Fake Shemp / Western Animation

• Adventure Time: in the Adventure Time: Distant Lands episode "Together Again" the original Death, who is only seen in flashbacks, remains silent due to the death of his voice actor Miguel Ferrer in 2017. This ends up working in favor of the episode as Death attempts to teach his son the art of zen.
• Archer: Jessica Walter died during the post-production of Season 12. Since she had already recorded her lines for the season, this only affected the season finale "Mission: Difficult", which has Mallory Archer retire to a tropical beach, with most of her lines in the episode being taken from previous episodes. For bonus points, she was reunited with her estranged husband Ron Cadillac, voiced by Ron Leibman until his passing some years previously, meaning he also got some spliced lines.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender has a bit of this.
  • Iroh's voice actor Mako died not long after finishing recording his Season 2 lines, and Iroh doesn't speak for several episodes at the start of Season 3 (though he is present, and occasionally grunts while exercising in prison). Word of God is that this was already written into the script and had nothing to do with Mako's death, but it was highly, highly convenient.
  • Greg Baldwin, Iroh's new voice actor, did a few lines intermixed with Mako's own lines during multiple episodes of Season 2. To the former's credit, unless you were actually listening for the differences, it's almost impossible to tell it was done by two different voice actors.
• The Avengers Assemble episode "Widow's Run" has an appearance from Gamora. However, since her only dialogue was grunts and fight expressions, it was decided to have Laura Bailey, the voice of Black Widow, fill in for Nika Futterman.
• In the Grand Finale of The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, most of the heroes the team had encountered in the past (Luke Cage, Spider-Man, Wolverine, The Falcon, Black Widow, War Machine, and so on) returned to help fight Galactus. With a few exceptions, almost none of the returning heroes had any lines, as there's no way Marvel could have afforded to pay that many actors.
• The Batman does this often given its large cast especially when there's a large Villain Team-Up; especially since many of them have a Celebrity Voice Actor. The episode "Rumors" has a battle between Batman and all of his villains. They aren't voiced, though, really stealing the thunder from what should be an awesome fight.
  • "The Batman/Superman Story" uses Poison Ivy as the catalyst for Lex Luthor's scheme. The catch? She's trapped in a glass prison and thus can't speak beyond the occasional grunt. Probably easier that getting Piera Coppola to record such a small amount of dialogue.
• Batman: The Brave and the Bold often has returning heroes and villains, sometimes as minor cameos and sometimes in full-on team brawls, but usually only about half of them actually get spoken lines. For example, the evil alternate superheroes and the good alternate villains only get a handful of voiced parts (such as Red Tornado's alternate, Silver Cyclone). Others, such as the unnamed evil Aquaman, are unheard.
• Big Mouth: De Von Furtive-Oldman was one of the major characters of the series, but after his voice actor Jak Knight died, his character has now been appearing rarely, having silent cameos.
• Danny Phantom revels in doing this in episodes where more than one ghost appears at the same time. In episodes such as "Prisoners of Love" and "The Ultimate Enemy" only Skulker and The Box Ghost (BEWARE!) have any dialogue. Though given Technus shares Rob Paulsen as a VA with Box Ghost his silence is odd, compared to other ghosts who more often than not have a Celebrity Voice Actor. It’s even stranger when the Lunch Lady Ghost is silent because she has the same voice as Maddie Fenton, Kath Soucie.
• The Elena of Avalor shorts "Marisa And The Mirror" and "Feeling Clammy" both follow suit, mostly because Marisa and Daria have prolific voice actresses that obviously wouldn't be brought in for only a few minutes. Although Marisa is the focus of the former , she doesn't speak at all, while Elena's giggle and yelp are stock audio. In the latter, Elena and Ocho speak, and thus Aimee Carrero and Richard Steven Horvitz are credited. However, since Daria only does grunts and yells, Aimee filled in.
• An episode of The Fairly Oddparents has Chip Skylark singing in archived sound by Chris Kirkpatrick.
• Family Guy:
  • The show's crossover with The Simpsons saw this happen with Harry Shearer. As Shearer did not want to participate in the crossover, while several of his characters appear in it, none of them have any dialogue except for Lenny's single "eh", which was done by an uncredited soundalike.
  • The show parodied the trope in an episode with this scene:
    Announcer: We now return to The Orville.
    [Peter shoots the TV]
    Chris: Why do you hate that show so much?
    Peter: (with a different voice) Because its preventing me from doing my work here at Family Guy.
• Fancy Nancy occasionally does this. One example is in "Nancy La Poete" , where Nancy struggles to think of what kind of poem to write, and she thinks of writing one about her mother Claire. Although this drives a good part of the episode, and she even puts Nancy in bed, she doesn't speak. Another example is in "Un, Deux, Cha, Cha, Cha" , where Mrs. Devine and Gus the mailman are established as Grandpa Frank's dance rivals, but only the former speaks.
• In the Futurama episode "Where No Fan Has Gone Before", they put in a completely silent McCoy (as DeForest Kelley had been dead for a few years by that time), not to mention Welshie.
• This is how Get a Horse! presents itself as a retro throwback before the characters are thrown into the “real world” . It mixes the audio of Walt Disney, Marcellite Garner and Billy Bletcher^note  who died in 1966, 1993 and 1979 respectively with bits and pieces provided by Russi Taylor and Will Ryan^note  Mickey’s dialogue is entirely recycled from old recordings of Walt and a single line from James MacDonald to bring the oldest versions of these character to life as a “lost short” from the earliest days of Mickey Mouse.
• House of Mouse: does this frequently given its large cast across Disney animation. Many of which are either voiced by celebrities or had their original voice actors die some time ago.
• Jackie Chan Adventures dipped into this time and again. Usually where the Demon Sorcerers were concerned. In episodes where they all appear, only Tchang Zu is silent among them. This is especially odd considering he's voiced by Clancy Brown, who also does major recurring character Captain Black. Valmont was also hit by this once season 5 rolled around, where he was reduced to two silent cameos.
• This occasionally happens in Justice League Action with episodes that have multiple characters, and if they have a small role, they usually either keep them silent, use stock audio, or have an actor in the episode do basic grunts. ^note  One example is the episode "Myx's Mix Up", which has Batman, Superman, and Stargirl switch bodies, and eventually many League members follow suit. One of those people is Zatanna. However, since she only has dialogue consisting of grunts and yelps, they obviously wouldn't get Lacey Chabert to record the dialogue. Instead, Natalie Lander, the voice of Stargirl, filled in.
• Subverted with Wayne Allwine, the voice of Mickey Mouse, who died in 2009 while Mickey Mouse Clubhouse was still in production. Wayne had already recorded all his lines for the third season before his passing, meaning Bret Iwan (who took over the role) didn't voice Mickey on the show until the fourth season (which was produced in 2011).
• In the Penn Zero: Part-Time Hero episode "The QPC" that focused on Penn's aunt and uncle, Boone and Sashi appear, but don't speak.
• In the fourth season of Reboot, Ray Tracer's voice actor was unavailable, resulting in his role being severely cut down with the couple of appearance he did make being unvoiced.
• In one episode of The Simpsons, while the family are discussing the benefits of animated shows over live-action, Ned Flanders walks past the window and adds, "plus you can replace [the voice actors], and no one can tell the diddly-ifference" in a voice that is obviously not Ned's. At the time, The Simpsons' voice actors were in a pay dispute with FOX, who threatened to replace them with soundalikes.
• When Isaac Hayes left South Park, it took the creators completely by surprise. The solution: blatantly copy and paste lines from earlier episodes, edit them together in a ham-handed fashion, chalk it up to Chef being brainwashed by a cult, then killed the character at the end. The brainwashing excuse meant for the most part they didn't have to put effort into masking the cut-and-paste job.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: After the death of Ernest Borgnine in 2012, Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy were regulated to silent cameos. With the passing of Tim Conway in 2019 this has become definitive.
• Star Trek: Lower Decks: In "Crisis Point", in-universe, Vindicta's third henchman, whom she kills for a minor infraction, is named Shempo. He was supposed to be Boimler before he decided to bail on the role.
• Star Trek: Prodigy used audio footage of Leonard Nimoy, Nichelle Nichols, René Auberjonois, and James Doohan from several series and movies to voice the holographic versions of Spock, Uhura, Odo, and Scott respectively in the episode "Kobayashi".
• Steven Universe:
  • Popular rapper Nicki Minaj voiced Sugilite in "Coach Steven," and the character quickly became a fan favorite. However, either due to budgetary or scheduling issues, the production staff was unable to get Nicki back for future episodes, resulting in Sugilite being silent in all subsequent appearances. This was Lampshaded in "Know Your Fusion", which had Sardonyx discuss Sugilite with some previous footage and Stock Audio Clips:
    Sardonyx: She's not actually in the episode. Do we still have to pay her?
  • Garnet's voice actress, Estelle, was unavailable during the making of Attack the Light, so the game's creators could only use voice clips pulled from the show for her; as opposed to the rest of the main cast recording new lines for the game.
  • For unknown reasons, Lars has no original voice recordings for the entire second season. The two times he appears outside the background, he is silent for one (in "Sadie's Song") and voiced with a Stock Audio Clip in the other (the "Lion Loves to Fit in a Box" short).
• In The Superhero Squad Show, Nebula was initially voiced by Jane Lynch from Glee. Unfortunately, Lynch was unable to record more episodes, so the character was shown gagged in her subsequent appearances to keep people from noticing.
• Teen Titans Go! has a habit with this. Many of the side characters, especially the villains, remain silent because of budget concerns, or are simply given The Other Darrin treatment with the main voice actors. Notably, Mad Mod (voiced by Malcolm McDowell in the original series) doesn't say a word in the episode "Salty Codgers", and Scott Menville (Robin) replaced Jason Marsden for Billy Numerous' first speaking role in "The HIVE Five".
• Happens often in Young Justice (2010) due to the show having a large number of characters and a limited casting budget. For instance, Nightwing and Wally have no lines in the episode "Satisfaction", and most of the superheroines present at Rocket's bridal shower are conveniently silent as well.

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