Vocal Dissonance in live-action TV.
- The Addams Family:
- Uncle Fester is a large man, but with a very high voice.
- When Cousin Itt speaks incomprehensibly (which is either speaking very fast or speaking in a different language he made up), he has a very high voice. However, when he was made to speak normally in one episode, he had a much deeper voice.
- This was a big part of Ms. Brahms' character on Are You Being Served? — she is a beautiful young woman working in an up-market department store but speaks like a working-class Cockney. One episode revolves around this — Ms. Brahms is chosen as a spokesmodel for the store, but they have the voice of Mr. Grace's nurse dubbed over this because her voice is more up-market. A British Lord is attracted to her and wants to meet for a date, based largely on her sexy voice. In the end, he immediately goes to the nurse, even though she looks nothing like the woman in the ad.
- A frequent gag on The Benny Hill Show was to have male vocalists singing in high female registers, and vice versa.
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
- Jonathan crooning a forties pop song in the Season 4 episode "Superstar". Pro athlete, military genius, star of The Matrix, and now he's Sinatra.
- Drusilla dresses like a Goth singer, acts like a Serial Killer and talks with an extremely soft voice.
- Doctor Who: In "The Eleventh Hour", this is Played for Drama and used to throw a shapeshifting alien straight into the Uncanny Valley. The first instance involves it shifting to look like a man holding a dog on a leash... only for the man to bark with the dog's voice. Later, what looks like a woman and her two daughters is discovered to be the alien when it uses the wrong mouth for the woman's voice, resulting in a very small girl speaking with an adult woman's voice, while the "mother"'s mouth remains closed.
- The Electric Company (1971) had a song about "Hircus of the Circus", an enormous strongman with a high-pitched voice.
- Scorpius of Farscape is rather freaky looking, which makes his smooth and urbane voice a surprise. He also fits it on another level, in that the soft-spoken voice is a conscious effort, and when really angry, Scorpius loses control, and in keeping with his Scarran ancestry, talks in a deep voice. This is also a contrast with his weak-looking body (as is the Super-Strength he also generally keeps repressed).
- Invoked in an episode of Frasier. Frasier and a lot of the KACL employees put on an old-time radio murder mystery to celebrate the station's anniversary and Roz was supposed to play a character with a very sexy voice. Unfortunately, she had to have an emergency dental procedure which left her mouth still numb from the Novocaine. Frasier spends a few moments building up her characters sultry, exotic accent, and she speaks in a mumbling, slurring mess.
- Kurt Hummel from Glee has an unnaturally high-pitched voice, especially in the first season. He's often mocked or bullied for it, as was his real-life actor.
- Get Smart. On a couple of occasions Maxwell Smart would meet with a CONTROL agent disguised as a scantily-clad showgirl, who spoke with a dubbed male voice for Rule of Funny.
- House of the Dragon: Caraxes, Daemon Targaryen's massive dragon, makes high-pitched and screeching sounds rather than the deep and rich Mighty Roar you would expect.
- Justified has Jimmy Tolan (Jesse Luken), a short, baby-faced man with a deep, imposing baritone.
- Knight Rider: KARR in the Hungarian dub, due to the robotic echo effect layered over the voice actor's performance, has such a high-pitched voice, he almost sounds feminine. A more accurate description would be to say he's an Ewok disguised as a car. It does a great job of undermining his malevolent aura.
- In several Clutch Cargo segments on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, Martha Stewart and Barbara Bush had blatant male voices.
- Live Forever As You Are Now with Alan Resnick: All of the clones have a digitized-Alan Resnick voice. Fine for Alan's clone, Teddy. Not so fine for the clones of old women or young boys.
- In the 3rd season premiere of Mr. Robot one of the hackers Elliott encounters is a dwarf with a bit of a deep voice.
- A horrifying example (to those involved anyway) occurs in Married... with Children. The men get hooked on a new phone sex line, only for them to eventually discover the woman behind "Butter's" sexy voice is Peggy's big and far-from-beautiful mother.
- Due to the nature of The Masked Singer, sometimes the voices will clash with the costumes.
- American version:
- Leopard has a deep, masculine voice, yet wears an Elizabethan-style Pimped-Out Dress.
- Gremlin's Ugly Cute design contrasts with their deep and gravelly voice.
- Grandpa Monster has the appearance as an old man, but has a really youthful voice.
- Other versions:
- On the German version the judges were shocked when they heard the beautiful Angel start singing in a harsh death growl.
- Conversely, the Dragon on the Australian version sings in a soft, high-pitched tone.
- American version:
- Miami Vice: pretty boy (and sartorial icon) Sonny Crockett has a distinctively nasal and hoarse voice.
- Moon Knight (2022) at a certain point brings in the Egyptian goddess Taweret, whose imposing hippo-woman features are contrasted to a friendly high-pitched voice with a posh British accent.
- The Muppets:
- You definitely wouldn't expect Sesame Street's Elmo to be voiced by some burly-looking black man.
- Jerry Nelson would also fit this with his gruff look, Manly Facial Hair and unusually large vocal range. Nelson was actually the first voice of Elmo (before Clash became his performer) and gave the cute little red Muppet a deep, gravelly voice.
- The Muppets have been known to do this with a few of their actual characters as well. On Fraggle Rock, for example, Brool the Minstrel is a furry, hulking, fanged cave monster with a jarringly sweet, soulful voice.
- Robin Williams once did a sketch on Sesame Street called "Two Robins" with an adorable little robin (bird) whose speaking voice is similar to Elmo. The two of them found various ways that even though they were so different, they were also the same. Williams then said that the bird was a great singer, whereas he couldn't sing (a joke in itself as Williams was a phenomenal singer). He then asked the robin if he would sing a song. The robin finally agreed, and launched into "Lullaby of Birdland" in a voice similar to Tony Bennett.
- You definitely wouldn't expect Sesame Street's Elmo to be voiced by some burly-looking black man.
- Played for laughs in the Gag Dub sketch The Olden Days from The Late Show (1992). When Governor Funbags compliments everyone at the table on their superbly dubbed voices, Caroline replies "Thank you Governor" in Judge Muttonchops' voice. Funbags continues, "With one or two exceptions."
- Power Rangers and Super Sentai have a situation similar to Digimon. (Makes sense, with the same sets of The Powers That Be — TOEI making the original, Saban adapting it.) In the American version, the Monster of the Week, as well as major villains, will sound growly or squeaky or otherwise be not-normal-human-y to better sound like they look. When watching the Japanese version, where this is often not so, it's strange when a beast of destruction or a cheesy rubber suit talks in a voice that could belong to any guy on the street — especially if it's a bad guy you know and remember sounding the part.
- In Hikonin Sentai Akibaranger, Yumeria, who is introduced speaking with a high, cutesy voice, switches to a deep, gravelly one when her cat ear headband falls off.
- Very common on RuPaul's Drag Race, where all the contestants, naturally, are Drag Queens, but in some cases, a queen may look entirely convincing as a woman until they speak, at which point this trope comes into effect. Rebecca Glasscock and Tyra Sanchez are two such queens who are extremely good at presenting as female but possess contrabass voices that can be startling the first time you hear them.
- Seinfeld had an episode featuring one of Elaine's friends dating a "high talker", a man with a high-pitched voice that made him sound like a woman (in what was a pretty blatant overdubbing job). In fact, he sounds almost exactly like Elaine's friend. This led to Elaine accidentally causing the two to break up when Jerry claims her friend was flirting with him. She calls her friend to confirm whether or not it was true, not realizing the high talker was the one who answered, who now has the idea in his head that his girlfriend might be unfaithful.
- Sesame Street:
- In one episode, Elmo uses Abby's wand to change Baby Bear and Alan's voices. When he makes them sound higher, Alan sounds the strangest as he's a grown man but was speaking in a helium voice. When he makes them sound lower, Baby Bear sounds the strangest as he's only about four years old but became a baritone.
- One animated skit shows a girl with a cold. She looks somewhere between four and seven, but sounds like an adult who's been smoking. Possibly the cold gave her a scratchy throat, but she didn't seem to be having trouble speaking, and she wasn't coughing.
- The Stephen J. Cannell series Sonny Spoon had an episode called "Who's Got Tonsillitis?" about a missing soul singer called Tonsillitis Brown who was so called because of how his real singing voice sounded like; he mimed to the voice of another singer. A pudgy white guy.
- Star Trek: The Next Generation: In one episode, Troi, Data, and O'Brien become possessed. The characters possessing them were all male, so Troi (the only woman in the trio) ended up with a deeper voice than she usually has.
- Star Trek: Voyager:
- Captain Janeway's voice is usually authoritative, which fits her personality, but when she gets hit with an anomaly in "Twisted", it becomes goofy and high, almost childish.
- In "Mortal Coil", during Neelix's vision quest, he sees his dead adult sister Alixia. At one point, she says, "Scared you!" in the voice of Naomi, a little girl.
- Supernatural: Once you look into his background, Crowley becomes an example. A demon formed from the soul of a Scotsman, inhabiting the body of an Americannote who, thanks to being played by Mark Sheppard, has a London accent.
- An episode of Veritas: The Quest has neo-Nazi villain Heinrich Cordova, who looks like a prototypical Aryan Ubermensch yet speaks with a Latino accent. The first words spoken to him in said episode are "You know Heinrich, I can never get used to that accent coming out of that face." Strange as it may seem, many German and Austrian immigrants came to South America in the early 20th century, and so there are many people in Argentina, Southern Brazil, Uruguay and to a lesser extent Paraguay and Venezuela with Spanish or Portuguese first names but Teutonic surnames. In fact, there are places like Colonia Tóvar and Treze Tílias which look exactly like a stereotypical Alpine village and the German language is still spoken.
