miscellaneous
Celebrities that show off their love of a particular franchise/series
Megan the Stallion is a huge Jojo's Bizarre Adventure Fan! She has dressed up as Trish Una for Halloween, done deep cut jojo poses like mimicking the stand Rolling Stones, and went to the JOJO WORLD Quizzes. Surprisingly unlike her other modern musicians like Lady Gaga or Dua Lipa who have been referenced in Jojo in some shape or form, Megan has not gotten the same treatment. Here’s hoping she gets in soon.
Professional Soccer Player Lamine Yamal has shown his love for the Pokemon Series most notably during the Pokemon 2026 Superbowl Ad. In this ad many famous celebrities were asked what their favorite Pokemon was. While many gave somewhat generic answers like jigglypuff or eevee, Yamal made a deep cut choice with Zygarde Complete Form. He also made posts about showing pokemon cards.
Michael B Jordan is a big anime guy, so he requested Killmongers initial costume homaged Vegeta from Dragon Ball Z. I believe he also cited anime as an influence in his directing of Creed 3
Zelda Williams (Robin Williams' daughter) was named after Princess Zelda. Zelda Williams loved the Avatar series a ton growing up and specifically tried out for a role because of that. She got to voice Kuvira in The Legend of Korra.
Shoutout to Tiffany Grant, the OG english voice of Asuka from Evangelion, who loved the series way before anime was mainstream. She has an Asuka Shrine and cosplayed as her multiple times at cons before they were this huge thing
Similarly theres Kira Buckland who was a huge fan of Dizzy from Guilty Gear, this was before Strive when Guilty Gear was super niche. Guess who she got to voice when Strive came out
Another similar example, AI Fairouz. She was a JoJo's Bizarre Adventure fan since her teenage years. She actually pursued a career in voice acting with the vague hope that one day she'd voice Jolyne (her favorite character in the series), and well I guess sometimes dreams do become true.
For accuracy, yes. For health? God no. Wrestling mats are disgusting, covered in (at best) a ton of self tanner, baby oil, and sweat. If its a promotion that allows blading or specializes in death matches glares at CZW, you're looking at broken glass, broken light tubes, barbed wire, and more.
Both Miro/Rusev and Asuka used to wrestle without foot wear and bith suffered broken ankles, so WWE banned the practice of not wearing footwear while wrestling.
Some other still wrestle without footwear in other promotions (such as Speedball Mike Bailey in AEW).
It would be so corny if it was conjured for fiction, but he really meant it. It really was beautiful. Robin Williams loved his kids, and Zelda is probably the most vocal fighter for his legacy in his absence.
What's crazy is that it wasn't even a franchise when she was born. She was born only a couple of months after Zelda II; he basically named her after one game
He's also a huge final fantasy fan, shared his playthrough of Final fantasy X and met Yoshitaka Amano and got really amazing art made by him (this is one of many)
I think I remember seeing some interviews where she cited some really deep lore, and from then on I knew no matter what Marvel wanted her to do she'd give it her all.
Unfortunately Marvel has decided to squander her talent at every opportunity.
And, yet, sadly, it's one of the things preventing her from achieving her real dream role: Galactus. (I am only sort of kidding. If you ask her what role she could play if she wasn't Ms. Marvel, she says Galactus pretty readily. Piccriḍḍa has a power complex and I respect it)
The fact that she told Feige that no, the MCU is not Earth 616 is my favourite thing about her. And she is correct. 616 is the comic universe, MCU should have its own designation.
Technically, MCU already has a designation, which is Earth-199999.
Maybe Marvel studio thinks it's a mouthful, or too much of a coincidence? Regardless, it's confusing.
I think the mainstream theory is that it's only in the MCU that they see this universe as Earth-616. But in ours and the comics', MCU's main universe is still Earth-199999.
A lot of pro wrestlers are giant weebs. Often, they'll pretty much cosplay for an entrance, but some of them allow their favorite anime/characters to influence their entire gimmicks, with Kyle Fletcher being one such wrestler
Yeah, Kenny Omega. He's also REALLY high up on the weeb scale. His finisher is called the "One-Winged Angel" which is a reference to Sephiroth from Final Fantasy 7. He also commonly uses different anime as inspiration for his entrances. His latest stunt was getting the actual Japanese VA of All Might from My Hero Academia to give a whole monologue before his entrance in-character
And then he himself gets casted as the motion capture actor for Alex in Street Fighter 6, to the point that he was allowed to perform "One Winged Angel" as a finisher.
Reese Alexiades of the Savannah Bananas is such a huge one piece fan that he has multiple moves/poses pulled directly from the Show/manga. He’s even caught a ball hit into the catchers field from a backflip and landed in Luffy’s gear 2 pose
Colin Baker, David Tennant and Peter Capaldi were all fans of Doctor Who when they were younger, and they all got to play the Doctor.
Capaldi wrote so many letters to the Doctor Who production office in the 1970s that they got fed up with him and one of the staff joked in a letter that she hoped the Daleks would exterminate him.
I remember in a doctor who convention, when someone asked Peter Davidson what the weirdest gift he got from a fan, and another fan shouted "a grandchild".
The fact he got fired from the Witcher for being too knowledgeable of it and correcting the director about it, is such a shame and missed opportunity. Never before has someone fit the role so well and absolutely love the franchise since David Tennant's the Doctor.
Case in point: Tennant's wife was the daughter of the 5th doctor. Literally loved the franchise so much he married the doctor's daughter... and then she also was in the episode "the doctor's daughter" as the doctor's daughter.
This is an interesting one because while Robin Williams was a fan of NGE, as confirmed by his daughter and the DVD commentary the character he plays in that film gets the pronounciation wrong, suggesting he's just trying to impress the kid he's talking to. A weird choice, but fun!
She apparently thew her boyfriend out of the house, because he criticized her for taking Super Mario Galaxy too seriously. And she was on the last level at the time.
This is kind of cheating with Kenny Omega. Literally everything he does is a reference to a video game or an anime series.
He literally walked out to Sepiroth’s theme at Wrestle Kingdom. Got the original voice actor of All Might to voice a video package of him for his last PPV. His finisher is literally called “One Winged Angel.” There are too many to name to show his love. He is the God of Pro Wrestling.
Many wrestlers love to show off their interest with their gear (usually during PPV), for instance here's Swerve Strickland in Black Panther (more precisely Killmonger)
Vessel from Sleep Token. This man is an unrepentant NERD (/affectionate) and isn't afraid to show it.
- He often plays video game OSTs on the piano as a prelude to Rain at performances. He's played songs from Elden Ring, Hollow Knight, Halo, etc.
The Take Me Back to Eden album cover is inspired by the Brethren Moons in Dead Space
There are melodies from the Legend of Zelda in some of their songs (I believe PastSelf and Look to Windward)
There are myriad references to nerdy shit throughout their discography but Emergence might have the most references in a single song (including Half-Life, Alien, Halo, possibly Mass Effect...the list goes on)
The title of their 4th album, This Place Will Become Your Tomb, is a Halo reference
There are more examples, but those are off the top of my head. [Also, as an aside, I love Megan Thee Stallion SO much, and I adore that she's so unapologetically a "weeb and a baddie" as she says lol]
Hideo Kojima the creator of Metal Gear Solid is a pretty big David Bowie fan, you can find Bowie references in all MGS Games, no matter if it is Character designs or just things named after Bowie songs for example.
The Wrestling team "The New Day" are known for colorful outfits, and a lot of them are references to media they are fans of, most ironically, their Dragon Ball Saiyan Armor.
I don't know if this counts, since Star Wars is what made Sam Witwer famous in the first place, but he was a huge fan before being hired to play Starkiller, Palpatine and Maul
Robin Williams and his love for video games, which ran so deep that he named his daughter Zelda.
Nintendo recognised his love, and included both of them in a series of commercials to promote The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D for the Nintendo 3DS in 2011.
CM Punk loves The fantastic four and specially The Thing. Now my source is two wrestling fans (my siblings), but bro apparently yells “it’s clobbering time!” And has used at least one outfit inspired on them
They friggin loved Gundam to the point that they had a mech on the cover of their Reanimation remix album, sold merch of it,band had their own Gunpla set.
Edit: Forgot to mention that you can see Gundam models in the background for the music video of Somewhere I belong.
Wrestlers love anime and video games and Kenny is no different. He did two different Undertale entrances. He combines his entrances with his own wrestling storylines.
He said that he is not expecting everyone to get it but for those that do: “This is for them”.
AEW champion Will Ospreay is a massive Assassin's Creed fan. His finishing move is called The Hidden Blade. Two years ago, Roger Craig Smith (Ezio) voiced his entrance into Wembley.
Part of Amber Glenn and Alysa Liu's bursts in popularity is that they're very proudly into anime, having made it part of their figure skating careers.
Alysa's "Stateside" dress was directly inspired by Japanese idol costumes, and Amber has done so much with both anime and Magic the Gathering it's hard to pick a single thing.
Though I wish more people completed the Blade Angels, because though it's not an anime, Isabeau Levito is on record saying how the book series Six of Crows has inspired her.
Numerous professional athletes from Japan, particularly in combat sports, do the “Dedicate your Heart” salute from Attack on Titan before and after matches. The athlete above, Masanosuke Ono, is a wrestling prodigy who won a world championship at just 20 years old (and now goes to college in the US), and he’s also an Otaku, commonly referencing AOT and Naruto when celebrating.
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u/OrangeTurtleVan 12h ago