One of Us/Other Pencilnecks

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Writer/director/musician Liam Lynch has a video podcast, and had an entire episode dedicated to his massive Doctor Who collection.
  • Israeli model Adi Noyman is one of the founders of the Israeli Star Trek fan club.
  • This sequence of strips from Dork Tower relishes in it.
  • This strip from Weregeek.
  • Jhonen Vasquez, creator of JTHM and Invader Zim, is a huge video game addict, even saying (as of Comic Con '05) that he has gaming systems from the Dreamcast to the Xbox 360; and is a fan of Zelda, Metroid, BioShock (series), and Alone in the Dark, just to name a few. He's also a big fan of the Alien movies, even giving a homage to them in an Invader Zim episode, "Lice".
    • Plus he's got a (very inactive) Something Awful account.
    • And is a huge fan of anime, particularly Neon Genesis Evangelion. This should surprise no one familiar with his work.
  • Former porn star Jessica Steinhauser (better known as Asia Carrera) is a member of Mensa, a classically trained pianist who performed at Carnegie Hall as a child, builds her own computers, and plays Unreal Tournament.
    • Her review of one version of Photoshop was published in Maximum PC magazine. On a side note, she has discounted Sharon Stone's claim to being a member of Mensa.
    • Loads of porn actors and actresses are secret geeks. For example Stoya is a huge sci-fi fan and has been an IT nerd since a very early age.
      • There is a porn star named Phoenix Askani.
      • And another who goes by Diana Prince.
      • Avena Lee has the Dragon Ball dragon tattooed on her lower back.
      • Porn star / import model Francine Dee has a tattoo of Mew down there.
      • Nicki Hunter has Comi Con on her yearly list along with the AVN Expo, and even starred in a porn parody of Avatar.
      • There's a pornstar named April O'Neil. If that wasn't enough, she is a Doctor Who fan and played Deanna Troi in a parody, which she considered a dream role.
      • This video makes it very clear that Bobbi Starr knows her video games quite well.
  • Ana Marie Cox, Daily Beast reporter and frequent guest on the Rachel Maddow show, has been known to make Firefly references on her Twitter.
    • She and John Hodgman also toasted each other "So Say We All" on Twitter at the end of the series Battlestar Galactica.
  • While we're on the subject of bloggers, at least half The Atlantic's bloggers right now are geeks, self-confessed or otherwise. The most blatant example is Ta-Nehisi Coates, who rolls with the Horde, enough to write about it for Time. Business Editor Megan McArdle is also a gamer, though to what extent is unknown (She loves Civ, at least). Chief blogger Andrew Sullivan, being English-born, is an obvious Doctor Who and Monty Python fan. Josh Green is limited to music geekery, enough to put up a fight with a music website. The rest (Ambinder, Fallows, Goldberg, and Crooks) remain uncertain (unless you count Fallows's beer fanaticism as geekery).
  • Many, many current high-stakes poker players got their start in ~Magic: The Gathering~; David Williams is the most famous of those. Justified in that many of the skills used in Magic translate very well to poker.
  • Former Obsidian writer Annie Carlson joined the RPG Codex forums initially for a topic about a post about a comment she made on the official forums; even after leaving the company, she is still a regular poster (apparently the forums lack of filter and her tendency to "use fuck like a comma" work with each-other).
  • According to this article, voice actors Yuri Lowenthal and Ashley Johnson are avid video game fans, with Lowenthal even mentioning that he finds Johnson "all the more hot" for being a gamer.
  • Cristina Valenzuela's personal YouTube page contains, among other things, a Blazen comic dub, an English-language version of "Bad Apple!!", and...we'll just let this one speak for itself. [dead link]
  • Bill Amend, creator of FoxTrot, has a degree in physics from Amherst and avidly plays World of Warcraft, often making accurate jokes about both. Not to mention other video games, internet memes and just about any aspect of nerd culture you can reference in a family friendly comic. Bill Amend may well be the geekiest daily weekly cartoonist out there.
  • David Gaider, who wrote a lot of the script for Baldur's Gate, has written fanfiction for his own video game (including a Seinfeld crossover) and posted it on fan forums. Occasionally he'll review fics and help out with fan mod dialogue.
    • He's also a huge Joss Whedon fanboy, to the point that he based several characters in Dragon Age on Whedon characters (Alistair as Xander being the most obvious), and liberally sprinkled the game with Buffy-Speak and subtle references to Whedon's shows.
  • Hikaru Midorikawa, the seiyuu of Heero Yuy, is apparently a very huge fan of the Super Robot Wars series. Amongst the activities he has done in the SRW community includes:
    • Making up a blog in the main staff's site.
    • Keep watching about the possibility of a new SRW game out, if it does, go there and volunteer to become a beta-tester and if he can, do extra lines for characters he voiced. Usually for free.
    • Do a One-Man Army run with the character he voiced in the game. (This was joked about in a No Fourth Wall skit when you save and quit in Super Robot Wars OG.)
  • Paul Krugman, who received the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel (it is technically not a Nobel Prize) in 2008. It is not unusual for those with a Ph.D. to be nerds but he deserves a special mention. Reasons: 1) His interest in economics began when he read Isaac Asimov's Foundation books. He wanted to, just as in the book, be one of the social scientists "who understand the true dynamics save civilization". Since psychohistory does not exist, he turned to the closest thing, economics. 2) He posted this LOLcat on his blog upon leaving for Sweden to get his Nobel prize. 3) This video. 4) To cheer himself up he once wrote The Theory of Interstellar Trade, a paper where he outlines how trade between different star system might work. It does among other things take up how time dilation could affect economics. And he's a Buffy fan!
  • Shane Acker, director of the Academy Award nominated short 9 as well as the feature film based on it, appears to be a bit of an anime fan as he stated during a talked with Elijah Wood on Currrent that he liked films such as Akira and Princess Mononoke.
  • Judging by the voice heard in these ads for the upcoming MAGFEST...
  • The astronaut Steven Swanson is such a big Firefly fan that he added a copy of the box set and Serenity to the International Space Station library.
    • For perspective on how significant this is, it costs several million dollars per pound to bring stuff up there, and even there, space is really, really, really at a premium.
  • Brad Dourif, the actor who played Saavedro in Myst III: Exile, took the job because he was a diehard Myst fan.
  • Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku is a huge fan of the sci-fi genre. He has a show on the Science Channel dedicated to explaining how various types of genre goodies, like robots and lightsabers could be brought to reality.
  • Stage actress and sometime Disney Princess Lea Salonga is apparently very much into video games.
  • Another seiyuu who likes video games: Kana Ueda. She owns an Xbox 360, likes playing Halo 3, is apparently pretty skilled at it. So much that Microsoft held an event so Halo players can meet her online... and get themselves fragged by her, or frag her in a friendly match.
    • She also voiced Saydy in the Japanese version of Halo 3: ODST and she will provide some voice work for the Japanese version of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.
  • Rie Tanaka is a big fan of online games and she even provided voice acting in many Japanese, Korean and American online games like Final Fantasy XIV (the Mi'qotes), Cosmic Break (Icy), and, just like with Kana Ueda, she will work in the Japanese version of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.
  • And another one is Sumi Shimamoto, ther Ur Example of Yamato Nadeshiko... and avid RPG player.
  • Eri Kitamura does amateur manga in her spare time.
  • Crispin Freeman. He's a voice actor in America 'cause of him being an anime fan of franchises like Voltron and Battle of the Planets. He considered changing his first name to Mark, one of the protagonists of BOTP. He's also a scholar on classic mythology. In addition, he also teaches potential voice actors in voice workshops too.
  • Isaiah Mustafa, the actor from The Man Your Man Could Smell Like commercials (he's on a horse), is a general paragon of manliness... and he absolutely loves comic books. He has said that he'd love to play Luke Cage in a movie. He also did a video response to Anonymous, complete with referencing the meme "Delicious Cake".
  • Ryohgo Narita, creator of Baccano! and Durarara!!, was once asked how he felt about fans Shipping and slashing his characters together in fanfic and doujins. His response? "Well, I ship Harumi/Chiri."
  • Joe Kucan, known to gamers as the actor who portrays Kane in Command & Conquer, noted that he is an avid fan of the games and is known to be very friendly to people who've met him. The fanbase rejoiced when it was announced that he would reprise the role for Tiberium Wars and Tiberian Twilight.
  • Scientists discovered a gene that causes an embryo to grow spikes like a hedgehog, so they called it a hedgehog gene. Then they discovered the protein that the gene produces, so of course they called it Sonic Hedgehog.
    • It gets better: Another group of scientists found a potential antagonist to the protein in question, and decided to name it "Robotnikinin".
  • Stephen Hawking is a big Star Trek fan, and requested to sit in the captain's chair during his guest spot on The Next Generation. He also said of the warp core while touring the engineering set, "I'm working on that." He also had a guest appearance portraying himself in a scene where Data plays poker while conversing with three great physicists on the holodeck (the others being actors portraying Issac Newton and Albert Einstein).
  • Hidenori Kusaka, creator of the Pokémon Special manga, doesn't get any inside info from Game Freak to help him out on his series. Instead, he plays the games when they come out and figures out which parts he wants to incorporate into the story. Some of his author notes have him squeeing over whatever new features the games have.
  • Hidekaz Himaruya of Axis Powers Hetalia fame is a fan of When They Cry, South Park, and Happy Tree Friends. And that's not counting his apparently quirky and eccentric personality.
  • Several members of That Guy With The Glasses are big fans of Red Dwarf - Linkara and Spoony frequently reference the show in their videos, Doug Walker cites it as his third-favorite television show (behind Home Movies and Daria) and Rob Walker has stated that Santa Christ was inspired by Ace Rimmer.
  • Lucas Gilbertson, the voice of Zero barring in ~Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds~, apparently shares our pain from the Narmy dub of X4, so he redubs it himself.
  • David Hayter, best known for being Solid Snake, is the only actor in MGS to have played and beaten said game. He also speaks fluent Japanese, has named his only daughter Natasha after the character in the Marvel comic book Black Widow, and once stated in an anime convention that he was present because he was "a big fan of Fushigi Yuugi" (he voiced Tamahome over there).
    • And, of course, he wrote the script for the Watchmen film adaptation.
  • The recent Miss USA winner Alyssa Campanella was revealed to be a huge Star Wars fan, even answering a few suprise trivia questions correctly, and going as far as admitting that if she knew she'd be quizzed on Star Wars, she would've worn her hair with Princess Lea's Odangos.
  • Alyson Court, star of The Big Comfy Couch, the animated Beetlejuice series, the 1992 X-Men cartoon, and the The Amazing Spiez, as well as being the voice of Claire in the Resident Evil series, plays Dungeons & Dragons (2nd edition, no less!), is a big time politics nerd (calls herself a "punditz"), and she's also the one who named the Mavericks in the English version of Mega Man X5.
  • Hungarian voice actor and translator Dániel Hamvas proudly admits he puts all the time spent on the net to good use by incorporating the latest slang, Leet Lingo and cuss words into his translations, or those that he supervises. His most famous and renowned "contributions" are the strikingly colorful scripts of Family Guy (where he also plays the role of Chris) and The Boondocks, and he also appears to be an all-round geek, in a good sense.
  • The mid-'90s staff of Disney Adventures absolutely LOVED showing off their nerd cred in the magazine. For the better part of the decade, it was difficult to find an issue that didn't have some kind of reference to Star Trek, The X-Files, and/or Star Wars.
    • The comics editors were HUGE outspoken fans of indie comics, and managed to put (among other things) Evan Dorkin's Kid Blastoff! and Jeff Smith's Bone into the magazine.
  • Gabe Newell, head of Valve Corporation, said in an interview once that he was a brony. The internet's reaction was exactly what one would expect.
  • Radio personality Howard Stern is a big fan of science fiction and comic books, even saying that he only watches TV shows and movies about superheroes. He also plays chess every day.
  • Seiyuu Hiroshi Kamiya (Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei, Durarara!!, Gundam 00) is a HUGE Gundam nerd, and his house is reportedly full of Gundam figures. He also likes playing "gal games", specifically Amagami, collects toys and boy's love drama CD's, and adores cats, himself having a Russian Blue named Nyanko-sensei, which is coincidentally the name of his character Natsume's feline youkai companion from Natsume Yuujinchou.
  • " #Bring Back Toonami is not about a job. It's profoundly personal for me." Quoted from Voice Actor Steve Blum's twiter account. He was as excited as any fan that its coming back.
  • Voice actress Erin Fitzgerald, known for her roles in Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy (as Nazz and May Kanker), Monster High (as Abbie, Spectra, and Cupid), and Bleach as a number of characters, is a huge video gamer. Her favorite of all time is Final Fantasy VII. She's a major otaku as well (she was just a casual fan before but got really into anime after dating an otaku), and attends numerous anime conventions, both as a fan and as a guest.
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/One_of_Us/Other_Pencilnecks?oldid=1984725"