Gratuitous English/Western Animation

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Examples of Gratuitous English in Western Animation include:

This song is kind of stupid
It doesn't make sense
The English is all fucked up
That's okay [we do it all the time!]
[Hey hey, let's go] fighting
The important thing is to [protect my balls]
I'm baaaad, [so let's fighting]
[Let's fighting love -- let's fighting love!]

    • That phrase "Let's fighting" is an example of what is, tragically, a very common Engrish construction in Japan. The bowling episode of Mega Man NT Warrior has a bunch of characters repeat the catchphrase "Let's bowling!"—making it perhaps the only one that's more painful to watch subbed than dubbed, ShoPro and all.
  • Seacht has quite a few English words mixed in with the Irish dialogue; this is particularly surreal as the series is set in Belfast, and one would think that this means the characters are actually speaking English.
  • Parodied in The Simpsons in the "Mr. Sparkle" commercial.
  • Icy in Winx Club, or at least the French dub, has a couple of attacks with English names.
    • Also in the original Italian, considering the heroine is named Bloom, you just mentioned a character named Icy, and "Winx" is a pun on wings. Whether this is due to it being influenced by anime, or due to the creator's wife being Singaporean, is up for debate.
  • English language cartoons end up with this trope when translated for a Japanese audience as many bits of the original dialogue and song lyrics (if there are songs) are retained as is for various reasons.
    • This is more prevalent in The Boondocks' Japanese dub, due of the use of some words (like nigger) whose Japanese equivalents are forbidden to use in Japanese media, so the translators used the original words untranslated from English instead.
    • Same case in Japan with South Park, but less exaggerated.
  • Gratuitous Spanish tends to become this when subbed to a Spanish-speaking audience
  • American Dad: "SUCK... MY... BOWLS!"
  • In a non-Japanese example, Metalocalypse gives us Swedish Skwisgaar and Norwegian Toki, who both suffer from the same ignorance of the English language. They both have atrocious problems with putting excessive plurals at the end of words (whether or not they are nouns in the first place), frequently use "am" for any form of the word "be", and have a bad grasp on vocabulary in general.

Oh Toki, its adorables, you really wants to takes more solos, but I am the lead guitarist, you know, why? Because I ams, hows do you says, way more gooders than you.