Hey, It's That Voice! - Television Tropes & Idioms

Hey everybody, look at me! I'm Seto Kaiba! I have a dragon fetish and I sound like Brock from Pokémon!

—Yami, Yu-Gi-Oh The Abridged Series

Shana: That's strange, but Taiga Aisaka is somehow no stranger to me... but why I have that feeling, I don't know.

Protagonist: Maybe because your voices seem similiar...

—Dengeki Gakuen RPG: Cross of Venus^*

So, you're sitting down, watching an animated superhero beat the snot out of a villain. The villain reels back and snarls "Is that all you've got?" at the hero. Hey... wait a second! You know that voice! It's [that character] from [that show] you love so much! And the hero, he's sounding a little familiar too...

This is the voice-actor version of Hey, It's That Guy!. While most of this trope is composed of animated examples, a few live-action versions exist.

This can be a little harder to spot than the guy on the live action show. You lose all the visual cues, and people don't always use the same "voice" when voice acting. It can also depend on the individual actor, their range, the number of things you've heard them in, and last but not least how much attention you're paying to recognizing them. If you watch enough animation, you will find your ear becoming better attuned to picking people out, even when they change their voice.

Often results in fun in the form of a voice-actor version of "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon", connecting disparate characters via a chain of common voice actors. In the case of anime, this get even more complicated when playing with both Japanese and American actors.

Possible result of Pigeon Holed Voice Actor. If it happens within the show itself, it might result in a character Talking To Himself. Taken to an extreme with Actor Allusion.

Compare You Look Familiar, You Might Remember Me From. Inverse of The Other Darrin. If you want to make jokes about it, come to the Voice Actor Jokes page.

In an effort to avoid redundancies and give this trope some semblance of order, all voice actors have been alphabetized by their last names. If you know a voice that is not on here please add it in the appropriate place. Check IMDB

or The Other Wiki

if you don't know the name of the voice. If you want to mention a program that has multiple recognizable voices, mention it on that program or game's page. Also, some of the really big common examples of this have their own pages, to wit Megumi Hayashibara, Takehito Koyasu, Kotono Mitsuishi, Kikuko Inoue, Tomokazu Seki, Megumi Ogata, and so on. And please remember that this is for instances where a voice actor's voice is recognizable, not their resumes.

Sub-Categories

Examples Besides Ones That Speak English and Japanese

Anime dubbed in countries besides ones that speak English and Japanese

Almost the entirety of the grid of Animax Latin America in its Spanish language branch gives you this effect, due to the fact that a good chunk of its series were dubbed by Venezuelan Dubbing Houses, who share a common pool of voice actors. And the voices are rarely pigeonholed, who makes this effect even more surreal and jarring.
- Pfffft, that's nothing compared with all the LULZ and OH NOES that Latin American anime fans have had from the 80's onwards, in regards to anime dubbing. Between people like Jesús "Chucho" Barrero (Koji Kabuto, Pegasus Seiya, Nueno-sensei), René García (Vegeta, Cygnus Hyoga, Hanamichi Sakuragi, Hikaru Matsuyama), Patricia "Patty" Acevedo (Usagi, Ryoumou Shimei, Chi Chi), María Fernanda Morales, (Yoshiko, Minako, Yui Kasuga), Gabriel Ramos (Ash Ketchum, Ippo Makunouchi), Mario Castañeda (Nephrite, Son Goku) among MANY other dozens of VAs... This Troper can spend HOURS talking about it.
And it's not only the English and LA Spanish language where those things happen. The whole main cast of Ghost In The Shell Stand Alone Complex, in it's German dub, is made up with the voice actors who also did Stargate SG 1. So we have:
- Christin Marquitan as Kusanagi and Samantha Carter
- Tilo Schmitz as Bato and Teal'c
- Klaus-Peter Grap as Togusa and Daniel Jackson
- Erich Räuker as Ishikawa and Jack O'Neil.
  - That... is awesome!
Speaking of Brock, this troper fell of her chair when she heard the DUTCH VA for Brock do a commercial VA-ing a drop from 'Dreft' which is a cleaning product for washing dishes.
The first voice actor of Vegeta in the German dub is also the voice actor of Spongebob Squarepants and Dr. Crowler! It feels so wrong when you imagine Spongebob screaming "It's over EIGHT THOUSAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAND!"
The Philippines is actually a country that had English as an official language besides Tagalog, the national language, but Filipino voice actors are notorious for avoiding being pigeonholed as much as possible. However, pigeonholes are unavoidable, and Talking To Himself cases are the norm.
- Speaking of which, since Filipino voice actors speak good English, they sometimes even dub the English versions of anime broadcasted in Animax Southeast Asia network that people thought the voice actors are Americans.
- I'll introduce some of the Filipino voice actors if you want an idea.
  - Rowena Raganit has a voice and pigeonhole that is similar to Megumi Ogata and Romi Paku in perfecting Crossdressing Voices and Cool Big Sis, but with wider range. In Code Geass for example, he was expected to hear Rowena voice Rolo, and also with Nagisa and Cornelia, but as Kallen and Kaguya almost blew this troper's head off.
  - Charmaine Sagrado is also a similar case. Charmaine can voice male Kid Heroes like Netto Hikari of Rockman EXE and Ryoma of Prince Of Tennis, yet this troper was shocked when he heard her as Nagi in Hayate No Gotoku. And Aya Natsume of Tenjou Tenge.
  - Grace Cornel is usually being pigeonholed as the Genki Girl in many roles, as her voice had the youthful quality of a 15-year-old girl. However, this troper thinks that hearing her as Kaname Chidori of Full Metal Panic is quite odd.

Film dubbed in countries besides ones that speak English

The Argentinian Spanish dubbing of Cars has racers Juan María Traverso and Marcos Di Palma as the voices of Doc Hudson and Chick Hicks.
- The UK version of Cars has Harv voiced by Jeremy Clarkson.
When a German dub for an animated movie needs a sonorous middle-aged male, Thomas Fritsch is the prime (or only?) choice. Scar, Diego, Aslan, Tai Lung, and Mr. Bonejangles are just the tip of this particular iceberg...
One of Snape's Mexican Spanish-dubbed voices also supplies the dubbed voice of Rorschach and Scooby Doo.

Live Action TV dubbed in countries besides ones that speak English

Happens a lot in live-action series dubbed in non-English languages.
- For instance, Sergio Di Stefano is the Italian dub voice for William Riker, Gregory House, Jack O'Neill, Johnny Bravo, Clow Reed, and several others.
- In Brazil, some voice actors are associated with the actors they usually dub (Garcia Jr. for Schwarzenegger, Mario Jorge for Eddie Murphy, Julio Chaves for Mel Gibson, the late Newton da Matta for Bruce Willis).
- Also happens a lot in France: Richard Darbois, for example, is considered the semi-official french voice of Harrison Ford. Can lead to interesting situations, considering he also dubbed William Shatner, Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Genie from Aladdin...
- Western series and movies are also dubbed into Japanese, which can create all sorts of strange images in the heads of anime fans living in the West. Fans of Ishida Akira squeed over his dubbing of Jack Dawson and Tom Riddle, while this Troper found it amusing (and slightly mindscrew-y) to hear Toshihiko Seki as David Tennant's Doctor.
This also happens quite often in German dubs. One particularly egregious example: Gudo Hoegel, German voice of Captain Jonathan Archer (Star Trek: Enterprise), is also the German voice of Darkwing Duck. Lets Get Dangerous, indeed.
A German TV-movie version of Hamlet was dubbed into English and later featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000. The actor voicing Claudius is quite clearly Ricardo Montalban, unless there is or was another actor with exactly the same voice.

Western Animation dubbed in countries besides ones that speak English

In the german dub of Avatar (which, in a rare version of the Pasture effect, This Troper has grown fond of and likes the voices more than the english ones [except for the one Azula line in the Beach Episode, but I digress]), Prince Zuko is voiced by the same voice actor and also in a similiar style as Christopher freakin' Turk. He will never be able to take Zuko seriously again.
- In the dutch dub, almost all the higher soldiers in the earth kingdom have the same voice. That thay also look alike isn't helping...
This troper freaked out when she noticed that the Brazillian voice actors for Ulrich and Kaoru are the same person.
Eric Cartman's voice actor in the german dub of South Park also provides the voice for the Chupa-Chups mascot in the TV-ads, more funny is that its catchphrase calls "Leckt mich". The direct translation would be "lick me" but in daily speech it just means "screw you!", like in "screw you guys, i'm going home!" This troper laughed hard when he saw this ad for the first time.
It's almost no coincidence that Lizemijn Libgott, Dutch voice actor, voices (nearly) all Disney roles of Ashley Tisdale, from Candace to Sharpay.