What the Hell Is That Accent?: Difference between revisions

 

Not to be confused with [[Not Even Bothering with the Accent]] where a character is supposed to be from Country Y but sounds just like the rest of the cast. May overlap with [[Just a Stupid Accent]] or [[As Long as It Sounds Foreign]]. If the accent ''starts'' recognizable but then inexplicably jumps on a cross-country road trip, then it's [[Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping]].

{{examples}}

== [[Advertising]] ==

* [http://brog.engrish.com/2010/11/30/ceramic-knife-infomercial/ This] Chinese [[Infomercial]] for King Double ceramic knives.

* One GEICO commercial showed some people who were confused as to whether the Gecko's accent is British or Australian. The commercial cuts away just before he answers.

 

== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==

** Not to mention Chad/Yuuichirou's... surfer accent?

* The English dub for ''[[Yu Yu Hakusho]]'' has Jin, who speaks in [[So Bad It's Good|such a hilariously bad]] Irish accent, he's sometimes impossible to understand.

* When auditioning for his part in ''[[No Country for Old Men]]'', Javier Bardem attempted to downplay his Spanish accent, and ended up with a bizarre, mangled dialect that is thoroughly undefinable. The [[Coen Brothers]] [[Throw It In|liked this so much]] that they told him to keep doing it, as the accent heightened the unsettling otherworldliness of his character. He won an Oscar for his performance.

* In the 1999 [[Disney Channel]] movie ''[[PUNKS]]'', a young [[Jessica Alba]] played a streetwise tomboy with a Brooklyn accent. Except Alba's accent drifted all across the United States' eastern seaboard, and occasionally turned into what sounded like an [[British Accents|Estuary]] accent.

 

== Literature ==

* [[The Witches|The Grand High Witch]] is implied to be Norwegian. She [[Vampire Vords|replaces her Ts with Zs and Ws with Vs]]. It doesn't in any way resemble a Norwegian accent, which is recognizable by more pronounced Rs and replacing Zs with Ss. Her accent resembles German more than anything else.

* In ''[[Robots and Empire]]'', the protagonists visit a planet presumed abandoned. Upon encountering a robotic overseer, they address it... only to find, to their dismay, that while these robots are [["Three Laws"-Compliant]], their definition of human only extends to those with the local accent (very distinct). Oh, and everything that looks like a human but doesn't speak like one must be destroyed on the spot.

 

== [[Live Action TV]] ==

* ''[[Star Trek: The Original Series]]'':

** [[Craig Ferguson]] once commented that ''nobody'' in Scotland understood Scotty. "It was like an Arab had an epileptic seizure."

** [[Mauve Shirt]] Transporter Chief Kyle had a kinda-English accent (which makes sense as the actor who played him, John Winston, is British), but it was "off" enough that a DC Comics bio had him born in Australia.

* While [[Leonard Nimoy]] had no discernable accent as [[Star Trek|Spock]], in his role on ''[[Mission: Impossible]]'' as master of disguise Paris he had [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaMso75ddb8 this brilliant moment].

* For a while, after she married Guy Ritchie, Madonna seemed to adopt some bizarre, half-assed attempt at a British accent, most notably in the intro to "What It Feels Like For a Girl".

* During the first year after [[Lady Gaga]] released her first album, "The Fame," she began to use a weird off-kilter British accent, which even her fans commented on. She later admitted it had to do with her anxiety and dealing with her newfound fame, dropping the accent entirely.

 

== Radio ==

* [[Josh Thomas]]. He was born and raised in Australia, and yet has an inexplicable, vaguely-English accent.

* [[Danny Bhoy]] has a strong Scottish accent. The only other one he can do even vaguely is French (and it's a bit of a stretch). He [[Lampshades]] this every time he tries to fake another accent in his act.

 

== [[Theatre]] ==

* At one point in ''The Complete History of America (abridged)'', one of the actors is impersonating a Vietnamese girl, and another observes that he has "no idea how to do a Vietnamese accent."

* One of many [[Running Gag|running gags]] in the popular summer stock farce ''A Bedfull of Foreigners'' is the mystery accent of Karak, the valet. The script calls for a non-specific Slavic accent, but Karak himself claims to be from Bulgaria, Hungary, and even Mexico.

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

* ''[[Halo]]: Combat Evolved'': A random marine in the first level who gets in your way will say; "Sir, The Captain wants you on the bridge ASAP. Better follow me!", in an accent that sounds remarkably [[Buffy-Speak|Australianish]].

** That's because the marine is not random. The marine programmed to meet the Chief and take him to the captain will always be Chips Dubbo, who's voiced by Andrew McKaige, an Australian actor. Funny thing is, [[Irony|people complained to Bungie]] about [[Reality Is Unrealistic|Dubbo's poor imitation of an Australian accent]]...

* Brother-Captain Indrick Boreale from ''[[Warhammer 40,000]]: [[Dawn of War]]'' has... well, whatever planet it comes from, [[Narm|players hope it's been destroyed]]. "[[Memetic Mutation|SPESS MAHREENS]]" indeed.

** The Chaos Cultists had what seems to be a [[Peter Lorre]] impression combined with [[Beavis and Butthead|Cornholio]]. The accent is one of the most hilariously infamous things of the game, eventually evolving into the [[Memetic Mutation|character]] "Cultist-chan". Best seen [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzqP1BqwvIw here] in the Chaos Stronghold intro of Soulstorm.

* Razer's accent in ''[[Jak and Daxter|Jak X]]'' is all over the place, sounding like either German or French, depending on who you ask. Others recognize Austrian or even Russian in it.

* [[Team Fortress 2]]: Invoked this trope for comedy, as all of the characters' "accents" are as how a typical American in [[The Sixties]] might have perceived it; the Spy's accent is the hardest to pin down, having mixed French, Italian, and Spanish pronunciations and words in his vocabulary.

 

== [[Web Original]] ==

'''Dartz:''' DUUUUUUEH! }}

* A common occurrence in the videos of ''[[Tobuscus]]''. During a playthrough of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, he once attempted to imitate Ezio's Italian accent, only to end up with something vaguely Slavic.

 

== [[Western Animation]] ==

* [[Bugs Bunny]] talks in a mixture of Bronx and Brooklyn accents ([[Mel Blanc]] also said his inspiration was Frank McHugh, who spoke in a New York Irish accent).

* Sandi on ''[[Daria]]'s'' accent might be best be described as a bad imitation of a French one, except the character had no connection to France. It's not clear what it was supposed to be, besides vaguely upper class.

 

== [[Real Life]] ==