Star Trek: Voyager: Janeway's interaction with the Leonardo da Vinci hologram also had this vibe. Likely due to the fact that Janeway is a scientist, while Leonardo literally is the scientist.
 * Buffy the Vampire Slayer: In probably the only case when it happened between a hero and a villain, Buffy squeed pretty hard when she met Dracula.
 * JAG: Admiral Chegwidden keeps a portrait of Arleigh Burke who was in his day enough of a badass even to impress a Seal.

Pro Wrestling

 * Zack Ryder tends to mark out uncontrollably whenever he gets a main eventer to appear on Z True Long Island Story. Especially John Cena.

Video Games

 * Dean from Wild ARMs 5 over his "hero", Nightburn.
 * In Persona 4, despite regularly diving through television screens and battling the physical embodiment of people's suppressed selves, Yosuke can't help being completely starstruck when teen idol, "Risette" comes to town.
 * Numerous times in Metal Gear:
 * In Metal Gear 2, Snake fanboys over Natasha Markova/Gustava Heffner, who was a women's figure skater he likes.
 * In Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, he can't resist fanboying over Peter Stillman, either, while Raiden is having messy fangasms over the thought of meeting Snake.
 * And in Super Smash Bros.. Brawl, he and Otacon fanboy over Captain Falcon for some reason that is never fully explained. Snake also shows deep respect for Mario and Luigi.
 * The Ouendan of the Japanese game Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan appear wherever they are needed, sometimes for a reason. In Ouendan 2, a pop star is kidnapped, and the Ouendan are there to support fans in reclaiming him because they clearly are fans themselves.
 * Morgan LeFlay, Mighty Pirate Hunter in Tales of Monkey Island is a fangirl of Guybrush Threepwood, Mighty Pirate despite her occupation. She is more than a little disappointed to find out Guybrush operates more through Indy Ploys, picking up anything that might be useful, and avoiding epic fights through clever trickery than the Badass pirate she seems to have thought he was.
 * Ratchet of Ratchet and Clank is like this a few times. He reacts with awe towards a hoverboard champion and is rather excited that the spaceship he is stationed on has a gamestation in the third game.
 * Mass Effect: Commander Shepard gets this from time to time, since s/he's already a Badass with a rep in the first game. In the second, s/he's only the savior of the entire galaxy. One could almost argue that there's less squeeing over him/her than there should be. Especially since s/he's back from the dead. Though given the memorials to the Commander on a half dozen planets, his/her home colony adopting his/her face as their official logo, and (according to one news report) raging extranet arguments about what his/her return means, we can say things are pretty Squee-ish. If you chose the Paragon ending in the first game the turian weapons dealer on the Citadel positively gushes over Shepard. Even before completing his loyalty mission, it's clear that the tankborn mega-krogan Grunt has nothing but total respect for Shepard and is infuriated whenever anyone insults him/her in anyway or spits on his/her name.
 * In Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, Sothe, despite being a highly skilled rogue, still fanboys immensely over Badass Ike. This quote from his prospect girlfriend Micaiah shows the level of his admiration.
 * Red Dead Redemption! It's hard not to hear a hint of squee in John Marston's voice when he meets Landon Ricketts.
 * Crisis Core: Zack Fair goes all fanboy at the idea of meeting Sephiroth. "I get to meet a real hero!" After actually meeting Sephiroth, he settles down. Sorta.
 * This is the reaction Viewtiful Joe has when he meets the Tatsunoko and Marvel heroes in the Capcom crossovers.
 * Adell of Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories is a huge fan of Pleinair, who is a news anchor in that game.
 * Altaïr, protagonist of the first Assassin's Creed, has a mild fanboy in Ezio, protagonist of the next three games. They never actually meet, because they were born three centuries apart, but Ezio adopts Altaïr as his mentor and tries to follow in his footsteps and learn from his mistakes.
 * The Player Character from Saints Row: The Third reacts in this way when meeting the current mayor of Steelport:

Visual Novels

 * Trucy Wright in Apollo Justice Ace Attorney over the Gavinners, despite the fact that Gavin is actually their opponent in court. Apollo himself has some fanboyish tendencies concerning Phoenix Wright.

Web Comics

 * Lisa of Mechagical Girl Lisa A.N.T., to the point of being completely oblivious that her idol Pink Flash is a dangerous foe.
 * The Order of the Stick: Roy meeting his grand-father in the afterlife. Roy is also quite fanboyish when meeting with Gary Gygax earlier—probably channeling the author there.
 * Villainous example from Homestuck: despite being an omniscient, nearly omnipotent "first guardian" of Alternia, Doc Scratch is apparently a big fan of Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff, bringing up many of the same Memes that the rest of the cast does.
 * Batman meeting the Grey Ghost in Shortpacked.
 * In The Specialists, Max to Captain Victory.

Web Original

 * Alloy from The Descendants to the point where he has to be told to control himself when meeting other heroes by his teammates.
 * Aquerna and some of the other Underdogs of Whateley Academy in the Whateley Universe have a fan club for Fey. This is really embarrassing for Fey, since she's their age and still in high school.

Western Animation

 * Happens a lot on Totally Spies!.
 * And to The Amazing Spiez whenever they meet the originals.
 * Inspector Gadget
 * Penny did this in an episode where everyone's favorite detective family has to protect a rock and roll star.
 * Plus there is one where a MAD agent also happens to be Gadget's favorite actress.
 * Katara of Avatar: The Last Airbender is a total Jet Fan Girl for one episode. Hey, All Girls Want Bad Boys. She loses her capacity to squee harder than most examples here when she learns that he's not just bad, he's a narrow-minded jingoist who considers killing a town full of innocent Earth Kingdom civilians a ringing success for the rebellion, just because there happens to be a Fire Nation camp nearby.
 * The Batman the Animated Series episode "Beware the Gray Ghost" had Batman showing as much squee as he is capable of upon meeting the actor of a childhood TV hero, the "Gray Ghost", who seems to have inspired some of the Batman persona. Played by Adam West as a Shout-Out to earlier incarnations of Batman.
 * Batman the Brave And The Bold
 * Blue Beetle spends most of his time in awe of Batman. He's also fanboyed over previous Blue Beetle Ted Kord and Aquaman.
 * And Bats himself to Sherlock Holmes, in the episode where he went back in time. At the end of that episode, Holmes asks how he knew who he was. "Everyone knows who you are. You're the world's greatest detective." (World's Greatest Detective is usually a title given to Batman.)
 * In Justice League, Captain Marvel finally meets his idol Superman, only to discover that he's nothing like he thought he would be. After Supes beats the tar out of him, destroying the "reformed" Lex Luthor's new city in the process, he resigns from the now understandably repentant JL with the words, "You just don't act like heroes." Contextually, the Big Blue's attitude had a lot to do with recent events. The same happens with the Ulti-Men later on.
 * Sushi Pack
 * The members of the Sushi Pack fall into this occasionally. In "The World's Tastiest Heroes", Ikura fanboys over all the superheroes on "The World's Biggest Heroes" and even gets backstage passes to the show. The superheroes all turn out to be horrible braggers and just laugh at the Pack when Ikura introduces them as heroes, too.
 * In "Yam Yakkers," Ikura and Wasabi are looking forward to getting the autograph of the actor playing Aquabot-boy, and while Tako claims to be a fan of Aquabot-boy, not the actor, he still does a happy dance when he gets an autograph, too.
 * Teen Titans
 * Raven and Starfire basically dissolve into a puddle of gently Squeeing goo when they first meet Aqualad.
 * The whole team drools over Val-Yor to a scary degree, trusting the stranger to the point of joining a mission of his far from Earth way too quickly. Then it turns out.
 * Also, in the flashback episode showing how the team first met, Beast Boy was very excited to meet Robin, who was, of course, already famous.
 * The whole team save Beast Boy squeed hard when BB received a letter from the Doom Patrol, a famous (in-series) and established team of superheroes. They stop squeeing and start asking themselves questions when BB reveals he had been in the team before getting fired.
 * Ben 10 Alien Force
 * Ben squeals like a fangirl when he sees a commercial for a new live-action "Sumo Slammers" movie.
 * Also in a more recent episode, Ben's girlfriend said the reason she didn't get jealous when a movie star kissed Ben was because "he's gotta bigger crush on Captain Nemesis than he does on Jennifer Nocturne".
 * In Danny Phantom, a villainous example is given with the Green Bay Packers fanatic Vlad Masters.
 * In The Penguins of Madagascar episode "The Red Squirrel" Skipper, Kowalski, and Rico all squee over meeting and working with the legendary Special Agent Buck Rockgut. Skipper even claims to have "patterned his whole life" after Rockgut.
 * In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003), Mikey often feels this way regarding established super-heroes, such as Silver Sentry and the Justice Force.
 * Static Shock: Static is quite excited every time he meets another superhero. No Broken Pedestal for him, either—they collaborate quite well. The closest thing was discovering that Batman is not very friendly, but Robin assures him that it's not personal, and they come to an understanding.
 * There was a definite Broken Pedestal moment when he met Green Lantern John Stewart. However that was quickly resolved upon learning the Lantern Static thought he'd met was Sinestro impersonating him.
 * Same with Superman in another episode, not to mention both he and Gear getting their minds blown when the Justice League itself asks for their help in their crossover episode (well, Static's help, anyway.)
 * The Legion of Super-Heroes over Clark Kent in the animated series. With Brainiac 5, it never stopped, and we had scenes of Danger Room-like sessions with Brainy heroically stopping the bad guys, being fatally wounded, and dying in the arms of Superman.
 * Early in Gargoyles, Lexington is excited to meet The Pack... until they try to kill him.
 * In My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic, Rainbow Dash is a very skilled flier, winner of many awards, and bearer of the Element of Loyalty, but she's still a total Fan Girl of the Wonderbolts and hopes to join them someday
 * Wakfu
 * Sadlygrove Percedal greatly idolizes his mentor Goultard. Though ironically back when the two met, Sadlygrove was the only person not to know Goultard in a town populated by fanatic fans of the legendary warrior.
 * Amalia Sheran Sharm, despite being herself an heroine and a princess, can easily turn into a complete Fan Girl around renowned people, like the Justice Knight or the Masked Gobbowler.

Real Life

 * Allegedly, Gabe and Tycho of Penny Arcade and Karen Traviss (best known for her Wess Har books and Republic Commando novels) reacted this way to one another when they read each other's blogs and found out they were fans of one another.
 * When Mark Hamill and Maurice LaMarche first met, Maurice hoped that he wouldn't fanboy-out at meeting Luke Skywalker. Only for Mark to fanboy-out at meeting the Brain!
 * In the 1993 NHL playoffs, the Los Angeles Kings eliminated the Vancouver Canucks in the second round. During the team handshake, up-and-coming young Canuck star Petr Nedved asked his idol, the Kings' Wayne Gretzky, for his stick as a souvenir. Needless to say, Vancouver fans were not amused at the antics. For completely different reasons, this actually turned out to be his final act as a Canuck.
 * Reportedly, one of the New York firefighters doing rescue work in the wake of the 9/11 attacks had a complete fanboy moment upon discovering that one of the volunteers serving them food and water was none other than Kevin Conroy of Batman: The Animated Series fame.
 * Similarly, more than one volunteer helping out after the Kanto Earthquake/Tsunami of 2011 apparently had had similar reactions when they found out that the famous seiyuu Norio Wakamoto (who actually was a policeman before becoming a voice actor) was among them.
 * Tim Allen and Buzz Aldrin mutually fanboyed each other when they had an opportunity to meet.
 * French comedian Jamel Debbouze and French soccer star Zinedine Zidane are complete fans of each other. It shows whenever they're invited together on television.
 * Any institution for providing protection(military, constabulary, disaster relief, whatever), will if it has gone on for a few generations acquire a veritable valhalla of heroes.