This week, our roundtable discussion turns to fictional nerds. Who is your favorite fictional nerd/dork/geek and why? It could be a comic book character, someone from a TV show or even a movie from the 80s.
There are so many options available here we could do four or five different version of this question and get different answers each time.
After reading our thoughts, add your opinions in the comments section.
Jason Powers: 
This is a no-brainer, it’s Dr. Bunsen Honeydew. The Muppet Show was my favorite thing for a long time, and even though I barely remember the original run, it lived on in re-runs for the majority of my formative years. Almost every episode, Dr. Honeydew would bring us the latest in science news and information from Muppet Labs “where the future is being made today.” These segments usually came with an experiment which caused great physical harm to Dr. Honeydew’s long suffering, monosyllabic assistant Beaker.
Meep!
Matt Clayton 
Emmett Lathrop "Doc" Brown from the “Back to the Future” movie franchise is an easy choice for favorite fictional nerd. He perfected time travel for humans and his dog, refers to himself as "a student of all sciences," is as a passionate inventor and has a great catchphrase in "Great Scott!"
Brown really only had three friends; Marty, Jennifer (Marty’s girlfriend) and Einstein, his faithful dog.
Just in case you think he’s not good enough, keep in mind that he somehow managed to steal a bunch of plutonium from some very angry Libyan terrorists and live to tell about it. Take that Libya!
Chris Moore 
Perhaps one of the greatest nerds out there was Steven Q. Urkel. And this man was definitely a nerd. He had a genius-level intellect, was a brilliant scientist and was
socially awkward when it came to women.
But that did not stop the cheese-loving nerd from trying. His eyes were nearly always set on the girl next door, Laura Winslow. No matter how many times he failed, Steve always
tried to win her heart. It was always endearing to see him try and was some of the most romantic gestures a nerd could ever pull off.
Urkel was also perhaps one of the first showcases of nerds becoming a mainstream occurrence on TV. The character was originally only slated to be a one-time thing on the
show Family Matters, but after his appearance he would show up more and more at the Winslow household and as the show got more seasons, it started to actually revolve around the character more than the Winslow family themselves. The character was so popular; he even appeared on other shows such as Full House and Step by Step.
As the show began to revolve more around the character Urkel, the plot of episodes even got more nerd-esque, with Steve going into space, creating a functioning robot named Urkelbot and, which is perhaps to most famous recurring occurrence, Urkel creating a transformation chamber that altered his DNA and personality to become different people. In perhaps a scenario that could have only come from writers that read DC Comics regularly, he cloned himself and made his clone his cool alter ego, Stefan Urquelle, a permanent human being.
Steve Urkel was an icon in his day. The character was funny, had his own dance
and a catch phrase that nearly every kid was saying in the 90s. When people
thought of a nerd, he was perhaps the first thing that came to their minds.
Anna Codutti 
I love a good fictional nerd. Back in the day, my “My So-Called Life” crush was never the smoking hot Jordan Catalano (Jared Leto in his prime) but the geeky neighbor Brian Krakow (Devon Gummersall with a cute blond fro).
My current fav fictional nerd has got to be Cyd Sherman, who goes by the handle Codex. Writer/actor/producer Felicia Day uses a lot of her own quirks in the character she plays in “The Guild,” a web series she created in 2007. Day, like Codex, is an adorkable ginger gamer-girl (and violin virtuoso). She’s most recognizable from her lead role in Joss Whedon’s “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” with Neil Patrick Harris and her role as rocket scientist Holly Marten in Syfy’s “Eureka.”
Codex takes awkward to a new level. When her therapist breaks up with her one minute into the first episode, I know this is going to be a girl whose personal embarrassments will make me feel less bad about my own shortcomings. Like many lady nerds, she is cute but has no game -- so when she gets her swerve on, it’s funnier than it is romantic. (Exception: I did swoon and hit rewind when bad-boy gamer Fawkes, played by Wil Wheaton, kisses her to remind her what she’s missing when she dumps him as a pretend boyfriend.)
In the online game she plays (titled simply The Game), Codex is a healer. It’s a fitting role, as it’s her that brings together all the members of her guild (her teammates in The Game) in a time of need. Sure, it’s her own personal need to get rid of fellow guildie-slash-stalker Zaboo, but that doesn’t make her less endearing. She makes a family out of six people who have nothing in common but The Game, and loves them despite their many, many failings. I heart Codex!
James Royal 
This is hard because there are so many good options (Kitty Pryde, Hank McCoy, C-3PO, Clark Kent, Chuck Bartowski, Chloe O’Brien, Lisa Simpson, Willow Rosenberg, Paul Pfeiffer, Comic Book Guy … you get the idea), but the more I thought about this one, the more one familiar name kept coming up in my mind – Peter Parker.
I’ve always been a huge Marvel fan, and outside of the X-Men, my favorite hero was Spider-Man. He was pegged as a nerd from the very beginning, but he still ended up getting the girl of his dreams and got superpowers thrown in for good measure. In recent years, he’s even put his gig as a photographer behind him and started using his genius intellect for bigger pursuits.
And lest you forget he is really a genius, just remember that he invented the formula for his web fluid when he was just a teenager. Most teen boys can barely mix soap and water to clean up the dinner dishes, and everyone’s favorite wall-crawler was mixing complex chemical formulas to come up with a high-strength polymer so he could tie up bad guys and swing around the city, and he was designing the means to deploy it to boot. And don’t get me started on the tech he would need to pull off his spider-tracers.
Michael Dambold 
My favorite nerd from fiction is Daniel Jackson from the Stargate movie/SG1 series. James Spader made that amazing character what it was, and Michael Shanks grew the character into what it is today in the TV series and movies.
Daniel could speak a number of languages, present and ancient, as well as decode the location of the ancient city of Atlantis, as well as being the resident archaeological expert on everything.
Micah Choquette 
My favorite fictional nerd? Sheesh, gimme a hard one, please! It's Peter Parker, hands down.
Let's run through the list: Ignored by the popular crowd? Check. Barely passes gym class, but possesses above-average knowledge in all things science mechanics? Check. Of course, that was before the spider bite, and that's not the best part - Peter Parker actually got to live out the ultimate fantasy of many a nerd as web-slinging superhero Spider-Man.
Most of us nerds/geeks/dorks in real life don't get that kind of luck. So now he's smart, strong, agile AND he scores the hottest girl in school. The guy is essentially who every nerd longs to be.
It's interesting to note that Parker's nerdisms came in handy during the most opportune moments while dressed as Spidey, too. While most of his superhero colleagues thought him of not much more than a wise-cracking wall-crawler, he proved over and again that he's more brains than brawn, surprising even the best minds like Reed Richards, Hank Pym and Tony Stark.
People tend to say that Batman is the most "realistic" comic book hero, because he has no super powers. I still maintain that Peter Parker/Spider-Man is the one most of us can familiarize with. We all have our strengths and weaknesses, and many of us struggle with the responsibility we're given. We may not be superheroes, but there's a little bit of Peter Parker in all of us.
