Voiced Differently in the Dub

When a dubbing studio is given a TV show, movie, video game, etc. to dub to their local language, the usual practice is to keep some consistency with the original vocal performance. If in the original language a specific character has a deep voice, then they will give that character a deep voice in the dub. A Girly Girl character has a high-pitched voice? Find someone who can also do a high-pitched voice.

However, sometimes a character will have a noticeably different voice in comparison to the original language. It can be because the studio doesn't have a voice actor with the specific voice tone, or because trying to emulate the original voice actor would be too hard or even impossible in the new language, or simply because they feel that the character's original voice was too grating, accidentally funny or simply didn't fit the character.

This can be very prevalent in the English-speaking world, Latin America and Spain, but is more prevalent in Latin America, especially because of their preference for clearer, less exaggerated voices.

See also She's a Man in Japan if the character is given a different voice because their gender is changed in a dub. If the voice is changed due to the character having a different personality, this overlaps with Dub Personality Change.

There may be an overlap with Crossdressing Voices as well, as a character voiced by a male voice actor in one dub can be voiced by a female voice actor in another language and vice versa.

This can sometimes lead to Vocal Dissonance.

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Examples (in alphabetical order):

Anime & Manga

• Ao in Asteroid in Love is originally voiced by Megumi Yamaguchi, who seems to be typecasted for soft-spoken Shrinking Violet — her most famous role is New Game!'s Hifumi. In Funimation's dub, however, she is voiced by Morgan Berry, who frequently plays boys and tomboys due to her deep voice (for example, Natural Killer Cell in Cells at Work!). While Berry did play Ao in a softer tone, it is still much deeper than the original.
• In Black Cat, Creed has a generic youthful voice and is canonically in his twenties. In Spain, he was given the voice of a jaded middle-aged man, perhaps because they mistook his gray hair for a mark of old age and intrpreted that his utter psychosis was the result of having seen too much in his job as an assassin.
• In the original version of Cardcaptor Sakura, Kero has a cute high-pitched voice while in his small form, while in the Nelvana dub of the series, Cardcaptors, he is voiced by a male even while in that form, who gives him a bit of a surfer dude voice in contrast to his original cutesy one provided by a woman. Interestingly, this is the only English localization that has taken this route, as the dub of the second film and Clear Card arc have him retain his cute voice while in his stuffed animal-like form.
• Chainsaw Man:
  • In the original Japanese, Denji (Kikunosuke Toya) has a lazy-sounding "slacker" type of voice. In the English dub, Ryan Colt Levy gives him a more enthusiastic and Hot-Blooded tone, complete with lots of visceral swearing.
  • Also in the original, Tomori Kusunoki gives Makima a soft, ethereal fey-like voice to go with the character's Mysterious Waif nature. Her English VA, Suzie Yeung, keeps the essence of the original but voices her in a slightly deeper and more treacherous tone, feeding into her more authoritative side.
• Cowboy Bebop: Overlapping with Dub Personality Change; Spike has a pretty different personality in the original Japanese language and similar changes were made with a lot of characters. In the original, Spike was presented much like a typical anime character who uses Obfuscating Stupidity—with a goofy voice and mannerisms much of the time and then a stereotypically gruff and hardboiled voice in action scenes or serious, dramatic moments. In contrast, his English dub voice, Steve Blum, has a gruff voice to begin with. He voiced Spike with a more subtle personality and less change in his voice tone/personality between comedic and serious moments, presenting Spike as having an undertone of world-weariness at all times. In the European Spanish dub, Joan Pera voiced him the same way as Blum.
• In the original Japanese version of Death Note, Ryuk has somewhat of a low voice. In the English dub, it's higher-pitched and a lot raspier.
• There's lots of this in Digimon at large, due to numerous characters in the dub being written as a year older than their counterparts in the original Japanese show. A number of other characters in the English dub sound especially different from their Japanese counterparts because their voices are based on those of celebrities or other cartoon characters known to North Americans. Additionally...
  • Digimon Adventure:
    • Taichi is voiced by a woman in Japan, a creative decision that emphasizes his boyishness and immaturity. By contrast Yamato, who is the same age, is voiced by an adult man. This is retained even in 02, when he is three years older. (However, he is given a new, male voice actor in tri, by which point he is 17 years old.) In the English-language dub, Tai is voiced by an adult male actor (Joshua Seth) throughout, with a portrayal that, while goofy and boyish, emphasizes his leadership qualities more.
    • Agumon has an exaggerated high pitched gravelly childlike voice but has a normal, calm sounding adult male voice in the English dub. The European Spanish dub followed on in this, although it also gave his voice a goofy edge no version has.
    • English Dub Tentomon has a nasal voice, but his original Japanese self does not. Gatomon has a mature sounding voice in Japanese, but is more cute and high pitched in the English and European Spanish dubs. Wizardmon sounds relatively young in the original, but in the English dub, he sounds older, even somewhat like he's of old age.
    • Puppetmon's dub voice is more scratchy compared to his child-like Japanese voice.
    • Angemon sounds like he's in his 20s and more Japanese than he looks. In the dub, his voice matches his look, and he sounds like a man in his 30s or 40s.
    • In the German dub for Digimon Adventure and Digimon Adventure 02, Patamon is voiced by a male with a notably deep voice.
  • Digimon Adventure 02:
    • Just like his idol Taichi/Tai, Daisuke/Davis is voiced by a woman in Japan and a man in the United States. However, in contrast to Adventure, Davis is still portrayed as immature and impulsive despite being voiced by an adult man. Ken is also voiced by a woman in Japan and a man in the United States; Takeru/TK is the only 02 Digidestined voiced by a man in Japan.
    • It may just be a function of dub Yolei being a teenager, but there's a big difference between how miserable and whiny she sounds in the original Japanese show when she's emotional and how scarily angry she sounds in many of the same situations in the dub.
    • Hawkmon has an intense, serious voice in the Japanese version of the show, but in the English dub, he's more flamboyant with a British accent.
    • In the Japanese version of the show, Armadillomon has a somewhat higher, raspier voice than the southern drawl given him by Robert Axelrod. In the Italian dub, he is voiced by Roberto Stocchi, which instead goes for a Simpleton Voice as he usually does.
  • In the original Japanese version of Digimon Tamers:
    • Like his predecessor goggle boys, Takato is voiced by a woman in Japan and a man in the United States. Takato's meek, mild personality is retained however, to the point that the American dubbers probably would have been able to get away with having a woman voice him, but the dubbers were generally moving away from casting women as male characters at this point. Jenrya/Henry is also voiced by a woman in Japan and a man in the United States, as are Kazu and Kenta. The Sixth Ranger Ryo is the only Digidestined this season to be voiced by a man in Japan.
  • Guilmon was voiced by Masako Nozawa who gave him an innocent, child-like female voice, while in the dub Steve Blum gave a high, nasally, and somewhat gravelly voice, but retained the innocent nature. In Spain, Pepe Carabias gave him a glass-shattering high-pitched voice.
    • Calumon has a ridiculously high pitched and cutesy voice, but the English dub gives him a somewhat deeper, more boyish voice.
    • Renamon has a mature, serious feminine voice in the English dub, sounds androgynous and aloof in the Japanese version, but has a baritone voice in the German dub, where she's a male.
• Doraemon:
  • In the Japanese version, Gian has a deep and raspy voice. In one version of the Spanish dub, he has a high-pitched voice and sounds more like Elmo than he sounds like a menacing bully.
  • His voice in Disney Channel India's English dub is also surprisingly high-pitched for a tough guy like him.
  • His voice in the Italian dub alternates between tones, being still raspy but with a sorta high pitch that lowers down when he's angry and gets even higher when he's happy.
  • In the Japanese version and most other dubs, Doraemon has a slightly raspy but high-pitched voice, and is voiced by a woman. In the most famous Italian dub, he's voiced by Pietro Ubaldi, a man that makes him sound like a cuddly grandfather.
• Dragon Ball anime and its sequels and spin-offs:
  • Both Goku and Krillin are voiced by women in the original Japanese dub throughout the series' run, so both have high-pitched, scratchy voices in both childhood and adulthood. Most other dubs choose to have Goku and Krillin voiced by different actors between ages, with female VAs portraying their child selves (as is standard when voicing children in media) and adult male VAs voicing their adult selves, so as to give Goku and Krillin more believably "adult" voices once they reach that age^note The same goes for Gohan once he grows up and Goten in Dragon Ball GT (where he's a teenager), since Masako Nozawa voices not only Goku but his sons and father as well, independent of age. Trying to keep track of who voices who in these situations is difficult because of the franchise's propensity for The Other Darrin in English-language dubs, though with the Mexican Spanish dub it's easier due to it sticking with a consistent cast barring Dragon Ball Z Kai. In this case, they are voiced respectively by Mario Castañeda, who has a very deep voice, and Eduardo Garza, who has a tenor voice, and later by Luis Daniel Ramírez.
  • Oolong is a bizarrely-complicated example: Although his non-human design doesn't look any particular age, in Japanese he's treated as relatively young (an official guidebook saying he's actually younger than Goku), hence he has a cartoonish high-pitched voice. This was quickly forgotten about, and Oolong looks identical in-series decades later, but the voice remained the same. When Z was dubbed into English first, Oolong was given a deep, craggly voice. This carried over when Dragon Ball was dubbed later, presumably because people would be confused if he sounded younger despite looking the same, and he speaks to Goku and Bulma as if he was much older than them.
  • Yajirobe in the original Japanese version also has a high-pitched raspy voice provided by Mayumi Tanaka, a woman. In the English dubs he is usually given a deep gruff voice.
  • In Dragon Ball Z, Frieza has a definitely male yet very feminine voice in the original Japanese dub. In the Mexican Spanish dub, he is voiced by deep voiced Gerardo Reyero, whereas in the original English dubs he straight-up sounds like an elderly lady, until Kai finally replaced Linda Young with Chris Ayres, who gives a performance very similar to the original.
  • The French dub gave Vegeta a whiny, nasal voice, because they thought he was going to be a one-time villain instead of becoming a main character. As a result, he kept that voice for the entire series.
  • The Canadian Ocean Group dub of Z (which was the first English dub of the show to become broadly popular) did something similar to the French version; Vegeta was given a distinctively raspy hiss, provided by Brian Drummond. This worked well enough, and spawned many Memetic Mutations, in the Saiyan and Namek sagas, where Vegeta was either an outright villain or only slightly less of a threat than Frieza, but while Drummond's performance is remembered fondly by many, it's also considered an ill fit for the Android and Buu arcs, where Vegeta began to evolve into a more sympathetic character.
  • In the Greek dub, Vegeta got a voice filter that many people say made him sound demonic or robotic.
  • Goku Black from Dragon Ball Super is an unusual case; when playing the character, Masako Nozawa reportedly used the same voice that she'd used for Super Saiyan 4 Goku in Dragon Ball GT, producing a low, even, sinister tone. For the English dub of Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2^note Which was noted by the voice actors as having had very uneven direction, Sean Schemmel did the same thing, but his Super Saiyan 4 voice was rough and gravelly so Black is as well. In Super he gives a performance more similar to Nozawa's, but after it's revealed that Black is the Supreme Kai Zamasu having stolen Goku's body, Schemmel switches over to an impression of Zamasu's voice actor James Marsters (which filtered back to Xenoverse when Super Saiyan Rosé Goku Black was added to the game's roster).
• In the original Japanese version, Juvia from Fairy Tail has the typical voice type for female characters — i.e., very high, breathy, and girlish. In the English dub, however, she has the relatively low, deep-throated voice of Brina Palencia.
• Fate/Apocrypha: Astolfo has a very girlish voice in the Japanese original to go along with his feminine appearance. While the English dub gives him a more masculine, if still effeminate, voice, the Latin American Spanish dub flat out gives him a male voice actor in contrast to the Cross-Dressing Voices of the other versions.
• The 1995 film adaptation of Ghost in the Shell features a baritone male voice for the Puppet Master in both the original Japanese dub and the English dub, creating an intentionally jarring effect when he's discovered to be inhabiting a waiflike gynoid body. In the 2.0 re-release of the film, however, the Puppet Master is voiced by Yoshiko Sakakibara, a female seiyuu, who gives him a voice more befitting of his female body.
• Girls und Panzer: "Duce" Anchovy sports a high-pitched, believably teenaged voice with heaps of ham provided by Maya Yoshioka in the original audio. Her English VA, Kira Vincent-Davis, gives the character a lower and (most strikingly) gruffer timbre.
• Hetalia: Axis Powers: Russia has a noticeably high pitched voice in the original Japanese version to match his Psychopathic Manchild tendencies, but the English dub gives him a deeper voice to fit the Husky Russkie stereotype a bit more.
• Hunter × Hunter (1999):
  • In the Japanese version, Gon is voiced by voice actress Junko Takeuchi, giving him a high-pitched voice typical of many Stock Shonen Heroes. In the English dub, he is also voiced by a woman, but has a deeper voice that makes him sound a bit older, almost like a woman trying to voice adult Son Goku.
  • In the Latin Spanish dub made in Colombia, Hisoka speaks with a thick French accent.
• In the Japanese version of the Inazuma Eleven anime, Kurimatsu has a very raspy chipmunk-like voice. In the English dub, he sounds like a normal teenage boy.
• In the Latin Spanish dub of Kirby: Right Back at Ya!, King Dedede has a very high-pitched, clown-esque voice as opposed to his more authorative tone in the Japanese version or his bombastic southern American accent in the English dub.
• In Laid-Back Camp, Nadeshiko is played by Yumiri Hanamori in the Japanese version, who is well known for her cute, high pitched moe girl voice. In the English dub, Nadeshiko is played by Morgan Garrett, who makes her sound significantly deeper, raspier, and more in line with her actual age, and is more well known for playing sultry older women and socially awkward girls.
• In Little Witch Academia, Sucy is voiced by Michiyo Murase in Japanese, who gives her a high pitched, nasally sounding voice, giving her a slight wicked witch vibe. By contrast, Rachelle Heger, who voices her in the English dub, gives her a smoother, deeper sounding voice instead. Anastasia Muñoz, who voices her in Space Patrol Luluco goes for a blend between the former two, giving her a deep voice like Heger's performance, but also making her sound nasally like Murase's original performance.
• In its source material's home region of Finland, Moomin (1990) gives Moomintroll a young masculine voice (this take is generally uniform with other animated works). In the Japanese edit however, he is voiced by a female actress, giving him a very childlike voice. The English dub follows the direction of the Japanese version.
• In Neon Genesis Evangelion, Shinji Ikari's Japanese VA, Megumi Ogata, is given a soft spoken voice given his young age. However, Spike Spencer voiced him with a much more adult sounding voice. In the Netflix redub, Casey Mongillo gives Shinji a softer voice inline with the Japanese original instead.
  • In Spain, Shinji is voiced by Albert Trifol Segarra, who usually sounds like a real, awkward male teenager.
• Now and Then, Here and There is notorious for doing this with the English dub, especially in regards to Shu. Most of the cast consists of children, and in Japanese, the boys are all voiced by female seiyuu, with some exceptions, and they sound like young boys. Akemi Okumura and Yuka Imai play Shu and Nabuca in Japanese, who make a good effort to sound like young boys. However, the English dub casts Ted Lewis and Dan Green as Shu and Nabuca, making them sound like adult men rather than the prepubescent children they're supposed to sound like.
• Pokémon: The Series
  • James has a traditionally masculine voice in the original Japanese. While his first voice actor, Ted Lewis, used a similar take, his second voice actor Eric Stuart gave him a campier, more flamboyant voice. Both versions of James enjoy crossdressing and have some effeminate interests, but the differences in voice acting contributes to how his Japanese voice paints him more as a case of Real Men Wear Pink than his English counterpart's Camp Straight personality.
  • In the original Japanese track, Meowth is voiced by a female actress, who uses a very high pitched, growly voice to make for a more cat-like speech impediment (he even has a meowing Verbal Tic). Through the English dub, he is usually voiced by a male actor (though at one point was voiced by Maddie Blaustein, a trans woman capable of deep voices), with his vocal range being deeper and more gravelly, usually with a slick-talking Brooklyn accent.
• The main characters of Saint Seiya are young teens between the ages of 13 and 16. The Italian dub gives to most of them deep adult voices. Most of the classical cast also kept the roles in later productions, and while Ivo De Palma's voice was fitting on the original show's incarnation of Seiya (as the characters looked older than their actual ages), he is obviously totally unfitting on his incarnations from later products such as Saint Seiya: Legend of Sanctuary or Saint Seiya: Knights of the Zodiac.
• In Special A Tadashi is voiced by Hiro Shimono who is known for his somewhat high pitched voice. However, in the dub, Tadashi was voiced by Andrew Love whose deep, low-pitched voice is a stark contrast to that of Shimono's.
• Sgt. Frog:
  • Tamama is supposed to be a young child, with most dubs giving him female voice actresses and such... except for the Italian dub, where is voiced by Giorgio Bonino that gives Tamama a nasal voice that makes him sound more like a middle-aged man that is pretending to be a child.
  • In the Japanese original, Keroro has a high-pitched, squeaky and cute voice courtesy of his actress Kumiko Watanabe to match his childish personality. In the Funimation Gag Dub, he has a noticeably deeper, more adult sounding voice due to being voiced by Todd Haberkorn.
• Tamagotchi: Kikitchi has a high-pitched boy's voice in the Japanese original, but in the Thai dub aired by True Spark, he has an adult man's voice. The other Thai dub aired by MCOT Family gives him a voice more like the Japanese version.
• Trigun: Wolfwood has a smooth, deep voice in Japanese but in the English dub he has a more gravelly voice with a slightly higher pitch, befitting a smoker. Vash is also somewhat higher pitched and younger sounding in the English dub.
• Tweeny Witches: Lennon is an androgynous boy who is assumed to be a girl, with a young, high-pitched voice that can pass as both masculine and feminine. The Italian dub, however, gives him a blatantly deep voice that makes one wonder how anyone could think he's a girl.
• In the English dub of The World God Only Knows, Ayumi's voice is deeper and more mature in contrast to the high pitched, more youthful sounding voice of Ayana Taketatsu in the original Japanese.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!:
  • Weevil has regular child voice in the original Japanese; in the 4kids dub, Jimmy Zoppi gives him a high pitched, screeching, raspy voice.
  • In the Singaporean dub, Yami Yugi was given a voice that made him sound like a Surfer Dude.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds has Jack Atlas, who has a Rated M for Manly baritone courtesy of Takanori Hoshino, while his English VA Ted Lewis makes him sound much more high-pitched. He also has an Australian accent (despite growing up in the same orphanage as Yusei and Crow).
• Zombie Land Saga has Sakura Minamoto played by Kaede Hondo in Japanese, who gives her a fairly high pitched voice but still makes her sound like a teenage girl. In English, she is played by Brina Palencia, whose voice for Sakura is significantly deeper and lower.

Asian Animation

• BoBoiBoy: BoBoiBoy was originally voiced by the female Nur Fatihah Diaz. However, in the English dub, BoBoiBoy seems to have a more masculine voice, due to the fact that Wong Wai Kay, the original and English voice actor for Fang, fills the role instead.
• In the original Chinese version of Happy Heroes, Careless S. has a high-pitched voice fitting for a Robot Kid. While the English dub from Miao Mi gives him a voice matching the Chinese one, the Lookus English dub opts for a Simpleton Voice instead (makes sense, since he's a Ditzy Genius who forgets stuff at a moment's notice).
• Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: The Khmer dub gives Paddi a deep voice, while other dubs give him a higher-pitched one.

Eastern European Animation

• I'll Return as the Rain: Guda-Guda's voice in the 1986 short's Russian redub is noticeably deeper than in the Georgian original, to the point of sounding like a Simpleton Voice. Particularly strange since he's voiced by the same person in both dubs.

Films — Animation

• In the Japanese dub of Chicken Little, the title character's voice is much more childish than his usual teenage voice in all other dubs.
• In the original version of The Fox and the Hound, as an adult, Copper was voiced by a young Kurt Russell with a young man's voice; in the Japanese dub, the adult Copper is given a dumb hillbilly type of voice.
• Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame:
  • In the original English version, Judge Claude Frollo was voiced by a actor who was elderly just like the character. In the Polish dub, however, he was dubbed by a younger person who, each time he yells, made the character sound even more hammy compared to the masterfully powerful performance of the great Tony Jay. Made even worse by the fact that the two Polish dubbers for the Brutish and Oafish guards were born almost a decade before Frollo's was! While he sounded old enough, French voice actor Jean Piat also sounded different.
  • Laverne is an occasionally crabby, elderly gargoyle, and her original English voice actress suited her personality, but her French voice actress, Perrette Pradier, made her sound decades younger.
• In the Ice Age movies, Crash and Eddie are voiced by women in the Japanese dub, making them sound like young boys even after the Time Skip where their niece Peaches grows into a teenager.
• The Lion King (1994):
  • In some of the foreign dubs, the age roles of Mufasa and Scar have been switched around, mainly due to their dubbers' limited understanding of English. The most egregiously jarring example of this happens in the French dub where the older Mufasa was voiced by the younger Jean Reno and the younger Scar was voiced by the older Jean Piat. Despite the fact that most French people enjoyed their dubbing performances, it can come off as less brothers and more like father and son by looking at the dubbers' physical real-life heads.^note Piat (Scar) and Reno (Mufasa) were born 23 years and 10 months apart from each other, yet since Scar is Mufasa's younger brother, very few French people thought it would've made so much more sense if Jean Reno dubbed for Scar instead.
  • Rafiki has been voiced differently in a lot of the foreign TLK dubs. Most of his dubbers were younger.
• In the original 1990 Finnish dub of The Little Mermaid (1989), Ariel was voiced by operatic soprano Johanna Nurmimaa, whose rich, classically trained singing was more like Aurora in Sleeping Beauty (whose voice she had also provided in the 1987 Finnish dub of that film) than like the light, Broadway-style voice of Jodi Benson's English-language Ariel. When the movie received a new dub in 1998, Ariel's new voice actress was pop singer/musical theatre performer Nina Tapio, whose singing style was notably much closer to Jodi Benson's.
• In Moana, Tamatoa is voiced by Jemaine Clement with his natural New Zealand accent and a rather affable tone. In the Hindi dub, he's voiced by the late Bappi Lahiri, who was 21 years older than Clement. Therefore, Tamaota now sounds like an elderly man. This still works since he's implied to be a lot older than what his high energy conveys.
• In The Nightmare Before Christmas, Mad Scientist Dr. Finklestein is presented as a old man with a fitting gravelly voice, but in the Japanese dub he was given an high-pitched, nasal and younger-sounding voice.
• The Princess and the Frog: In the original English, the hyperactive Charlotte has a mostly squeaky voice that drops whenever she gets too excited or is trying to be seductive. In the Canadian French dub, she's voiced by Pascale Montreuil, who gives to Charlotte a very raspy voice.
• The Swedish dub of Quest for Camelot, gives the villain, Sir Ruber a much deeper voice than Gary Oldman's original tenor voice, courtesy of Tommy Nilsson who does his typical basso profundo voice which suits the character design much more. Nilsson also plays up Ruber's enjoyment of being evil as well as the obvious humor in Ruber's dialogue.
• The Japanese dub of Ratatouille makes the main character Remy sound like a typical Bishōnen and use the pronoun boku no less.
• In the Japanese version of Ringing Bell (Chirin no Suzu) Chirin is voiced by Minori Matsushima who made the character sound very young and cute as a reminder that he's the youngest of the flock. In the English Dub, he's voiced by Barbara Goodson who gives a similar performance, but occasionally talks in a bleating tone. Chirin's bleating pattern is notable since the English Dub made him more vocal and nosier (such as grunts, whimpering, and gasps). In addition, the English Dub has Chirin's voice slowly getting much deeper and gruffer as more terrible things happens to him compared to the Japanese version where his voice remains unchanged.
• In the Japanese dub of The Sponge Bob Movie Sponge Out Of Water, in addition to Chie Matsuura reprising her role as Plankton, Kyle the seagull has a young boy-sounding voice instead of an adult man imitating a boy's voice. He's voiced by Yumiko Kobayashi.
• The Swan Princess, Odette has a high-pitched child's voice for almost the entire Age-Progression Song "This Is My Idea", until it gets to the time when the actual plot begins. In the Russian dub of the song, Odette has a deeper voice starting from her preteen age, and in her mid-teens, she sounds fully like her adult self.
  • In the Japanese dub Derek has his adult voice during "This Is My Idea" when he's in his early teens during the card game scene.
• The True Story of Puss 'N Boots: In the original French, Puss has the kind of suave, smooth voice you would expect of a cunning con artist. For the English dub, William Shatner gave him a very high-pitched voice that has drawn comparisons to Winnie the Pooh, seemingly going for what a cat would sound like it if could speak English.
• In the Japanese Dub of UglyDolls, Lucky Bat is given a higher-pitched, childish voice due to being voiced by a woman instead of a man.

Films — Live-Action

General actor examples

• Many foreign voice actors for Christopher Walken have notably deeper voices and speak without pauses, in contrast to Walken's more soft-spoken voice and tendency to use dramatic pauses in his speech.
• In European French, Daniel Beretta sounded absolutely nothing like Arnold Schwarzenegger, with the Austrian accent Arnold kept on purpose notably absent^note Though it should be noted that accents without a big enough sample size in the dub's language for the actor to draw from are usually discarded or replaced with another , but he was chosen by the man himself for Red Heat and voiced him from 1988 to 2021 almost without exception. Ditto when Arnold was voiced by Richard Darbois and Pascal Renwick.
• Also in European French, Alain Dorval's voice sounded deeper and smokier than that of the actor he dubbed the most, Sylvester Stallone.
• Curly Howard of The Three Stooges fame spoke with a falsetto voice onscreen. Some Spanish-language dubs gave him a deep, guttural voice.

Individual Films

• During Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, it was noticeable that both Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint were going through puberty, so their voices sound a bit deeper than in Philosopher's Stone. But for some reason, the Latin American Spanish dub decided to keep Harry and Ron sounding like younger kids, with Harry even getting another child voice actor to do his voice in the movie. Fortunately, by Prisioner of Azkaban, their voices were finally recast with older voice actors to match the English ones.
• Zac Efron was 21 when High School Musical 3 was released, yet the Spanish dub makes him sound several years younger than what his character is supposed to be (17). Here's a clip from the Graham Northon Show discussing this.
• In Green Book, the protagonist Tony "Lip" Vallelonga is played with heavy, even exaggerated Italian accent by Viggo Mortensen. The French dub drops the Italian accent entirely, presumably to avoid making the character sound too caricatural.
• Star Wars:
  • In Latin American Spanish dubs, Yoda is voiced by Arturo Mercado (except in The Last Jedi) who gives a slower and more soft-spoken voice in comparison to the high-pitched voice of Frank Oz in the original English language.
  • In the Italian dub of the original trilogy Luke Skywalker is given a deep, basso profundo voice, quite at odds with his youthful farmboy appearance.

Live-Action TV

• In the Italian dub of ALF, the titular character is voiced by Gigi Angelillo, who gives him a more mellow and kind voice than in the original version.
• In the LatAm dub of The Big Bang Theory, almost the entire cast was voiced by actors who mostly work on cartoons and anime, making everybody sound a lot younger and more energetic with Irwin Daayán voicing Howard and the late-Luis Alfonso Mendoza as Sheldon as the biggest example who turned from a smug, mostly stoic Insufferable Genius to a more high-pitched, lively fast-talker.
• In the Brazilian dub of El Chavo del ocho, there are some characters which sound different:
  • El Chavo himself speaks with a high-pitched, childish voice in the original audio. From the several voice actors for the character in Brazil, most of them tended to just do their respective natural voice with a slight modification, or a different tone altogether.
  • Don Ramón has a raspy voice, but his iconic voice actor Carlos Seidl, not so much.
  • In the original audio, Popis originally had a very nasal voice, which was often mocked by the other characters, in her three initial appearances. The character was later removed for one year and returned permanently with a non-nasal voice. In the Brazilian Portuguese dub, her Vocal Evolution happened the opposite; since the episodes were aired in Brazil in a completely random order, the predominant episodes where she had a normal voice in the original version were aired first and thus, used as basis for her voice actress Marta Volpiani, who just did a regular high-pitched little girl's voice in the episodes dubbed from 1984 to 1988 (ironically, including one of the three only episodes where she originally had a nasal voice). In 1990, Marta decided that the voice she was doing for Popis sounded too generic and more of the same than any other little girl's voice from other TV shows, so she decided to differentiate by doing the nasal voice in all episodes, a change which stuck and remained in the dub for all subsequent incarnations of the franchise.
• In the LatAm dub of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Will Smith (played by the very deep-voiced Will Smith) was voiced by the higher-pitched, loud and energetic Juan Alfonso Carralero and Carlton is voiced by the also higher-pitched and energetic late actor Luis Alfonso Mendoza.
• Game of Thrones: In the Italian dub, both Jon and Deanerys sound younger, and Jon's voice actor doesn't have Kit Harington's deep voice.
• In the English dub of Bom Dia Veronica! (Good Morning Veronica), a Brazilian Netflix original series, Anita Berlinger (portrayed by Elisa Volpatto)'s voice is dubbed to be higher-pitched and more excitable as compared to the original Brazilian Portuguese where she spoke in a softer tone.
• For the French dub of House, Féodor Atkine's deep and smooth voice (which he lent to a number of memorable characters such as Jafar and Elrond) doesn't sound like Hugh Laurie's at all.
• House of the Dragon: Young Rhaenyra Targaryen's voice in the French dub, Julie Cavanna, sounds significantly different compared to Milly Alcock (Cavanna was born in 1985, Alcock in 2000).
• LazyTown:
  • In most dubs, Stingy has a nasally voice. The Romanian dub inexplicably gave him a high-pitched screeching voice for the first few episodes before the voice actor was switched to the more traditional nasally voice. The Croatian dub, meanwhile, gave him a very deep voice that made him sound much older than he was supposed to be.
  • Ziggy's voice is a lot more high-pitched in the UK dub than the original.
• Married... with Children has the deep voice of Ed O'Neill as Al Bundy. The Latin American dub instead, has the Bumbling Dad (and sometimes guttural) voice of Humberto Vélez as Al, which also served him as an inspiration to voice another iconic dad in the future: Homer Simpson.
• Misfits: Nathan has a normal voice for a guy in his early 20s, but in the Italian dub, he's voiced by Gabriele Patriarca who has a high-pitched, somewhat childish-sounding voice. This doesn't fit Nathan's character, who is a brash, perverted Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist, while Gabriele Patriarca is often typecast as kids or nerdy/naive characters.
• The Nanny: Fran's nasal voice is toned down in the Spanish dub and completely removed in the French, Italian, and German dubs, where she speaks in a normal voice.
• Police, Camera, Action!: When the 1994-2002 British original presented by Alastair Stewart was redubbed in Europe, sometimes his voice was changed to be more gruff, as compared to the softer Received Pronounciation (RP) Hampshire accent that Alastair uses when speaking. In the Dutch dub, his voice was made a lot more lively than usual, until the 1998 series when Mariska Hulscher replaced him as on-screen presenter and episodes were locally-produced.
• In the LatAm dubs of the Power Rangers franchise, T.J (played by Selwin Ward, who has a soft adult voice) and Carter Grayson (Sean Cw Johnson) are voiced by Benjamín Rivera, who has a very energetic and high-pitched tenor voice.
  • In Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, Goldar's voice is very growly, raspy and guttural. The Italian voice actor sounds less growly and guttural while still being menacing.
  • Again in the Italian dub: the original voice actor for Tommy, Gabriele Calindri (who voiced him in both Mighty Morphin and Power Rangers Zeo), has a very deep voice that is completely different from Jason David Frank's actual voice. In Power Rangers Turbo he was instead voiced by Simone D'Andrea, who sounds more like JDF.
  • In the LatAm dub Power Rangers Time Force, Eric - the Quantum Ranger (played by Daniel Southworth, who has a high-pitched voice), is voiced by Jorge Ornelas.
  • The Minizord from Power Rangers Ninja Storm speaks with a high pitched voice that has been heavily filtered to sound more robotic. In the Italian dub he instead has a deep, booming voice with little to no processing over it.
• Aleksander Mikołajczak as Big Bird in Polish dubs of Sesame Street compilation shows from the 2000s sounds less high-pitched and more older than Caroll Spinney.
• The Latin American dubs of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager are infamous due to some of their casting choices.
  • The first voices of Jean-Luc Picard; Antonio Monsell, César Arias and Guillermo Coria, gave him a very "old-man in his 70s" voice that lacked the presence and strength of Patrick Stewart's. Eventually, Blas García (who voiced Benjamin Sisko in the first half of DS9) took over and gave him a more fitting, stronger voice.
  • A similar thing happened to Kathryn Janeway with her being voiced by the late-Angeles Bravo who made her sound as if she was in her 70s rather than in her 30s.
  • Tom Paris was voiced by deep voiced Mario Castañeda (who also voiced Miles O'Brien in TNG), who many people felt didn't fit Tom's easygoing and snarky personality.
  • Deep-voiced Jorge Ornelas voiced Miles O'Brien in DS9, who, like Castañeda before him, made him sound older and grumpier than in the original English dub.
  • Seven Of Nine was voiced by Gabriela Gomez, who voiced her with a more calm and less militaristic tone, while also making her sound a lot younger, which made her sound more Innocently Insensitive rather than proud when she went Insufferable Genius on the crew.
• The two leads of Supernatural have very deep voices, at least one octave lower than the guys who voice them in the German dub, making Sam and Dean sound much more youthful and much less badass when the show airs on German TV channels.
• When The Flash (2014) was dubbed in Europe, Caitlin Snow's voice would end up being the European equivalent of Brooklyn Rage in tone, even though her character never displayed that trope and canonically wasn't from New York.

Video Games

• In Arena of Valor, by default, the hero Tachi is using a deep male voice courtesy of Ted Evans despite his feminine appearance, whereas he's using a medium pitch, striking a balance between feminine and butch sounding. However, when the game is dubbed into Japanese, he is instead voiced by a female voice actress (with a lower pitch), since Japan is no stranger to the character archetype of 'pretty boy swordsman with female voice'.
• In the Atelier Series' Mysterious subseries (starting with Atelier Sophie: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Book), Plachta's Japanese voice is soft and very high-pitched, making her sound young and innocent, while the English dub has her speak in a somewhat deeper, more mature tone to reflect her very long life.
• Command & Conquer: Kane's voice is much deeper in the French dub of the first game.
• There are several examples in the Fire Emblem series since after Awakening's release.
  • In the Japanese version of Awakening, Ricken was voiced by female seiyu Yuki Masuda (who also voices Panne in Japanese), whereas in English, he's voiced by male voice actor Yuri Lowenthal.
  • Henry, who is also from Awakening, was originally voiced by female seiyu Akemi Okamura (who also voiced Emmeryn), while in English, he's voiced by the male Bryce Papenbrook.
  • Also from Awakening, Nah, Nowi's future daughter, has a very high-pitched childlike voice in Japanese, whereas in the English version, Eden Riegel gave her a slightly lower, more teen-sounding voice.
  • Miyuki Sawashiro's Japanese voice for Female Morgan, the Male Avatar's future child, is high pitched and cute-sounding, whereas her English voice courtesy of Nicole Balick is significantly deeper and lower, closer to how her male counterpart sounds in both languages.
  • In the Japanese version of Fire Emblem Fates, Effie had a soft and gentle voice. In the English dub, Marisha Ray's performance gave her a super deep Tomboyish Voice to play up her great strength and makes her sound more like a caveman.
  • In the Japanese version of Fates, Male Kana was voiced by Nobunaga Shimazaki, who also voiced the Male Avatar. His voice is very different in English, where it's very high pitched, courtesy of Laura Faye Smith (and Sandy Fox in Fire Emblem Heroes).
  • Fallen Berkut's English voicelines in Heroes only used Ian Sinclair as his voice actor, unlike the Japanese version where Berkut has both his voice actor Tatsuhisa Suzuki alongside Duma's voice actor Banjo Ginga in nearly all his voicelines to create an I Am Legion effect.
  • Eitri's English voice in Heroes, provided by Lisa Reimold, sounds like that of a young girl as per her appearance, albeit with some genuinely unsettling shouting and laughter in the Book V Ending Movie. In the Japanese version, Minami Takayama provides her with a mature, somewhat androgynous voice that you wouldn't expect from simply looking at her.
  • The recurring seasonal banner theme in Heroes features popular characters as small children. In the Japanese version, with with a single exception, the male characters featured were voiced by actresses, giving them childlike voices. However, in the English dub, the male characters were voiced by the same actor who would voice their adult selves, making them sound like adolecents instead of children. For example, kid Marth was voiced by Yuu Kobayashi, Lucina's voice actress, instead of Hikaru Midorikawa, while in English he was still Yuri Lowenthal.
  • Much like Effie above (though not quite as caveman-sounding), Etie from Fire Emblem Engage is voiced by Trina Nishimura with a deeper and humble voice to emphasise her Gym Bunny personality, while in Japanese said personality was hilariously contrasted with her Ojou-like outfit and voice inflection. This causes the joke to be somewhat lost, with many English-speaking players expressing confusion at how her character design doesn't seem to fit her at all, given that she feels less like a haughty noblewoman who brags more about her muscles than her fair looks and more like just a standard tomboy who happens to wear extremely frilly clothing for whatever reason.
• In Guilty Gear -Strive-, Testament speaks with a feminine voice in the Japanese dub and with a masculine voice in the English dub.
• Daxter in Jak and Daxter has a young boy-like voice in the Japanese dub provided by a woman instead of his more teenage voice provided by a male.
  • He's also voiced by a woman in the European Spanish dub.
• In the original Japanese version of Kingdom Hearts, Master Xehanort sounds like a discordantly unthreatening elderly man. In the English dub, his voice is incredibly raspy, especially under his original voice actor Leonard Nimoy, who while playing the role was suffering from an obstructive pulmonary disease that was his eventual cause of death. The gravel is carried by Nimoy's successors Rutger Hauer and Christopher Lloyd, and not only make the character much more actively sinister than in the original Japanese but also emphasize that he's a very old man seeking immortality and a younger body so he can see prophecy fulfilled before he dies.
• Leisure Suit Larry 7: Love for Sail!: In the original English version, Larry speaks in a nerdy, slightly high-pitched tone, fitting his awkwardness. The Polish dub has Jerzy Stuhr as him speak in a much deeper tone, which fits Larry being a middle-aged womaniser.
• In the Japanese version of Lunar: The Silver Star Ramus has a rather deep voice and is played by a male voice actor, but in the English versions by Working Designs he is voiced by a woman and sounds significantly younger. Ghaleon also has a deep and imposing voice in Japanese, but is higher pitched and nasal sounding with a bit of a lisp in the Working Designs dub. Finally, the localization of the PSP remake by X Seed does this to Nall: in Japanese and the original Working Designs dub he sounds like a high pitched Ridiculously Cute Critter with a female voice, but in this dub he's given a male voice actor and sounds more like a teenage boy.
• In MapleStory, Kyle is a young boy-turned teenage warrior for his entire race as latest incarnation of the legendary hero Kaiser. He's dubbed as such in the Japanese and Korean release, but in the Global release he's given the voice of a man twice his age. And while the Japanese and Korean dubs made him a Hot-Blooded Screaming Warrior, his Global lines make him come across as low and raspy at times.
• Puyo Puyo:
  • Arle Nadja was a victim of having a deeper voice in localization, specifically in the original Puyo Puyo and Puyo Puyo Fever. While all games since her debut in Madou Monogatari 1-2-3 always gave her Japanese voice a higher pitch, her English voice in Fever wasn't as cutesy, and her English voice in the original was so deep it didn't fit a 16-year-old girl in any capacity. In Puyo Puyo Tetris and its sequel, Arle is voiced in English by Erica Mendez, making it the first time she was dubbed with something akin to her high-pitched, energetic current Japanese voice.
  • Sig and Klug in the Japanese games have similarly had high-pitched young boy voices since their debuts. This extends to Klug's appearance in the English version of Puyo Puyo Fever, but not in Puyo Tetris's English dub, which makes both characters' voices much, much deeper.
• Ratchet & Clank: Ratchet has a younger-sounding voice in the Japanese version due to being voiced by a woman (Makoto Tsumura).
• Shadow Hearts: Covenant: Joachim Valentine is voiced in Japanese by Tomohiro Nishimura and given a youthful, high pitched voice perhaps to accentuate his childishness and Chuunibyou tendencies. In the English dub, he's voiced by Paul St. Peter, who gives him a deep, booming voice perhaps to accentuate Joachim's larger than life superhero persona.
• Spyro the Dragon: In the Japanese dub of the first two games, Spyro himself is given a childish-sounding voice, provided by Akiko Yajima, which contrasts with his more adult-sounding voice in English. Averted in Skylanders and Crash Team Racing, where Spyro is voiced by a male actor.
• Syberia: The Russian dub of the original game inexplicably changed Oscar's voice from one that sounded upbeat and human to a grating Machine Monotone, stripping away most of his nerdy enthusiastic charm.
• Tales of Graces, Tales of Zestiria and Tales of Berseria: In Japanese, Dark Turtlez, who is/looks like a young boy, is voiced by Marina Inoue. His Mystic Arte, Final Fury, even parodies Marina Inoue's previous character from the series - Kohaku Hearts. In English, meanwhile, Dark Turtlez is voiced by Cam Clarke, Kirk Thornton and Keith Silverstein respectively, who, while deliberately making their voices sound higher-pitched than usual, still sound like grown men. Given that Kohaku appears in the international version of Tales of Graces, one would think that the double casting would tip them off.
• WarioWare:
  • In Japanese, Ashley's voice actress Ayaka Fukuhara gives her a cute, innocent voice (complete with Third-Person Person) reflecting the character's young age and to juxtapose her Creepy Child personality. Most overseas dubs, particularly in English where she's voiced by Erica Lindbeck, remove those childish traits almost entirely in favor of giving Ashley a deeper and more monotone voice that emphasizes the more aloof and deadpan side of her personality.
  • When WarioWare Gold introduced voiced cutscenes, Dr. Crygor's voice remained as deep sounding as implied, at least in Japanese. In English, Kyle Hebert gives him a much higher pitched voice by comparison.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 2 has this for many of its characters:
  • Generally, the English dub gives all of the characters accents based on their place of origin (with Blades typically being given American accents), whereas the Japanese dub does not give any special attention to accents or slang.
  • Pyra and Mythra have fairly standard high-pitched anime character voices in the Japanese version, provided by Shino Shimoji. In the English dub, Skye Bennett voices them with a slightly lower and more adultlike tone and an American accent.
  • Likewise, Nia has a standard, high-pitched voice with a Tokyo accent in the Japanese version. In the English dub, she has a deeper voice complete with a very thick Welsh accent, which may sound surprisingly old for those unfamiliar with the accent.
  • In the Japanese version, Tora is voiced by Ai Nonaka and sounds like a little girl, the type of character that she is known for (though this is excusable by the fact that he is a Ridiculously Cute Critter). In English, he's voiced by Rasmus Hardiker, who voices him with a more identifiably male voice that still manages to sound young and cartoonish. The same can be said for Riki from the first installment, voiced by Yuki Kaida in Japanese and Wayne Forester in English.
  • Zeke in Japanese has Kenjiro Tsuda's signature shouty voice. In English, he instead has a more "hoity-toity" sounding voice with a pronounced London accent.
  • Jin is the opposite, being voiced by Takahiro Sakurai in Japanese and sounding exactly like his Cloud Strife, but having a lower voice in the English dub.
• In Xenoblade Chronicles 3, Sayaka Senbongi gives Riku a rather high-pitched voice as is standard for Nopon despite his serious and stoic demeanour. In the English dub, he's voiced by Tarinn Callendar who gives him a rather deep, voice unexpected of Nopon in general.

Web Animation

• Parodied in Homestar Runner with Stinkoman K 20X6, which is Strong Bad's idea of what his life would be like as an anime. He notes that "they'd probably get someone else to do the voices". Stinkoman's voice is less gravelly and more energetic than Strong Bad's, and 1-Up's is softer and more childlike than Homestar's (and he lacks Homestar's Elmuh Fudd Syndwome). This isn't a real-life example, though; they're still voiced by Matt Chapman, who does the voices of just about everyone in the series.

Western Animation

• Adventure Time: Finn is voiced by a man in the English version and many dubs, but in the Romanian dub, when the show was dubbed by Mediavision, he was voiced by a woman, making him sound like a teenage girl. After the dubbing studio was switched to Fast Production Film, he received a male voice actor.
  • He's also voiced by a woman in French, European Spanish, and Japanese.
  • In the Latin American Spanish dub, BMO is a male rather than having an ambiguous gender, so he has a male falsetto voice, which becomes deeper starting in Season 5, making him sound like a teenager.
• The Amazing World of Gumball:
  • Nicole Watterson has the very mature motherly voice of Teresa Gallagher in the original English language. In the Latin American Spanish dub, Nicole is voiced by Rossy Aguirre, who has a very high-pitched nasally voice.
  • Leslie (the Flower) speaks with a very high-pitched male effeminate voice in the original English language. In the Latin American Spanish dub he was voiced by Circe Luna who gave him a high-pitched tomboy voice.
  • Darwin Watterson has a high-pitched childish voice throughout the entire series, consistently being voiced by actual children, with his voice actors regularly having been replaced every few years each time the previous one hits puberty. Both the Latin American Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese dubs mantained his voice actors in their respective dubs even after they hit puberty, which led to them giving Darwin more mature voices which aren't childish or high-pitched as all.
  • Jamie Russo has two voice actresses in the original English audio, both being women who did a tomboyish voice for her. In the Brazilian Portuguese dub, her main voice actor throughout all seasons is a man, though he mantains the tomboyish-sounding voice somewhat resembling the original while not falling into Larynx Dissonance, so this trope is averted in this case. However, in the episode "The Uploads" and some flashbacks from both the spin-off miniseries Darwin's Yearbook and The Gumball Chronicles, she is voiced respectively by a much older-sounding woman, and by man with a very deep, gruff voice, with the reason for that being unknown as the original voices sound nothing like these. It's possible that She's a Man in Japan was at play in the case of "The Uploads", however in The Gumball Chronicles, it was made clear that the character was female.
• Animaniacs: Wakko is voiced in English by Jess Harnell, a grown man, who gives him a deep yet bouncy voice with a Liverpool accent that pays tribute to The Beatles. In the Latin Spanish dub, he's voiced by Giset Blanco, a woman, who gives him a nasal and raspy "preteen boy voice."
• In the Dutch dub of Avatar: The Last Airbender, Azula is voiced by Marieke de Kruijf with a lower and more mature voice than Grey DeLisle used for her version, making Azula sound older than Zuko (whose voice was still somewhat high-pitched). This, however, does make her sound more imposing and seductive than the original voice, which helps to identify her as a serious threat right from the start.
• In the LatAm dubs of animated DC Comics adaptations from Batman: The Animated Series to Justice League Action, the Joker (El Guason) was voiced by Rubén Leon who has a louder and more energetic voice in comparison to his original VA Mark Hamill who voices the Joker with a more manic nasal tone.
• The Beetle Bailey TV special from 1989:
  • In the Danish dub, Beetle is for some inexplicable reason voiced by a woman (Karin Jagd), giving him a very high-pitched voice — this is glaringly unlike the original version in which he's voiced by a man (Greg Whalen) and has a normal-sounding male voice.
  • Also in the Danish dub, Zero has a very deep Simpleton Voice, whereas he in the original version he has a relatively high and nasal voice with a southern twang.
• Ben 10:
  • In the Dutch dub, the main character, Ben Tennyson, is voiced by Florus van Rooijen, a male voice actor, instead of a voice actress as in the original dub. Nevertheless, he does an excellent job of voicing the character due to his high-pitched, raspy voice. Furthermore, he continues to voice the teenage version of Ben during the later series (in a slightly lower tone), which adds further continuity to the Dutch dub.
  • The Italian dub also has a male voice actor, Daniele Raffaeli, who voiced him in a lower tone than the original already in the first series. Subverted in the dub of the reboot, where the role is taken instead by Gabriele Patriarca whose pitch is higher.
• Bob's Burgers: In the original English version, many female characters are voiced by men. Not all foreign dubs follow suit. For example, in the Italian dub only Linda and Tina are voiced by men while other female characters that have male voices in English (Gretchen, Jocelyn, Courtney) are voiced by women. In the Brazilian Portuguese dub of the show, most female characters are voiced by women.
• In the Dutch dub of Code Lyoko, all of the male main characters (Jeremy, Odd and Ulrich) are voiced by male voice actors (Ajolt Elsakker, Roben Mitchell and Pepijn Koolen respectively), as opposed to the French dub, where all of the main characters were voice by female voice actors. They all manage to sound like teenagers, nevertheless, mainly due to the voice actors' capabilities to provide high-pitched voices, although Odd does get a slightly lower voice to match his counterpart from the English dub.
• The European Spanish dub of Darkwing Duck gave the character of Beelzebub a random Andalusian accent when the original had no particular accent whatsoever.
• Dexter from Dexter's Laboratory is voiced by a woman as is typical for young boys in cartoons. In the Danish dub, he is voiced the male voice actor Lars Thiesgaard who - despite making his voice slightly higher-pitched and more nasal - sounds very much like a grown man. He also doesn't have the odd and ambiguous accent that he has in the original.
• Donald Duck's voice is incredibly thick and raspy, bordering on The Unintelligible at times, in most languages—except in Thai, in which he sounds like a normal deep-voiced man. In Japanese, Donald used to be voiced by women until the 90s when a male voice actor was brought in to sound more accurate to Tony Anselmo and Clarance Nash's Donald voice.
  • His nephews in the original shorts speak the same way. But the Latin American Spanish dub gives them perfectly understandable kid voices.
• In the Dutch dub of DuckTales (1987), Huey, Dewey and Louie^note Kwik, Kwek en Kwak in the Dutch dub were voiced by Bob van der Houven, who managed to distort his voice in such a way that he could reach (insanely) high voice pitches for the characters (without help from computer software). This is, of course, in stark contrast to the original dub, where the nephews were voice by Russi Taylor. Moreover, he managed to give each nephew a distinct personality (through voice inflections), despite the high vocal pitch, which made his performance even more impressive.
• DuckTales (2017): In most languages, the nephews sound like teenagers/young men. However, in the European Spanish dub, they are voiced by the same woman, who makes them sound more childish.
  • In the Hungarian dub, they are all voiced by child actors.
• Donkey Kong Country:
  • Diddy Kong has a high-pitched, chirpy voice courtesy of Andrew Sabiston. The Japanese dub has him voiced by Megumi Hayashibara, who is similarly high-pitched but makes him sound more childlike.
  • In the French dub, he is voiced by two different child actors (one per season) and, as a result, has an authentic child voice.
• Ed, Edd n Eddy: Edd's original English voice is very high pitched, to the point that many viewers thought he was a female or was voiced by a woman (albeit in the first few episodes he sounded slightly deeper). Many foreign dubs give him a more masculine sounding voice.
• Family Guy:
  • Lois Griffin has a nasal voice in the original English language, but this is toned down in most foreign dubs, with some versions (like the French or Italian dubs) giving her a normal, non-nasal voice.
  • In the original English dub, Herbert has a soft, high-pitched voice. Both the European and Canadian French dubs give him a deep, gravelly voice. The Spanish dub, meanwhile, gave him a typical old man voice without a hint of the effeminate tones of the original.
  • Speaking of the European French dub: in early episodes, Chris was voiced similarly to how he sounds in English, while Meg was given an extremely scratchy, grating voice. Some time later, this was flipped on its head, with Meg sounding closer to her English voice but Chris being given a very high-pitched Simpleton Voice.
• Futurama:
  • Fry's original voice is intentionally made youthful and high-pitched by Billy West. In the Italian dub, his voice is deeper and he sounds less young, and the way Fabrizio Manfredi delivers some of his lines gives Fry a mild Simpleton Voice which was absent in the original.
  • Bender is voiced by John DiMaggio, who has a rough deep voice. In the Italian dub he is voiced by Dario Penne, who gives him a more high pitched and nasal voice that sounds more like a stereotypical robot voice. Later subverted when Penne left the show because doing Bender's voice was beginning to strain too much his chords and was replaced with Paolo Buglioni, whose voice is more similar to DiMaggio's.
  • The high-pitched, nasal voice angle for Bender was also used in the Brazilian dub, in which he was voiced by Aldo César, and then by Sílvio Navas following César's death between the dubbing of seasons 2 and 3, until the series' first cancellation. From season 5 onward Bender was voiced by Wellington Lima, whose voice is closer to DiMaggio's.
• Glitch Techs: In the LatAm dub, Hector "Five" Nieves is voiced by Carlos Siller (Mikey's voice actor in Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) who has a much younger sounding-tenor voice in comparison to Ricardo Hurtado's young-adult voice in the original English language. The same can also be noted with Mitch Williams who is voiced by Gerardo Mendoza (better known for voicing Darwin in The Amazing World of Gumball) who has much younger sounding voice than Luke Youngblood.
• From Gravity Falls:
  • Kristen Schaal gives Mabel a voice that comes relatively close to her natural speaking voice. Her Danish voice actress, Julie Agnete Vang, tries to sound more like an actual 12-year-old, hyperactive girl - though this results in her voicing Mabel with an extremely screechy, high-pitched and nasal voice that doesn't sound very similar to her original voice.
  • A rather more downplayed example from the Danish dub is Grunkle Stan. He's intended to be a Scratchy-Voiced Senior in both the original and the dub. However, in the original he's voiced by series creator Alex Hirsch who was only in his late 20s by the start of the show. Despite Hirsch trying his best to make his voice deeper and raspier, it's still very obvious that Stan is voiced by a young man. In the Danish dub, he's voiced by Bjarne Antonisen who was in his late 40s by the time of dubbing and sounds like an actual old man, in part because his natural speaking voice is very old-sounding.
• Hazbin Hotel: Less the voice itself than it is the post-processing of said voice, but in the original English, Alastor's voice is given audible crackling akin to old American radios from the 1920s and 1930s, befitting for somebody known as the Radio Demon. The Japanese dub drops this vocal effect for the character, as Japanese radios from that time were less likely to have that level of audio distortion due to being built to different standards, meaning the joke wouldn't have translated quite as well.
• In the original version of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983), Skeletor has a nasal and high-pitched voice. In the Italian dub of Season 1, he instead has a deep, raspy voice. This change was probably done to make less obvious that Skeletor and Orko shared the same voice actor. Subverted in Season 2, where the entire cast was replaced and Skeletor's new voice actor did the role similarly to the original version.
• In the Singaporean English dub of Jelly Jamm, Goomo not only has a deeper voice than in the British English dub, but he also lacks his lisp.
• Jimmy Two-Shoes: Dwayne Hill uses a sniveling high-pitched voice for Samy that befits his status as Lucius' timid and ever-abused sycophant. In the Canadian French dub however, Philippe Martin gives the character a low-pitched Simpleton Voice instead.
• In the German dub of The Little Rascals, the voice actors sound more mature than the original Americans. Buckwheat in particular sounds like a man doing a falsetto.
• The Loud House:
  • In the original version, Luan speaks normally. In the Italian dub, she speaks in a high-pitched voice that often borders on a mocking falsetto, which somehow fits with her character's constant barrage of puns and overall annoying attitude.
  • In the original, Lynn Jr., as one of the resident tomboys, has a fairly low voice and is voiced by an actress much older than herself. In the Danish dub, her voice actress is the same age as her (13 when season 1 was dubbed) and as such voices her with a higher and more believable teen girl voice.
  • Again in the Italian dub, Elena Perino's performance as Luna has a lower pitch and lacks the raspiness of Nika Futterman's interpretation.
  • In the original version, Lucy sounds low and sad. In Italian, she's given a more high-pitched and raspy voice, sounding more like a stereotypical creepy girl.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • In the Romanian dub of the first three seasons most of the female characters sound noticeably younger compared to the English dub, which has more appropriate voices for the adult ponies. Starting with season 4, the kiddy voices are steadily replaced with more mature-sounding ones, however.
  • The Italian dub had a similar issue: in Season 1 Rarity had a very high-pitched and whiny voice, while Rainbow Dash was given a voice a bit too masculine. After complaints, both voice actresses changed their takes as the characters in season 2.
• The Owl House: In the original version, The Collector is voiced by a woman to emphasize his child-like mind. However, some dubs, such as Brazilian Portuguese, Italian and Romanian gave them an adult male voice, possibly to make them sound more threatening.
• Phineas and Ferb:
  • In the Romanian dub, Phineas sounds appropriately young in the first season, but starting with the second, he received a deep, nasally voice very unlike his English voice.
  • In the original English version, Baljeet has a high pitched voice and an obvious Indian accent. He has neither in the German dub, most likely due to how hard it would be to affect an Indian accent while speaking German.
• The Powerpuff Girls: In the LatAm dub, Buttercup was voiced by Rossy Aguirre who, as we have established above, has a high-pitched nasally voice. Mojo Jojo is voiced by Enrique Cervantes, who has a very deep and energetic voice unlike the deep but lower voice of the original language.
• Ready Jet Go!:
  • In English, Jet is voiced by an adult woman. However, in the Korean, Brazilian and Arabic dubs, he's voiced by an adult man, which can be unnerving if you're used to his prepubescent, androgynous voice in the English dub.
  • Speaking of the Arabic dub, Mindy sounds like she's 30 in that dub. Not very fitting for a 4-year-old.
• In The Ren & Stimpy Show, Stimpy has a high-pitched Simpleton Voice in English and most dubs, while the Latin American Spanish dub gives him the low-pitched variation.
• Rocko's Modern Life:
  • Rocko is voiced by Carlos Alazraqui in the English dub, but in the European Portuguese dub, he is voiced by a woman. This is averted in the Static Cling special where he got a male voice actor.
  • Heffer is voiced by a man who is Tom Kenny in the English dub. However, he is voiced by a woman in the Greek dub.
  • The Norwegian dub gives Rocko a slightly angry voice as opposed to his soft-spoken voice in the original English dub, not to mention he also sounds much older. Pretty unfitting given his innocent, timid demeanor.
• In most iterations of Scooby-Doo, Shaggy has a high-pitched and nasal voice. Italian dubs initially followed the route, until the live-action movies where Oreste Baldini became the character's main voice actor and started voicing him with a lower pitch sounding like something in between a Simpleton Voice and a surfer dude.
• The Simpsons:
  • In the original American version, Milhouse is voiced by Pamela Hayden, who gives him a squeaky voice. In the Italian dub, he's voiced by Davide Lepore, who gives him a deep, old man-like voice.
  • Waylon Smithers has a very deep, pinched voice in the original American version courtesy of Harry Shearer, but in the Japanese dub, Kosuke Meguro gives him a high-pitched voice, making him sound like an effeminate gay man. Now Hilarious in Hindsight because Smithers has been confirmed to be gay.
• The Smurfs (1981):
  • In the original version, Hefty and Grouchy have gruff, manly voices. In the Italian dub, they are both voiced by Giuppy Izzo, who was a teenage girl at that time, so they both sounded more cutesy and childlike than the original. She also makes Grouchy sound like a whiny kid rather than a grump, changing the intonation of his Catchphrase from "I hate..." to "I haaaate...". This is averted in live-action films and later adaptations, where they both got male voice actors.
  • Also in the Italian dub, Brainy still has a nasally and whiny voice, but it's very deep (much deeper than all the other Smurfs), instead of high-pitched like the original.
• Sonic Prime: In the original as well as the international dubbed version, Tails is dubbed by a woman, imitating a boy's voice. But in the Polish dubbing, for some reason they decided to hire an adult male actor who sounds like he was an adult in this version, which has been severely criticized by the Polish Sonic fandom.
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • In almost all the dubs, Plankton has a deep, booming voice which serves as a funny contrast to his small size, and also evoking Evil Sounds Deep. Except in the Japanese dub, where he has a cutesy, high-pitched voice (which is actually provided by the same female voice actor who voices Sandy in that dub).
  • Similarly, Patrick has a deep Simpleton Voice in almost all the dubs, but it's high-pitched in the Japanese one until season 9, when he received a male voice actor.
• Steven Universe: In some dubs, like the Cantonese dub of the movie, Steven has a very deep voice, one that is far different from Zach Callison's voice that English watchers are used to hearing and should not be coming out of the mouth of a teenage boy.
• Thomas & Friends:
  • A strange variation. While most dubs of earlier seasons utilised a narrator, the Japanese version utilised a full voice cast. Even when the series switched to CGI and all regions began to use full voice work, the Japanese version mainly stuck to the direction it originally had, sometimes leading to rather divergent takes on the cast. In particular Thomas and Percy are voiced by female actresses, making them sound more legitimately like children, while both English dubs give them high pitched but still adult sounding voices by male actors.
  • The series has always had two English dubs, and after the switch to CGI, some characters have different voice actors in each one. For example, in the British dub, Henry has a slow, deep voice and Emily has a Scottish accent. In the American dub, they both have high-pitched voices.
• Total Drama: In the original English version, Emilie-Claire Barlow's voice for Courtney is rather high-pitched. In the Romanian dub, for the first three seasons, she is voiced by Lucia Rogoz, who gives her a deeper, less child-like voice. However, Iulia Tohotan, whose voice is much more similar to Courtney's English voice, replaces the original voice actress in All-Stars.
• Some dubs of the Tom and Jerry short Blue Cat Blues such as Japanese and Latin American Spanish make Jerry's Inner Monologue voice sound more like a child, similar to his voice in Tom and Jerry: The Movie.
• The Transformers:
  • In the original version, Menasor has a deep, growly voice like all the other combiners. While the original Italian dub followed suit, in the 2008 redub his new voice actor, Toni Orlandi, gives him a slow, high-pitched voice that makes the giant robot sound like a drunken old man with some kind of mental issues (which is how he is depicted on his original toy description).
  • Swindle has a nasal voice in the original dub. The first Italian dub gave him two different voice actors that switched around in various episodes: one voiced Swindle with a gruff voice with a south-Italian accent, sounding like a cartoonish mobster, while the other gave him a completely unfitting Simpleton Voice.
• In The Unlucky Tug's American fandub of TUGS, Ten Cents has an older and deeper voice.

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