Woolseyism/Western Animation

""He got friends like Paco Picopierda...""
 * The Mexican dub of King of the Hill had the title translated as Los Reyes de la Colina; fortunately, since "Reyes" turns out to be a real Hispanic family name, the Hills had their names changed and their family name was replaced with "Reyes", thus keeping the pun on the Hills' family name and the phrase "king of the hill". Hank Hill, for example, had his name changed to Hector Reyes.
 * Transformers series sometimes translate the meaningful names of the characters along with the dialogue. For example, Starscream becomes Gwiazdowrzask (literally "Starscream") in the Polish dub.
 * In the German translation of Transformers Animated, the garbage-loving Wreck-Gar's name is Wreck-sauger. It's a play on the German word "staubsauger", which means "vacuum cleaner".
 * In the Hungarian dub of the live-action film, Starscream became Üstökös ("Comet").
 * Though he has had a number of other names in different series. In Armada, he is called Csillagsikoly (Starscream, literally), sometimes abbreviated to Csillag (Star); and his Energon (re-)incarnation was christened Surranó (Sneaker, which is what he does at his first appearance). Both dubs of the '86 movie refer to him as Starscream, however the delivery at times makes it sound like "Szarszkrém" (Shitscream).
 * According to the Transformers Wiki the otherwise atrocious G1 English dub by Omni Productions (a Hong Kong-based company) renamed Blurr, a transformer known for his superspeed movement and speech, to "Wally". No, really.
 * Drawn Together, as translated into Russian by TNT. Most jokes specific to American culture that wouldn't make sense to a Russian audience were replaced with Russian-specific ones. In a particularly Anvilicious moment, Foxxy and Spanky recite the names of Russian reality show participants, like "This is for Olga!", in the first season finale.
 * When The Magic Roundabout made the transition from France to the United Kingdom, the plot for each episode was completely rewritten and narrated by Eric Thompson. Although the show's creator, Serge Danot, expressed concern over these changes, Thompson's thoroughly British revamp of the animations gained cult status.
 * Eric in fact wrote the scripts without looking at the original French ones; he based it entirely off the film.
 * Then there's the strange case of the 2005 computer-animated movie... It was made as a joint French-British effort, and had a voice cast from each country. Then it had a separate American dub, which is just considered terrible in of itself.
 * When The Flintstones was translated to Spanish, nearly all of the characters' names were changed: Fred Flintstone became "Pedro Picapiedra" (Peter Stonecutter), Barney Rubble became "Pablo Marmol" (Paul Marble) and so on. In addition, the voice actors (who, by and large, do not sound like the originals) apparently ad-libbed most of the jokes. This helped to make the series a big hit in Latin America.
 * In Swedish, they got to keep their first names, but their last names were changed from Flintstone to "Flinta" (Flint) and from Rubble to "Granit" (Granite).
 * In fact, many Hanna-Barbera series were given this treatment, to great success and increased funny.
 * Pretty much all cartoons dubbed in Mexico before the 1970s got this treatment to a bigger or lesser degree. For instance, in the Spanish dub of The Perils of Penelope Pitstop, Penelope Pitstop became "Penélope Glamour", and Sylvester Sneekly became "Silvestre Dos Caras" (Sylvester Two Faces).
 * Frank Black gives this one his usual (bad) Gratuitous Spanish treatment in the song "Crackity Jones."


 * That's Frank mocking an old "psycho gay roommate" who lived with him while in Puerto Rico. Said psycho gay roommate was obsessed with the Flintstones, but it's a good question whether "Paco" instead of "Pedro" is due to Frank or the psycho gay roommate.
 * The Quebec dub did much the same, featuring prominent local comedians for the Voice Acting, changing all the names to appropriately french-sounding names: Fred Flintstone became "Fred Caillou" (Fred Rock), for example. All external signs were also translated in still-frame images. Even Mr. Slate was renamed "Mr. Miroc", a reference to the Mira stone quarry company that existed in Quebec at the time.
 * Even the No Celebrities Were Harmed and Expy cameos were re-written with a more local color, adding more local appeal and moving away from american references that french canadians might otherwise not get (it was a time with no Internet and only four television channels, after all)
 * The Hungarian dub of that show went further than that: the dialog has been rewritten to rhymed prose by a writer/poet, József Romhányi. It gained a lot of puns and wordplay in the process. Even the Hungarian title (Frédi és Béni, a két kőkorszaki szaki) has a rhyme in it.
 * Guilherme Briggs is a famous Brazilian Dubber. Most of the fame comes from the exceptional voices he makes for incredibly different characters (he dubs Superman from the Animated Series/Justice League and Cosmo from The Fairly OddParents, as well as Jim Carrey in his movies), but few know that he also largely improvises on his more comedic personas with jokes easily understood by Brazilians. In fact, many consider his version of most of these characters to be superior to the originals. For instance, he dubbed Hank for the Sealab 2021, managing to make this above average cartoon into comedy gold singlehanded.
 * He was the dubbing director, too, so, it helped a lot. His work on Mewtwo in the Pokemon movie made a cute pokemon clone that happened to be wicked in a wicked clone monster that happened to be a cute pokemon. And it was adapted from the 4Kids version.
 * Nowadays Briggs could very well be considered the Ensemble Darkhorse of voice acting in Brazil. Almost every work he had a hand in, and definetely every single one where he was the director, were very acclaimed in Brazil, where the Fan Dumb simply loves to bash any kind of dub even before actually hearing it. Even them only have good things to say about Briggs's works.
 * Ensemble Dark Horse? Yessir, I like it.
 * The original Mexican dub of Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends left virtually no line of dialogue untouched, turning a stock-standard superhero action cartoon into a legendary, hilarious show that many Children of the '80s (and even the parents of those children, for various reasons) quote to this day. Sadly, this dub was replaced for a dead-literal one in post-2000 reruns, and the show lost most of its charm.
 * Count Duckula's Latin American dub, also produced in Mexico, inserted rapid-fire references to Mexican culture (pop and otherwise) that make it one of the most beloved cartoons in the country's history. Such as "patolín" (how Nanny refers to Duckula in Spanish instead of "Ducky-Boos") wanting tortillas made from Maseca-Seca for lunch; or how he almost never refers to Nanny as such, preferring to use "Gordis" or "La Gorda" (think "fatty/fatso" as a very affectionate term of endearment) and "Gorda de la caridad!" when especially irritated with her.
 * Hanna-Barbera's Top Cat, which originally consisted of only 30 episodes and which wasn't so successful in the United States, was dubbed into Latin American Spanish with the names of all the characters altered to fit. But what really took the cake was that every cat spoke in a different Mexican accent, which is what made the series so wildly successful in Mexico. The same 30 episodes have been re-run over and over in mainstream Mexican TV for about 30 years.
 * A few examples from Winx Club:
 * This scene at a Halloween party is much funnier in the dub.
 * In which the Trix talk about a plan to make Riven hate Bloom, back when they were still reasonably threatening.
 * The Real Ghostbusters had a Dutch dub which featured the characters talking over the end credits, practically turning this into a show-within-a-show as they introduced bizarre, made-up back stories (such as frequent mention of Egon's days in the "Sea Explorers", a scouting group), cracked jokes about the events featured in the episode and even referred to the hosts of the Saturday Morning Kids Show it was part of.
 * The Polish version of Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers changed the name of character "Monterey Jack" (a name of American cheese) to "Rockfor" (which is "Roquefort", a name of French cheese, written phonetically). Also, the "RR" in the title was translated as "Risky Rescue Brigade" (which, also, was the Polish title of the show).
 * The name of Roquefort a.k.a. Rocky was also left in the Russian dub, with some additional changes like Gadget becoming Guyka (Nut, although not this kind of nuts you may think about first) and Fatcat becoming Tolstopuz (Fatbelly).
 * In fact, the Russian dubs of most of the classic Disney animated shows are notorious for their "liberal" approach to character names that ended up mostly working and themselves became iconic. For example, in DuckTales, the names of the triplets Huey, Dewey and Louie, which sound silly to a Russian audience (invoking a slang word for penis), were changed to Billy, Willy and Dilly -- which ironically works the same way to an English audience.
 * The Hungarian dub of Chip and Dale translates the show title as "Csipet csapat" (literally "Tiny team"), Monterey Jack is renamed Kvarg Lipi (a pun on Quargel cheese), Gadget becomes Sziporka ("spark") and Fat Cat is called Pukkandúr (combining "pukkan" (to pop) and "kandúr" (tomcat)).
 * The Italian dub renames Fatcat to Gattolardo, which not only has the same meaning (gatto "cat" + lardo "lard"), but also sounds like Il Gattopardo aka The Leopard, a novel about a Sicilian nobleman, an apt choice for a refined crime boss. The same dub renames Prof. Nimnul to Dr. Pan De Monium.
 * A very clever, multifaceted example: In the German dub of the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Born Again Krabs," when the Flying Dutchman comes after Mr. Krabs, the fake Line-of-Sight Name he gives after looking at the flower on the end table is "Benjamin Blümchen," rather than "Harold Flower" in the English version. It's still a Line-of-Sight Name because "Blümchen" is a diminutive of the German word for "flower", but it's also a Woolseyism because it references Benjamin Blümchen, the elephant from the popular German children's audio-stories and cartoons. In addition, it's also an Actor Allusion, because Mr. Krabs' German VA is Jürgen Kluckert, who has been the voice of Benjamin Blümchen since 1994.
 * Krabs' voice actor even changes his voice to the much calmer, softer tone he uses for said pachyderm.
 * In the Latin American dub for "Krusty Krab Training Video", the acronym "P.O.O.P." (People Order Our Patties) became the similar "C.A.C.A.", which stands for "Clientes adoran comer aquí", meaning "Customers enjoy eating here".
 * The Italian dub of Futurama has replaced most English swear words not with their direct Italian equivalent, but with words which have a similar sound and whose meaning can be linked to the character who uttered it. For example, in one episode Zoidberg's "the hell" is rendered in Italian with "cozza" (Italian for "mussel"), which is extremely similar to "cazzo" (Italian for "dick").
 * The Brazilian dub of South Park tends to go to the other side of the scale, since it was made in an amateur studio with amateur actors. Nevertheless, one entire-episoded joke got a surprisingly creative treatment in the episode "Jared has Aides". Since the portuguese word for "aides" ("ajudante" or "assistente") doesn't sound at all like "AIDS" (or "SIDA"), the joke got a slight remake - Jared keeps telling everyone that he has "H&V". Which sounds exactly the same as "HIV", but he says that "H&V" stand for "Hector and Victor", his aides. Sure, there were still some issues with grammar (especially verbal conjugation) due to the change, but still managed to get the joke across competently.
 * The German version handles this rather creatively, too, by having Jared talking about A.I.D.S as an acronym for "Assistenten im Diätsystem" (diet system assistants).
 * Similar to the King of the Hill examples above, The Québec dub of The Simpsons replace many pop-culture references with local ones, and even implied the show was set in Québec (despite no Dub Name Changes), thought the later stopped with the increased politicization of the recent seasons.
 * Yet that makes it more annoying as the show keeps throwing those local Québec references include including Burt Reynold and a Québecois celebrity talking to each other in a Québec-made awards ceremony!!! Head meet wall.
 * Played with on occasion. In one recent episode, Homer ended up in Canada by accident. This wasn't changed in the Quebec dub, but the roles of an English and a French Canadian were reversed in one scene, with French being the language that Homer understood rather than English.
 * From Anastasia, the Russian dub's lyrics of "Once Upon A December" are probably more poignant than the English.
 * In Meet the Robinsons, Lewis says he's from Canada, and Tallulah points out that he must mean North Montana since it hasn't been called Canada for years. In Swedish, Lewis says he's from Denmark and Tallulah says that he must mean Southwest Skåne (Skåne being a province in southern Sweden).
 * It is similar to this in the German dub as well. Lewis says he comes from Switzerland and Tallulah corrects him by calling it West Austria.
 * The Norwegian dub of the Shrek movies often takes very American jokes and gives them a unique Norwegian spin, and sometimes adds a unique Norwegian joke in scenes or dialogue lines that are joke-less in the original. Donkey (voiced by Norwegian actor/stand-up comedian Thomas Giertsen) gets the majority of new jokes, but others have their moments as well. Highlights include:
 * The scene where Farquaad interrogates Gingy turning both characters into Cloudcuckoolanders when the "Muffin Man" dialogue ends up with them quoting a popular Norwegian children's song about a baker for absolutely no reason, acting as if "he bakes big cakes, he bakes small cakes, he bakes cakes sprinkled with sugar" are huge, terrible secrets.
 * Shrek, when asked by Fiona what kind of knight he is, alluding to his dub voice actor (children's show host Asgeir Borgermoen, who'd jokingly refer to himself as "boss over all bosses") and claiming to be "knight over all knights".
 * In the second movie when Shrek, Fiona and Donkey drive to Far Far Away, instead of singing Rawhide, Donkey begins singing an old Norwegian song of the "Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall" type, about how many people it takes to pull a root out of the ground. The song fades out with the scene, and then fades back in again, with Donkey having gotten to several hundred people when he messes up the lyrics and forgets where he was in the song. "Oh well," he says cheerfully. "I'll take it from the top!" Shrek's annoyance with him is really easy to sympathize with at that point.
 * Likewise the Polish dub of Shrek. Bilingual people often remark that they find the Polish version funnier. The translator himself made enough of a name on Shrek, that he is now listed alongside voice actors on posters.
 * In the original English Mickey's Christmas Carol, the characters retain their names from the original story, even though they are "played" by familiar Disney characters - Scrooge McDuck as Ebenezer Scrooge, or at least Ebenezer Scrooge looking like Scrooge McDuck, etc. In the Finnish dub, their names switched back to the Disney characters, which makes perfect sense since Finnish children would presumably be at a loss with the odd English names they've never heard. This also necessitates a further change: Isabelle/Daisy in Scrooge's past is identified as Goldie O'Gilt, because it would be too odd for Scrooge to be dating her if she was actually named as Daisy Duck. (That all said, the translation also has some serious fumbles, such as "Ghost of Christmas Porridge" and, due to some dropped words of explanation, Scrooge and his fiancée apparently having a financial contract to get married that involves her having to pay him.)
 * Polish dialoguist Dariusz Dunowski is generally a controversial figure in the dubbing industry, but his translations can be pretty damn clever. Not only does he include a lot of Polish slang, which makes the dialogue incredibly interesting to listen to - there's no stiff sentences or word-to-word translation. He also tends to put in references to the Polish culture, even when there's no reference in the original. Almost always, it makes the dialogue sound funnier while still preserving the original thought. Some examples (all taken from the dubbed version of Fanboy and Chum Chum):
 * Original: "Hey guys, great session, why don't you take a break? Frosty Freezy Freeze's on me!". Translation: "Hey guys, you're great, Sopot and Opole await you, now get out!" (Sopot and Opole being Polish cities, the former known for holding a lot of music festivals, the latter being a reference to a musical talent show for kids "Od przedszkola do Opola" - "From kindergarten to Opole").
 * Original: "Janitor Poopatine, we will not let you down!". Translation: "You can rely on us like you would on Zawisza!" (Zawisza Czarny was a Polish knight and nobleman living in the 14 - 15th century).
 * The German dub of The Simpsons has vastly deteriorated over the years (not only owing to the deaths of some of the principal characters' voice actors). Initially, it was very good and contained several Woolseyisms in the dialog and the acting.
 * One example is when Milhouse jumps from a dam in a parody of The Fugitive and loses his glasses. The German dub adds a timing gag, giving the audience one second of silence to assume that Milhouse died before his "My glasses!" line.
 * In general, the fact that there are more voice actors to portray the more important characters than in the original leads to a more facetted portrayal of the individual characters with a broader range of expression as the actors don't have to strain their voices to achieve yet another distinct funny voice.
 * The Irish dub of Avatar:The last Airbender is peppered with Woolseyisms, (and excellent acting)
 * Of particular note is Katara'a speech to the Earthbenders trapped on the iron prison ship. The entire speech stole bits out of Irish Colonial poetry (mostly Mo Ghile Mear) about how the Irish had hope of fighting back against the English because Bonny Prince Charlie is coming (If you're not that well up on Irish history, Charlie never did come), but the names were changed around to we have hope of defeating the Fire Nation because the Avatar is coming. This troper nearly cried. And she found the original to be quite narmish.
 * Also the actors all speak a different dialect of Irish depending on where in Ireland they came from. The Fire Nation have Connacht accents (western Ireland). Katara and Sokka have southern tendencies, and the Earth Kingdom have more standardised, school Irish. Aang seems to have a bit of everything, I suppose he traveled a lot.
 * The Hungarian dubbers of Family Guy evidently had lots of fun working on the show, and gleefully changed many non-visual gags into jokes that the Hungarian audience would be more likely to get, such as referencing House in an episode that had been made before the aforementioned series debuted or at times taking jabs at Hungarian celebrities. If a famous guest star happens to share his or her voice actor/actress with one of the cartoon characters, it tends to get lampshaded as well.
 * Non-English versions of Dora the Explorer have her speaking Gratuitous English instead of Gratuitous Spanish.
 * ''Woody Woodpecker"'s character Wally Walrus is...well, a walrus, who speaks mostly in a Swedish accent. In Brazil, his accent is Argentinean. The woolseyism is found when you realise that, while Argentina doesn't have any walruses, it really is (at least in the Far South) very cold, with a climate similar to Sweden, is home to seals (some species of seal are also found in Sweden), and has a soccer rivalry with Brazil.
 * The Hungarian dub of King of the Hill attempted this, though how successful it was is questionable. Essentially, they rewrote every line of dialog to sound more "realistic" -- by packing them chock full of swear words, especially Boomhauer's speeches. This is a common tactic, and the dubs of South Park and Family Guy also made use of it (more like abused it), but unlike those, King of the Hill had morning and afternoon timeslots, when children could watch it. Sadly, it isn't part of the channel's regular rerun showcase anymore. Another unique change they made was giving Hank a very gruff, stereotypical dumb redneck voice.