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This duck migrated far, far north.note

When a character's nationality is changed between the original work and an adaptation. This could be done a) to simplify the Back Story by saying the character comes from the country the work is set in, b) to vary the backstories and turn a group from one country into a Multinational Team or c) simply because that's the accent the actor has and the creators don't want to risk Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping. The trope may apply to fictional cultures as well as those in the real world. Alternatively, a character with no specific nationality may be given an explicit one during an adaption.

Sub-trope to Adaptational Diversity. Compare with Race Lift, which changes the character's ethnicity rather than country of origin (although these may overlap) and Fake Nationality. A Foreign Remake will usually do a nationality change on the entire cast, as does a Thinly-Veiled Dub Country Change. If the changed nationality goes hand in hand with other changes to the way a character is raised, see also Adaptational Upbringing Change.


Examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • In Black Butler, Baldroy's nationality is changed from American in the manga to English in the 2008 anime, though for some reason he doesn't seem to know the words to "God Save the Queen" despite having served in the Army.
  • Sonic X has a fantasy variation. In the games, as shown by Sonic Adventure, Amy naturally lives on Earth and has her own apartment in Station Square. In X, all the Funny Animal characters are from another dimension. While she did have an apartment in Station Square while stuck on Earth, Amy's normal home in X is a small, rural looking house. The same applies to almost every other SegaSonic character in the anime.
  • In the English dub of Ultimate Muscle various characters had their nationalities changed.
    • Buffaloman went from being from Spain to being Russian.
    • Geronimo/Beetlebomb went from being a Native American to being from England. Complete with a Ringo Starr voice.
    • The Ninja/Ninja Ned is now an American who happens to be a fan of ninjas rather than being a native of Japan.

    Comic Books 
  • In Archie Comics (2015), Cheryl Blossom is Swiss instead of American like she originally was.
  • Catsai from Amalgam Universe is a native of Egypt. Her original components, Catwoman and Elektra, were respectively American and Greek.
  • The DCU:
    • Pre-Crisis Kristin Wells was an Earthwoman descendant of Jimmy Olsen. In Post-Crisis Superman story arc The Third Kryptonian, she's a Kryptonian woman whose real name is Karsta Wor-Ul.
    • In the New 52 continuity, Silver Banshee is explicitly identified as Irish, and coming from Dublin. In the Post-Crisis continuity she came from a fictional island that was between Scotland and Ireland.
    • In the Post-Flashpoint universe, Firestorm (DC Comics), Firehawk is a Frenchwoman who is the official Firestorm Effect of the French Government. In the original continuity, she was an American who was given Firestorm's powers by a villain.
    • In Forever Evil (2013), Barbara Ann Minerva/Cheetah's backstory is that she grew up in an orphanage in Idaho. However, Wonder Woman reverts to the pre-Flashpoint English heiress.
    • All over the place in DC Comics Bombshells. Harley Quinn is British, Poison Ivy and Barbara Gordon are French, Catwoman is Italian, Supergirl and Stargirl are Russian, Huntress, Joker's Daughter and Zatanna are German, and Kimiyo Hoshi is a Nisei Japanese-American.
    • A number of DC Elseworlds do this, either as the central point (Superman: Red Son is "What if Superman was Russian?") or as part of the set-up (Batman: Castle of the Bat is "What if Bruce Wayne was Victor Frankenstein?", so relocates him to Bavaria).
    • In The Legend of Wonder Woman (2016), Philippus is now the former nomad queen of the "Ice Lands of Alcyones" rather than having been with Hippolyta from the start of the Amazon nation. She is still one of the oldest and the most loyal of the Amazons by the time of the story.
    • Earth 2:
      • Wesley Dodds is Canadian, rather than American, to emphasize the international nature of the Sandmen organisation.
      • Hank Henshaw/Captain Steel is from the Philippines (and is, therefore Race Lifted to Filipino). He still wears an American flag on his chest, though.
      • Stormy Foster, who in previous continuity was an American superhero called the Great Defender, is an Australian in the World Army.
    • In Pre-Crisis continuity, Julia Pennyworth was the daughter of Alfred and the resistance fighter Mademoiselle Marie, and was raised with French citizenship. The mother of the New 52 version is unnamed, but as a former British special op, it can be assumed she was raised in the UK.
  • In Powerless, Magneto is an American senator instead of a Polish Holocaust survivor.
  • In Spider-Gwen, Felicia Hardy is French (and black).
  • Ultimate Marvel:
    • S.H.I.E.L.D. itself, is an American organization rather than an international one.
    • Overlap with Race Lift with Abomination and Crimson Dynamo, who are Chinese nationals rather than East European. Swarm is Syrian rather than German (also gender-flipped).
    • Ultimate Spider-Man's Kraven the Hunter is Australian rather than Russian.
    • Morbius is Romanian (as a result of being Count Dracula's brother in this universe) instead of being Greek-American.
    • Ka-Zar and Shanna the She-Devil are natives of the Savage Land instead of English and American-Zairian respectively.
    • Justin Hammer is from the Deep South instead of England.
    • Earth-616 Jessica Drew is ... well, her parents were British and she grew up in a fictional East European country. Ultimate Jessica is Peter Parker's Opposite-Sex Clone, so she's American.
    • Storm is from Kenya in 616 but hails from Morocco in this continuity.
    • Deathstrike is a Yellow Peril from Japan in 616, but an American from Texas here.

    Fan Works 
  • Avenger Knight makes Pepper Potts a native of Gotham City; Tony Stark explicitly muses that Pepper is basically the only good thing to ever come from the city.
  • Blood! Rusty AU takes place in North America instead of Britain.
  • Child of the Storm makes alterations to the nationalities of at least four characters:
    • Jean-Paul Beaubier is French-Canadian in the comics, but just French here.
    • Doctor Stephen Strange, Sorcerer Supreme and the Big Good of the story, traditionally American (and portrayed as American in the MCU, though played by Brit Benedict Cumberbatch). Here, Strange is British (more specifically, he's Welsh- and he's actually the ancient Welsh druid Taliesin from Arthurian mythology.)
    • Lorna Dane, the daughter of Magneto and half-sister of Wanda Maximoff. American in the comics, but Australian here.
    • Zatanna Zatara, who comes to teach at Hogwarts in the second book. In the comics, Zatanna is Italian-American. This version, however, is straight-up Italian.
  • The Destiny (Afterandalasia) series changes some of the character's nationalities. In some cases, characters are just changed from being from a country's fictional counterpart to their real-world incarnation. Others get outright edited, such as Rapunzel being from Italy rather than a Germanic country.
  • In Evangelion 303, Shinji Ikari is an American national, although he was born in Japan.
  • Though the characters still have French names, the Hunchback of Notre Dame fic Give In, Give In [and Relish Every Minute of It] takes place in modern-day Britain.
  • Guys Being Dudes: No one's nationalities are stated in canon. Candela and Arlo are stated to originate in regions from elsewhere in Pokemon canon, Orre and Kanto respectively.
  • In Hero Academia DĂ—D, Ingvald Leviathan is Norwegian, due to having a Norwegian name.
  • Khaos Omega invokes this for one Flower Knight-origin character in particular. As part of a Back Story modification to keep the Cross name, Sasha's home dimension is switched from Flower Knight to Need for Speed, as Nathan Cross's daughter.
  • The Dragon and the Bow: In the original Brave, Mor'du and the Witch are as Scottish as Merida. Here, the Witch (Hilde) is Norse, and speaks with an Old Norse accent. Mor'du doesn't have such an accent, but presumably he's half-Norse too, because Hilde's his mother.
  • In the Mulan fic Make a Man Out of You, the enemy is the Rouran, not the Huns.
  • The Marvelous World Of DC: Zatanna is English, instead of Italian-American, much like her father, connecting to the Adaptation Name Change to Zatanna and John Zatar respectively.
  • Examples in PokĂ©mon Reset Bloodlines:
  • The version of Arclight from Sixes and Sevens is German instead of the American from the comics, which the authors justify by saying her civilian name (Philippa Sontag) is already German.
  • Samantha, a character in the Thomas & Friends series The Stories of Sodor originally lived in Wales (and has an accent to match). Her counterpart in Sodor's Legend of the Lost Treasure Bad Ending lived in England before arriving on Sodor.
  • In Son of the Sannin, Karin and Haku both grew up in Konoha instead of Kusagakure and Kirigakure respectively, though Haku is granted dual citizenship at the end of the Kirigakure Civil War arc when Mei appoints him as an ambassador.
  • In a study of the butterfly effect, Klavier and Kristoph Gavin hail from Borginia and France, respectively, instead of America (or Japan, in the Japanese version of the game).
  • A Thing of Vikings: Since the movies, books, and show are set in a collection of fictional islands, most of the non-Berkian canon characters have now changed to be from real places.
    • Heather, Dagur, and the Berserkers are from Alba (Scotland).
    • Alvin is a Norse king ruling over an Eirish city.
    • Cami and the Bog-Burglars live in a village in Wales, though they're not culturally Welsh.
    • Viggo and Ryker Grimborn are from Normandy.
    • Eret is a Saami taken as a thrall to Iceland.
    • Drago is from the Liao kingdom in East Asia.
    • Mala is from the Caucasus, but lives in northeastern India.
    • Grimmel is from Bohemia.

    Films — Animation 
  • Disney's Aladdin makes Agrabah out to be in the Middle East, implicitly near the River Jordan. But the original story was actually set in China (admittedly, the characters still had Arabic names and customs).
  • In the Russian dub of Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire, the Italian demolitions expert Vinnie becomes the Georgian Vano.
  • Done in Big Hero 6 with GoGo: while she was Japanese in the comics, she's Korean in the film, presumably to match her voice actress. Several of the comic's main cast underwent Race Lifts for the film. San Fransokyo appears to be a Japanese-influenced American city, rather than the actual Tokyo of the comics, suggesting the characters are all [country of origin]-American.
    • In the Romanian dub, Honey Lemon is Romanian-Spanish.
  • In the source book, Coraline is British, however in the Coraline film she is American.
  • The Invincible Iron Man turns the normally-American Pepper Potts English.
  • In the original Tarzan books, Jane and her dad are Americans. In Disney's Tarzan, however, they're British.
    • The Tarzan (2013) CGI film reversed this, with Tarzan and his parents being American.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Hannay in the original book version of The Thirty-Nine Steps is Scottish. British actor Robert Donat played him as a Canadian in The 39 Steps (1935), which might be an in-joke to the original author, who became the Governor-General of that country.
  • In the film of The African Queen, the American Humphrey Bogart was cast as Charlie, who is a patriotic working-class Englishman in the original novel. Bogart couldn't do the English accent, so the character was made Canadian. His patriotism still applies to The British Empire, which sort of works.
  • Curt Connors/the Lizard is English in The Amazing Spider-Man, though he's been living in America long enough to have worked alongside Peter Parker's missing father.
  • In Angels & Demons, Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca (Italian) changes into Camerlengo Patrick McKenna (Irish). This was likely done to fit the actor Ewan McGregor, although he's actually Scottish.
  • In The Axe, the Serial Killer protagonist is a Frenchman and is set in France, while the original novel by Donald Westlake is set in the US with an American protagonist.
  • Blade Trilogy: Blade, who in the comics is canonically of British origin, is portrayed as an American in the films in large part to match that of Wesley Snipes, who portrays him. This continues in Blade: The Series, in which he's portrayed by the American rapper Kirk "Sticky Fingaz" Jones.
  • In Tom Wolfe's novel The Bonfire of the Vanities Peter Fallow is a cynical British tabloid journalist. In the 1990 movie adaptation, he's an American reporter played by Bruce Willis.
  • The film version of Cabaret switches the nationalities of the two leads, to match the nationalities of the actors: in the stage version, Sally is British and Cliff is American, but in the film, Sally (Liza Minnelli) is American and Brian (Michael York) is British.
  • In Captain America (1990), the Red Skull is Italian instead of German like in the comics.
  • In Constantine (2005), Constantine is an American (played by Keanu Reeves). In the source material, Hellblazer, he's British.
  • Dark Heritage changes the the Dutch Martense clan of The Lurking Fear to the Norwegian Dansens.
  • Death Note (2006): Lind L. Tailor is (presumably) Japanese in the manga and anime, but becomes an American in the film. Notably, he delivers his speech challenging Kira in English, and actually pronounces it "Killer" the way it would be if not for Japanese Ranguage.
  • DC Extended Universe:
    • Wonder Woman (2017):
      • Etta Candy is British. All previous versions, from Golden Age sorority sister to New 52 A.R.G.U.S. agent, have been American.
      • Doctor Maru is Japanese in the comics, but becomes Isabel Maru in the movie, hailing from Spain like her actress.
    • Wonder Woman 1984 does the inverse of Etta with Cheetah, going from being British in the comics to an American in this universe.
    • The Suicide Squad:
      • Bloodsport, an American in the comics, is played by Idris Elba with a London accent, implying the character comes from England in this continuity.
      • The original Ratcatcher was American in the comics. In the movie, he instead hails from Portugal.
    • Like the Bloodsport example, Black Adam (2022) has Doctor Fate played by Pierce Brosnan, who uses an English accent for the role even though the character is an American in the comics. He later mentions having seen a Royal Air Force deployment as a child, confirming this version of Fate does indeed hail from England rather than America. Additionally, Ishmael, a Russian-American immigrant in the comics, is instead from the Middle Eastern nation of Khandaq in the movie.
  • In the film version of The Devil Wears Prada, Miranda Priestly and Nigel, both British in the book, are portrayed by Americans Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci. Nigel doubles as a Race Lift, being black in the novel but played by the white Tucci onscreen. Meanwhile, Emily was supposed to be American, but the director decided he liked the character better with Emily Blunt's native British accent.
  • Edge of Tomorrow combines this with Race Lift: the main character is a Japanese man named Keiji Kiriya in the original light novel All You Need Is Kill, but an American soldier named William Cage in the movie adaptation.
  • Frankenstein:
  • GI Joe The Rise Of Cobra has Breaker as Moroccan, Heavy Duty as British, and Scarlett as Canadian. All three of these characters are normally American in the G.I. Joe franchise (with Scarlet, between her place of birth, her codename, and her real last name of "O'Hara", being a Shout-Out to Gone with the Wind).
  • The Girl on the Train relocates the British setting of the book to New York. All the characters become American except Rachel — who remains English.
  • Sandy in the theatrical version of Grease was American, but when Olivia Newton-John was cast in the film version, the character was made Australian to account for her accent. Also, her surname in the stage version, Dumbrowski, implies that she's of Polish descent, but the film changes her surname to Olsson, which implies Swedish descent.
  • Harry Potter: Luna Lovegood was an English country girl in the books. But because Evanna Lynch's audition was so good, they made her Irish in the films. This extended to her father, as Welsh actor Rhys Ifans does an Irish accent to match Evanna's.
  • Alice Monaghan (Irish) and Ben Daimio (Japanese-American) from the Hellboy comics are both British (though Daimio is presumably Japanese-English) in Hellboy (2019).
  • In The Hound of the Baskervilles (1983), Sir Henry Baskerville is American rather than Canadian.
  • In the short story Impossible Dreams by Tim Pratt, Pete and Ally are Americans. Considering that the short film adaptation changes the location of the story from the United States to Tel Aviv, their counterparts Daniel and Shiri are Israelis.
  • James Bond:
    • Thunderball: Domino goes from being Italian in the book (Dominetta Vitali) to being French in the film (Dominique Derval) and played by the French Claudine Auger.
    • Live and Let Die: Mr. Big in the book is Haitian-French; in the film, he hails from the fictional Caribbean island nation of San Monique (played by the Cameroonian-American Yaphet Kotto).
    • The Man with the Golden Gun: Francisco Scaramanga, a Catalonian in the book, in the film is said to have been born to an English snake charmer and a Cuban father, and to have lived in Rio as a teenager (played by the English Christopher Lee).
    • Moonraker: In the book, Hugo Drax is a former German Nazi masquerading as an Englishman, while in the film he is French, played by French-British actor Michael Lonsdale.
    • For Your Eyes Only:
      • Melina Havelock is half-Greek, half-English in the film (played by Frenchwoman Carole Bouquet), while her literary counterpart, Judy, was just English.
      • Columbo and Kristatos are both Italian in the Risico short story, while their film counterparts are Greek (played by the Israeli Chaim Topol and the English Julian Glover respectively), in keeping with the film's Adaptational Location Change of that story's scenes from Italy to Greece.
  • The main character of the German novel Jesus Video is an American student named Stephen Foxx. In the TV-movie adaptation, he's a German named Steffen Vogt. And in the English dub of the movie, he's American again, but named Stephen Boyd.
  • The movie King Ralph was loosely based on the Emlyn Williams novel Headlong, where the main character was a British stage actor named Jack Green who ends up becoming the new King of England after the Royal Family perishes in a freak accident and he turns out to be a distant relative. The movie changes the main character to an American lounge singer named Ralph Jones.
  • In Left Behind (2000), Buck Williams' contacts Dirk Burton and Alan Tompkins, both of whom were Brits in the book series, were made American in the film, with Alan also getting a Race Lift from Caucasian to African-American.
  • Dirk gets turned into an American in Left Behind: Rise Of The Antichrist.
  • The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe doesn't name Mrs MacReady's nationality. In the BBC adaptation, she's Scottish, while she's Irish in the Walden Media film. Maugrim speaks with an English accent in the BBC version and an American in the Walden Media.
  • In Little Women, Friedrich Bhaer is German, but in the 2019 film adaptation French actor Louis Garrel plays him and uses his natural French accent.
  • The Lost Daughter: The novel's characters were all Italian. Now Nina and her family are Greek-American and Leda is British.
  • In The Lost World (1998), as well as undergoing Adaptational Villainy, John Roxton also becomes an American, rather than tthe British lord he is is the original novel.
  • Since Maleficent changed the setting from Medieval France to Medieval Scotland, King Stefan has a Scottish accent (done by South African actor Sharlto Copley) while Prince Phillip and the 3 fairies have English accents instead of American accents in the original Sleeping Beauty, which was supposedly set in Medieval France. Similarly, Maleficent and Aurora still have Mid Atlantic accents, done by Angelina Jolie and Elle Fanning.
  • In the film version of Mamma Mia!, Bill's nationality is changed from Australian to Swedish to match his actor Stellan Skarsgard, with his surname changed from Austin to Anderson.
  • A Man Called Otto changes the pregnant neighbor from A Man Called Ove, who was an Iranian named Parvaneh, to a Mexican, Marisol.
  • Marvel Cinematic Universe:
    • The Iron Man movies zig-zag this trope with the Mandarin. Originally a (rather overblown) Chinese Yellow Peril character in the comics, he doesn't appear at all in the first film, but is hinted there to be affiliated with an internationally-affiliated terrorist cell operating in Afghanistan. In Iron Man 3, he's portrayed by Ben Kingsley, who's British with Indian ancestry, but then it's revealed that the "true" Mandarin-behind-the-Mandarin is a white American businessman who paid Kingsley's character (a British stage actor) to pass himself as a generically-foreign terrorist to stoke American paranoia. And then the short All Hail the King reveals that there is indeed a real Mandarin who is not the villain from 3, with Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings confirming that the MCU's actual Mandarin is indeed Chinese.
    • In The Incredible Hulk, Emil Blonsky (the Abomination) is British (though born in Russia) and a Royal Marine seconded to the Hulkbusters. The original version was a Yugoslav spy. The change of nationality allows Tim Roth to use his native British accent rather than a fake accent.
    • Peggy Carter was American in the original Captain America comics, but is British in Captain America: The First Avenger and Agent Carter.
    • In Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Batroc, who is French in the comics, is noted as Algerian in a throwaway line.
    • The Maximoff twins (Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver) were originally from the fictional Eastern European country of Transia, but Avengers: Age of Ultron establishes them as being from the (also fictional) Eastern European country of Sokovia.
    • In the comics, Helmut Zemo is German, and the son of a Nazi war criminal. In Captain America: Civil War, he hails from Sokovia, much like the Maximoffs, but retains his distinctly German first name and is played by Spanish-German actor Daniel BrĂĽhl.
    • Zigzagged with Ulysses Klaue. In the comics, he is a Belgian of Dutch descent, while in the films, he's presented as South African, probably to invoke the connotations associated with the Amoral Afrikaner trope. However, his file in Avengers: Age of Ultron states that the MCU's Klaue is also actually a Dutchman with Belgian citizenship.
    • In Black Widow (2021), among the many changes applied to Taskmaster is going from American to Russian.
    • In Eternals, Dane Whitman is English rather than an American of English descent.
    • Doctor Strange (2016) The Ancient One is usually an Old Master Himalayan. Here, Tilda Swinton portays the character who is stated to be 'Celtic'.
    • Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness: Professor Charles Xavier is fully American in the comics, but the Earth-838 iteration speaks with an English accent, so he's either British note  or British-American note .
  • Matilda: The 1996 movie adaptation of Roald Dahl's novel changed the setting from Great Britain to the USA, thus Americanizing all the characters, except for the evil headmaster Mrs. Trunchbull, who remains an Evil Brit.
  • The film adaptation of Memoirs Of A Teenage Amnesiac by Gabrielle Zevin is an International Coproduction between a Japanese studio and an American studio. As such, some of the characters, including the main character, have been changed from American to Japanese.
  • Punisher: War Zone: The Bulats were changed from Romanian in The Punisher MAX to Russian mobsters.
  • In The Scarecrow of Oz, Prime Minister Kruel and King Kynd are from Jinxland, an isolated principality in Oz. The Wizard of Oz (1925) has them living in mainland Oz.
  • In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Dr. Carol Marcus is an American. In Star Trek Into Darkness, Carol is British since she's played by Alice Eve. Word of God said that this timeline's Carol grew up in England.
  • In the 2016 film of Swallows and Amazons, Mrs. Walker is Scottish; in the books she was Australian.
  • In the The Dark is Rising, the Stanton family are British, in the film adaptation The Seeker they are Americans who just moved to England.
  • Street Fighter:
    • Chun-Li is changed from Chinese to a native of Shadaloo. So too is Sagat, who is Thai in the games.
    • Ryu is changed from Japanese to an ethnically Japanese American.
    • E. Honda is changed from Japanese to American Samoan.
    • If T. Hawk's shoulder patch is to be believed, he's changed from Mexican to American. It's been stated that his tribal affiliation in the film is Cherokee (actor Gregg Rainwater's real-life ethnicity), whereas in the games he's a member of the fictional Thunderfoot tribe near Monte Albán (older canon mentioned that the Thunderfoot had been driven from USA to Mexico, but this has since been retconned).
  • U571: A very controversial example. This World War II movie stars Americans as the heroes. In real life, the first to capture the submarine-based ENIGMA machine were the British.
  • In Vampire Academy, the Moroi royals are of Russian descent, in the film adaptation they are all English.
  • Both Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory do this to various characters from the book:
    • Willy Wonka is British in the books but American in both films.
    • Augustus Gloop is either British or American in the books but is German in both films.
    • Veruca Salt is either British or American in the books but British in both films.
    • Charlie is vaguely British in the first book but is American in the second book. The first film has Charlie as an American while the second adaptation has him as British.
  • X-Men Film Series:
    • X2: X-Men United: The Australian Saint-John Allerdyce from the comics has been adapted to an American without the "Saint" in his given name.
    • X-Men: First Class:
      • Sean Cassidy and Moira MacTaggert are American, but in the comics, they were Irish and Scottish respectively.
      • In the comic books, Charles Xavier is fully American, but this movie establishes that he's half-British through his mother, and therefore he may possess dual USA/UK citizenship.
    • X-Men: Days of Future Past: The Eastern-European Pietro Maximoff has been Americanized into Peter Maximoff.
    • X-Men: Apocalypse: The British Psylocke is played by the American Olivia Munn.
    • Deadpool (2016): Ajax is English rather than American.
  • Zatoichi and the Flying Guillotine, an unauthorized Taiwanese take on the Zatoichi franchise makes the titular iconic Japanese character a native Chinese, who was only captured by pirates as a child and then raised in Japan.

    Literature 

    Live-Action TV 
  • Arrowverse:
    • In Arrow, Deathstroke and Wintergreen are both ex-Australian Intelligence. In the comics, Slade is American and Wintergreen is British. This change was made partly to accommodate Manu Bennet's thick New Zealand accent.
    • In the comics, Doctor Light is a Japanese national, but in The Flash, she's Korean-American (due to being Linda Park's counterpart from an Alternate Universe).
    • Savitar hails from an unnamed Eastern European country in the comics, but the Arrowverse's version of him is American due to him turning out to be a time remnant of Barry Allen.
    • Clifford DeVoe/the Thinker is American in the comics but South African in the series to match the actor Neil Sandilands.
    • Ramsey Rosso/Bloodwork is American in the comics but British in the series. He also has a Race Lift from white to Asian.
    • Evan McCulloch/Mirror Master II is Scottish in the comics, but Eva McCulloch is American in the series.
    • An interesting case with Morgan Edge, who is American in Supergirl, just like his comic book prototype, but is British in the Superman & Lois universe (and played by a different actor). In fact, he isn't even human. His real name is Tal-Rho, he's Superman's half-brother from Krypton. His accent comes from being imprisoned in England shortly after his arrival.
  • The Boys (2019): In the comics, Frenchie was hinted to be a Brit who had an obsession with France. Here he is from Algeria, which as a former French colony has French as a common language.
  • In the 1954 US television adaptation of Casino Royale, James Bond was an American agent called Jimmy Bond, and American Felix Leiter was now British and called Clarence Leiter (but played by an Australian).
  • Doom Patrol (2019):
    • The Brain traditionally is French, but in this continuity speaks with an American accent.
    • This continuity's interpretation of Madame Rouge is Scottish rather than French.
  • Elementary: Due to the setting change, a lot of characters are turned American, such as Watson (who also received a Race Lift and Gender Flip) and Captain Gregson.
  • In A Song of Ice and Fire, Tyrion's mistress Shae is a Westerosi woman with her dialogue written in working-class English dialect. In the TV adaptation Game of Thrones, she is played by Turkish-German actress Sibel Kekilli and is initially only identified as Non-Specifically Foreign. In Season 2, she is revealed to hail from the quasi-Mediterranean city of Lorath, which was likely done to account for the fact that she shares her accent with Jaqen H'ghar, a Lorathi character also played by a German actor.
  • Good Omens (2019): In the original novel, Anathema Device is British. In the series, while she's still of British descent (as her ancestor was Agnes Nutter, a witch from 17th century England), she's now American instead, having grown up in California.
  • Gotham: Along with some adaptational socioeconomic class. While The Penguin is usually an Impoverished Patrician of British or American origin, this version is Hungarian on his mother's side and has been raised by her his whole life in relative poverty. He is still presumably American on his father's side, however, as he is the product of a poor immigrant cook and the heir to a wealthy and reclusive Gothamite family.
  • Trillian is English in the original The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1978) radio series, but American in the TV version. Douglas Adams later said that Sandra Dickinson could do a perfect English accent if asked, but the Troubled Production was such that no-one thought of it. She is also American in the film, portrayed by Zooey Deschanel.
  • Interview with the Vampire (2022):
    • In the novel, Louis de Pointe du Lac was born in France and later moved to the French colony of Louisiana, and when he was turned into a vampire in 1791, it was still under French rule, so he had spent his whole human lifespan as a French citizen. In the TV adaptation, Louis is an American who was born in New Orleans in 1877.
    • The show's Antoinette Brown, the Gender Flip of her book counterpart Antoine, is American instead of French.
  • Legion:
    • Charles Xavier is an American in the comics, but his TV counterpart is an Englishman who speaks with a refined English accent, and he was a British army officer during World War II. When discussing tomatoes with his Love Interest and hearing her pronounce it as "to-may-to", his response is, "Well, we say 'to-mah-to'." (The "we" refers to the British.)
    • The comic book version of Gabrielle is an Israeli Jew, but her TV iteration is Romani with no fixed abode.
    • By extension, their son David is an American of English and Romani descent on the show instead of being a British-Israeli of American and Jewish descent.
    • The original Amahl Farouk is Egyptian, whereas the live-action character is Moroccan.
  • Marvel Cinematic Universe:
    • Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.:
      • In the Secret Warriors comics, Yo-Yo Rodriguez is from Puerto Rico. In the series, she's from Colombia instead. Likewise, her comic book teammate Hellfire is American in the source material, but Australian in the show.
      • Holden Radcliffe is American in Machine Teen, but Scottish in the series.
      • Played with concerning Graviton. Franklin Hall remains Canadian, but he does not become Graviton, and the role goes to Glenn Talbot, an American.
      • In the comics, Whiplash (real name Marco Scarlotti) is an American, presumably of Italian descent. In the show, he is Marcus Scarlotti, a German.
    • The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: In the comics, Karl Morgenthau was Swiss. In the TV show, Karli Morgenthau is an Englishwoman.
    • In the comics, Jacques Duquesne was a Frenchman who grew up in the fictional French protectorate of Sin-Cong. In Hawkeye (2021), Jack Duquesne is instead the son of a wealthy New York family, though his surname implies he still possesses French ancestry.
    • In the original comics, the Purple Man is from Croatia. In Jessica Jones (2015), he's a British-American and is played by David Tennant.
    • In the comics, Moon Knight and all his alters are American and are primarily based in New York City. In Moon Knight (2022), Steven Grant speaks with an English accent and works at the National Art Gallery in London. His passport reveals that Marc Spector is an American citizen, and Marc is shown speaking with his actor Oscar Isaac's natural American accent. The third alter, Jake Lockley, has an unknown nationality, but the fact that he seems to be speaking Spanish as his native tongue heavily implies that he's "from" somewhere in Latin America. It also applies to Marc's wife, as the American Marlene Alraune is changed to Layla El-Faouly, Egyptian like the god who empowers Moon Knight.
  • In Peacemaker (2022), Christopher's father is an American rather than a Nazi war criminal from Austria. His racist leanings are kept by having him be a bigoted Right-Wing Militia Fanatic.
  • In British-American Ragdoll (made for AMC and the UK's Alibi, Lucy Hale plays an LAPD cop who's transferred to London's Metropolitan Police; in the novel her character was a Brit.
  • Ruyi's Royal Love in the Palace: Xiangjian's historical counterpart Consort Rong was an Uyghur. The Uyghurs are currently being treated horrifically by the CCP, so to be politically correct the series-makers made Xiangjian a member of a fictional ethnicity.
  • Meanwhile, in Sherlock, Irene Adler goes from being an American in the books to English in the show, and the King of Bohemia is replaced by an unnamed British royal. Henry Baskerville is Canadian in the books, but his Sherlock counterpart, Henry Knight, is British.
  • In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, Malone is American, but the character was Irish in the original novel. He was also Canadian in the 1992 film adaptation.
  • In DC Comics, Andrea Rojas is a member of Mexico's national superhero team, but in Smallville she's American. The nationality of the Supergirl (2015) version has yet to be revealed (although her company's headquarters is in Argentina and she's played by an Argentine-American actress).
  • The comic book version of Siobhan Smythe (alias Silver Banshee) is Irish, but in Supergirl (2015) she is changed into an American of Irish descent, albeit one whose Irish heritage is very important as the source of her powers.
  • Everyone except the title character in Supergran. In the original books, Supergran is a Scotswoman living in England, and the fact she talks in a dialect nobody else does is part of the characterisation. The series is set in Scotland, and all other characters are made Scottish.
  • In Titans, Lex Luthor's Bodyguard Babe Mercy Graves is British rather than American. And William Wintergreen is American rather than British.
  • While many characters in The Walking Dead (2010) are portrayed by British actors, Eleanor Matsuura as Yumiko is notable for being the only one to use her natural accent in the role. Since basically every character in the source material is presumably American (specifically, from the south-eastern United States) unless specified otherwise, this trope is likely in play for her.
  • In the original Watchmen, Hooded Justice was speculated to be a white German named Rolf MĂĽller. In Watchmen (2019), Will Reeves is an African-American.

    Radio 
  • The BBC radio series The Rivals, which features 19th century fictional detectives other than Sherlock Holmes, makes American detectives, such as Augustus van Dusen, the Thinking Machine, and Constance Dunlap, Woman Detective, British (along with nearly everyone else in their stories) in order to fit them into a series linked together by Inspector Lestrade.

    Theater 
  • In a stage adaptation of The Hound of the Baskervilles, Henry Baskerville changes from Canadian to American for no particular reason.
  • In the musical adaptation of A Little Princess, although the setting and characters remain English, Sara's birthplace is changed from Bombay, India to Saint-Louis, Senegal.
  • In The Maid of Orleans (Tchaikovsky), Lionel is a Burgundian knight rather than an Englishman like in the original play by Schiller.
  • In the original stage production of The Miracle Worker and its 1962 film version, Anne Bancroft portrayed Anne Sullivan with an Irish accent. While the real Anne Sullivan was Irish-American, she was born and raised in Massachusetts and spoke with a New England accent (which was allegedly too hard for Bancroft to master).
  • The stage version of Moulin Rouge! changes Christian from British to American.

    Roleplay 

    Video Games 
  • Taken to the extreme in Broforce: All the Lawyer-Friendly Cameo characters are walking Eagleland displays, even when the original character wasn't American. The biggest example being Bro Heart, whose original character is based on an historical Scottish hero.
  • Gaston Garson and his wife Gariella Gourmet from Gary Gadget series, who are French in original, in Russian translation are named Gogi and Guliko respectively and are Georgian.
  • In the original Sniper Elite, Karl Fairburne was a German-American. In the reboot series, namely Sniper Elite 4, Karl is instead German-British, but raised in the United States.
  • The various games in the Super Robot Wars series are known to sometimes change where the casts of certain entries come from, such as changing the inhabitants of planets in other galaxies into Earthlings:
    • GUNĂ—SWORD has been consistently subjected to this in all of its mainline appearances, as its characters were originally from a faraway planet called "Endless Illusion", but are always changed to being from Earth. In K, they come from an Earth different from the one where most of the cast come from, while in T and 30, they are from a terraformed Mars.
    • Speaking of K, the cast of Zoids: Genesis are from a secluded part of said alternate Earth instead of the faraway planet of Zi.

    Web Animation 

    Webcomics 

    Web Original 
  • The original Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) anime took place in Amestris, which is a fictional country but is often implied to be a Fantasy Counterpart Culture to Germany with some slight influence from other European regions. As such, the nationalities of the Elric Brothers, their mother and their friend Winry are more or less ambiguous, but can be assumed to be western European. In Nullmetal Alchemist, all of the above mentioned characters are depicted as being British, while everyone else is given generic American accents. Additionally, the Homunculi Envy and Sloth are both depicted as having British accents as well, which fits seeing as they'd later be revealed to be the Elrics' half-brother and mother respectively.

    Western Animation 
  • In the original 1978 Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! film, the sole female member of the Killer Tomato Task Force was a German athlete named Greta Attenbaum. In the '90s animated series, she is Russian and renamed Mary Jo Nagamininashy.
  • The unnamed Scientist Supreme of A.I.M. in Avengers Assemble has a strong Scottish accent. A.I.M's Scientist Supreme in the comics have all been American except for one Russian, and physically, the animated Scientist Supreme resembles George Clinton, one of the Americans.
  • Beware the Batman plays with this in regards to Mr. Toad. In Batman (Grant Morrison), where he debuted, he was depicted with a Cockney accent. In the show, he's voiced by Udo Kier, thus like all characters played by Kier, he sports Kier's German accent and additionally, Toad's modeled on an African giant toad.
  • Captain Pugwash: Tom the Cabin-Boy is portrayed with an English Home Counties accent in the first two television adaptations, and with an Irish accent in the 1997 series.
  • Castlevania (2017): Leon Belmont, the founder of the Belmont clan, was of vague, unclear European origin in Castlevania: Lament of Innocence. In the show, he is explicitly said to be French when someone comments his name sounds unusually non-Romanian. By extension, Trevor and his whole family who are Romanian-born have French descent because of their ancestor.
  • Very prevalent in Clone High—the clones of famous people from around the world are all portrayed as American teenagers.
  • DuckTales (1987) and DuckTales (2017):
    • Because of the political tensions with South Africa at the time over issues like apartheid, Flintheart Glomgold is Scottish instead of South African in the original show. As a Mythology Gag, the 2017 reboot has him exaggerate his Scottish tendencies to a truly ludicrous degree because he actually is South African, and assumed a fake Scottish persona to one-up Scrooge in as many ways as possible.
    • Magica DeSpell was Italian in the original comics. Where she was from was more vague in the series, with June Foray using a vaguely Slavic accent much like Natasha from Rocky and Bullwinkle. Catherine Tate uses her natural British accent in the 2017 series.
  • In Fantastic Four: The Animated Series, Alicia Masters is voiced with a British accent even though her comic counterpart is an American.
  • G.I. Joe: Renegades sees Breaker changed from an American to an English college student.
  • In Iron Man: The Animated Series, the Beetle (an American in the comics) is British and has a distinct Liverpudlian accent (as a Shout-Out to a certain famous band from that area).
  • Jellystone!:
    • El Kabong is now actually Hispanic, with a Brazilian voice actor.
    • Conversely, Bobbie (Baba) Looey is no longer Mexican. She's now Cuban according to Word of Saint Paul.
    • The Great Gazoo is now German instead of British.
  • Justice League:
    • In the Wonder Woman comics, Cheetah originally hailed from England. In the cartoon, Cheetah is voiced by Sheryl Lee Ralph, who uses her natural American accent.
    • In the Suicide Squad comics, Plastique is a former terrorist from Quebec. Her animated counterpart instead speaks with an accent that suggests she's from somewhere in the Southern United States.
  • Downplayed with Calamity Jane in The Legend of Calamity Jane, who changed areas rather than countries. She grew up in both Portsmouth, Rhode Island and Atlanta, Georgia. The real Calamity Jane is from Missouri.
  • A retroactive example is found in the CINAR and DiC Madeline cartoons. Like most of the other characters, Madeline is portrayed with a French accent. But Madeline in America, a discarded manuscript from the '50s by original author Ludwig Bemelmans that was eventually completed and published by his grandson in 1999, reveals that Bemelmans envisioned her as American, with the last name "Fogg" and with family in Texas. Meanwhile, the 1998 live-action film portrays her with a British accent, though it's not clear whether she's actually supposed to be British or whether it's a case of Translation Convention.
  • In the comics, the Brain is depicted as French, just like his partner, Monsieur Mallah. In My Adventures with Superman, he's depicted as German.
  • Spider-Man:
    • In the Spider-Woman animated series, Jessica Drew and her scientist father are American. In the comics, her parents were MI-5 agents and she grew up in Eastern Europe.
    • In Ultimate Spider-Man (2012), Swarm is an American Stark employee instead of a a World War II German scientist.
    • In Spider-Man: The Animated Series, Electro is the Russian-born son of the German Red Skull, rather than the American Max Dillon.
  • The X-Men's Wolverine was given an Australian accent in Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends and the 1989 animated pilot Pryde of the X-Men instead of his usual Canadian origins.
  • In Marvel Comics, Lancaster Sneed/Shockwave is British, originally appearing in Shang-Chi as the nephew of Denis Nayland-Smith. In Iron Man: Armored Adventures, he's an Australian.
  • In Teen Titans (2003):
    • Argent is reimagined as being from New Zealand rather than America.
    • Madame Rouge in the comics is French, but in the series speaks with an accent that implies she's Russian. Averted in the Latin Spanish dub, where she retains the French accent.
    • Mammoth has an American accent instead of an Australian one.
  • Teen Titans Go!: Robotman of the Doom Patrol speaks with a German accent, when Cliff Steele was American in the comics.
  • The 1939 Terry Toons version of The Three Bears makes the titular bears act like stereotypical Italians, complete with eating spaghetti instead of porridge.
  • X-Men: The Animated Series:
    • Pyro has an extremely British accent. His comics counterpart is Australian.
    • The episode "Whatever It Takes" is loosely based on the comics story "Life-Death II" (Uncanny #198), but Shanni's village is relocated from Kenya to Tanzania.
  • Young Justice (2010) does this a lot, especially in the third season, which presents its Superhuman Trafficking plot as a worldwide problem. For example, major character Halo becomes a Quraci refugee living in the fictional Eastern European nation of Vlatava, Wendy "Windfall" Jones has an Australian accent and Dolphin is Indian.

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