Not Even Bothering With The Accent - Television Tropes & Idioms

"Yondah lies da castle of my faddah".

Tony Curtis, The Prince Who Was a Thief

When an actor decides not to bother putting on an accent, either because they can't pull it off without sounding silly or because they believe it'll hinder their ability to act.

Sometimes, this would be vastly preferable.

Compare Just A Stupid Accent, where the character has an accent, but you just can't tell from where.

Of course, if they are playing a character who is supposed to be speaking a different language, there is no particular reason for the actor to use the accent. They're not speaking the language, what sort of sop would the accent be? For example, the wonderful 2005 mini-series Casanova with David Tennant.

Examples:

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Anime and Manga

Film

Jean-Claude Van Damme sports his natural Belgian accent even when it's not particularly appropriate for the character.
- In Timecop, he still has his accent, but it's noticeably thicker in his character's 1994 self than his 2004 self. It's a nice touch in an otherwise rather mediocre movie.
- Several films, including Universal Soldier and Hard Target, give Van Damme's character a Cajun background, though a Cajun accent sounds nothing like the accent of a non-native Belgian speaking English.
The inappropriateness of Arnold Schwarzenegger's thick Austrian accent for his various roles as been lampshaded a few times:
- In a deleted scene in Terminator 3, Schwarzenegger has a brief cameo as Sgt. Candy, the soldier upon which the T-800 model is based. His voice is dubbed by Samuel L Jackson. One of the officers in charge of the program says he doesn't like the accent, prompting a computer geek with Arnold's real voice to note that they can "fix it."
- In Last Action Hero, Danny tries to convince Slater (Schwarzenegger) that he's an action movie character by pointing out that he's got a heavy Austrian accent despite ostensibly being a native L.A. cop. Slater's response is, "Eggscent? Vat eggscent?"
John Malkovich in The Messenger. He'd be conspicuous enough in any role, surrounded as he was by genuine French actors, but when the king of France is the only one who can't even pronounce "France"...
- The same situation in A&E's biography Napoleon, in his portrayal of Talleyrand.
The producers tried to have all the actors speak the same accent in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, but considering that all four main actors spoke with different accents (Cantonese, Malaysian, Taiwanese, and Beijing-dialect), they decided to give it up as a bad job. The Chinese audience was not impressed.
After taking a lot of criticism for his phony Cockney in Mary Poppins, Dick van Dyke completely dispensed with a British accent in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang — despite the fact that his character's father and two children all had one.
- And despite the fact that he'd played an upper-class Englishman in Mary Poppins, Mr Dawes (Sr.), without receiving complaints.)
- Also from Mary Poppins: Ed Wynn didn't bother attempting an English accent in his one-scene appearance as Uncle Albert.
  - However, this could partly justify Bert's terrible accent - if Albert is Bert's uncle, then he has American family, and so his accent might be influenced by them, perhaps to the point of sounding like an American affecting a bad Cockney accent.
Sean Connery rarely dispenses with his Scottish accent, despite playing a wide variety of ethnicities:
- In The Untouchables his character is supposed to be Irish. When asked why he didn't attempt an Irish accent for the film, Connery reportedly said, "If I didn't talk like this, you wouldn't know who I am."
  - In fairness, parts of Ireland and Scotland have similar enough accents that an outsider would have to listen quite carefully to tell the difference.
- In Highlander, Connery played a thousand-year-old Egyptian who identified as Spanish, spent a long time in Japan, and was now living in Scotland. He kept a straight Scottish accent. Other old immortals, such as Christopher Lambert's character, acquire a muddled accent due to living in so many places for so long.
- In The Hunt For Red October, Connery plays a (Soviet) Lithuanian submarine captain. He speaks both Russian and English with more or less his standard Scottish accent.
  - To be fair Connery's particular version of the Scottish accent almost sounds more Russian than Scottish.
- In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Connery played the father of the red-blooded American Harrison Ford. He's apparently an immigrant, but no mention of the disparity in accents is made. Interestingly, Jones briefly adopts a hilariously unconvincing Scottish accent as part of a ruse. You'd expect he'd have a better ear for it if he'd grown up with a Scottish father.
  - But if you consider Indy hasn't spoken with dad for years...
- In The Wind and the Lion, Connery plays a Berber chieftain with his usual accent; this was roundly mocked on an in-episode movie parody of SCTV, "How The Middle East Was Won," in which Eugene Levy as ~~Sean Connery~~ Shawn Connorie as The Mufti utters the line: "I'm the bluidy Mufti. Awa' wi' ye."
Tony Curtis, in The Black Shield Of Falworth, didn't even try to hide his pronounced Brooklyn accent, resulting in the infamous line, "Yondah lies da castle o' me fadder." It's particularly jarring because the rest of the cast at least tried to sound British.
The Last Temptation of Christ was widely mocked for various characters sporting jarring accents, especially Harvey Keitel's Brooklyn-accented Judas. His line, "You're a Joo killing Joos!" is a particular offender.
Edward G. Robinson was notoriously miscast in The Ten Commandments as the villain Dathan, whom he played in his usual New York gangster style. ("Yuh see?")
- "Where's your messiah now, see?"
In The Greatest Story Ever Told, John Wayne who doesn't bother with an accent even though he only has one line: "Truly, this man was the Son of Gawd."
Robin Hood films often sport characters without proper accents:
- In Robin Hood Prince Of Thieves, Mike McShane did apparently make a significant effort to pick up an authentic Nottinghamshire accent, but was told to play an Irish-accented priest instead. Kevin Costner doesn't even try for an English accent. His Robin Hood is all midwestern U.S.
- This is mocked by Cary Elwes in Robin Hood Men In Tights:
  Prince John: And why should the people listen to you?
  Robin: Because, unlike some other Robin Hoods, I can speak with an English accent.
  Crowd: (gasps)
- In Disney's 1973 Talking Animal version of Robin Hood, some of the characters are played by British actors, while others are played by American actors with strong Southern accents such as Pat Buttram and George Lindsay.
- Parodied in an Eddie Izzard bit, saying it's been done so often that if an actual British Robin Hood showed up, no one would accept him. "You don't have the authentic Nottingham twang!"
Hannibal Lecter's accent never gets nailed down and seems to be based purely on the actor's whim.
- Brian Cox plays the character with a Scottish accent in Manhunter.
- Anthony Hopkins slips in an out of various accents in his films starting with The Silence Of The Lambs. He said he based the voice on a cross between Truman Capote and Katherine Hepburn. In Hannibal, the character's background is revealed to be Lithuanian, which is never even hinted in his speech.
- Hannibal Rising actually puts Lecter in Lithuania, but he's played by French actor Gaspard Ulliel, speaking with his native French accent.
Matthew Broderick in Ladyhawke, set in medieval France, used a harsh Brooklyn accent. Most of the rest of the cast are British and use British accents. The romantic leads are Californian Michelle Pfeiffer and Dutch Rutger Hauer, both speaking impeccable generic upperclass American English.
Batman Begins: While the character Alfred is usually thought of as having an upper-class English accent, Michael Caine decided that Alfred's sense of duty and loyalty towards Bruce Wayne reminded him of the comradeship that exists in the military, so he based the character's voice on that of a colonel he knew when he was in the army as an 18-year-old. Ultimately, his accent is more or less identical to his natural cockney accent.
While Clark Gable consented to shaving off his trademark mustache to play the British Fletcher Christian the film Mutiny On The Bounty, he made no effort to hide his American accent. Additionally, Gable makes no attempt to adopt a Southern accent in his portrayal of Charlestonian Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind.
Infamous swashbuckler Errol Flynn, an Australian who spoke the Queen's English, starred in a few westerns, such as Dodge City (1939) and They Died With Their Boots On (1941), wherein he played George Armstrong Custer. Wow. He nonetheless always looked and sounded like Errol Flynn. His accent was handwaved in his first cowboy picture, Dodge City, where the character was referred to as an Irishman. They never bothered with any of his (many) westerns after that.
In Chocolat, most characters manage to sound as if they at least knew what a French accent sounded like (it helped that Juliette Binoche is actually French, and so was about half the cast). Johnny Depp, however, decided his character was Irish.
In the Canadian movie (TV movie?) Handel's Last Chance, about a German composer in 18th century Dublin, only one person sounds Irish; the rest all sound Canadian. (Or possibly American, but not Irish.)
Robert Redford as a supposedly English expatriate in Out of Africa.
Intentionally done in the movie Young Frankenstein. The story takes place in Transylvania, which is in Romania, but the "starring" Transylvanian characters speak with German accents, while most of the more minor village characters sound, at best, British
- Justifiable, as in the original book Dr Frankenstein is Swiss, which is close enough. (Also, in Dracula, the only one originally set in Transylvania, Bram Stoker didn't know Romanian, so he used German.)
  - Stranger yet, in the original Universal series, there was no particular pattern to which villagers had English accents and which ones had German.
  - From the 12th century on, parts of Transylvania were settled by German-speaking Saxons.
  - Which also explains why another name for Transylvania is "Siebenburgen".
Justified in The Incredible Hulk 2008 film. Rather than have the British Tim Roth attempt a Russian accent, they make Emil Blonsky born in Russia, but raised in Britain, and a Royal Marine instead of a KGB agent.
- Similarly averted in Lie To Me. Rather than have Tim do an American accent (which, if you've seen Reservoir Dogs, he actually does pretty well), the writers made his character British and let him keep his natural accent.
Pierce Brosnan seems to have largely given up doing fake accents (for instance his Irish accented Americans in Laws of Attraction and Mamma Mia!). Somewhat ironic considering his most famous role had him speak in a ''British'' accent.
There is only one man who could pull off a Cockney Henry VIII. And a Cockney Beowulf.
Scottish actor Billy Boyd used his normal accent in Lord Of The Rings as Pippin Took. The director explains on the audio commentary that they tried to have him speak with an English accent, but it ruined his comedic timing. They later found out that "Took" was pronounced by Tolkien to make it sound Scottish, which makes the trope justified.
- There is also the fact that the head of the Took family holds the title of "Thain" of the Shire, which is a Scottish title (yes Pippin is an Upper Class Twit of a hobbit).
- In addition, just as the Scots invented the modern game of golf, Pippin's ancestor Bandobras "the Bullroarer" Took, invented Hobbit golf.
In the movie Taken Liam Neeson plays an ex-CIA operative living in the States, with his nice Irish brogue completely intact.
Valkyrie is like this. It seems that all Germans speak with British accents, except Tom Cruise, who sounds like he always does. Hitler (David Bamber) is rather hard to recognize by voice and attitude alone, though it's late in the war, and he's probably running short on his usual bravado. Director Bryan Singer wanted the actors to use their natural accents. If they attempted a German accent, people would pay more attention to that and the accent's quality than what the characters were saying.
The recent movie adaptation of the children's/teenager's novel The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, which is supposed to be set in Auschwitz (Poland) and in viewing distance of the infamous Nazi extermination camp, featured a range of supposedly German characters who all speak English with strong British accents.
In the 1930 film version of All Quiet On The Western Front, the German characters are played by American actors who speak with American accents. This is probably to make the characters as relatable to the main audience as possible. After all, it's not really about World War I; it's about war in general.
Another war film example: Paths Of Glory, set in France with American accents.
Everyone in Enemy at the Gates. Apparently Russians are Brits and Nazis are Americans (though at least Ed Harris mutes his natural Jersey accent). Made even more jarring by the fact that some of the secondary characters actually do have proper accents—some of the background Nazis and Sacha's mother.
The Man In The Iron Mask. Some character sport Just A Stupid Accent with more or less success, while Leonardo Di Caprio doesn't seem to even try while playing the King of France. Gerard Depardieu's actual French accent puts the lie to everyone else, though.
In 300, Gerard Butler uses his natural Scottish accent for Leonidas and Rodrigo Santoro uses his Brazilian accent for Xerxes. The rest of the Spartans are British-accented (including Australian David Wenham), while the other Persians seem to do a generic foreign accent.
In The Sound Of Music, all the children used what Charmian Carr called a "Mid-Atlantic" (read: mild British) accent. Richard Hadyn used his own accent, as did Christopher Plummer (a Canadian) and Julie Andrews (British, of course). Eleanor Parker, an American, adopted a very upper-class East Coast Prep-type accent that sounded vaguely British.
The 2004 version of The Phantom Of The Opera (set in Paris). With the exceptions of Miranda Richardson and Minnie Driver, who put on painfully silly French and Italian (Spanish?) accents respectively, everyone just goes with whatever English/American/Scottish/etc. accent they've got.
- Note that in the stage version, the character played by Minnie Driver (Carlotta) and her love interest Piangi, always put on ridiculously exaggerated Italian accents.
Although the entirety of the 1933 film Queen Christina is set in Sweden, Greta Garbo is the only one with a Swedish accent.
- Perhaps justified in that close to no persons from outside of Sweden can do Swedish accents. Most times they tend to sound German, Norwegian or just plain weird.
  - This troper is Swedish and thinks that The Swedish Chef has the best Swedish accent.
George Hearn as Sweeney Todd never much bothered with the London accent. Johnny Depp, conversely, sounds exactly like he always sounds when he's from England: slurred and batshit crazy.
- Ironically, when Johny Depp is from New York, he sounds much more high-class british.
The film Alexander, Alexander the Great has an Irish accent as do many of his generals. The filmmakers did this on purpose, as Alexander was Macedonian, which at the time were considered much more rural and uncivilized than their Greek neighbors, and hypothesized that they sounded more like Celts, so they decided an Irish accent would be more realistic than anything else. On the other hand, Angelina Jolie affects an "exotic foreigner" accent.
Cary Grant plays a French army captain in I Was a Male War Bride. He sounds exactly like Cary Grant.
Siegfried and Shtarker in the 2008 movie version of Get Smart - in sharp contrast to the way the characters are portrayed in the series. (Bernie Kopell, the original Siegfried, has a brief yet wonderful cameo in the film.)
Justified, sort of, in Toys: Michael Gambon, as a crazy American general, has a British accent. He complains that because his father was he's an American.
- Which is odd, because Gambon is quite capable of using an American accent when he wants to.
John Wayne as Genghis Khan. So Yeah.
"Yer beautiful in yer wrath."
Many characters in Casablanca, although perhaps British actor Claude Rains as the French Captain Louis Renault is most noticeable.
The accents, or lack thereof, in the X-Men movies are jarring, considering how over-the-top everyone's accent is portrayed in the comic books, to the point of parody. Although since the movies are based more on the Ultimate Marvel universe, where things are a little different, it's not entirely out-of-place. It's still confusing to long-time comic readers to not hear Wolverine say "eh, bub" every other sentence.
- Patrick Stewart keeps his British accent when playing Prof. Charles Xavier, though Xavier is meant to be an upper-class New Yorker (and to be fair, some Americans mistake that accent for mild British, though the Anglo-Canadian Cedric Smith was far closer to it in the cartoon series). Ian McKellen also keeps his natural English accent when playing the Polish Magneto.
  - This Troper knows little about X-Men (outside of the films), but Magneto may well have gone to England after the second world war, possibly as a refugee, which would explain the accent.
  - Well, in the comics, Magneto was a Polish Jew (presumably Yiddish-speaking) who after the war went to Ukraine, lived with a Gypsy tribe for several years, and then Israel, which would give him a really weird accent (this is probably why, the very few times this troper has seen the comics mention his accent, it's described as untraceable). But the movies are a different canon, so you may be right.
  - In the novelization, Xavier's accent is explained by his being educated at Oxford. And since we've all known people who go to London for two weeks and come back trying to sound like they grew up in the East End...
- The fans' most popular complaint is Colossus - ironic, considering that in the comics he learned his English telepathically and therefore spoke it with an accent that led to his being repeatedly mistaken for an American, including by himself when he had amnesia. On the other hand, it's best not to expose a native German speaker to Alan Cumming's Nightcrawler. (Alan Cumming is Scottish.)
  - Read the end of that last paragraph again and tell me it's not dirty...
- Halle Berry attempted some kind of accent in the first film. Now, Storm in the comics spent her childhood in Cairo and her teen years in Kenya, so some confusion is understandable, but still... Thankfully, they just did away with it entirely for the next two films.
  - Same with Rogue's Southern accent in the first film, which is notably absent in the sequels.
- In X Men Origins: Wolverine, Taylor Kitsch's Cajun accent as Gambit is impossibly faint, and it seems like he doesn't even bother for most lines.
  - Some Cajuns in New Orleans barely have accents at all. Everyone outside of New Orleans is just used to hearing The Big Easy versions of them.
- Halle Berry had such horrid approximation of an African accent playing Storm that she gave up halfway through the first movie and sounded like the Ohioan she is for the rest of the series (one of many things that didn't endear her to Storm fans).
- Hugh Jackman hides his accent, but some of his vowels [[are really Australian.
In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale: Nobody tried, it was just a mish-mash of different accents. Jason Statham seemed very out of place in this movie, and it wasn't just because he was the only actor with an accent that MIGHT resemble the correct one.
In-Universe example: In Inglourious Basterds, when infiltrating the Nazi-filled cinema as an Italian, Aldo speaks what little Italian he actually knows in his heavy Southern accent. His other men at least try. Hans Landa, who already knows that they're impostors, toys with them by speaking Italian back to them and asking them to repeat themselves multiple times so he can "get the accent right."
Swedish wrestler Tor Johnson played Inspector Daniel Clay in Plan 9 From Outer Space... with his own Swedish accent, naturally.
Ewan Mc Gregor can only do two accents: Scottish and Jedi. In A Life Less Ordinary he was originally going to play an American character, until director Danny Boyle heard him attempt the accent and told him, "You are playing a Scotsman."
- This Troper thinks that Mcgregor did a very good American accent in The Island.
James Mason always kept his regular (and awesome) accent, no matter what character he played. This is most jarring in Bigger Than Life, where he portrays an all-American dad who was a star (American) football player in high school.
Sometimes Anthony Hopkins attempts to sound like an American, but does it halfheartedly. In All the King's Men he initially tried to put on a southern accent and later seemed to eschew it completely.
In The Devil's Rejects, Otis seems to lack even a vestigial Southern accent, and even enunciates more than any normal person does. Somehow, the effect is actually more disturbing than if he'd talked like a good ol' boy.
In Mother Of Tears, Asia Argento plays an American...with an Italian accent. Justified because Everything Sounds Sexier With An Italian Accent.
Batman And Robin decides to make Barbara/Batgirl Alfred's niece from England instead of Gordon's daughter from Gotham but Alicia Silverstone doesn't even try to do an accent. An odd case because this trope could have been avoided altogether if they had just stuck with the comic book version (or at least have Barbara be native, there's no reason she couldn't have moved to America as a kid.)

Close Film

Live Action Television

There was a BBC miniseries version of War And Peace which had this in spades. Particularly jarring to this (American) troper, because ostensibly Russian people all had perfect BBC accents.
- Well, the characters in War And Peace speak French and Russian, not English, so any accent would be wrong. The BBC English indicates that they are upper class. (c.f. The Queens Latin).
William Petersen in CSI uses his own Chicago accent for the California-originating Gil Grissom.
- Dennis Franz also sounded more Chicago than Brooklyn on NYPD Blue.
Julian Sands in Season 5 of 24 used an English accent to play someone from the Caucasus, which led to him being described as the Englishman by Sky's audio description.
- Glasgow native Robert Carlyle puts on a generic Irish accent in 24: Redemption, even though his character is supposed to have been in the Special Forces together with Jack Bauer and is presumably American. This prompted complaints about his unexplained 'Glaswegian accent' from American viewers.
  - Without much justification - Special Forces are, well, special, and the nature of the work means that they work with similar units from all over the world. It's not at all unreasonable for them to have served together. The US Military doesn't necessarily exclude immigrants from serving either. This could equally apply to movies like Taken - there's no particular reason to assume the character is meant to be American.
Khan Noonien Singh from Star Trek The Original Series is from somewhere in northern India, but speaks in Ricardo Montalban's actual Mexican accent.
Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek The Next Generation is played by Patrick Stewart, a Brit, even though Picard is from the French countryside. He doesn't seem to modify his accent for the role; on the rare occasions when he uses French terms, however, his accent is impeccable. Whenever his relatives appear, they also speak with English accents (or Scottish in the case of his brother) - except for a vision he has of his mother in the first season, who speaks with a French accent.
- Ironically, Commander Riker pronounces "Jean-Luc Picard" with a pretty good French accent while Picard himself pronounces it with an English accent.
- Possibly subverted in the episode "Code of Honor," when Data refers to French as an "obscure language." Perhaps it didn't survive into the future, and was replaced by English.
- As the Film section shows, Prof. Charles Xavier also sounds really British for a New Yorker.
- Stewart also keeps his accent when voicing Bullock from American Dad, which is especially ridiculous considering he hold a high ranking position in the C.I.A., an American federal institution. This is almost certainly intentional, and even gets a Lampshade Hanging when he notes he picked up some women with his "sexy accent".
- Memorably averted in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy when Stewart plays KGB mastermind Karla. He doesn't speak. At all.
The rule for pretty much any film ~~east of Worcester~~ easta Woosta is "talk like you usually do, but without the R's."
- And Yorkshire accent uses none of definite articles.
  - That would be Worcester, Mass. and badly faked Boston accents. Nothing to do with Yorkshire.
Something of a subversion occurs in the extremely short-lived British sitcom Heil Honey I'm Home!, which features Hitler living next door to an annoying Jewish couple and pretends to be a long-lost American TV show. Hitler speaks with an American accent, as does everyone else, except for Neville Chamberlain.
- Oh, how this troper wishes the previous troper were making that up!
- It's also sort of a legitimate use of the trope, as Hitler and the neighbor have the worst fake American accents ever. Debate stands as to whether this was intentional.
On Lost, Slavic Mira Furlan plays Danielle Rousseau, who is ostensibly French. She uses her own accent. Fans have questioned this numerous times, and the producers joke about it often in interviews and podcasts. Presumably this is just a quirk of casting and doesn't mean anything, but This Troper has entertained some Epileptic Trees theories about it.
- To give the producers credit, they honestly try to get the British accents correct. Australian accents? Not so much.
- The situation with Danielle is complicated further when we see a younger version of her, played by a ~~real French actress~~bilingual American-French actress.
- In fairness, Rousseau had been alone on an island for sixteen years; it's surprising that she was capable of speech at all.
Jeffrey Donovan speaks with the same upper-middle-class Boston-area accent no matter what he's in... played for laughs in Burn Notice, in which he has to fake a Boston accent and does it horribly.
- Another Burn Notice example is Fiona. Gabrielle Anwar's fake Irish accent in the pilot is terrible. In the second episode they lose it entirely, having her claim that since she's in Miami, she "can't very well be talking like a friggin' Leprechaun". It hasn't been heard since which may make some new viewers confused when they find out she's former IRA.
One of the complains about Telemundo's Soap Operas is that every actor keep speaking in their own accents, becoming specially jarring when people with accents as different as Puerto Rican, Cuban, Venezuelan and Argentinian were cast as members of the same family. The network contested by forcing their actors to adopt the stereotypical Mexican Pseudo-Neutral Soapie Accent, with the consequences that many actuations become hindered, and the thing sounded even more ridiculous due to Ooh Me Accents Slipping.
In addition to the Eddie Izzard bit involving Robin Hood, he fails miserably at attempting a serviceable imitation of John F. Kennedy during his Dressed to Kill special, and instead substitutes his James Mason impression. The same voice he gives God (if only because God's real voice is "a bit weird").
- Izzard has only two impersonations: James Mason and Sean Connery. He's lampshaded this on occasion, as when he plays Henry VIII as Connery: "Oh, that's a much better name. Church of England. Although I am Scottish myself." or the above JFK as Mason: "People of Berlin, I have come to you to tell you something about the American states. I sound a bit like God, don't I?"
A quasi-example from Heroes: the actor who plays Mohinder made a painful attempt at an Indian accent in the first few episodes, but soon relaxed into a British one. His natural accent is American.
Accents varied widely among the cast of The Dukes Of Hazzard. The producer claimed at one point that if the Dukes had truly authentic accents for that part of the Deep South, they'd be unintelligible to most of the television audience.
In the Hercules/Xenaverse, the only person who ever attempted a European accent was Michael Hurst as Iolaus, which he dropped at some point. Despite the fact that half the cast was Australian, it seemed easier to make everyone sound American.
- The cast was more New Zealander (where it was filmed) than Australian. Understandable though, it often seems like only Australians and New Zealanders can tell the differences between the accents.
In Sliders, the US colonel Angus Rickman (Roger Daltrey) speaks with a thick English accent that the actor didn't even try to cover.
Connor on Angel was raised in a hell dimension with his sole human contact, and possibly the only thing he'd ever talked to, being an 18th Century Englishman. Whenhe breaks out back to earth he has an American accent.
- Although Holtz doesn't sound remotely English. In fact, the accents in the entire Buffyverse are fairly odd. James Marster's British accent in season 2 is awful although he improves as the series continues. David Boreanez's attempt at Irish has to be heard to be believed and it's difficult to tell if Juliet Landau is even attempting a British accent. Amusingly, Anthony Head did use a British accent, a completely different one to his natural voice (Head's natural accent is not dissimilar to Marster's fake accent). And let's not even get started on Kendra...
- This troper is reminded of an episode of the short-lived series The Wizard, starring the late David Rappaport. The story involved Rappaport's character encountering a girl who'd been raised by wolves and didn't speak English. He tried to teach her to say "girl," but in his thick English accent it sounded like "gell." Yet after hearing "gell, gell" repeatedly, she replied "girl" in perfect American diction.
Averted (or lampshaded to those in the know) by McNulty (Played by British Dominic West) on The Wire. He does a (mostly) convincing American accent for the role, but in an episode where they need to infiltrate a prostitution ring, puts on a hilariously fake British accent to seem like a convincing customer.
Inverted by Jim Gaffigan, who voices The Pope (formerly a Pole, now a German) with a slightly more nasally version of his own voice.
- Lampshaded: You gotta admit, that was a pretty good impression of The Pope.
In-Universe example: There's a...intern...student...guy on Bones with a thick Middle Eastern accent and mannerisms, and at one point Bones questions why he has a Jordanian accent when he's from Iran. Turns out he's faking the accent so people won't question how he reconciles being a strict Muslim with being a scientist, and the moment where he finally loses it is actually quite funny.
Little-remembered British police drama Van Der Valk was set in Amsterdam. Knowing the supply of actors in the UK capable of a convincing Dutch accent was likely to be very small, the producers subverted the trope by having the cast use various British accents appropriate to the intended audience's conception of how a particular character should sound. Your Mileage May Vary, but it had to be better than the only other likely outcome.
Power Rangers has been filmed in New Zealand since Power Rangers Ninja Storm, 2003. They're usually good about faking the accents, but the actor who played Xander didn't even bother hiding his Aussie accent. The rest of the actors do bother, they just fail hilariously on occasion.

Close Live Action Television

Video Games

In Metal Gear Solid 3, all of the "Russian" characters, with the exception of Granin and Nikita Kruschev, speak with flawless American accents, except for Sokolov, who speaks with Belgian accent.
- Lampshaded: Sokolov remarks that Snake has "excellent Russian". The player is meant to assume that we're hearing Russian translated into American English/Japanese/whatever.
- This is justified though, as Akio Ohtsuka (Snake's Japanese voice actor) and Hideo Kojima had wanted to get the game done in Russian, but the other voice actors didn't want to, as they didn't know how to speak Russian and they pointed out that the American VAs didn't do it.
- Crops up in MGS 4. Despite the majority of enemy soldiers not being American, everyone outside flashbacks except Vamp and Crying Wolf speaks with American accents.
In Fallout 3, Malcolm Mc Dowell portrays President of the villainous Enclave, John Henry Eden, who claims to have been brought up in rural Kentucky. At times, he seems to be trying to fake some sort of American accent, but most of the time he sounds like, well, Malcolm Mc Dowell.
- Possibly justifiable, since much of the country had been destroyed and most of the population having been wiped out 200 years before the game takes place, perhaps Southern accents as we know them had ceased to exist.
- No; other characters in the game have Southern accents. Besides, it doesn't matter what accent Eden has because He's a goddamn computer. He can have any accent he's programmed to have. Also, seeing as the entire world had been in anarchy, it's entirely possible that he could have been from Europe and came to America and became Enclave President, because it's anarchy and there wouldn't be any rules for taking office. Assuming that he isn't the computer that he actually is.
  - While it wouldn't justify a British accents, not all rural parts of Kentucky have particularly Southern accents. The areas closer to Cincinnati and Louisville sound more midwestern than Southern, for the most part.
- Also, the player character's father, voiced by Liam Neeson (who, as has been remarked upon elsewhere, doesn't really do accents). We're living in a Vault that's supposedly been completely sealed off from the outside world since the bombs fell 200 years ago, and here's this ONE guy who speaks with a markedly different accent from everyone else. Yeah, that's not going to cause inconvenient questions from the child he's so desperate to keep safe and sheltered...
Half-Life 2 takes place in post-apocalyptic Eastern Europe, but only three characters have an accent that isn't North American, and two of them are British.
- Maybe possibly justified (or at least handwaved) since Earth's population was apparently decimated and the survivors (many of whom are apparently Americans) moved to the numbered cities.
  - Pretty well justified, since the Combine uses moving population around as a method of control (more difficult for them to get revolts going) and it's likely that City 17 is now an "American" city while some city in the Americas now houses Russians...
In Freelancer, with the exception of a few major characters in the story missions, none of the Rhinelanders, Kusari, or Bretonians speak with the accent of their home country. Possibly justified by the eight hundred years since the departure from Sol, but this would not explain the exceptions like von Claussen.
- Most notably the main character, Trent, who is ostensibly Bretonian, but does not share his foster father Tobias's notable British accent.
Characters such as Lancer and Saber in the English dub of Fate/stay night are noticeably lacking the accents an English-speaking audience would expect, given their countries of origin. Of course, this is doubly justified: the Irish and British accents of Cú Chulainn or King Arthur's time would be completely different from modern ones, and the dub was already bad enough without poorly faked accents.
Assassin's Creed suffers from the problem where nearly all of the Crusades-era characters have vaguely Middle Eastern accents except for the main character, Altaïr, who speaks as American as apple pie.
- Justified. Since the Animus is tailored to the intended audience (in this case, Desmond), it would be normal that there are very little accents. Lucy, the technician working on the Animus, says that she can restore all the accents and write it as Old English, but she doesn't because it would be like reading Chaucer.

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Ray Ellington's roles on The Goon Show would occasionally feature him playing a native-born Scotsman or a female secretary. Ray Ellington had the kind of voice where you'd be almost certain he was black even without the (for the time) good-natured jokes about it.

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