A character gains a lot of weight in a short time (for example, from a Balloon Belly), gaining mass in every part of their body, even their voice. Their voice will get deeper and thicker as if some of the extra pounds ended up in their larynx. Generally only found in animated works, and very common in anime. Not to be confused with the Heavy's voice.
Compare and contrast Power Makes Your Voice Deep and Resized Vocals. Might be combined with Weight Taller.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Lampshaded by Hachibei in chapter 88, page 14
of Ai Kora when he tells Kirino, after she has gained weight due to a drug slipped into the dorm's water supply, that her "voice is fatter". This is a pun in the original Japanese version of the manga, in which Hachibei tells Kirino "koefuto", which can usually mean "to grow fat", but in this context it includes the word "koe" meaning "voice".
- In the seventh episode of Di Gi Charat, Gema falls in the river and drinks a lot of water, making him grow huge and giving him a deep voice.
- Every character who eats the "Diet Cake" in the tenth episode of the Ganbare Goemon anime gets one.
- In the OVA adaptation of Gyo, this, combined with Voice of the Legion, is a side effect of Erika's infection.
- In Kiss Him, Not Me, when fat, Kae Serinuma has deep voice. After losing a substantial amount of weight, Kae's voice gets significantly higher. In the English dub, this is averted, as Kae has a normal pitch regardless of whether she is fat or not.
- Zura from Mamotte! Lollipop is a little seahorse-thing that can blow up like a balloon and float. When it does this, it can still talk, but its voice is much deeper than usual.
- During an episode of MÄR, the team (specifically, Princess Snow) fights against an ugly little girl whose signature ARM is the Gingerbread House - a house of sweets. Eating it makes her grow to sumo-like proportions, gaining superhuman strength and toughness in the process. And of course, as she grows bigger, her voice grows deeper and thicker. (Also, she turns into a Gonk.)
- In an episode of Wagamama Fairy Mirumo De Pon!, Mirumo and Kaede both gain weight thanks to Kaede's rival sending her cakes. Kaede doesn't gain too much weight, but Mirumo, being a Lilliputian, has a more substantial weight gain with a lowered voice to match.
- In Naruto Shippuden's Episode 188 omake, Naruto has one of these when he transforms himself into a sumo wrestler.
- One Piece, Usopp on the Bowin Islands.
- There's also Gekko Moriah, a rather fat guy with a high pitched voice who gains a deeper Voice of the Legion upon growing to titanic size with his One-Winged Angel form.
- Osomatsu-san: In the Season 2 premiere, during the Bad Future, fat!Jyushimatsu's voice is much deeper and thicker. And he's the size of a whale, by the way.
- This happened to Stocking in episode 4-A, after she balloons into an obese giant.
- Samurai Champloo's Fuu gets this whenever she gorges herself in at least the Japanese and English versions of the show (not so much in the German version).
- Tina of Toriko gets one in Episode 27 after stuffing herself to the brim with tofu.
- In episode six of Wandaba Style, The Professor is in a slump, so his pilots (the girls of Mix Juice), have nothing to do, and thus gain weight from just sitting around. This is hinted at (before we see them completely) by their voices. (Note: averted in the English dub)
- In episode 2 of Mysterious Joker's second season, Queen and Roko get this after gaining a huge amount of weight from eating too much of Millefeuille's cooking.
Fan Works
K-On!: Bassist’s Amassing Mass begins with the girls of HTT deciding to fatten up with extra sweets to invoke this trope to change their sound and be more popular. Mainly implied, as the story’s focus is on their weight gain. Chapter 7 says every girl in school had gotten fat by the time of the band’s last concert. Megumi had gotten fat after graduation (so the gain at least somewhat spread outside Sakuragaoka) and her voice is said to have deepened when Nodoka visits her at her college, so this trope may be in effect for other girls.
begins with the girls of HTT deciding to fatten up with extra sweets to invoke this trope to change their sound and be more popular. Mainly implied, as the story’s focus is on their weight gain. Chapter 7 says every girl in school had gotten fat by the time of the band’s last concert. Megumi had gotten fat after graduation (so the gain at least somewhat spread outside Sakuragaoka) and her voice is said to have deepened when Nodoka visits her at her college, so this trope may be in effect for other girls.
Films — Animation
- In Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, the Mayor's voice gets a bit deeper when he's fat.
Films — Live-Action
- Inverted in The Nutty Professor, in which the obese Sherman Klump gets a lighter voice as his skinnier alter-ego Buddy Love.
Live-Action TV
- After The Daily Show came back from a 3-week hiatus in September 2009, Jon Stewart ended up like this.
- In Super Sentai (less often in Power Rangers) the Monster of the Week often gets a deepened voice after Make My Monster Grow time.
Stand-Up Comedy
- Comedian, Patton Oswalt, muses on this in one of his stand-up bits, noting that he needs to start getting in shape because he's starting to "sound fat." In another bit, he notes that Nutter Butter bars are perfectly named to emphasize a fat person's voice.
Video Games
- In the Super Smash Bros. series, when a characters gets a Super Mushroom and grows larger, their voice deepens. Justified in that the mushroom doubles the size of their entire body, including the voicebox. The reverse happens when a Poison Mushroom is picked up.
- In the Uncharted series, the Doughnut Drake costume makes Nathan very, very fat. As a side-effect, his voice is pitch-shifted downward by about 15%.
- In Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story, the Toads infected by the blorbs have deeper speech vocalizations than those who are uninfected.
- In Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves, when Carmelita Fox is wearing the Mask of Dark Earth, her voice gets deeper as she gets larger.
- As the titular princesses of Fat Princess get heavier, their voices change accordingly.
- In Tekken Tag Tournament 2, you can play as Bob, a martial artist larger than a sumo wrestler with a deep, macho-sounding voice, or as Slim Bob, who is much higher pitched.
- Various Pokemon have their voices become deeper and louder when they are Dynamaxed. Justified, since the Dynamaxed Pokemon in question are actually just holograms.
Western Animation
- South Park:
- In the second episode, Cartman gains a lot of weight, and his voice gets deeper (and thicker).
- It also happened to all of them in "Make Love, Not Warcraft".
- Inverted in "Spontaneous Combustion", with Cartman's voice getting higher after losing a lot of weight.
- Bender from Futurama may be a robot and thus find it hard to get fat but in one "What if..." episode where he becomes human and then lives as he normally does (which is to excess) he becomes extremely fat with a deeper, less excited voice.
- Subverted in one episode of Scaredy Squirrel, where, after gorging on nutbars, Scaredy seems to have a deeper voice, but he just had a (still-wrapped) nutbar in his throat.
- Mammoth Mutt in Krypto the Superdog whenever she inflates herself.
- Princess What's-Her-Name of Earthworm Jim gets one after being subject to Professor Monkey-For-A-Head's Fatomic Ray Gun.
- In her earliest appearances on SpongeBob SquarePants, Mrs. Puff's voice would get deeper when she inflated.
"Oh Spongebob, whyyyyy?!"
- After the Earl of Lemongrab (of Adventure Time) becomes morbidly obese, his voice becomes a bit more strained and slightly muffled as his chubby cheeks squish his mouth somewhat.
- During an episode of Lilo & Stitch: The Series, when Frenchfry began fattening up Lilo, Stitch and Pleakley to eat them, he was left alone with Pleakley for a day. Naturally an entire day of receiving Frenchfry's undivided attention made Pleakley obese - to the point he's a blob that fills an entire room. And his voice is much heavier to go with his insanely fat size.
- Although Mama the Hutt is already morbidly obese (even by Hutt standards) by her first and only appearance on Star Wars: The Clone Wars (S3E09 "The Hunt for Ziro), her ridiculously deep, masculine voice (which was actually a woman's voice digitally altered) that makes Darth Vader sound like Michael Jackson in comparison can only be attributed to this trope.
- In the All Hail King Julien episode "Fast Food Lemur Nation", Clover becomes addicted to King Julien's Booty-Doodle candy bars and winds up gaining a ton of weight. Her voice becomes a lot rougher to go with the extra girth.
Real Life
- Opera singers are often large. At least one postulate is that they need the fat around their vocal cords to make those big sounds, and it's kinda hard to have a fat throat without having a fat everything. It could also simply be that people with naturally loud and powerful voices tend to have larger statures, which tend to result in thicker physiques.
- Orson Welles' obesity was said to have affected his voice in his final days.
