- Assassin's Creed Rogue Arguably multiple examples but a particularly jarring one is the main character Shay Patrick Cormac. Voice actor Steven Piovesan is a Canadian and his Irish accent is at times painfully bad.
- Most of the supposedly American characters in Heavy Rain are played by British actors and it shows, as they slip constantly, especially for Ethan Mars.
- Even worse are the kids, whose accents fall into What the Hell Is That Accent? category and whose lines are oftentimes incomprehensible were it not for the subtitles.
- Norman Jayden's voice and motion capture actor, Leon Ockenden attempts to go for a New England accent with his character. Needless to say, it doesn't sound very convincing.
- When Ethan screams for his son JASON!, it sounds more like he's yelling JAAAY-SUNG!
- Tim Curry frequently slips into his normal accent when playing a Russian during Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3. This adds to the scenes though, rather than take away from them.
- Tim Curry also voiced the titular character of Gabriel Knight and even though he managed to do a southern American accent well, he slipped a few times here as well.
- In the Ensemble Stars! story Keep In Character!, Akatsuki join the Theatre club to put on Cinderella, despite none of them having any acting skill whatsoever: Kuro tries to play a Prince Charming but can't hold back his rough mannerisms, Keito makes a good effort playing an ugly stepsister (despite being a hilariously inappropriate role for him) but slips back into his normal rude speech when Wataru riles him up too much, and Souma fails so badly even in rehearsals that Wataru gives him permission to just talk like he normally does no matter how strange it sounds for a high-class lady to be talking like an old-school samurai.
- Loxley from Fallout speaks in a faux-posh British accent that sometimes slips into an American one. An interview with designer Chris Taylor confirmed that the joke with his character was that he was trying to model himself after Robin Hood with the accent (in post-apocalyptic America) but not doing it very well.
- Cyberpunk 2077: All three members of "Japanese" lazerpop group "Us Cracks" speak English well, but have thick Japanese accents and sprinkle their speech with Gratuitous Japanese. At least, in public. Corner them backstage, and their accents are suddenly much less pronounced, and if you sneak a little you can hear one of them practicing her Japanese accent in front of the mirror. In a late game gig where you act as bodyguard for one of them, she casually code switches from an American accent to the exaggerated Japanese one depending on if she's talking to you or a fan.
- In Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, Celestia Ludenberg's French/German accent strangely disappears whenever she gets angry. This is later revealed to be not so strange after all, as she assumed a false alias which allowed her to pin the blame of a murder on another student, Yasuhiro Hagakure; her real name is Taeko Yasuhiro.
- Played with in Guild Wars. During EotN's hero tutorial, Budol Ironfist states that he'll try to speak like a human (as opposed to the standard Scottish dwarf accent). He continually lapses back into dwarf speech.
- Conker in Conker's Bad Fur Day slips between British and American quite frequently.
- T.T. in Diddy Kong Racing is supposed to have an American accent, but traces of his voice actor's native British accent keep slipping in and out depending on the voice line.
- A weird example occurs in Fire Emblem: Three Houses (in that the character suddenly slips from their native accent to a foreign one), during a scene where the protagonist meets with Rhea in the monastery: at the beginning of one of Rhea's lines, she sounds like she's Scottish for a second, then goes back to her normal American accent.
- The Irish Clover Bartender from Toonstruck constantly switched from an Irish to a Scottish accent, Flux Wildly points this out.
- That was actually an aversion of both this trope, and the Scot Ireland trope. Notice he's wearing a kilt, too; his accent ping-pongs back and forth because he's half Scottish, half Irish.
- In Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, a beggar with a raspy voice might suddenly perk up when you ask them about the weather. This is because only lines unique to the beggars (like asking for and receiving alms) were recorded with the "beggar voice." For any lines they share with non-beggars, like a generic response to requests for information, they simply use the normal townsperson voice.
- In The Saboteur, Robin Atkin Downes tends to switch between the Irish accent his character is supposed to have and his British dialect.
- A rare text example of this trope comes in the French localization of Pokémon Sun and Moon and its Alternate Universe version, Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon. In most versions of the game, Kahuna Hapu speaks in a very formal, almost Antiquated Linguistics style of speech. In the French localization, Hapu (called Paulie in the French localization) speaks much less formally and is instead given something akin to a Québécois accent, with words like "moi" and "toi" rendered as "moué" and "toué." However, this is not consistent and some other lines of hers have her use the standard "pronunciation."
- Given that Quebec French developed from an archaic form of Modern French, the Antiquated Linguistics still apply.
- Ed Ivory has a cameo as the Human Noble's tutor in Dragon Age: Origins. The fact that the tutor is practically the only human in the entire Highever Castle with a noticeable American accent. However, this may be more of a Not Even Bothering with the Accent than this trope.
- Variant: Kaptain Natashikov's voice actress in Rogue Trooper: Quartz Zone Massacre can't decide if she's supposed to have a German or Russian accent.
- The voice actress for the protagonist of A Vampyre Story tries to mix a French accent with a Transylvanian one. Not surprisingly, her success is mixed as well, though she does a better job of it than you might expect.
- Mass Effect:
- Mark Meer (the voice actor for male Shepard) is Canadian. He does his best to sound completely neutral in regards to accent, but it does slip through from time to time (most noticeably when saying "been" with a long E sound).
- Canadian voice actor John Ulyatt does a decent Scottish accent as Engineer Kenneth Donnelly in Mass Effect 2. However, his other big part in the game is arms dealer Donovan Hock (in Kasumi's loyalty mission) and is, to copy-and-paste from the Heroes entry, "a truly fascinating trainwreck of an accent". It vacillates from American to Irish to Scottish to Russian and back again, often within the space of a single sentence. It was supposed to be a South African accent.
- In Knights of the Old Republic Bastila is voiced by Jennifer Hale, a Canadian (who also voices female Shepard). She fakes an Obi-Wan-style "Coruscanti" (British) accent.
- In Fallout 3, the Enclave President, John Henry Eden, is played by Malcolm McDowell; who attempts to sound like he's from the Southern US, for all of 3 minutes. Arguably justified because he's a supercomputer. Likewise, James, the Lone Wanderer's father, is voiced by the North Irish actor Liam Neeson, and he doesn't hide it too well.
- Canadian VA Gianpaulo Venuta tried and miserably failed to convince players that Far Cry 3 protagonist Jason Brody was a California native. Like the Mark Meer example in Mass Effect, he often slips into Canadian pronunciations, only Venuta does it a lot more often, and not just with "been" and "about."
- In Mega Man X4, Iris' voice actress slips horribly during her death scene as she tries to fight her Australian accent and and so turns that scene unintentionally hilarious. The same thing happens with the Colonel, who's apparently also trying to hide that he's from the land down under but just can't quite manage (and gives up by the end of the scene).
- In Mini Ninjas, most of the voice actors are trying to adhere to a Chop Socky accent, but commonly slip into more genuine Japanese accents. Huh.
- Final Fantasy:
- Final Fantasy VI's habit of using generic dialogue for scenes where any character could be in the party has surreal results when Cyan slips out of his Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe accent, Wild Child Gau loses his Hulk Speak, and Umaro stops his usual unintelligible howling to speak in totally normal sentences.
- Final Fantasy VII has this happen In-Universe when Reeve is identified as being Cait Sith when he begins talking in his natural accent (Kansai in the original, Southern in the English localisation), which he uses to voice Cait Sith, rather than the neutral accent the other Shinra members know him as having. Unfortunately, the game's inconsistent localisation meant Cait Sith loses his accent in many scenes before that, meaning a lot of players didn't realise he was supposed to have an accent...
- In Dissidia Final Fantasy we have Gabranth. Played by the Scottish Michael E. Rodgers in Final Fantasy XII, Rodgers did a pretty good upper-class British accent for Gabranth in XII. However for Dissidia he couldn't be reached so Square-Enix brought in The Other Darrin, American-born Keith Ferguson, who voiced Gabranth's brother Basch in XII. Ferguson also doesn't do a bad job of making Gabranth sound British—he just can't seem to decide what kind of British to use, and quite often Gabranth slips from British into outright Cockney. This has inspired the Memetic Mutation "HATRED IS WOT DROIVES ME!" Ferguson toned down the accent a bit for the prequel Dissidia 012. The problem now is occasionally it's too toned down and he slips into Not Even Bothering with the Accent.
- Wakka's accent slips briefly (but noticeably) early into Final Fantasy X on the line "A flier? My kind'o customer!"
- In Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Southern-Fried Private Haggard is played by a Canadian who puts on a fairly convincing Texan accent. However, there is one anomalous moment in the mission "Crack the Sky" in which he clearly says, "Are you sure aboat that?" in response to a query from Sweetwater.
- In Grand Theft Auto V, Trevor's mother switches between a regular American accent, a Cockney accent and a Southern accent every sentence. It's probably to highlight how she's just another of Trevor's hallucinations.
- Metal Gear:
- The original dub of Metal Gear Solid, while an extremely good dub for the time and even today, struggled with this because the actors hadn't quite standardised how the characters were supposed to sound yet.
- Revolver Ocelot is a frequent offender. When his arm gets chopped off, his accent changes completely. If you run into the tripwires, he yells "you idiot!" with an accent so removed from either of those two accents that it's difficult to even tell it's the same character. During the torture dialogue where he talks about 20th Century Russia, his accent gains a prominent Russian twang which is usually absent.
- Mantis also wobbles between a goofy generically-European twang, and general American. Compare "his mental shielding was very strong" and "the greatest practitioner of psychokinesis and telepathy in the world!".
- Sniper Wolf has an accent that is as widely inconsistent as it is unidentifiable.
- Gray Fox shifts frequently between a general American and Greg Eagles' own African-American. Possibly cruel to ask someone with a non-rhotic accent to fake a rhotic one while constantly screaming the word "more!". It soon turns to "mo'!".
- Liquid's version of Evil Brit Recieved Pronunciation incorporates a lot of American twangs and occasionally turns towards straight-up Cockney.
- Happens In-Universe in a deeply buried Codec conversation with Master Miller, if Ocelot puts a bomb in Snake's equipment (which he often won't do), and the player calls Miller after defusing it. Miller will be so outraged that he slips into a British-sounding accent for a couple of sentences... before pulling himself together rather quickly when he realises what has happened.
- When Snake speaks French in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, he does it with a prominent French-Canadian accent. (His voice actor is Canadian.)
- In Peace Walker, Strangelove can pull this off around twice a sentence. Her accent is consistent in V, but also distinctly Estuary English despite her being from Manchester.
- The original dub of Metal Gear Solid, while an extremely good dub for the time and even today, struggled with this because the actors hadn't quite standardised how the characters were supposed to sound yet.
- Carmelita Fox has a different accent in each of the three Sly Cooper games, from a slight Hispanic accent in Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus, to completely American in Sly 2: Band of Thieves, to very Hispanic in Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves and Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time. This is mostly caused by the fact that she also had four different voice actresses.
- BioShock arguably does this intentionally to drop hints that Atlas isn't all that he seems.
- Also occurs in-universe when he killed Diane Mc Clintock because she walked into his room at the wrong time and caught him recording an audio log in his natural voice.
- The most severe example occurs during Burial at Sea when he becomes furious that Elizabeth is Too Broken to Break and only laughs and eggs him on when he threatens her with a lobotomy — he rips the icepick out of her eyesocket and doesn't bother to hide his Brooklyn accent as he berates her.
You're a regular hero, ain't cha? Can't risk ripping the only part a' you that's worth a damn! Well, there's more than one way to fry an egg!- Likewise, Andrew Ryan affects an American announcer voice in the opening slide show and in other recordings, but sometimes lapses into his native Russian accent when he's speaking directly to the player over the radio. Perhaps the most obvious is when he speaks to Dr. Langford moments before killing her.
- Call of Duty:
- Alex Mason, the American protagonist in Call of Duty: Black Ops, is voiced by the very Australian Sam Worthington doing his best attempt at an American accent. He fails completely. Highlights include:"Todaye is the daye we succeeyde."
"Reznov killed him ROIT IN FRONNA ME!"
"EWE FACKING SUNNOVA BAYTCH!
" - Thankfully, he's gotten a lot better with it by Call of Duty: Black Ops II. The game itself still has some examples, though — Salazar's voice actor sounds as if he can't decide whether the character has a really thick Nicaraguan accent or barely any at all.
- Alex Mason, the American protagonist in Call of Duty: Black Ops, is voiced by the very Australian Sam Worthington doing his best attempt at an American accent. He fails completely. Highlights include:
- In Professor Layton and the Curious Village, Flora's first line, "well, I'd rather not say..." is spoken in a British accent, but she has a Western accent for the rest of the series. Also, from the second game onwards, there are few characters other than Layton, Luke, and Chelmey who even have British accents, despite being entirely set in England!
- While Clive, Dimitri, and Claire from the third game have decent accents, the fact that some characters actually sound British makes the fact that some don't really jarring. Apart from Flora, Katia and Don Paolo stand out.
- Morrigan's English voice in Marvel vs. Capcom 3 slips back and forth between British, American, and a strange attempt at Irish, even though she's supposed to be Scottish, and her voice actress is Welsh.
- Hydrophobia does this to no end, it seems - Kate's accent shifts so often and frequently that it's like an international tour.
- In Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Adam sounds very noticeably Brooklyn when trying to talk his way into the DPD morgue. At the time the scene's lines were recorded, Adam's character hadn't been fully fleshed out, so the accent wasn't completely set in stone.
- The Penguin in Batman: Arkham City, voiced by Nolan North, is supposed to sound like an archetypal working class London gangster. North's Cock-er-nee accent, worthy of the great Dick Van Dyke himself, varies between "not quite authentic" and "Australian". Perhaps Bob Hoskins wasn't available. May be justified given the Penguin's backstory in the Arkhamverse: he's from Gotham, he just hung out with street toughs while he was supposed to be getting an education in England, meaning the accent sounds fake because it is fake.
- Happens again in Arkham Origins, not just with the Penguin, but with his two henchgirls Candy and Tracey. Earlier, when The Joker poses as the captured Black Mask, he tries sounding like the latter, but comes off more like a Mafia gangster (not hiding the fact that Troy Baker voices both the Joker and the fake Black Mask). Then, when the real Black Mask, Roman Sionis (voiced by Brian Bloom), is brought before Batman, the former calls the Joker out, forcing him to scold Sionis for not "play[ing] along" in his true voice!
- In Perfect Dark Zero, Joanna lacks her English accent from the original, at least partly due to the change in voice actors from British to American.
- Shadow the Hedgehog, as voiced by David Humphrey in Sonic Adventure 2 and Sonic Heroes. Shadow would usually speak in an American accent, but a few lines here and there would be spoken in an English accent. This case is strange because David Humphrey himself is American, and Shadow is decidedly not British.
- In PN03, during the cutscene when Vanessa discovers the clone of herself, she momentarily loses her German accent.
- Catherine O'Hara from Valkyria Chronicles keeps changing between a Scottish accent and an Irish one. Even voice actors seem to think Scotland and Ireland are the same.
- In Syphon Filter: The Omega Strain and Dark Mirror, Mara Aramov has a noticeably weaker Russian accent than in previous games, at least partly due to being voiced by a Canadian-American (Jennifer Hale).
- Depending on the scene, Ulrika of Mana Khemia 2: Fall of Alchemy can either have a strong Southern accent or no accent. When she's gone for a while without any noticeable accent, the scenes with the southern accent can be rather jarring.
- The male dunmer in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim tend to slip between Keith Szarabajka's native American accent and some kind of overblown mixture of australian and cockney, seemingly at random. This is especially noticeable with Erandur the dunmer companion, whose unique dialogue suffers a lot from this.
- The Street Fighter games have had American, British and other non-Japanese characters since the very first game, which debuted in the 80s, but did not have English VAs until atleast the late 90s. Characters like Guile and Charlie got off with a relatively competent facsimile, while characters like Cammy and M.Bison...not so much.
- The commentators in the obscure 1997 sports video game Riot (a.k.a. Professional Underground League of Pain) are voiced by British people trying to do American accents. It shows.
- Chris's voice actor in Resident Evil – Code: Veronica is Canadian and he does an okay job sounding American, but his accent slips when he says the word sorry by using the Canadian pronunciation (long "O" sound) of the word.
Examples in which this trope is in-character:
- Maya Brooks of Mass Effect 3's "Citadel" DLC has a very...dubious American accent, which inexplicably also seems to have more than a bit of Australian in it. This is the first sign that she's not what she seems; after she's revealed to have been Evil All Along, she begins to use her more natural British accent.
- Final Fantasy:
- Used in-universe in Final Fantasy VII, when Reeve accidentally outs himself as a spy for AVALANCHE (and Cait Sith reveals that he's Reeve). The former speaks with a Kanto accent in the Japanese version, whereas the latter speaks with a Kansai accent. During the incident with the Mako cannon, Reeve starts speaking in Kansai, and Cait Sith in Kanto. The English version doesn't do this; presumably if they remade the game, they would use American and Scottish accents respectively.
- Vanille's voice actress in Final Fantasy XIII is Australian, but Vanille herself can't seem to decide if she's Australian, Cockney (which is the forefather to Australian), or some oddball hybrid of various Australian and British accents. However, it turns out Vanille, and her accent, are from Pulse; something she was trying to keep hidden. When this fact comes out in the open, she stops trying to disguise her accent. Fang, on the other hand, who doesn't have an Australian voice actress, is pitch-perfect Aussie, because she wasn't trying to hide it in the first place.
- In Final Fantasy XIV the goblin beastmen talk in Buffy Speak by replacing common words with different ones, such as "tongueflaps" for mouths and "jigglyshinies" for money. There is one goblin that doesn't talk this way and speaks normal English, causing the player character to react in shock since all the goblins they met before had always used buffy speak. This particular goblin explains that he learned how to speak properly in order to reach out to a wider audience for his business. However, he does have a few moments where he briefly slips back into buffy speak when distressed and then apologizes for it while correcting himself.
- One of the many Annas from Fire Emblem: Awakening faked a French-like accent in one of the DLCs maps and admits that she's faking it.
- Zeke in the inFamous series tends to go in and out of his Southern accent with it sometimes being very noticable and other times it will be almost non-existent.
- Wheatley in Portal 2 slips out of his British accent in a few places. Listen closely when he uses the extended card-games metaphor and when he boasts about reading books. Since Stephen Merchant, his voice actor, is from Bristol, UK, he was clearly doing it deliberately.
- Carlos from Resident Evil 3: Nemesis loses his latino accent partway through the game.
- The Cockney voice (Male 1) in Saints Row 2 was particularly guilty of this, especially because the cutscene dialogue barely changes from one voice to another, which leads The Boss spouting sentences that no English person would ever use. In Saints Row: The Third and Saints Row IV, Male 3 takes over as the Cockney voice. The newer voice actor is far more authentic, especially since more English slang words and phrases are inserted in place of Americanisms and any fixed dialogue in cutscenes is written to fit around all the voice characters.
- The fourth game has this happen deliberately for some of the voice sets during the 1950s simulation early in the game: The Boss will switch to a much more refined, upper-class version of their accent while the illusion holds, preserving The Boss's appearance as a suitably refined sort on a Leave it to Beaver type sitcom. As The Boss fights back and the illusion breaks down, their real accent returns.
- Especially with the Cockney accent, which goes from the usual gravelly "street punk" Cockney to a smoother, high-nosed voice you would expect to hear from a member of the Royal Family, which makes the gradual decomposition back to the default roughness all the more hilarious.
- In the Adventure Game, So Blonde, you play a shallow and clueless teenage blonde girl. Despite being American, she has a noticeable British accent.
- Wolf O'Donnell in Star Fox 64 speaks with a faux English accent until in his death throes drops it for an American one to say "No way! I don't believe it!"
- Similarly, in Star Fox Adventures, the American-sounding Fox has a tendency to lapse into British pronunciations of words. In the scene where he talks to Belina after rescuing her from the mines, Fox completely loses any traces of an American accent. It's just for a few lines, but still!
- Let's not even get started with Krystal's faux British accent in Star Fox: Assault.
- The Spy from Team Fortress 2 has voice clips where he tries to actually imitate the other characters, sometimes to mock them. One that gets used for fan videos quite often is "Why don' we head on beck to tha base, pardner?" in a butchered American Southern accent when disguised as the Engineer. This contrasts to the actual gameplay mechanic of voice commands becoming that of whomever the player is disguised as. It seems the spy himself might not be as good an actor as one would think.
- Lost Dimension has Mana Kawai, who speaks in a faux English accent, but occasionally a few French words slip into her dialogue. She eventually admits to Sho that she's not English, nor has she ever been to England — she just started speaking like that because she thought it was cute.
- In Yakuza 2 and it's remake, Yakuza Kiwami 2, when Kaoru Sayama travels to Tokyo after getting involved with the plot, she adopts a formal Tokyo dialect, possibly feeling insecure about her Kansai accent. After she and Kiryu nearly getting arrested, she asks him for a night out, during which she briefly returns to speaking in Kansai.
- A Way Out is made by a Swedish company, and though the voice actors for Vincent and Leo do a good job at emulating American accents, their Swedish nationalities slip in every once in a while.
