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"That was like a bad impression of somebody doing a bad impression."
Owen: "Roooar! Monster..noises!"
Alejandro: (awkwardly) "Oh no! A large, out of shape monster!
Tyler: (screaming) "WE...MUST...RUN!
Noah (in complete monotone) Think of of the childreeen.
Acting's version of Hollywood Tone Deaf. In Hollywood, bad acting can only come in two flavors: Large Ham; and this trope, which involves acting that's extremely stilted, extremely wooden, or extremely monotone. It may result in something like this (read aloud in your most stilted/monotone voice):
"Oh, no. The asteroid... is coming towards us. We are doomed. Aaaaahhhh. Exit stage left"
This often happens when characters are forced to reenact a specific event in hopes that it will have the same consequences. Often afflicts school rooms around the world where teachers have students read lines aloud, with the students not caring for the actual tone of the piece at all. What can almost be considered a trope in its own right is to attempt to homage William Shatner with strangely placed staccato pauses and random jumps in pitch.
Bonus points if the character's eyes shimmy back and forth as they read the out-of-shot cuecards.
Also like Hollywood Tone Deaf, in that professional actors can, well, act. If they aren't very good at their job, you wouldn't be able to tell if they were sucking on purpose for the Show Within A Show. Those that are good at acting typically couldn't mimic a poor actor, and even then, just like above, it'd be hard to tell if the actor was trying to fail — though it's something like common wisdom that only someone who's very good at something can be deliberately bad at something. Also, as per Rule Of Funny, genuinely poor acting isn't amusing — or at least not as amusing as Bad Bad Acting. Impersionations done in Bad Bad Acting tend to involve Hugh Mann and Most Definitely Not A Villain.
Stylistic Suck is the Super Trope of this.
Just to reiterate, this is where characters try to act and do a horrible job at it, not when you think someone does a legitimately horrible acting job or even a So Bad Its Good performance. We have a whole other set of tropes for that.
Examples
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Anime & Manga
- The student film from Suzumiya Haruhi. Most of the participants genuinely can't act, but one of them just talks like this normally. For example
 .
- In Koizumi's case it isn't the way he speaks that makes him a bad actor, it's the way he exaggeratedly gesticulates his way through every line he gets. Surprisingly, during the school festival when he's cast as one of the leads in Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, his style of acting is oddly appropriate.
- Actually, his acting mostly consists of this trope - except during his monologue, that's different.
- Also, he sometimes gesticulates like that when he's explaining things. Do you suppose he does it when he's self-conscious?
- The dub of episode 11 of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann has a group of girls faking a Gunmen attack like this in order to lure Team Gurren into a trap.
Dayakka Everyone else suspects, but Kittan, the interim leader, straight-up falls for it. This isn't as present in the Japanese version (although the girls still have hilariously stilted body language, and the trap is obvious no matter how you spin it).
- Late in the Ouran High School Host Club anime, Haruhi is kidnapped by the Zuka Club and forced to participate in a tragic play (as part of an excruciatingly complex revenge gambit by Benio). The characters comment on Haruhi's "robotic" acting, which consists of repeating the same line with virtually no intonation. (As an aside, Haruhi's English voice does an excellent job of crappy acting in this instance; the rest of the time, Haruhi is acted with great aplomb.)
- Syaoran in volume 5 of Cardcaptor Sakura. So bad it actually comes across in a manga. That is not easy to do.
- There is a kind of "flashback" scene in Big O, where Roger and his butler Norman are on a theater stage and re-enacting the events of their first meeting, in very stilted melodramatic dialogue. It's some kind of Fourth Wall thing, probably.
- In episode 29 of Keroro Gunsou, Natsumi degenerates into woodenly reciting her lines for the School Play whenever she's overcome with stage fright. Keroro goes to the other extreme.
Fan Works
Films — Animation
- In the Lupin III movie The Castle of Cagliostro, Inspector Zenigata brings a TV news camera crew down to the basement of the building and feigns surprise at finding counterfeiting equipment. This makes one of his superiors comment, "He's such a bad actor."
- See the mutant-brain movie Hogarth watches on TV in The Iron Giant.
- Basically any movie that parodies the 50's Sci-Fi film genre will feature Bad Bad Acting.
- Subverted for effect in the first Naruto movie: the actress the team escorts played out a scene they see her shooting quite convincingly; this shocks the team because it sharply contrasts with how distant and snide the actress really behaves. She's not, however, able to fake crying.
Films — Live Action
- All the characters in Boogie Nights in their movie-within-a-movie pornos. Amber Waves' affectless "You have a giant cock" is a good example.
- In Charlie Chaplin's The Circus, the Tramp amuses the crowd by accident, but fails utterly when the circus master tells him to be funny.
- In the So Bad Its Good movie Reefer Madness, two characters "act" out Romeo and Juliet for a few seconds. Very funny to see bad actors trying to act badly.
- My Big Fat Greek Wedding has Toula's aunt acting this way when they're trying to trick Toula's father.
- Daddy Day Care features a scene where Marvin has to fill in for a professional actor. His attempt can be put in this category.
- In Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Robert Downey Jr.'s character, a petty thief, is running from the cops and bursts into some acting auditions. In order to escape the police, he goes ahead and does an audition, reading out the lines in a monotone ("Um... beat up on me all night. You want me to give up my client, you can go spit.") until some of the dialogue hits too close to home. Then he appears to be doing a great acting job, but it's really genuine emotion. (Ah, Method Acting...)
- The entire film The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra was this way — the actors were playing the part of B-movie actors in a film, not like the characters.
- Zack and Miri Make a Porno includes this when the main characters and the people they hired attempt to "act" in the film they are making. (Just as well that it's, um, a porno... Pity a mainstream film can't show "the good parts".)
- In The Naked Gun 33 1/3, Frank Drebin has to replace a host at the Oscars Gala. At first he doesn't know what to say, so his co-hostess tells him to read off the autoprompter. Which he does, word for word, including the stage directions and even the co-hostess' own lines.
- Borderline example in Son of Rambow, where the older brother is used in the film within a film. He reads his lines exactly as someone with no acting experience and no preparation would realistically have read them. The makers of the movie then comment about how bad of an actor he was.
- In Ghostbusters 2, Janine and Louis are roped into acting for a commercial for the company. They fall squarely into this.
- This scene follows the similar commercial from the first movie, with the originial three Ghostbusters reading very stilted lines, and Egon even looking down when he steps forward and back to make sure he steps on his floor mark.
- This was actually Harold Ramis making sure he hit his mark - the director thought it was so perfect he kept that take.
- Likewise Alexander Dane, Alan Rickman's character in Galaxy Quest, when the out-of-work and typecast actors are advertising the opening of an electronics store.
- Note that Alexander Dane is a perfectly good classically trained actor otherwise, but there he was feeling very unenthusiastic.
- The others are all pretty stilted too, he's just the most obvious about it.
- Averted in Cold Souls: when the newly soulless Paul Giamatti is acting in Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya", his performance is not stilted or hammed up, but it is still very noticeably and realistically bad.
- Outrageous Fortune. Shelley Long's Russian acting instructor asks her to simulate being shot, which she grossly over-acts. Later on in the movie he takes a shot at her for real and appears to have killed her, but it turns out her performance has improved.
- The 1996 movie Feeders, all of it.
- In Dunston Checks In, a maid's boss's boss wants her fired, but her boss likes her and knows his boss will never remember the incident when he shows up again next year, so for the meantime the maid is on two weeks paid vacation. The joke is supposed to be that she's trying to seem sad in front of her boss's boss but is actually happy to be on vacation and is bad at acting. Interestingly enough, the actress seems to have been trying for Bad Bad Acting as a way of making the joke clear to the audience. What came out was more like bad bad bad acting.
- In Black Dynamite, many of the actors are bad. Not sure which are really good at acting bad, and which are just... bad. Anyways, "The militants stand up, startled!"
- Reds has an example of this with Louise Bryant's terrible acting in one of Eugene O'Neill's plays. In general, Diane Keaton, who plays Louise, is the master of this trope.
- The homage to "Romeo and Juliet" in Hot Fuzz.
"BANG!"
Live Action TV
- There's an episode of News Radio where a camera crew decides to shoot Jimmy James for a documentary. Whenever they start filming, though, he starts going all monotone and speaks like a robot.
- Miranda's acting in Lizzie McGuire, complete with her accidentally reading out stage directions.
- The Daily Show: For a while, the end segment (a.k.a. "the toss") that segues into The Colbert Report was pre-taped, instead of done with a live audience as usual. Fans noticed and were displeased. On the show that returned to live tosses, Jon Stewart acknowledged that the fans enjoyed the expression of "warmth and genuine camaraderie" between him and Stephen Colbert — and both immediately became very wooden, read robotically off the teleprompters, and expressed relief when it was over.
- Sophie from Leverage is terrible. Really terrible. Once, Parker compared her acting in 'Death Of A Salesman', in which Sophie played the title role, to a horror movie saying "Attention must be PAID!" and Eliot declared that that was the worst night of his life. This was juxtaposed with a flashback of him playing Russian Roulette somewhere. Of course, as is made clear throughout the series, she's only terrible when she's trying to act outside of a con. If it's during a con, she can pull off almost any role effortlessly. As Nate puts it, "She can act... when it's an act."
- Subverted by an episode of The Big Bang Theory. The show worked up an expectation that Penny, who is an aspiring actress, (and also shown to be a horrible singer), was also not that good an actress either. Whilst the fans of the show would expect her to be a typical sitcom style bad actor (and this is lampshaded to an extent in the lines previous), the first time her acting is revealed, it's in a tense moment with the Dogged Nice Guy, Penny exclaiming that if they moved in together (to save on rent) that "She couldn't keep her hands off him". He basically believes her, at which point she reveals her acting classes "weren't a waste of money".
- And as far as the singing is concerned, she's got quite a nice voice sometimes, as shown by the episode where Sheldon takes over her business.
- In an episode of Star Trek The Next Generation, Barclay performs a play with Dr. Crusher. He is terrible at acting, stammering and forgetting lines. The audience, however, is too nice to criticise him and politely applaud the performance while saying things like "bravo" — except for Data.
- In "Time's Arrow, Part II" the Next Generation crew have travelled back in time to 1893 San Francisco. When the landlady Mrs. Carmichael demands their overdue rent they pretend to be actors rehearsing "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and encourage her to read the part of Titania. Captain Picard then praises her stilted performance, and Mrs. Carmichael is so flustered she forgets about the rent for another day.
- Lampshaded and parodied in several Mad TV skits entitled "Prehistoric Glamazon Huntresses A.D" that poked fun of B-rated television series.
"You are not a scientist... from the future... AS I am."
- Played with in Monk. In the episode "Mr. Monk Goes to the Theater", Monk becomes the understudy for an actor who was murdered. When he's re-enacting the scene in the play to try to solve the crime, he's really good; Sharona does her part much less convincingly. Monk starts to lose it in rehearsals; during the actual performance, he makes a lot of mistakes and veers into Large Ham territory.
- Of course, during the actual performance, he was also rather flustered due to having just figured out that the murderer was the person he was acting with on the stage.
- All of the Blockblister videos seen in The Amanda Show.
- There was an episode of Hey Dude that featured Ted performing a script for someone outside eavesdropping. His performance was also typically stilted and wooden.
- Max Evans of Roswell, formerly Roswell High, auditioned for a part as an alien prince. He stumbled over his lines a lot, but other than that it wasn't much different from usual.
- The eponymous Bones, when trying to trick Gormogon.
- Everyone in Garth Marenghis Darkplace does this in their own particular way. Garth (as Rick Dagless) hopelessly overangsts his every line, the actress playing Liz lives in a world of Dull Surprise and breathless delivery, Dr Sanchez is played as the Ham to end all Hams, and Thornton Reed does little more than read his lines straight off the script.
- Simon in the Firefly episode "Jaynestown", when he's pretending to be a merchant looking to buy "mud".
- Note, however, that he wasn't expecting to have to act and that it was saddled onto him last minute. In The Movie, where it can be assumed that he had a lot of prep time, he managed to act like an Alliance inspector convincingly enough to sneak into The Academy to rescue his sister.
- "We applied the cortical electrodes but were unable to get a neural reaction from either patient."
- Also in "Trash", where at the end it's revealed that everything was played by the entire crew from the moment Mal released Yo-Saff-Bridge from the crate. In fact, if you watch closely, the crew's performance really wasn't that great, with for instance Kaylee at times unable to stay serious.
- J-Roc's numerous porno films in Trailer Park Boys, where the "actors" are absolutely terrible.
- Funky Squad, an Australian Affectionate Parody of 70's cop shows like The Mod Squad, most notably with the "spontaneous laughter" in the Everybody Laughs Ending.
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer has several examples of this, such as a painful rendition of Oedipus Rex by the main characters for a mandatory talent show in the first-season episode "The Puppet Show," nice-girl Willow trying to pass as her evil vampire counterpart in the third-season episode "Doppelgangland" ("I'm a bloodsucking fiend! Look at my outfit!"), and (a variant) a robot (in seasons five and six) designed to look like Buffy moving among her friends using such cunningly in-character lines as "Willow, you are my best friend. You're recently gay!"
- Not to mention Faith trying to impersonate Buffy.
- Also in "Doppelgangland," not only does Willow try to pass herself off as the evil vampire Willow, but the vampire Willow tries to pass herself off as good Willow, so Cordelia will let her out of the book cage. "Look at me. I'm all... helpless." Hilarity Ensues.
- Doyle's video ad for Angel Investigations in the first season. After his death, it's played later on in the first and then the fifth season, turning into a Tear Jerker.
- Cordelia also displays this — especially in a risible performance in Henrik Ibsen's "A Doll's House" — but improves markedly.
- The League of Gentlemen had Pam Doove, who became The Unintelligible whenever it was time for her to speak a single, easy line. Played with in that in-universe her unintelligible phrase becomes a popular meme, her advert is actually filmed and broadcast and, in the minds of the writers according to the DVDCommentary, she becomes a famous actress and wins an Oscar.
- Reno 911 occasionally shows its police-officer characters doing incredibly stilted Public Service Announcements.
- An episode of Green Acres, where the town puts on a play. Arnold, a pig, is considered to be a great actor and is sent to Hollywood. Considering the quality of the human acting, I don't blame them.
- KYTV had a spoof behind the scenes production of a Dickensian costume drama with a useless lead actor, who can barely read and can't even say his lines in the correct order: "I think it now not far... is?", "I too, wife weary... am?".
- Joey from Friends is quite the bad bad actor at times, varying from stilted delivery, to Soap Opera melodrama, to Reading the Stage Directions Out Loud.
Hayes: You're thinking too much.
Joey: I really doubt that.
- In the Doctor Who story "Meglos", the Doctor and Romana are caught in a chronic hysteresis (a time loop), which results in them going through the same scene involving repairing K-9 by waggling his tail several times. In order to break themselves out of said loop, they have to deliberately recreate the scene, which results in Romana acting very woodenly, and the Doctor actually forgetting what he has to say next, even though he's already delivered the line at least three times already. Hilarity Ensues.
- Scrubs has J.D. and Turk perform a concept scene for J.D.'s screenplay "Dr. Acula" and requisitely has them doing a horrible job at line delivery and staying in character when their line is over.
- Despite the fact that Miley Cyrus supposedly is a good actor as Hannah Montana, Hannah herself couldn't act her way out of a paper bag.
- In an episode of Hannah Montana, Hannah/Miley has something on her mind when she's cohosting an award show. She reads in a very robotic voice and reads the stage directions.
- Everyone on Acorn Antiques from Victoria Wood As Seen On TV. But especially Miss Babs.
- Jack Donaghy on 30Rock.
- Ed Norton (no, not that one) on The Honeymooners when Ralph Kramden's Zany Scheme of the Week is to sell a multi-purpose tool on TV. "Can it core a apple?" However, when the time comes to actually do the commercial (live, of course, in those days), Ralph is even worse: "Homminahomminahommina...."
- The State does this sometimes. A classic example is the "Spaghetti and Fried Bumblebees" sketch.
- While trying to escape Hobgoblins, The Satellite of Love crew set up some decoy lookalikes and a pre-recorded riff track, which combines this trope with some... odd phrasings.
- Also somewhat earlier in the series, when Dr. Forrester forces the crew to put on an act for his visiting mother. Starts at about 4:45, and pretty much runs the gamut.
- The Roadie is a borderline nightmarish clown who doesn't entirely hide his distaste for his work and The Umbilical Brothers.
- FX The Series, season 1 episode 5. Carrie Ann Moss absolutely mangles Margaret's speech to York in Shakespeare's Henry VI Part III.
- Will And Grace: it seems that Jack's a pretty terrible actor: he often breaks character to laugh at his own mistakes and doesn't read the script ahead of time:
Jack: (auditioning, fake-shivering violently) "'Please, Mr. O'Shaughnessy, I'm begging you. I can't stand out here any longer in this unbearable—'" (turns page) "'heat.' Oh. Oh...it's hot. (fans himself) 'We need food or else I fear my family will perish, and my harp will break.' Oh, 'heart.' (laughs) 'My heart will break.' I said, 'harp will break.' Did you hear that?"
Puppet Shows
- In the Dom DeLuise episode of The Muppet Show, Miss Piggy is trying to get noticed by Kermit. Among her efforts was a badly-acted conversation between Miss Piggy and Scooter involving her having gotten an offer from another show.
Kermit: Uh, Scooter, that performance by you and Miss Piggy was terrible.
Scooter: Gee, I didn't think it was that bad. I missed one line, but... Oh, no.
Radio
- Used frequently by radio satirists Bob & Ray, in the course of poking fun at various conventions of the medium. One of their mock talk shows was called "Us, the Folks, Mumble!" and featured the following running gag:
Bob: (as host) OK now sir, tell us what happened in your own words...
Ray: (as guest) Um... mph schmpfl reffle flp...
Bob: (hastily) Er, maybe you'd better use our words, sir. Right here on the card.
Ray: OK, sure. (reads off card in stiffest and most unconvincing manner possible)
Video Games
- In Disgaea, one of the Prism Rangers delivers half his lines like this, and the other half of his lines as if he's trying to do this and failing to entirely remove the inflection... and then Etna shoots them.
- In Phantom Brave, Ash and Marona employ this to
defeat get rid of a Bonus Boss who keeps coming back. Laharl is dumb enough to fall for it, too.
- Dragon Quest VIII featured a scene in which the party is locked in a prison and acts out a scene to attract the guards' attention. In the English dubbed version, their delivery during this scene is wooden, but the guards are stupid enough to buy it.
- Psychonauts has the theater stage, where all of the actors play out past events from Gloria Von Guten's life in this manner.
- The PSP game Dragoneer's Aria contains a segment wherein the two female characters need to agitate a spirit guarding a tree that wouldn't listen to anything they say (thus necessitating the threat). Their delivery is wooden, but, somehow, the centuries-old spirit falls for it.
- The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, which is full enough of incredibly bad voice acting as it is, contains a set piece in which an NPC "puts on a little act" as a prelude to faking his own death with the assistance of the player character. The result is positively cringeworthy.
- The Lost Crown. As a game designer, Jonathan Boakes is brilliant: as a voice actor, well, he's a very talented game designer.
"'Dangerous Undercurrents.' I should take that. As a warning. To watch my step. From now on."
- The various parody TV shows within the Max Payne games feature some clearly terrible "acting".
- Locke's performance in the Opera scene of Final Fantasy VI is supposed to be this. Due to technical limitations, it's left as an Informed Ability.
- Some Suikoden games feature a theater minigame. Generally speaking, you can cast a good chunk of the Loads and Loads of Characters as any individual role in such works as Romeo and Juliet, or William Tell. The game will usually warn you which characters are bad actors... but then that's half the fun. Sometimes the acting is so bad that the set itself falls down.
Web Animation
- Frequently done by the characters on Homestar Runner when they're given a script to read.
- The tutorial of Strong Bad's Cool Game For Attractive People is full of Bad Bad Acting, with Strong Sad and Bubs reading their lines with all the pathos of a plank of wood, occasionally broken up with complaints about the awful, awful script.
- The Dangeresque installments are full of this, especially from Coach Z.
- A DVD bonus toon opens with the King of Town on stage, reading from a cue card in an extremely forced manner, and giving a reaction after the line is read indicating that he didn't even know what he was reading until after he read it. Of course, this bit of bad acting is justified when the viewer gets to see the cue card... and Homsar is holding it upside-down.
- Red Vs Blue. Donut tried to orchestrate a play to illustrate how the time jump happened. The reds actually do good, but Caboose, being the Ralph Wiggum, reads his stage directions aloud. However, that was his only flaw; he wasn't monotone or wooden.
Web Comics
Web Original
- A Running Gag with The Nostalgia Critic is that he responds to instances of bad acting in the movies he reviews by staring at the camera and saying "I'm acting!" in a dopey voice and style reminiscent of the actor.
- Also variations, e.g. in his Red Sonja review he imitates the actress' uncertain-sounding tone with "I'm... acting?"
- Other That Guy With The Glasses contributors have also dabbled in this: Spoony and Linkara's Warrior crossover video showcased an alternate universe (one of several) where Spoony and Linkara are terrible actors, reading their lines flatly from the script, fumbling with the props and making no attempts to emote. Linkara's commentary hung a lampshade on this by mentioning that some people think they were already terrible actors to begin with...
- There's also The Nostalgia Chick's review of Showgirls. Because she can't show the naughty scenes on blip, she has to get her friends to play the parts. They either look bored or uncomfortable and one is even reading a book while he gives a lapdance, but to be honest, it's much funnier than the real thing.
- In Unforgotten Realms, when Rob is forced to do a scripted event, he seems to go out of his way to act as bad as possible. After a certain point, he gets sick of it and acts normally. Normally being kill everything.
Western Animation
- Lor in The Weekenders episode "Radio Drama".
- Occurred when The Powerpuff Girls tried to act in their own movie.
- Also, when they create a fourth sister to help them in crimefighting, they faithfully act out the part of "accidentally" adding Chemical X this way.
- Futurama, in the Aliens Steal Cable episode.
- Also in the porn film featured in "A Big Ball of Garbage" — With gusto! Also, the two educational films shown within the show: I Dated a Robot!! and Global Warming — None Like It Hot!!! (the second features the claim that the Earth is warming due to the piling-up of corpses after gang-member-like greenhouse gases beat sunbeams to death).
- Also in the Star Trek episode where William Shatner himself does it. It's the complete opposite of his usual unholy acting talent, and the entire Star Trek cast follows suit with their own embarrassingly monotone acting — though the fact that they're being held captive and forced to perform a fanboy's Marty Stu script goes a long way towards explaining their complete lack of effort.
- Also frequent in the Show Within a Show All My Circuits, though Calculon is more of a Large Ham. Played straight when Zoidberg's uncle directs a movie, which also includes Bad Bad Directing.
- Katara and Sokka in Avatar: The Last Airbender, when they're trying to get Katara arrested for earthbending and speak in the most stilted tone possible:
Sokka: Get out of my way, pipsqueak!
Katara: How dare you call me pipsqueak, you giant-eared cretin!
Sokka: What did you call me?
Katara: A giant-eared cretin! Look at those things. Do herds of animals use them for shade?
- In the Sealab 2021 episode "Swimming in Oblivion", which features the crew as Animated Actors, Hal, playing Capt. Murphy, sandbags his lines because he thinks they're stupid.
- Borderline case in The Pilot for The Critic: Jay finally gets around to watching the movie his latest girlfriend is starring in. "I'll GIVE you a KISS alRIGHT. A kiss... OF DEATH!!!!!"
- The Critic did that quite a bit. Jay Sherman is a movie critic who ends up seeing mostly bad films....
- An example from Angry Beavers, "Dag For Night":
Daggett: Oh my! It's going to crash into!... Us? Save yourselves!
Daggett: The End... Question mark?
- Heck, practically every other episode features at least one example. In-universe B Movie actor Oxnard Montalvo is the embodiment of this trope.
- The Beavers idolize Oxnard Montalvo and he is probably consciously or subconsciously emulating him. (And really, why wouldn't anyone want to be Just Like Oxnard Montalvo.)
- In the episode of Metalocalypse where Dethklok acts in a movie, they all do this.
- Danny Phantom: Jazz and Danny has to perform a mock battle in front of Vlad, so convincing that even Danny himself didn't get it until the last minute. That was good acting, at least on Jazz's part. Then they commence the bad acting with Jazz having "killed" Danny; the two perform stilted acts that somehow gets the usual Chessmaster Vlad convinced. Later, Danny and Jazz poke fun at their poor attempts at drama.
- The ninth episode of The Venture Brothers, "Are You There, God? It's Me, Dean", ends with a PSA, where the characters' eyes are shifting from left to right to indicate they're reading from cue cards.
- A trope constantly employed in A Pup Named Scooby-Doo; the characters would act like this every time they needed to trick a monster into falling for a trap. Lampshaded in one episode when Scooby's scolded for going off script by showing genuine emotion.
- Darkwing Duck is a terrible actor, although his ego won't allow him to realize it. So he... starts and stops... all of his lines... with Hollywood Tone Deaf... and wrong inflection... to indicate intent?
- In an episode of WITCH, the Guardians need to leave to fight the forces of evil just before their slot in a school talent show. They leave behind copies of themselves to take their places; but it turns out that the copies don't retain any memories and therefore are not familiar with the short play they are putting on. It all goes downhill from the Taranee copy beginning her narration with "Taranee speaks dramatically."
- In a Krusty Krab commercial shot by Mr. Krabs in the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "As seen on TV", he, Squidward and Pearl are like this. Then again, the commercial got aired very early in the morning...
- In one episode of Sushi Pack, Titanium Chef "acts" horrified that Wasabi has discovered his plot in a ploy to get the blob of mustard to attack, giving him the final ingredient for his plan. One of his henchmen even face palms at how bad this acting is, but Wasabi takes the bait.
- ANYTIME a character acts in Recess, ESPECIALLY when it's a big part of this week's Zany Scheme.
- Except Mikey, who can use his singing voice to sound completely different and convincing.
- The "Mr Plow" episode of The Simpsons, where the family produce their own (badly acted) TV commercial.
- In one episode of Freakazoid, a man who runs into the room the main character is, panicking and yelling that the Lobe has arrived. He's promptly scolded and forced to repeat the scene. At a second instance, the titular character tells him to take acting lessons. Much later during the final showdown between the hero and the Lobe, the same man breaks up the fight to show them that the acting lessons have payed off, by performing the Death of Romeo, from Shaespear's famous play.
- In an episode of Family Guy, Stewie programs two robot lookalikes of himself and Brian so that no-one notices they've gone on a trip. They move around stiffly and talk in completely monotone voices:
Robot Stewie: Damn you vile woman. Blast. What the deuce.
Robot Brian: I am a tool. Stewie is much better than me at everything including arts and crafts and the guitar. I have no friends.
- The commercial made by Team Chris in Total Drama World Tour, especially:
Noah: (flat voice) Think of the childreeeeeen.
- In an episode of Wait Til Your Father Gets Home, a TV commercial for a used car dealership shows off one of its "satisfied customers". Said "customer" is obviously reading from cue cards, to the point of stumbling over the word "courtesy".
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