Took the Bad Film Seriously

"Every actor has to make terrible films from time to time, but the trick is never to be terrible in them."

— Christopher Lee

Despite their best wishes, every performer who is not John Cazale will end up acting in at least one bad movie in their career. Some are wise enough to notice this going in, and decide to have fun while getting paid for it (lucky bastards). Not this guy though. They act with sincerity and conviction for an overproduced, over-hyped, and shoddily-written movie.

The reasons for this vary: they may have extreme professionalism in every role they take to keep their reputation, they could be desperate to prove something (either a young actor who's still new or someone Playing Against Type desperate to show they're able to play multiple parts), there was Executive Meddling afterwards that hurt the film, or they honestly couldn't tell from ground level that the movie wasn't True Art but a glorified B-Movie. Others may know or realize it but figure they can at least do their best to retain their dignity or improve the film as much as they can or reason that they're doing the film anyway so they may as well bring their A-game.

The net effect is very Narmlike, with audiences becoming amused that this guy is putting so much effort into a flat role for a dud movie. This makes the actor/character stand out and seem out of place: they aren't like the other bad actors on set with their dull detachment, but they aren't hamming it up either. They may even seem to be overacting by comparison because they're the only ones really acting. If enough of the cast do it, the movie itself may become So Bad, It's Good as it crosses the threshold from bad to surreal with actors giving Oscar grade performances for a throwaway summer Action Movie. On the other hand, their character might be the best part of the movie, or very occasionally make it worth watching solely for the actor's performance, if it is good enough. They might even rescue the film from being unwatchable.

Contrast Ham and Cheese, which features a Large Ham in a badly-received work, whereas this trope involves a serious performance in a work with the same reception.

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Example subpages:

• Films — Live-Action
• Live-Action TV

Other examples:

Advertising

• Stan Bush of "The Touch" fame sings the jingle for Freddie Freaker — which is meant for a novelty phone hotline — with a ton of passion.
• The corny Heineken tie-in commercials created for Casino Royale (2006) and Quantum of Solace have this in spades. The making-of video for Royale's commercial shows everyone involved in the production treating it like a serious mini-movie, with production crew talking about injecting "high drama and wit", and Steven Gaghan (the director of Syriana) being hired to direct the clip. It seems a bit much in light of the corny subject material, which has... Vesper knock out a goofy-looking waiter and bring a Heineken to Bond's room. The Quantum commercial is even worse - the actors and crew are taking a commercial about a grocery store clerk who daydreams he's a spy absolutely serious, and lead actress Olga Kurylenko discusses at length how this commercial is so important for women. Notably, for the release of Skyfall, Heineken did away with the making-of completely and dropped the pretenses about the corny material.

Anime & Manga

• Takehito Koyasu and the rest of the Weiß Kreuz cast, likely because Koyasu created it as a way for himself and his cool voice actor friends to show off. This accounts for a good bit of the charm of the series.
• The Transformers wiki suggests Garry Chalk and David Kaye as Optimus Prime and Megatron in Transformers: Energon. Brad Swaile puts on a similar performance as Kicker Jones; and he later cited it as a key factor in disowning the role after he was cast as Light Yagami in Death Note, which made him a mainstream success.
• Macross Delta: The effects of Executive Meddling really show on the second half of Delta, but that doesn’t stop the cast from giving it their all. Special mention goes to Asami Seto, whose interrupted Love Confession in episode 20 was filled with genuine emotion and sincerity.
• The voice acting in the 4Kids dub of One Piece left a lot to be desired. Most of the time, the performances (especially of side characters) sound incredibly dopey if not outright stilted. Other times, they're hamming it up to the point of yelling half their lines (Luffy and Usopp are noticeable standouts). Combine that with some of them adding strange accents that don't fit (Robin and Sanji are also standouts). However, there are two standouts.
  • Marc Diraison's performance as Zoro (or Zolo) has been considered the best out of all of them as he has a lot more range of emotion in his performance without overdoing it in spite of the cheesy script he was given. Some people even prefer him over Christopher Sabat, Zoro's voice actor in the much better received Funimation dub.
  • J. David Brimmer's portrayal of Crocodile has been as well received as Diraison's portrayal of Zoro. While given a terrible script, fans praise Brimmer for giving a terrifying performance as Crocodile, just as much as John Swasey.
  • The entire cast of the first Latin American One Piece dub but most notably all the Straw Hats. They were cast according to the Japanese version (So Sanji sounds legit badass) but still had to read out the 4kids scripts and had the endure working with a Macekre version. Most of the fanbase did wish for them to return for an eventual redub which happened years later on.
• Almost all of the cast in the 4Kids' dub of Sonic X put a good amount of emotion into their lines. Especially Lisa Ortiz as Amy Rose, despite not having much to do aside from being a Tsundere. Even then, when she was pissed, there was a lot of energy, and in rare moments like when she finally sees Sonic again after waiting three years in the finale of season 2, her crying love confession sounds genuinely sweet.
  • Likewise, Mike Pollock as Dr. Eggman is usually considered the best 4Kids castings for Sonic X. When the Sonic characters were officially recast again back in 2010, fans were pleased to know that Pollock was the only actor from the 4Kids cast that retained his role.
• Out of the four Yu-Gi-Oh! dubs that were localized by 4Kids, Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds had the absolute least amount of effort put into it. But the cast for the dub pulled a very great performance, especially Bella Hudson as Aki, whose performance was more emotional than her Japanese voice by Ayumi Kinoshita.
• In yet another example, the DiC Entertainment dub of Sailor Moon is generally regarded as corny at best with a lot of Totally Radical dialogue and censorship, but it's clear that behind the slavish working hours and terrible scripts, the cast was at least trying with the material they had to work with. Especially Terri Hawkes, who restored a lot of Usagi's heroism and conviction Tracey Moore lacked. In an unexpected way, Stephanie Beard also managed to do a great job as Chibi-Usa of all characters after the cast turnover Cloverway took over dubbing the S and Super S seasons. Especially compared with Tracey Hoyt who played her as whiny and abrasive, Beard's voice work as Chibi-Usa was legitimately cute, had some nice range on her spotlight episodes which was especially good as Super S mostly revolved around her, and has many fans who still consider her the definitive voice even after the respected re-dub brought in Moe powerhouse Sandy Fox.
• Magical Warfare: One of the anime's saving graces is that the voice actors do their best to bring their characters to life, even if the story doesn't actually go anywhere.
• Blood-C: The entire cast, particularly Nana Mizuki, really did their best in their performance despite the mediocre reception of the show. At least, Mizuki's songs for the show sold well.
• Despite the English voice acting in Fire Emblem being all-around hokey, it's clear that Spike Spencer is giving it his all to make his performance as Marth (or Mars, as he's known here) sound believable and lifelike.

Films — Animation

• Out of all the cast members, Charlie Sheen, surprisingly enough, is the only one who comes off as trying to take Foodfight! seriously (though the movie is supposed to be a comedy, even the non-comic characters ham it up).
• A singing variation in All Dogs Go to Heaven 2 — the songs are all twee uninspired kids' fluff, and this includes villain Red's "It Feels So Good To Be Bad." But it's still the best song in the movie, thanks to George Hearn's magnificent performance.
• Quest for Camelot:
  • As Garret, Cary Elwes gives the best performance in the film.
  • Gary Oldman as Ruber, who manages to rise above the material he's given and makes an otherwise cliched villain entertaining to watch.
  • The singers hired to dub the songs (the film was changed to a musical very late in production). Andrea Corr, singing for Kayley, sings the hell out of "On My Father's Wings" — elevating it far above a generic '90s "I Want" Song. Céline Dion sings for Lady Juliana and her song "The Prayer" became a Breakaway Pop Hit.
• It's quite surprising that The Littlest Light on the Christmas Tree has passable voice acting (and singing in the musical numbers, with Little Light having the best singing voice in the film) for a flawed Christmas special.
• The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea is considered one of the most divisive Direct to Video sequels of the Disney Animated Canon. It addresses a few issues present in the first film, but its flaws unfortunately outweigh them. However, even detractors are willing to admit that Tara Strong easily gave the best performance as Melody, thanks to putting a lot of charm and enthusiasm into the character.
• Mulan II is considered one of the worst Disney sequels, but Ming-Na Wen delivers a gut-wrenching performance when Mulan believes her fiancé Shang is dead, even crying in the recording booth.

Music

• Soul music great James Carr sang the Narmy lyrics of "A Man Needs a Woman" with the same sincerity and conviction as his other songs. The lyrics go from "Just like a vampire needs blood/Like a dead dog need them bugs" to the utterly hilarious "I need a little love/Like the soldier needs a gun/Like a hamburger needs a bun".
• Songs in the Sonic the Hedgehog series are known to have cheesy lyrics, but Johnny Gioeli from Crush 40 sure knows how to take the cheesiest of lyrics and make them sound sincere and epic. The same can be said about songs TJ Davis for the soundtrack of Sonic R: even if the lyrics are cheesy, Richard Jacques' music and her passion and conviction make them endearing in and out of the game.
• Nina Gordon (of Veruca Salt fame) had trouble producing what was intended to be her second solo album in 2005, and in lieu of that, she started performing Narm-filled cover versions of songs that were outside her genre while at a Los Angeles nightclub. One of these, a completely uncensored cover of N.W.A.'s "Straight Outta Compton" is performed as a "coffeehouse" version that's just as serious and melodic as her previous works, with lines like "My AK-47 is a tool, don't make me act like a motherfucking fool" played entirely straight.
• Richard Harris manages to sing the ridiculous lyrics of MacArthur Park with sincere passion and conviction. The result is one of the most infamous Narm performances in music. Many fans of it today adore it as Narm Charm.
  • One documentary says that Harris picked the song especially because Jimmy Webb told him it was ridiculous, implying that Harris sang it all that way knowing how narmish it would be but loving every minute of it.
  • Waylon Jennings did a Country Music Cover Version a year later and similarly treats the lyrics seriously, but goes the opposite direction of Harris and sings it with a tone of subdued anguish over lost love. It helps that he skips the overly-florid first verse and starts with the more reflective and evocative second verse.
• Before she went into acting Sissy Spacek tried a music career, and in 1969 was talked into recording a song meant to cash in on the John and Yoko Two Virgins controversy, called "John, You Went Too Far This Time", credited under the name Rainbo. The song itself is pretty hokey, with lots of lyrical and musical references to The Beatles (mostly Paul songs, ironically). But her impassioned vocal and the elaborate arrangement make it oddly compelling.
• Reportedly Leiber and Stoller wrote "Jailhouse Rock" as deliberately silly, tongue-in-cheek narrative goof in terms of lyrics (including an implied gay pairing in the third verse). Elvis Presley, however, took it and performed it as a straight rock and roll song, missing all the deliberate humor and innuendo in the lyrics. It's believed that Elvis' straight delivery prevented the song from getting censored.
• Watch the 'Making Of' video for the infamously bad Coming Out Of Their Shells concert tour. Assuming it's not meant as a joke, it's almost disturbing to watch grown men and women talk about a cheaply made kids' musical with terrible costumes as if it's the second coming of the Beatles.
• For the Live Aid concert in 1985, most artists went into it out of touring shape and saw it as more about expressing solidarity with the cause than putting on a good performance. Queen, fresh off a difficult world tour, put on what has been described as "The Greatest Twenty Minutes in Rock", performing with enough passion and energy to directly instigate a comeback for the band east of the Atlantic.

Professional Wrestling

• Professional Wrestling gimmicks are so known for this that fans have to suspend their disbelief. During the decline of WCW, many found it difficult because the writing was so bad (covered in the book The Death Of WCW).
• Chris Jericho stated in his interview on The Broken Skull Sessions that this is what he aims for. No matter what kind of match he's booked in — a 30-second squash or a twenty-plus minute epic — Jericho's aim is to always be memorable.
• Dolph Ziggler is known for this. No matter how cheesy an angle or low on the card he is, he manages to put out believable promos
• Edge, whether it was a ridiculous feud with Kane where he pelted Paul Bearer with dodgeballs or arguing with a laptop, put everything into each feud he had.
• Diva Dirt noted that though the 2010 'feud' between LayCool and Kelly Kelly was moronic in concept — Michelle and Layla making fun of Kelly for smelling bad and calling her 'smelly Kelly' — the three women put as much effort into it as they could. After Kelly's title match against Layla — her first Women's title shot in fact — they remarked: "she came out of it looking like a top Diva."
• Emma's gimmick was thought of as a joke when she debuted. She was a bad dancer who thought she was good. Fans embraced the idea and the dance suddenly got over, which was helped due to Emma's genuine talent as a wrestler.
• While working as The Shark of the Dungeon of Doom in WCW in 1996, John Tenta sat for a 24-hour process to have his LSU Tigers tattoo turned into a shark. Not long after that, he stopped doing the gimmick.
• As a performer rather than "just" a wrestler, Dustin Runnels's Goldust gimmick could've been a career ending disaster, so much that The Wrestling Observer Newsletter was openly speculating whether or not he was being deliberately set up to fail as part of some twisted hybrid of a practical joke and spiteful revenge on his old man. But by leaning into the gimmick, committing to and reveling in it, and ultimately making it his own, Dustin succeeded in becoming an outrageously entertaining character and parlayed it into a multi-decade career that continued even after he left the company and the gimmick with it.
• Sid Vicious, so, so much.
  • During Ric Flair's "A Flair For The Gold" on WCW Clash of the Champions 24, August 8, 1993, Sting, Davey Boy Smith and Dustin Rhodes were there to introduce the fourth man for their team against The Masters of the Powerbomb (Big Van Vader and Sid Vicious) and Harlem Heat (Booker T and Stevie Ray^note Though at the time they were called Kane and Kole for whatever reason) in War Games at WCW Fall Brawl 93 on September 19th. Sting announced that their partner would be The Shockmaster. Some pyrotechnics went off, and The Shockmaster started to walk through a wall, and tripped and fell on the floor. His helmet came off, revealing himself to be Fred "Tugboat"/"Typhoon" Ottman. While everyone else was laughing, Sid still acted scared.
  • On the November 15, 1999 WCW Monday Nitro, Kevin Nash was imitating Sid in the ring. Sid came out and cut a promo which included him saying, "You are half the man that I am, and I have half the brain that you do."^note Which caused Nash and Scott Hall to completely lose it and double over in laughter, totally breaking character Despite Sid's history of botching his promos, this one was not his fault, as professional moron Vince Russo actually wrote it that way and Sid took it and did the best job he could with something that was completely moronic (though Russo has denied this several times.)
• The 1996 edition of WCW's Uncensored is widely regarded as one of the worst PPVs ever, featuring the infamous 8 on 2 triple cage match, Madusa having a match with - and losing to - Robert Fuller, and one of the worst garbage matches ever (that went thirty minutes) with Sting and Booker T beating the Road Warriors. And in the middle of this trash is William Regal and Fit Finlay basically doing a worked bare knuckle boxing match, as they spend nearly 20 minutes beating the absolute shit out of each other in one of the stiffest matches you will ever see on American TV, and certainly the most realistic thing to ever grace a WCW show. Finlay won both the match (by DQ) and a broken nose.
• At Extreme Rules 2014, Hornswoggle teamed up with jobber stable 3MB to take on El Torito (a mini wrestler in a bull costume) and Los Matadores on the preshow in a "WeeLC Match" where the ring announcer, referee and even the commentators (Micro Cole, Jerry Smaller and JBElf) were played by little people. Despite this uninspiring idea, the performers involved decided to put their heads together to come up with the best WeeLC match they could. What should have been a lame, farcical waste of everyone's time actually turned out to be a genuinely entertaining comedy match with some really good ring work from the two mini wrestlers and the supporting players bumping like mad to get it over (including Hornswoggle smacking Heath Slater in the stomach with a steel chair and sending him backwards off the ring through two tables, and a horrific spot where El Torito and Los Matadores gave Jinder a Doomsday Device off the ring apron through two tables and two ladders!). The crowd even gave them a "This is awesome!" chant after Hornswoggle gave El Torito an elbow off the ring through the mini-announcers' table. When 3MB and Hornswoggle reunited to rewatch the match in 2018 they were genuinely proud of what they'd accomplished with such a stupid concept.
• Ethics about them aside, most are in agreement that the shows WWE put on in Saudi Arabia are glorified house shows with WrestleMania levels of spectacle, with many wrestlers flying in for an easy paycheck and some free exposure. As a result, a majority of the matches tend to be mediocre at best, with some of the company's worst matches of the decade taking place there^note Though those particular matches involved wrestlers well past their primes because apparently the Saudis stopped watching wrestling at the end of the Attitude Era. Then again, so did a lot of Americans. They also asked for Ultimate Warrior and Yokozuna, who passed away in 2014 and 2000, respectively. However, possibly bolstered by it being their first time in the country since the onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic, Crown Jewel 2021 turned out to be a surprisingly good affair, with excellent work from the likes of Drew McIntyre, Becky Lynch, Bianca BelAir, Roman Reigns, and especially Edge and Seth Rollins, the latter two's Hell in a Cell match being regarded as one of the company's best matches of the year.
• A lot of times, an inherently stupid stipulation could be elevated if the performers in question still manage to sell it like a legit wrestling match. Case in point, the Eye for an Eye match between Seth Rollins and Rey Mysterio Jr. where the objective is to force your opponent's eye out. Pretty much everyone agrees regarding this match that the stipulation itself? Stupid and nonsensical. The match itself and the story told throughout? Surprisingly good, but given the experience and caliber of both performers, a decent-at-worst match was gonna be a given regardless of the stipulation.
• All Elite Wrestling Revolution 2021 saw the infamous feud-ending "Exploding Barbed Wire Death Match" between Jon Moxley and Kenny Omega, a tribute to the cartoonishly hyperviolent antics of 90's Japanese wrestling — with the explicit promise that the ring would explode and people could legit die after 30 minutes — which unfortunately became memorable for all the wrong reasons when the countdown finally reached zero... and due to issues with pyro, basically nothing happened except for a few sparklers. Perhaps the most unfortunate part is that everyone sold it — Eddie Kingston made a face-turning Heroic Sacrifice to protect a stranded-in-ring Moxley as the "explosions" went off, and commentators and paramedics sold it as though they had actually been consumed by a massive fireball. Everyone involved naturally recanted on this botch afterwards (Kenny later claiming he intentionally made a crummy exploding ring to embarrass Mox), which was widely accepted as them trying to save face after such a disappointing, if sincerely-executed failure.

Podcasts

• Abigail Thorn of Philosophy Tube, cohosting on Kill James Bond!, likes whenever she sees an actor making a serious effort in a bad film and believes that it gets that actor noticed and remembered, and hopefully cast in something new.

Radio

• Parodied by Patrick Stewart in an appearance on Ask Me Another: known for his ability to deliver crappy scripts with utter conviction, Stewart recited the lyrics of several pop songs as clues for a quiz as if they were classical theatre scripts: "You Shook Me All Night Long" and "Blank Space" (as himself), "Africa" (as Laurence Olivier) and "Wannabe" (as John Gielgud).

Sports

• As many prospects or fringe players often don't get much playing time except in "garbage minutes" (i.e., after a game is so lopsided the result is beyond doubt), they will often put in a top effort even when the rest of the team has checked out. For instance, it is not uncommon to see a backup goaltender in hockey play exceptionally well after the starter has been pulled and the game has become a blowout. Of course, it's a Justified Trope in this case, as a good showing after the starter's been pulled may result in a new starter being chosen.
• The captains of bad teams tend to do this, especially if they're also the leading scorer. A few historical examples:
  • Barry Sanders, of American Football's hapless 1990s Detroit Lions, was the workhorse and only good thing on a team that roundly sucked. He managed to be one of football's top running backs despite being on a team considered lucky to ever post a winning season, let alone get a playoff berth. He eventually grew so frustrated that he quit football instead of persisting in this exercise in futility.
    • Wide receiver Calvin Johnson did the exact same thing, playing for the Lions from 2007 to his retirement in 2015
  • Walter Johnson, star pitcher for Baseball's Washington Senators from 1907 to 1927, was widely recognized as one of the great pitchers of his era^note He has the second most wins all time, and barring some dramatic changes to the way baseball is played it's pretty much impossible for anyone to pass him on the list, or really even come close, with a then-thundering 91-mph fastball that struck out large numbers of the greatest batters in the American League. However, Johnson, being a pitcher, couldn't be in every game, and even when he was, the Senators sometimes failed to produce enough runs to win. His Senators only ever went to the World Series twice: in 1924, when they won, and 1925, when they lost to the Pittsburgh Pirates. Otherwise, being a Senators fan was better known as "an exercise in futility" for his entire tenure.
  • Also from baseball, the late 1990s-early 2000s San Francisco Giants could never... quite... get... enough... wins to make it all the way — despite Barry Bonds' massive exertions. As one Bay Area sportswriter put it, Bonds was one of several "compensations" for never having a World Series (along with Bonds' father Bobby and godfather Willie Mays)... until the Giants won in 2010, three years after Bonds retired.
  • Alex Rodriguez put up such monster numbers at the plate for the last place Texas Rangers in 2003 that he won the American League MVP award^note Though a strong case could be made that they finished in last place because of A-Rod, or more specifically his $25 million per year contract, which was more than several teams were paying their entire roster. The Rangers couldn't afford to put any more talent around him, and as great as he was he could only fill one of the nine spots in the lineup and he didn't pitch. Cue the sportswriters and talking heads on ESPN asking/debating if the award should just go to whoever is the best player in the league, or if most valuable player means "They'd be totally screwed without him."
  • Mike Trout is one of the definitive modern cases of this. Those fond of the Game of Nerds have noted Trout's Wins-Above-Replacement to be among the best of his generation, despite him being on a team that has failed to win a playoff game even once during his lengthy tenure with them and frequently posts losing seasons.
  • Go back through the baseball record books and you'll find dozens of great players that spent their entire career on cellar-dwelling teams. Baseball is rife with this trope because an at-bat is a one-on-one battle that the other players on either team really can't have any effect on (you might see more advantageous pitches come your way if you come to the plate with men on base, but that's about it.)
• December 23, 1982: the top-ranked team in college basketball, the University of Virginia Cavaliers, had just played in a tournament in Japan and on the way back home scheduled a game in Hawaii against the Silverswords of Chaminade University (which had a total enrollment of around 800 at the time). The game was supposed to be an easy win for Virginia after spending the day hanging out on the beach. Chaminade was supposed to be in awe of their guests and happy to just have the chance to be on the same court as national Player of The Year Ralph Sampson. But Chaminade had suffered their first loss of the season a few days before, to a team with a losing record, and they were looking for redemption. They came into the game intensely focused, and won 77-72 in what is usually considered the biggest upset in the history of American college basketball.
  • At least until 2018 when Virginia became the first ever (and until 2023, only) #1 seed to lose in the opening round of the men's NCAA Tournament, not only losing but getting completely blown out by #16 seed UMBC^note University of Maryland-Baltimore County, 74-54. Virginia would bounce right back this humiliation and win their first ever NCAA men's basketball title in 2019.
  • The win so boosted Chaminade's name that they arranged with the NCAA to hold an annual invitational tournament at the school, usually around Thanksgiving. The Maui Invitational is still held each year, though Chaminade no longer participates in it.

Theatre

• Shakespearean experts like Harold Bloom believe that The Merchant of Venice was a case of this for William Shakespeare. It was only made as a commission from someone else and Shakespeare isn't known to have held any real anti-Semitic beliefs. Yet he still put the same level of effort into it as any of his other plays, doing things like giving the stereotypical Jewish villain a sympathetic backstory. Bloom has noted how this regretfully gave pantomime anti-Semitic caricature a longer life in popular imagination than it really should have had. It's hard to combat stereotypes when they are given depth and good writing by one of the most beloved scribes in history.
• Many productions of Love Never Dies fall into this, but it's particularly evident in the Melbourne production that was actually filmed. It's quite clear that everyone involved, especially Ben Lewis as the Phantom, is desperately trying to wring something out of the material; even the costumes and sets are incredibly elaborate. This is likely at its most evident in Beneath a Moonless Sky, where Ben Lewis and Anna O'Byrne are throwing their entire lungs into a seven-minute-long opera ballad about how they had a one-night stand ten years ago.

Video Games

• The Fight: Lights Out is a near-launch PlayStation Move fighting game that had a very negative reception, mostly due to bad controls, lousy hit detection, and boring gameplay. The highlight of the game is the tutorial which features an FMV of Danny Trejo doing his best "tough-as-nails" act as your trainer. However, he also does this incredibly intense performance while clutching the rather silly-looking Move controllers, and at one point equally intensely warns the player to not move his feet because otherwise, the game breaks. It's so ridiculous it becomes awesome.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • Traveller's Tales are this in the programming case for both their productions of the Sega Saturn era, Sonic 3D Blast and Sonic R: while these games are seen as okay at best and mediocre at worse, they included programming and graphical wizardry to outpass the limitations of the machine. Concerning the former game, the original Sega Genesis version is even more of a wizardry when you consider the following: it milks the maximum of the 1988 hardware with a simple cartridge, it hides the error handler as a secret level select screen, and 21 years after its original release, Jon Burton released the Director's Cut which expands the game with new content to increase replayability and to fix long-standing issues that the game has been criticized for.
  • Sonic Adventure: The English dub is infamous for its poor acting and awkward-sounding, poorly translated dialogue, compounded by strange character animations in cutscenes. Despite this, Knuckles' actor gave many self-reflective monologues on his purpose guarding the Master Emerald. Likewise, while a bit stiff along with the general cast, Tikal's shtick as a mysterious, otherworldly maiden works, most memorably when she's explaining the famous "the servers are the seven Chaos" speech to Tails, and her horror at the end of Sonic's story when her tribe was decimated by Chaos and the shrine's in ruins. It helps that some of the awkwardness stemmed from the voice actors having been given poor direction and no context for any of their lines; those lines were self-explanatory, and it was therefore possible to give them proper inflection, unlike most of the dialogue.
  • Sonic Adventure 2 is remembered fondly for its admittedly somewhat rushed and badly-edited cutscenes, but they work in spite of their problems based on Rouge and Shadow's good lines, managing to sell the former as a classy, intelligent spy and the latter having many sad, occasionally profound moments. While much of Shadow's later developments are seen as melodramatic and his reputation tanked later on, David Humphrey is considered the first and best portrayal of the character that found a comfortable spot between his angstiness, mysteriousness, and coolness, injecting a playfulness and genuine melancholy that won the character his fans in the first place.
  • Lacey Chabert in Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) gave the most emotion to her character in the game. Her performance doesn't stop her storyline from coming across as a Romantic Plot Tumor, and despite how infamously cringeworthy her kiss was with Sonic, her speech imploring him to wake up is surprisingly moving if you can look past the visuals.
• Joseph Kucan's performance as Kane in Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight was on the same level as his performances in the previous games. Too bad the same thing cannot be said about the game itself.
• While many people will cite Johnny Yong Bosch's best roles as being Adachi or Narukami, Ichigo Kurosaki, Lelouch, or even Guy (within the Tales Series fandom), it's pretty obvious that he was really really taking the role of Emil Castigner, Ratatosk, and Aster seriously in Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World. This was a game intended to be a Gaiden Game that failed to get most of its English voice actors back due to more-limited production values and a reduced budget for localisation, resulting in some obvious oddities when characters speak with a different voice, or perhaps even sounding like they're just reading off a script. Even to the end, when Emil no longer sounds as wimpy and no longer goes Large Ham in combat, Bosch gives both of his characters distinctly different voice sounds.
  • Janice Kawaye also gives a very good performance of Alice in Dawn of the New World as well. Despite that her voice is very squeaky, the scenes where she treats Decus like crap, beats her subordinates or monsters, or tells Marta with a smile on her face how she's always despised her and wants to kill her can provide some genuine discomfort given just what kind of character is delivering those lines. Alice is one of the game's main antagonists, yet she looks (and sounds) like a character who would normally be joining your party in these types of games. It's obvious she wasn't just there for the check.
• The quality of Star Wars Battlefront II (2017) is contentious at best, and the game’s story mode is considered an abysmal Cliché Storm. Yet the voice actors all turn in fantastic performances, managing to make even the weakest dialogue sound halfway decent. Matthew Mercer, in particular, was praised for stealing the show with his performance as Luke Skywalker.
• Hunt Down the Freeman:
  • One of the more tragic things about the game is how, despite the actual character being abysmally written, Mick Lauer is clearly giving his damnedest in his performance as Sgt. Mitchell, and is valiantly struggling throughout the game's nonsensical plot to add any humanity he can scrounge up to such a thoroughly unlikable character.
  • Additionally, ignoring the infamous "Black Messah" misstep, the G-Man's voice actor "Rick" easily gives the best performance in the entire game, with it being very easy at some points to forget that it actually isn't Mike Shapiro voicing him.
  • Paul Humphrey (the game's main music composer) made some surprisingly memorable music for the game and even tried to give a Mitchell a fittingly melancholic Leitmotif.
• Postal III is pretty much universally considered the low point of the series, to the point that even the owners of the property regularly issue it Take Thats, and one particularly onerous decision was the recasting of the Postal Dude (which, to be fair, wasn't the fault of the developers, as Rick Hunter was in the midst of a Creator Breakdown). Despite this, most fans will admit that Corey Cruise, the replacement voice actor, clearly did the best with the material he was given, and often wish he was in a better game. In fact, future entries in the series, such as the Brain Damaged spin-off and the fourth game, managed to bring him back in some form, more or less acknowledging him as merely a different take on the character rather than something best left forgotten.
• YIIK: A Post-Modern RPG: While the game is mostly derided for its poor acting and voice direction, many actors themselves put in very good performances for the lackluster material they have. Vella and Alex sometimes show good examples of this, but Anthony Sardinha playing Claudio is a stand-out. He's clearly having fun with the role and sometimes even seemingly goes off-script, injecting a lot of life into the game from his performance alone.
• Jurassic Park: Trespasser is widely considered one of the worst video games of all time, with a severe Troubled Production and overly-ambitious physics system rendering it nigh-unplayable without extensive modding. But there's one point where the game truly shines; the haunting, beautifully-written, and remarkably well-acted narration by the incomparable Richard Attenborough, reprising his role as John Hammond from the films^*Keep in mind, this was also in 1998 when video games were still seen by many as a fad and not a true artistic medium worthy of being taken seriously, let alone an actor of Attenborough's stature. Many who have played the game consider said narration to be so good it actually justifies playing through the whole buggy mess, and lament that it didn't have a better game to be in.
• Despite its infamously buggy and unfinished launch, Cyberpunk 2077 has become famous for how ecstatic Keanu Reeves was when promoting it at E3 2019.
• Ripper has a star studded (well, mostly B-List actors) cast that was notable for 1996. Most of them act like they're just collecting a check (Karen Allen, Ossie Davis, Tahnee Welch), hamming it up (Christopher Walken, Jimmie Walker, Burgess Meredith), or doing their best but limited by their skills (Scott Cohen), but damn it if John Rhys-Davies, Paul Giamatti and David Patrick Kelly aren't giving pretty good performances in this crappy little game.
• Faust: The Seven Games of the Soul has a jumbled plot that doesn't even entirely make sense on repeat playthroughs because of what appears to be outright mistakes with the timeline it presents, hideous character models, obtuse puzzles, and voice acting that is often stilted or too over-the-top. Despite this, the performance of Geoffrey Bateman as Mephistopheles has been universally lauded for portraying the character as a manipulative tempter who is nonetheless growing weary of his demonic role, who can seamlessly switch between acting manipulative, humorous, intimidating, wise, and even kind on occasion. Even when the game is at its most needlessly convoluted, Mephisto remains the lynch pin holding everything together.

Web Animation

• Homestar Runner:
  • The Dangeresque films mostly feature Bad "Bad Acting", with a lot of monotone performances, Reading the Stage Directions Out Loud, and characters forgetting or misspeaking their lines. Yet, curiously, the King of Town delivers a fairly good performance as main antagonist Perducci, committing none of the above sins and pulling off a convincing Villainous Breakdown in the third film. Marzipan also seems to be oddly enthusiastic and competent in Dangeresque 3, Acting for Two as a Femme Fatale and a Damsel in Distress and playing both parts fairly convincingly (though she does go off-script to try to add a Green Aesop while playing the latter). Homestar and Strong Bad try for this, but they're quite bad at it.
  • In the Cheat Commandos cartoon "The Next-Epi-Snowed!", writer A. Chimendez is shown to take his job as a writer of an incredibly dumb Merchandise-Driven cartoon with complete professionalism and regards the character of Gunhaver as a great military leader. The conflict arises because of the guy who plays Gunhaver phoning it in so hard that he gets bored and asks if he can start voicing the rhyming guy instead.

Webcomics

• The "Pizza" NP story of El Goonish Shive has an In-Universe example. The story uses Animated Actors, and different characters put different amounts of effort into their roles. In particular, Ashley plays her role as Bridgette with absolute sincerity. However, her sincerity is matched only by her lack of talent, and all her body language comes across as choreographed.

Web Original

• Ultra Fast Pony: Happens In-Universe in "Stranger than Fan Fiction". The show's usual writers are indisposed, so everyone else just uses a fan's script for the episode. It turns out to be a Self-Insert Fic riddled with mistakes. Most of the cast break character to comment on the script or just phone in their performance. However, Blue Twilight and Spike stay in-character the whole episode, and they're the only ones to really sell their roles (as the villain and the hero's sidekick, respectively).
• The Transformers: Combiner Wars: It seems to be a tradition for the actors who portray Optimus and Megatron to give it their all no matter the quality of the series, as Jon Bailey and Jason Marnocha are clearly doing their best and doing quite well.

Western Animation

• The My Little Pony 'n Friends cartoon was a largely serviceable adventure show that was made to sell toys like most other '80s cartoons.
  • The voice work was often passable, but Sarah Partridge, the voice of the pony Wind Whistler had some especially nice moments in her focus episodes and occasional banter. Amusingly as The Spock, her character displayed the least obvious emotion, but it made her sarcasm and sense of humor a joy to watch. It's also ironic that in a show full of grating singing, her actress was a professional jazz singer and never got a song.
  • There's also Bettina Bush, who played the farmgirl Megan. While she was barely 12 at the time, she easily spoke the most as the lead character who popped up in most stories and had a lot of enthusiasm and pep that probably made viewers actually like her compared with most Token Human characters in merch-driven series.
• Toon Makers’ Sailor Moon, the infamous North American live-action adaptation of Sailor Moon often incorrectly called Saban Moon, was the handiwork of Toon Makers Incorporated. As noted by its presenter in the private showing, and as can be seen even through the distorted perspective of the camera that captured it all, the people doing the computer graphics special effects really do seem to have given it their best effort. (See especially Sailor Moon's live-action-to-animation transition near the end.) Added to that, many of the monsters seen are actually based on the Monster of the Week villains from the original series. The writers evidently just didn't care and went with a horrific Totally Radical approach to the show and especially its opening theme. Much to the company's regret and everyone else's relief, as noted, the adaptation was scrapped in favor of just dubbing the original show. The video of it however, continues to circulate on the Internet, much to the amusement of everyone who sees just how bad it was.
• In-universe, in The Simpsons episode "The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show", Homer gets a job voice-acting the character of Poochie, a designed-by-committee and Totally Radical character who speaks entirely in dated catchphrases and immediately gets a withering critical response. Despite this, Homer does his best with the material and capturing the feel of the character, and even petitions the executives for ways to improve the character rather than killing him off. It doesn't work. Lisa even reassures him when he gets sad about the response, pointing out that it wasn't that Homer did a bad job; he just had nothing at all to work with.
• Though not a bad show, especially by the standards of its time and genre, The Transformers isn't a show that most people would go to the hilt for. Despite this, Peter Cullen puts some real work into the role of Optimus Prime, claiming to have based Prime's voice on his older brother (who was a war veteran), and giving the Autobot leader a constant sense of inner sadness and gravitas even while playing basketball or fighting big game hunters. Similarly, Frank Welker was clearly giving solid performances as basically half the first year Decepticon cast, turning in voices ranging from the growling evil of Megatron to the tryhard thuggishness of Rumble. Most probably remember him for the infamously hollow, robotic, and extremely cool voice of Soundwave.
• DuckTales (2017) features an In-Universe version regarding a Darker and Edgier reboot movie of Darkwing Duck. The lead actor (who was a big fan of the original show when he was a child) openly admits to having a low opinion of the project but wants to give the best performance possible to inspire a new generation the same way the original inspired him.
• Looney Tunes
  • Baby Looney Tunes was a divisive show, due to its Lighter and Softer nature. However, the voice actors do a good job, especially Samuel Vincent, who plays the baby versions of Bugs, Daffy and Tweety.
  • Loonatics Unleashed is a rather polarizing show, but one of the few things that are seen as good is the voice acting. All the main voice actors (Charlie Schlatter, Jessica DiCicco, Jason Marsden, Rob Paulsen, Kevin Michael Richardson, and Candi Milo) give their A-game despite their characters not being anything too special.
• While no one will deny RoboCop: Alpha Commando didn't help with the Sequelitis the RoboCop franchise has suffered from since RoboCop 3 (presenting Murphy akin to Inspector Gadget didn't help), but one of the few saving graces was David Sobolov as the titular character, as he managed to successfully capture Alex Murphy's humanity.
• Despite receiving a mixed-to-negative reception from fans of the film franchise, the voice actors involved in Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2017) did sound like they were having a fun time when recording the voices for the characters and tried their darndest in what they've got.
• The Famous Popeye shorts are widely considered to be inferior to the Fleischer shorts and the 1960 TV show made them look good in turn, but not only did Jack Mercer and Mae Questel continue to give solid performances in both, Bluto got a new voice in Jackson Beck, who is considered by fans to be the best voice Bluto's had since Gus Wickie.

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