History Main / AccentsArentHereditary

* Children on the autism spectrum have sometimes been known to speak with foreign (or [[WhatTheHellIsThatAccent foreign-ish]]) accents. For example, two YouTubers with autism were born and raised in Australia, but the older sister has a British accent while the younger sister sounds slightly American. Their mother claims it’s because they watched a lot of American and British television shows.

** Autistic writer Kel Currie was born in Pennsylvania to Canadian parents, but moved to Nova Scotia at a young age. She now has an accent not typical to either country. Her non-autistic younger sister has a slight Cape Breton accent.

* Children on the autism spectrum have been known to speak with foreign (or [[WhatTheHellIsThatAccent foreign-ish]]) accents.

* Franchise/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles: The Turtles, growing up in New York City, all have American accents though they were raised by a Japanese immigrant. However they all have wildly different American accents suggesting they may have been raised as much by TV. Usually only Raph [[BrooklynRage sounds stereotypically New York,]] Mike is somewhere in [[SurferDude southern California,]] and Leo and Don are more [[UsefulNotes/AmericanAccents neutral/midwest.]]

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheRescuersDownUnder'', Cody has an American accent while his mother is heard speaking with an Australian accent. Some fans have theorized that Cody's absent father may been American, hence the disparity in his and mother's accents.

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheRescuersDownUnder'', Cody has an American accent while his mother is heard speaking with a Australian accent. Some fans have theorized that Cody's absent father may been American, hence the disparity in his and mother's accents.

* out of universe, this can be explained by these characters being revealed as relatives in later seasons, being a big [[TheTwist twist]] that probably wasn’t the original intention.

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* ''Anime/YuGiOh'': Zigfried has a noticeable accent, [[spoiler:but his younger brother Leon, doesn't.]]
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-->- '''Douglas:''' Two things, Arthur: Australian accents aren’t genetic; and you can’t do one.

* In ''Disney/TheLionKing'', everyone in the royal lion family speaks with American accents except for Mufasa's treacherous brother Scar, who has an [[EvilBrit English accent]] provided by Creator/JeremyIrons.

* In ''Disney/TheLionKing'', everyone in the royal lion family speaks with American accents except for Mufasa's treacherous brother Scar, who has a [[EvilBrit English accent]] provided by Creator/JeremyIrons.

* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Animaniacs}}'', Wakko Warner has an [[OopNorth Liverpudlian]] accent while his siblings have [[BrooklynRage New york ]] accents.

* Children on the autistic spectrum have been known to speak with foreign (or [[WhatTheHellIsThatAccent foreign-ish]]) accents.

* In ''Disney/TheLionKing'', everyone in the royal lion family speaks with American accents except for Mufasa's treacherous brother Scar, who has a [[EvilBrit British accent]] provided by Creator/JeremyIrons.
* In ''WesternAnimation/Shrek2'': King Harold and Queen Lillian both have British accents (and are played by British actors) but their daughter Fiona has an American accent. She's also married to someone with a Scottish accent.

A sub-trope of UnexplainedAccent. Compare TheKidsAreAmerican, where the adults have appropriate accents for their country of origin, but their children inexplicably have American accents.

* Webby of ''WesternAnimation/DuckTales2017'' was raised by her British grandmother in a Scottish mansion, yet speaks with a flawless American accent despite saying that she never heard one until she was seven.

* ''WesternAnimation/HowToTrainYourDragon'': The parental generation of Vikings all have Scottish accents[[note]]which would be weird by itself were they not in the area of the genuinely Viking-populated Scottish Hebrides[[/note]], but their children (including the protagonist) all have American accents. And then some of the other Vikings have ''English'' accents.

* ''Film/ThePhantomMenace'': Anakin Skywalker has an American accent. His mother, Shmi has a Swedish accent, or whatever the space equivalent is.

* ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'''s Peter and Lois Griffin both speak with thick, Rhode Island accents, but none of their children do: Meg and Chris sound like they're from [[ValleyGirl Southern]] [[SurferDude California]] while Stewie sounds like he's from [[EvilBrit the city of Westminster]]. Even when he finally outs himself as a FakeBrit, the trope still applies, as his accent is no different from his siblings.

* In ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'', Deanna Troi has a heavy Eastern-European accent. Her mother has a more American accent.[[note]]Deanna was originally conceived as an exotic character with an exotic accent to match, not unlike Ilia from ''Film/StarTrekTheMotionPicture''. However, actress Marina Sirtis actually began developing the accent while she was auditioning for the security chief role, after that character was changed from the ethnically-Latina Macha Hernandez to the ethnically-Russian Tasha Yar. While the other producers were liking Sirtis as Yar and Denise Crosby as Troi, Creator/GeneRoddenberry felt the roles would be better served by switching the actresses, and now recast as Troi, Sirtis further developed the accent as a "Betazoid" accent. However, when Majel Barrett was cast as Lwaxana, she was given carte blanche to play the role as essentially herself, with her own natural accent. This ended up carrying over to every other Betazoid character appearing in the franchise, all portrayed by actors using their own natural American accents, making Deanna's accent all that more of an outlier. Sirtis would gradually soften the accent over the course of the series, to the point where in the films and her appearances on ''[[Series/StarTrekVoyager Voyager]]'', Deanna has more of a Mid-Atlantic accent.[[/note]]
* In ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'', Dean often slips into a southern accent (as is natural for his Texas-born actor) despite moving around frequently as a child. His brother, Sam, doesn't speak with an accent.
* On ''Series/ChillingAdventuresOfSabrina'', Hilda speaks with an English accent while her sister Zelda speaks with an American accent, even though it's implied they grew up together in the United States.
* In ''Series/{{Shadowhunters}}'', character Izzy is played by actress Emeraude Toubia, who is the daughter of a Mexican mother and a Lebanese-American father. Because of this, the character speaks with a very noticeable accent not shared by any other members of her on-screen family.

* Sheldon Cooper of ''Series/TheBigBangTheory'' affects an East-Atlantic accent despite being from Texas, while the rest of his family have Texan drawls (although he does slip from time to time). This extends to the spin-off ''Series/YoungSheldon'', where he's nine years old. Narration from the pilot episode of that series explains that he chose to change his accent to sound smarter.

* Children on the autistic spectrum sometimes speak with foreign accents.