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Suddenly Voiced

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Aisha: Oh my God, it's you.
Boss: Surprised, Aisha?
Aisha: What, that you're here, or that you're talking?
Boss: Pick one.

A character who previously had no audible voice now gets a permanent tone of voice.

This was especially prevalent for aged cartoon characters, many of whom originally didn't have voices and were given them in order to make more diverse plots. The reception to this is often mixed due to They Changed It, Now It Sucks!.

This is also common in video game series whose origins predate the Nintendo 64/PlayStation/Sega Saturn era. Older gaming consoles had limited processing power and cartridge storage space, which meant that voice acting took up a lot of resources and was low-quality, so dialogue was mostly limited to text. As hardware got more powerful, players started to expect that even Heroic Mimes have at least audible grunts, if not fully voiced dialogue.

Note that some of these characters may have already had speaking roles in comic books based on their works. Since comics are inaudible, their voices there are up to the imagination of the readers. Characters who are mute in some dub versions and speaking in others also qualify for this trope.

Related to Unseen No More and Named in the Sequel, where a person who is initially unseen or unnamed is respectively given a face/name.

Not to be confused with Suddenly Speaking, in which someone who is typically mute finally speaks up.


Examples:

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    Advertising 

    Anime and Manga 
  • In the Naruto anime, all of Kakashi's ninja dogs could talk during the Hunt for Uchiha arc, whereas in the manga and all previous scenes in the anime, the only one who could talk was Pakkun.
  • Persona 4: The Animation is going to be downright weird for people who played the game and are used to the Silent Protagonist (Yu Narukami) who only says "Persona" or the name of the Persona he's summoning once its revealed that his personality is that of a charismatic Deadpan Snarker who openly talks as opposed to his more withdrawn predecessor, and has a tendency to go with the "funny" dialogue options when he can.
  • In Jack and the Beanstalk (1974), an anime adaptation of Jack and the Beanstalk, Jack refused to aid the princess of the Cloud Kingdom who had been hypnotized by an evil witch (the giant's mother), and instead slid down the beanstalk with the giant's treasure. While he and his mother celebrated their newfound wealth, Jack's dog (who was silent throughout the movie) started singing balefully at the moon. Jack saw this as a sign that he should return to the Cloud Kingdom and rescue the princess.
  • Gon: Gon is voiced by Motoko Kumai in his new anime, and the rest of the animal cast is fully voiced as well. He doesn't say much other than his name and make some cutesy noises, but it's still a sharp contrast to the dialogue and sound effect free manga he originated from.
  • Pokémon Origins: The famous Heroic Mime Red, whose personality in later games was revealed to actually be that of the strong silent type and chooses to avoid speaking unlike the other suddenly-voiced heroes, talks frequently in the anime. This serves to give him an Adaptational Personality Change to make him more in tune with the young folks that enjoyed his game when it came out. Ironically, the Pokémon avert the Pokémon Speak trope and make only animal voices.
  • Dororo (2019): Subverted. Hyakkimaru manages to regain his voice at the end of the fifth episode. Unfortunately, spoken language didn't come with it, and thus Hyakkimaru largely continues to remain silent as he very, very slowly picks up something faintly resembling a vocabulary.
  • Endo and Kobayashi Live! The Latest on Tsundere Villainess Lieselotte: August Riefenstahl was never given any lines in the original novel or the manga adaptation. In the anime adaptation, he is given a speaking role.
  • The Legend of Zelda (Akira Himekawa): Despite his perpetual Heroic Mime status being an iconic trait of his, the manga adaptations of the various games give Link his own personality and Character Development.

    Comic Books 

    Comic Strips 
  • Garfield always talked in the comics, but only via thought bubbles that only the reader could understand, except when he talked with other animals. In the '80s Garfield Specials and Garfield and Friends, he can be heard, but his mouth never moved. In the 2000s CG movies he can suddenly talk normally, though The Garfield Show went back to him talking via thinking.
    • One strip had Garfield with a regular speech bubble that was drawn by mistake. In later strips, Jon reacted to Garfield as if he could understand him.
    • Becomes a plot point in Garfield's Judgement Day. All animals are capable of speech, but have a rule against using it. Garfield and the other pets in the town sense a huge natural disaster on the way (something that animals in Real Life sometimes do as well) and Garfield proposes that they temporarily relax the ban so they can warn their owners.
  • Marmaduke's eponymous Big Friendly Dog has a voice in his 2010 movie (provided by Owen Wilson). In his comic, Marmaduke never spoke, not even Garfield-style.
  • Peanuts: Snoopy was another animal that communicated via thought balloons. One strip from the '60s accidentally gave him a regular word balloon and stem — he laps up a potato chip from the floor and says "Anything that falls on the floor is legally mine." In the movies and TV specials, he could only whine or growl, but sometimes he would dance to musical numbers and a human voice would sing the part of the character he was miming, thus giving the impression that Snoopy was sentient (for example, dressing up as an Uncle Sam-type to the lyrics of the first-person song "Yankee Doodle Dandy").
    • The Animated Adaptations of the musicals “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown” and “Snoopy the Musical” have him verbalizing his thoughts through voiceovers.
    • On at least one occasion, he refers to Charlie Brown as "the round-headed kid" and Linus responds as though he knew exactly what he was thinking by saying, "You can't even remember your owner's name!", although this could just be an error in itself.
  • Inverted with Ziggy. In the comics, Ziggy regularly speaks, but in his animated Christmas special, "Ziggy's Gift", he never says a word aside from singing "Silent Night" near the end, and even then, he was drowned out by a cop and a thief singing along with him.

    Fan Works 

    Films — Animated 
  • The Angry Birds Movie: Unlike the games and cartoons where they mostly spoke in grunts, growls and gibberish, the characters are fully voiced in the movie.
  • The original cut of The Thief and the Cobbler has many mute characters, including the titular cobbler and thief and many animals. All of these have been given voices in the Arabian Knight version, constantly making jokes.
  • Tom and Jerry: The Movie had the titular characters realising they could talk after introducing themselves to some animals they met on the streets at night.

    Live-Action TV 
  • On the album release of Spidey's Super Stories segments from The Electric Company, Spider-Man is now voiced by Jim Boyd (who plays Arthur J. Crank) on the show. On the TV show, Spider-Man is silent with Word Balloons.

    Puppet Shows 
  • In the movie, Dumbo is more or less a Cute Mute (justified seeing that he is a baby), but he’s given a voice in the Disney Channel original series, Dumbo's Circus.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Sentinels of the Multiverse:
    • The digital version of the game has spoken dialogue for Guise and singing snippets for Argent Adept.
    • The trailers for the digital version have voices for Baron Blade, Chrono-Ranger, Kaargra Warfang, Tachyon, and Sky-Scraper.
    • The Sentinels of Freedom spinoff video game gives us even more voices: Absolute Zero, Bunker, a different Tachyon, Wraith, Legacy (Felicia Parsons/Fields), Expatriette, Unity, Setback, The Adhesivist, Fright Train, Ermine, the members of Perestroika, and Highbrow.

    Toys 
  • Though unremarkable, Mattel's Bugs Bunny See 'n Say Phone gives Road Runner something more than "Beep Beep".
    "I'm the Road Runner! Bye!"

    Video Games 
  • In 100% Orange Juice!, all characters were initially voiceless (except for the text-based dialogues in Campaign Mode). However, in June 2017, the game added voice acting via a DLC for the 4 starter characters, with QP voiced by Azusa Sato, Suguri voiced by Seiko Yoshida, Marc voiced by Maika Takai, and The Protagonist Kai voiced by Yoshiyuuki Matsuura. Later, subsequent DLC added voice acting for the other core characters.
  • Anodyne 2: Return to Dust: For most of the game, Nova never talks, and generally listens. However, during the Dustbound Village segment, when people try to talk to her, she realizes she can talk, but she just never did. The rest of the game has her speaking to others.
  • Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has two instances of this back to back. After the mission "Team Player", which sees Allen reassigned, the next cutscene has him speaking with General Shepherd — a first, as neither "Soap" MacTavish nor Paul Jackson from the first game said a single word. Then the next mission starts, and we see one of the other senior officers of Task Force 141 is none other than the aforementioned Soap, now with voice acting.
  • Crash Bandicoot:
  • The Darius series has little to no voice acting, other than the small piece of dialogue at the start of the second game, as well as the radio chatter in Chronicle Saviours. In Arkanoid vs. Space Invaders, however, Proco, Riga Pratica, and Ti2 all have voiced dialogue. Ti2 would also show up in Alice Gear Aegis, where she is voiced by Ayane Sakura.
  • In the Dark Tales series, all dialogue in the first two games is presented as on-screen subtitles. Beginning with the third game, The Premature Burial, Dupin and all NPCs have voice acting. The player character continues to speak only in subtitles; but in the twelfth installment, Morella, she finally has a single line with voice acting.
  • Isaac Clarke from Dead Space is silent throughout the first game, and according to the devs the decision to whether to make Isaac talk or not was debated throughout the game's entire development. The devs felt having Isaac as a Heroic Mime felt too awkward in parts and made him voiced starting in the second game. They even had him retroactively voiced for the remake.
  • In Disgaea 4, all of the monster types which formerly just made noises were given the option of having voices in the form of short combat phrases like "Here I go!" and "Hiyah!" (Being Player Mooks, they don't get any big voice parts). They had unvoiced dialogue prior to that.
  • In Dishonored 2, Corvo Attano is fully voiced whereas in the first game he was completely silent.
  • Survivors in Don't Starve all have distinct musical instruments that play as their "voices", with captions of what they are actually saying appearing above their heads. This is also usually kept up in the series' promotional material, save for a few animated shorts. In Wigfrid's short, she sings along to a recording of one of her old opera songs, and in a trailer for the annual Winter's Feast update, Wilson, Willow and Webber sing a winter carol, voiced by some of the game's developers.
  • The Warden in Dragon Age: Origins was mostly voiceless (except for battle cries). Then Hawke in Dragon Age II got all his and her replies fully voiced a la Shepard from Mass Effect.
  • Dragon Quest: The Hero was the first to set the Heroic Mime trend and the first to avert it, as at the game's end he suddenly speaks up to refuse the King's suggestion that he should take his place and asserts his own personal goals.
  • In The Elder Scrolls series, Dremora, a humanoid form of lesser Daedra typically found in service to the Daedric Prince Mehrunes Dagon, were voiceless prior to Oblivion. They did get some "voice" characterization in the form of text dialogue in Morrowind, laying the roots for their later "Hammy-ness", but didn't have any actual voiced lines. Oblivion ramps up their hammy qualities, while also giving them spoken lines. They have very deep, very "outdoor" voices. Skyrim takes it even further, keeping their past vocal traits while uttering them in the most over-the-top way possible.
  • The first four games of the Epic Battle Fantasy series had no vocal sound effects from humans whatsoever, and the first game did not even have dialogue. Epic Battle Fantasy 5 gave Voice Grunting both from NPCs when spoken to and from player characters when they die, making it the first installment in the series where the main characters have audible voices.
  • Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two has all the characters from the previous game speak fully voiced lines, such as Oswald, Mickey, Gus, Ortensia, and the Mad Doctor.
  • Etrian Odyssey Untold: The Millenium Girl: Starting from this remake, the Etrian Odyssey series has incorporated voice acting to plot-critical characters as well as the player-created characters (for each of which the specific voice can be selected as well).
  • Final Fantasy:
    • Final Fantasy IV DS had some 3D cutscenes with voices. However, this was not cost-free: The previous GBA remake's option to switch party members had to be cut, and with it, the two Bonus Dungeons made for the extended cast.
    • For the Pixel Remaster of Final Fantasy VI, the opera scene is done with actual voice actors instead of synthesized voices.
    • The Player Character in Final Fantasy XIV is a Heroic Mime where, outside of dialogue choices, they nod or make other gestures when interacting with other characters. Shadowbringers has them speak one line with an audible voice. Although said voice comes from Ardbert, another character who was already voiced, who just merged his soul with the player's and is speaking through them. They don't get any more voiced lines after that.
    Warrior of Light: This world is not yours to end... This is our future. Our story.
  • In the Fire Emblem franchise, while BS Archanea Saga for the Satellaview, the Tellius games, and all titles starting with Awakening featured voice acting, one of the draws of Fire Emblem Heroes is that every single playable character featured in the game, spanning from all fourteen mainline entries in the series plus a handful of original characters, is fully voice-acted, many for the first time. Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, the remake of Fire Emblem Gaiden, is the first game in the franchise to feature complete voice acting for all plot-important dialogue and Support conversations. The only unvoiced dialogue is flavor text when investigating objects and interacting with other characters in towns.
    • In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, the protagonist, Byleth, only speaks in dialogue prompts given to the players, with two exceptions. In Female Byleth's S Support with Dedue, she'll let out a "What?!" when Dedue reveals that he's leaving Dimitri's service to be with her. In Male Byleth's S Support with Annette, he'll say "Yes?" to prompt Annette to continue when she trails off.
  • Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location provides voice lines for William Afton, AKA "The Purple Guy," revealing him to be British.
    • Ultimate Custom Night gives voices to many of the animatronics, primarily so they can deliver a Bond One-Liner after doing the player in. Freddy, Foxy, and Mangle also get Japanese voice actors for the Animesque cutscenes you have a chance of seeing after completing a night.
  • Frogger's Journey: The Forgotten Relic: After not speaking at all for the entire rest of the game, OPART thanks Frogger before it sacrifices itself to contain the explosion from Eric's OPART.
  • In Genshin Impact, The Traveler suddenly speaks at the end of chapter two, when they are offered anything that the Liyue Qixing have in their power, despite up to that point having been a silent protagonist who never speaks on screen (though you do select unvoiced dialogue options for him). Naturally, their request is to have them put up missing person posters for their sibling.
  • Harvest Moon:
  • After spending Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy as a mute, Jak enters Jak II: Renegade with a speaking role, his first words being "I'm going to kill Baron Praxis!" It turns out he was born mute (if his past self is any indication) but was cured as a side-effect from the dark eco infusion.
  • The Kingdom Hearts series gives a voice to the formerly voiceless Yen Sid, the wizard from Fantasia. Yen Sid's narration in Epic Mickey has the same voice, and recently he's also started speaking in shows at the Disney Theme Parks.
  • The Kirby video games typically have little more than grunts, basic sounds, and Kirby's "Hi!". However, Kirby and the Forgotten Land has both a lyrical song (in a fictional language), and a fully voice-acting tour of a laboratory in the late game.
  • The PC Steam version of the original The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel game contains over 5,000 lines of voiced dialogue that was previously text-only, resulting in this for certain characters. Among others is a Provincial Army Officer at the end of Chapter 2 with a Scottish accent completed with heavily rolled Rs.
  • The Legend of Zelda:
    • The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures: Navi Trackers mode had Link as the silent protagonist again, but Tetra, Red Lion and Sue-Belle were fluently speaking Japanese, cheering on Link and giving him hints to help him collect 100 hidden coins in the map. Voice acting was however, in this case, integral to the gameplay, as players didn't have time to look away from the GBA screen to look at the TV to read instructions.
    • Barring the aforementioned Japan-only minigame, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is the first main game to include full voice acting for some characters; a female voice is heard urging Link to wake up during the start of the game, and the titular princess herself has fully voiced dialogue (The before-mentioned female voice? That's her). Recurring character Impa is also given fully voiced lines for the first time.
    • Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity gives fully voiced lines to characters like Robbie and Kohga who only had Voice Grunting in Breath of the Wild.
  • Six of Little Nightmares never speaks within the game unless to grunt or gasp. In the sequel game, she does pipe up to call to Mono occasionally.
  • While we did hear his voice as a younger man in Metal Gear Solid 3, it wasn't until Metal Gear Solid 4 that we got to hear the elder Big Boss speak. In fact, his first scene occurs right after The Stinger when the character's voice actor is listed in the credits.
    • A similar example from earlier in the series, which knowing Kojima is probably a subtle Lampshade Hanging: Metal Gear Solid was the first game in the series with voiced dialogue. As such, Snake is unable to recognize his own best friend by voice until that character essentially tells him "It's me, you dumb bastard."
  • For that extremely rare non-controversial example, your challenge is to find a single Monkey Island fan who didn't accept that Dominic Armato was perfect for the role of Guybrush Threepwood within thirty seconds of him opening his mouth at the start of The Curse of Monkey Island.
  • Karuraten from Namu Amida Butsu! was unvoiced until the remake Namu Amida Butsu! -UTENA- where he's voiced by Daiki Yamashita.
    • In the first game, stories are not voiced; the only available voices are stock gameplay voice clips and card dialogues.
    • In -UTENA-, the prologue and the recollections are the only stories where the voice actors actually read the lines. In all other stories, the characters either stay silent or interject stock voice clips at certain lines.
  • Octopath Traveler: An odd example. While the protagonists are perfectly chatty during the main story and party banters, they never speak a word during sidequests. The one exception is the sidequest "Star of the Stage", where Olberic or H'aanit do have spoken dialogue depending on which one you use to complete the quest.
  • Just like in his comic book adaption and the 1993 animated series, the Pink Panther can talk in the games Pink Panther's Passport to Peril and Pink Panther: Hokus Pokus Pink. Justified since both games are dialogue heavy, so having a mute main character wouldn't make any sense.
  • Poker Night at the Inventory marks the first time Tycho Brahe of Penny Arcade fame has ever been given a voice. He did speak plenty before, just in text.
  • Being a Fan Game, Resident Evil Containment has pretty much no budget to speak of, so the dialogue of Episodes 1-3 is unvoiced. A trailer for Episode 4, however, gives Ghost and Tracey voiced lines.
  • The characters from the Richman series starts to have voice acting since 4.
  • The Player Character hardly spoke in Saints Row, and even then it was usually a single line at the very end of any given storyline. In Saints Row 2, they become the Third Street Saints leader, and it would be pretty difficult to run a gang if they hardly spoke. Along with the fact that you can completely change their appearance and even their gender (playing as a woman wasn't possible in the first game), several characters lampshade this throughout the game.
  • There is a moment in episode three of Sally Face where Sal is telling Ashley that sometimes he wishes he could just scream out all his frustrations where no one could hear, and since they're alone at the edge of a lake, she tells him to go ahead and they'll do it together. There's a short pause, and suddenly Sal and Ashley are both audibly screaming, with a voiced male and female voice for each of them. It's the only instance of voice acting in the game.
  • In the first three games Maxwell from Scribblenauts was your standard silent protagonist. From Scribblenauts Unmasked he started talking via dialog boxes.
  • Lampshaded in Serious Sam II when NETRICSA starts vocally speaking to Sam.
    Sam: Netricsa? Nettie??? You can talk!
    Netrisca: Yes, it's a bit complicated... let's just say it has something to do with having a bigger game budget.
    Sam: What game budget?
  • Skylanders: Giants: Every single Skylander who Spoke Simlish in the first game is fully voiced from this point onward.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog: The title character could speak in SegaSonic the Hedgehog (along with Ray and Mighty), Sonic CD, and various Japanese-exclusive arcade titles. As Sonic's voice clips in CD are easy to miss (many were unused and the one line many would be familiar with is triggered by a Game Over-causing Idle Animation), the game initially came out for an unsuccessful system, and the arcade games never made it out of Japan, most fans first experienced fully-voiced dialogue in Sonic Adventure, where the entire cast could speak.
  • In sora, characters normally talk through text boxes. However, when Sora confronts Star Breaker near the end of Stage 6, both characters inexplicably gain voice acting. This continues into the final stage.
  • Spyro the Dragon:
    • Sparx the dragonfly got this treatment in two stages. First in Spyro: Year of the Dragon, where he gained a kazoo-like voice during the flight levels, and then in A Hero's Tail, when he gained a normal voice. And the third stage, where he's suddenly David Spade. Fourth stage, Billy West, for the fifth stage, Wayne Brady.
      Spyro: Sparx! It's good to see you too! You okay?
      Sparx: Huh, you know, little stiff, voice keeps changing, but I'm good.
    • The Spyro Reignited Trilogy gives voices to the save fairy and balloonists in the first game. Before, they just had silent text dialogue.
  • Star Fox started out Speaking Lylatian, then got fully voiced in Star Fox 64 and future installments... until Star Fox Command went back to Lylatian, with the twist that you could record your own voice using the DS microphone, which would then be sampled and distorted into the Lylatian "speech." Star Fox Zero then returned to full voice acting, using the cast of 64 and its 3DS remake. The only character that didn't get voiced in 64 was the Trainer in Training Mode. That is... until the 3DS remake.
  • In Star Trek Online's Mirror Universe storyline, we're introduced to our Evil Counterpart from that universe. However, since they are meant to be "us" and many players tend to have voices picked out in our heads for them, the game circumvents this by revealing our counterpart was injured in an attempted assassination attempt and had their vocal cords repaired by a voice box around their necks.
  • Super Mario Bros.:
    • There was an event at GoNintendo where one can speak to Mario and Wario live and it's voiced by no other than Charles Martinet. Here is an example.
    • In Super Mario Sunshine, the cutscenes have full voice acting (Mario never speaks a single word). Bowser's more high-pitched, cheerful Sunshine-voice has since been replaced by a very dark, demonic-sounding one that can be heard in Super Mario Galaxy and Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story.
    • In the pinball machine in 1992, Mario gives out instructions and status updates for the player. Though he wasn't voiced by Martinet yet, Gottlieb chose a high-pitched voice for Mario that sounds remarkably like Martinet's.
    • Mario has a few full sentences in Mario vs. Donkey Kong. Here, he's shown to have a bit of a sarcastic side to him.
    • Luigi's, Wario's, and Toad's first lines with sound are in Mario Kart 64.
    • In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door when Doopliss takes over Mario's body. In that case it is lampshaded by the party if you know where to find them.
    • In Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, while disguised as Princess Peach, Luigi has dialogue telling the villains that they have the wrong princess and convinces them to swap the two.
    • While not voice acted, Dreamy Luigi gets a bit of dialogue in Mario & Luigi: Dream Team, when Mario is about to venture into the heart of Dream's Deep:
      Dreamy Luigi: It's probably dangerous ahead! You might not be able to come back... You can leave if you jump towards that light... I don't know what's up ahead... Big bro...it's your choice... Luigi....will follow you. We're all here for you, bro. Always.
    • WarioWare Gold: Unlike its predecessors, the game features full voice acting, with dubs in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, and Japanese. You can even voice the characters yourself by using the game's Studio feature.
  • You spend the entirety of Putrefaction as a Silent Protagonist, but in the sequel you can suddenly speak. And you spend the whole game quipping and dropping one lines while killing undead monsters, demonic creatures and Nazi mooks left and right.
  • Super Robot Wars:
  • Super Smash Bros.:
  • The characters in Undertale usually speak through dialogue boxes and Voice Grunting. However, there are a few exceptions.
    • Mettaton gets a voice when he transforms into Mettaton EX. The first thing he says is a loud, seductive "OH YES!", and hitting him during his boss fight causes him to say "Yeah!"
    • On a Neutral and a Pacifist run, Flowey mocks you upon leaving the ruins, and departs with cackling laughter. However, considering he's on your side during a Genocide run, he has something else to say before popping back underground.
      Flowey: Hmm... That's a wonderful idea!note 
    • This continues into Deltarune, where the optional bosses from the first two chapters have voice lines - either as they attack in battle, or as part of their theme songs.
  • Unpacking: The ending song is sung by your character.
  • In Yu-Gi-Oh! Reshef of Destruction, Yugi, Joey and Kaiba speak, but only when you duel them. All other duelists have no voice.

    Visual Novels 
  • In Symphonic Rain, the first three routes have Chris as the protagonist, and unvoiced. After completing them, you unlock a route in which Torta is the protagonist, and thus suddenly loses her voicing while Chris suddenly becomes voiced.
  • In Another Timeline of Virtue's Last Reward, the player character is suddenly voiced by Troy Baker (Sigma's VA in the promotional anime). This is the first sign that the player is no longer playing as Sigma. The player character is actually an unknown consciousness in the body of K, Sigma's son/clone. It only happens in the English dub, though: the Japanese voice acting actually inverts this trope by making every character silent in that timeline.
  • In the Ace Attorney series:
    • Usually, only a handful of characters have voices, which in turn only utter brief phrases ("Objection!", "Hold it!", etc.). But the crossover Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney features fully-animated, fully-voiced cutscenes with Phoenix and the usually silent Maya. He speaks in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 too.
    • Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies features full voice acting during the animated cutscenes.
    • Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice has a couple of instances outside the cutscenes where a character speaks one impactful line.
      " A dragon never yields."
    • The Great Ace Attorney has some parts of the duology where the text is voiced alongside some voiced cutscenes, but it's used very reservedly. That is, until, Barok van Zieks invites Naruhodo back into the courtroom in the second game and the latter suddenly moves from the prosecutor's bench and speaks, starting a 3D animated cutscene wherein everyone starts speaking and reacting in shock to the apparent true identity of the infamous Professor. Not to mention that a previously silent Masked Apprentice, mute in both text and audio, lets out a rather pained scream.
  • Doki Doki Literature Club! is purely text-based with no voice acting, until Monika suddenly speaks over the end credits, and then serenades the player with a vocal version of the main theme as the game is being deleted.

    Webcomics 
  • Tycho Brahe of Penny Arcade was given his first voice (by Andrew Chaikin) in Poker Night at the Inventory.
  • Kevin & Kell has been going strong since September 1995, but it wasn't until recently that the two of them were given voices. In a short cartoon from an animation class that Bill Holbrook, the creator, took, Kevin is voiced by Bill and Kell is voiced by his wife Teri.
    • Bill also commissioned Tom Smith to write a song for Kevin and Kell that tells the story of their meeting. Kevin is voiced (sung) by Tom, and Kell by Karen Underwood. See here.
    • Not only that, but the about page has another character, Fenton Fuscus, briefing new readers on what the premise of the strip is. Kevin has one line in this video, likely by Bill.
    • Other than that, Bill is shopping around the idea of a "Kevin and Kell" TV series to different networks. He's said he would want John Goodman as Kevin and Janeane Garofalo as Lindesfarne.
  • Some examples in morphE :
    • In the 2nd dream sequence there is a voice acted segment where the POV character and the knife wielding woman from the prologue speak, marking the first use of voice acting in the comic.
    • As of Chapter 4 an entity named Hizrim begins speaking with Asia. Every single one of his lines is voice acted, albeit a little strangely.
  • In Problem Sleuth, the titular protagonist only speaks when the narration says he does. He's not shown saying any actual words until the Hark! A Vagrant parody, and then it's right back to not talking unless said so by the narration.

    Web Videos 
  • For the longest time Barry, the editor and all around ace of an assistant for Game Grumps and Steam Train, barring a few instances outside of the shows and one minor line of dialogue for the sake of a joke ("Jon..?"), never communicated in any way other than his standard yellow text. Then came Steam Rolled, Steam Train's equivalent to Game Grumps VS and even there he only spoke using in game communications...at least until the end of the CS: GO episode where he spoke once and has been speaking on Steam Rolled ever since.

    Western Animation 
  • Snoopy is generally non-speaking (if not exactly silent; he makes "Bleah!" noises and similar, portrayed by Bill Mendelez) in Peanuts animation, even though we can see his thoughts in the comic strip, but the Animated Adaptations of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown and Snoopy!!! the Musical gives him a voiceover, just like the musicals. (His Inner Monologue was played by Robert Towers and Cameron Clarke, with Mendelez continuing to provide his vocalisations.)
  • Hindi dubs sometimes did this to no dialogue shows, this includes: Oggy and the Cockroaches, Shaun the Sheep, Zig & Sharko, Angry Birds Toons, just to name a few.
  • On The Simpsons, Sideshow Bob was initially introduced as Krusty the Clown's primitive mute sidekick who only communicated with a slide whistle. It wasn't until his second appearance, in "Krusty Gets Busted", that he speaks eloquently with the voice of Kelsey Grammer. Bob's replacement, Sideshow Mel, was also initially introduced this way.
  • In the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Sleepy Time", Gary is able to speak fluent English in his dream.
    • The anglerfish in "Rock Bottom" who chases after SpongeBob's balloon when he first arrives in Rock Bottom.
      SpongeBob: "Thank (raspberry) you (raspberry)!"
      (Beat)
      Anglerfish: You're welcome.
  • Much like his Transformers Film Series counterpart, Bumblebee had been mute in Transformers: Prime — until the penultimate episode, "Deadlock", when Megatron blasted him into the synthetic Energon-filled Omega Lock, which not only healed those injuries, but also restored his voice, resulting in a Bond One-Liner before skewering Megatron with the Star Saber.
  • Xiaolin Chronicles: Tubbimura's chihuahua Muffinface is a Talking Animal in this show, while in the original show he wasn't even heard barking.
  • The Pink Panther was normally mute in his shorts but did talk in two early cartoons, "Pink Ice" (voice of Rich Little) and the end of "Pink Sink" (Paul Frees). He talks throughout the 1993 updated series (voice of Matt Frewer).
  • The Fairly OddParents!: Poof can usually only say his name, and a few other words. In "School of Crock", he spends most of the episode making babbling sounds. He finally says his first full sentence when outraged at Crocker for endangering him and his classmates. Poof then speaks intelligible dialogue for the rest of the episode, and this carries on into "Fairly Odd Fairy Tales." Presumably, he would have spoken more, but he got Put on a Bus right after.

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The Emperor of Mankinds' TTS

"I Have So Many Things To Complain About."

How well does it match the trope?

5 (7 votes)

Example of:

Main / SuddenlyVoiced

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