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{{trope}}
[[File:stupidfont.jpg|link=Aladdin (Disney film)|frame|Because reading Arabic is tricky.]]
 
 
If a movie or cartoon is set in a particular [[Hollywood History|period]] or [[Hollywood Atlas|region]], sometimes the creator might want to show certain details to the audience through a sign in the background. However, said most of the audience are educated in the English language. So in order to avoid breaking the feel of the setting, the scene might just have English text in written with a [[Useful Notes/Fonts|typeface]] [[As Long Asas It Sounds Foreign|emulating the writing style of that region]] [[Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe|or period]].
 
This can also occur on the covers of books or on movie posters in order to evoke the feel of the work's setting.
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== Anime & Manga ==
* The English-language cover art for ''[[Excel Saga (Mangamanga)|Excel Saga]]'', both anime and manga, uses a Japanese-styled font for the title. Bonus points for using actual katakana characters turned Latin characters.
* The kanji in ''[[Black Butler (Manga)|Black Butler]]'s'' title are written in the style of Old English blackletter calligraphy, reflecting the show's Victorian English setting. (No, really; see its page illustration!)
* Sometime around the Hoenn Saga in the ''[[Pokémon (Animeanime)|Pokémon]]'' anime, the producers used a faux-Japanese text on signs, letters, etc., to make it more "acceptable" for a global audience.
** It appeared earlier in the series too. It doesn't even try to look Japanese a lot of the time, it looks like mixed up symbols.
* One scene in ''[[One Piece]]'' had a close up of Luffy's first bounty poster. Oddly, in a world that [[Word of God|speaks English,]] has English signs, and English words ''right on the bounty poster,'' the [[Fine Print]] is nothing but a random assortment of letters and characters.
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* Various letterers use [http://www.blambot.com/fonts_dialogue.shtml interesting fonts] to represent people who have an accent or are speaking an alien language.
* In ''[[Blue Beetle]]'', the Scarab-speak letters correspond to English, but they're almost entirely illegible. However, when the Scarab gets [[Character Development]], the letters change into more readable English while still invoking the previous version.
* The French cover (but not the English cover) of ''[[Tintin (Comic Book)/Recap/Land of Black Gold|Land of Black Gold]]'' has the words "L'or Noir" written in pseudo-Arabic calligraphy. The Arabic writing underneath is a correct translation of the title (though it wasn't in the first edition; this particular book was revised many, many times).
* In ''[[The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen]]'', most non-English speech is actually rendered in the original language. In the case of the Martians, their language is depicted using heavily-distorted mirror writing.
* ''[[Two Thousand2000 AD (Comic Book)|Two Thousand AD]]'' commonly uses vaguely Cyrillic-looking letters when ''[[Nikolai Dante]]'' is on the cover.
* ''[[Thor]]'' writers like to give his dialogue a calligraphic font.
* Inverted in "Superdupont vs. Bruce Lee" cartoon by Gotlib. Superdupont uses the usual comic [[Symbol Swearing]], peppered with some Chinese-looking symbols. Bruce Lee retorts with the same swearing symbols-only the Chinese add-ons are replaced with ABCDEF.
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== Films -- Live-Action ==
* [[Peter Jackson]]'s ''[[The Lord of the Rings (Filmfilm)|The Lord of the Rings]]'' has both: Although lots of texts appear 'properly' written in [[JRRJ. TolkienR. (Creator)R. Tolkien|JRR Tolkien]]'s constructed scripts for Middle-earth, various instances of text are rendered as English in Latin letters for the convenience of the viewer, but made to look vaguely like the scripts they are supposed to be. Most notable is probably the Tengwar-imitating font (an originally Elven script, but universally used), even down to the ''tehtar'' diacritics, which in proper Tengwar are vowel signs and here are added to the corresponding vowel letters.
* ''[[Quantum of Solace (Film)|Quantum of Solace]]'' used exotic fonts to label each country the story takes place in. [[Maddox]] criticized this use of the trope in his review of it, saying that its use crossed the line into pretentious and implies that [[Viewers are Morons]].
* ''[[Around the World In 80 Days]]'' (2004) has this with all the map fonts throughout (eg, Hindi-style script for the Chyrons in India, etc.).
 
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== Literature ==
* Several [[Fu Manchu]] book covers (and movie and television posters) often feature English words written in Asian brushstrokes.
* In the [[Discworld]] books, [[Terry Pratchett]] sometimes plays with this. For example, in ''[[Discworld (Literature)/Jingo|Jingo]]'', dialogue in Klatchian is written in an Arabic font, and words written by the golems are in an archaic font, to invoke their background in Judaic myth.
** From the Annotated Pratchett File:
{{quote| The font used by the golems in the UK editions is clearly designed to look like Hebrew lettering. For some reason, the font used in the American editions is not.}}
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== Newspaper Comics ==
* Adolf Kilroy, a tortoise who turned up from time to time in ''[[The Perishers (Comic Strip)|The Perishers]]'', not only had Hitler's face but spoke in Fraktur.
 
 
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* A video game of ''The Hunt for Red October'' featured English text in an imitation Cyrillic font.
** Red Alert 3 had recently joined the faux-Cyrillic bandwagon, given the nature and setting of the game.
* ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Video Game)|The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess]]'' uses what at first appears to be Fictionary, but is in fact a very stylised English.
** ''[[Phantasy Star]] Online'' also uses its own signature font for English. It's a bit easier to read than the ''Zelda'' example.
** This is notable because most other games use a cipher with a completely different alphabet instead.
* The title card for the ''[[Dance Dance Revolution]]'' song "I Feel" uses mock Thai/Lao letters.
* In ''[[Quake II (Video Game)|Quake II]]'', all the Strogg text is in stylized English, while in ''[[Quake IV (Video Game)4|Quake IV]]'', it's in [[Wingdinglish]].
* Raw Thrills' movie tie-in arcade racer ''The Fast and the Furious: DRIFT'' (Tokyo got forgotten, apparently) takes this to a ridiculous level. The menus are outright padded with it, and every sign and billboard has at least some.
* Shows up all over the place in ''[[Final Fantasy X]]'' and ''[[Final Fantasy XIII]]''. The languages of their planets are basically English, except the alphabets are written with all sorts of crazy serifs and squiggles attached. The final boss of the latter even has the lyrics to his ''[[Image Song]]'' written on his body.
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== Western Animation ==
* ''[[Aladdin (Disney film)|Aladdin]]'': ''Crazy Hakim's Discount Fertilizer'' is written in Arabic brushstrokes on a sign near a cart of manure near the end of the "One Jump" chase scene.
** The title itself and the opening credits also appear in [[Foreign Looking Font]]. No ''real'' Arabic appears in the movie at all, with the possible exception of a sign over Jafar's door; it's either English in a foreign-looking font or random scribbles that look like what Arabic looks like to people who don't speak Arabic. (Arabic Is Just A Bunch Of Scribbles should be a trope.)
* ''[[Hercules (Disney film)|Hercules]]'': The animated series has words written on buildings that are clearly English words made to look Greek.
* [[The Amazing World of Gumball]]: In "The Refund", Gumball and Darwin pre-order a video game called "Cyberground BATTLE II" with "BATTLE" in the style of Chinese/Japanese characters. Arguably a confusing case of [[The Backwards R]], with the "A" clearly a 太 and the "E" clearly a モ, the characters skewed to look more Roman/natural.
* ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (Animation)|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]'': Starting in Season 2, printed text takes the form of oddly distorted English. [http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120401142047/mlp/images/c/ca/Snips_and_Snails_on_the_newspaper_S2E23.png\][http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120204180041/mlp/images/6/65/Rainbow_Dash_holding_Daring_Do_book_S2E16.png\]
 
== Real Life ==
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