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Creator / Travis Willingham

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https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/dont_mess_with_travis_6.jpg
When I become Roy Mustang, there will be changes. On that day, all female cast members will be required to wear...TINY MINISKIRTS!
If authority needs to kick some ass, it needs a proper charismatic voice to do so.

Enter Travis Willingham.

Travis Hampton Willingham (born August 3, 1981) is an American voice actor born in Dallas, Texas. He originally started out as Col. Roy Mustang in Fullmetal Alchemist (2003). After that, he started getting pigeonholed into voicing characters that are either badasses or have a high rank or status, be it military or some other thing (not to mention a few characters Playing with Fire). He is somewhat memetically popular thanks to his infamous "tiny miniskirts" decree and the fact that "HE LOVES DOGS!" (and he actually does like cute things — not hard to believe considering his role as Mori-senpai). Like Vic Mignogna and Aaron Dismuke's Risembool Rangers, his loyal Miniskirt Army follows him from con to con. He is among the few voice actors to also get many live-action roles.

In 2005, he become famous for his non-anime activities when he took on Monica Rial in a tequila shot contest after Anime Weekend Atlanta. Needless to say, the result was hilarious and has come to be known as The Travis Willingham Tequila Story. Multiple versions were told; one each by Vic Mignogna, Monica Rial, and of course, Travis himself.

He has been doing dubbing for many California-based works, as have many other Funimation voice actors such as Troy Baker and Laura Bailey. And now, he's even living there. He's married to Laura Bailey as of 2011, and thus he's now officially a family man. Even more officially when on March 1 2018, Bailey sent out a Tweet revealing that she is pregnant with their first child, a son named Ronin who was born on June 28, 2018.

Has a Twitter account.

Due to becoming a union actor, Willingham primarily does video game voice overs and western animation nowadays, rarely getting any new anime roles, generally only reprising roles when he does anime. If he does get a new anime role, it's usually with Studiopolis.

Notable roles from Travis Willingham:

Anime

Video Games

Web Animation

Web Video

  • Critical Role:
    • Grog Strongjaw (Campaign 1)
    • Fjord (Campaign 2)
    • Bertrand Bell ("The Search for Grog" and Campaign 3) and Chetney Pock O'Pea (Campaign 3)

Western Animation

Other

  • Surprisingly enough, one of the four young punks at the bar in the live action film Secondhand Lions. Surprising because instead of portraying an authority figure, he plays a rebellious youth with a lot of disdain towards authority.
    • Also the source of one of his favorite stories to tell at conventions, as the director assumed Travis was a stuntman (given the fact that he's tall and quite buff), which resulted in Robert Duvall actually hitting him during the fight scene. After learning that Travis is a regular actor, Duvall apologized profusely and gave him $500 to make up for it, at which point all was forgiven.
  • Had a cameo as a soldier sent to take down Frank Castle in a season one episode of The Punisher (2017), only to meet a grisly end to a spike trap.

I would like to TROPE!

  • Cowardly Lion: In Real Life. He's 6'4" and built like a football player, but will visibly recoil and Screams Like a Little Girl when confronted with anything horror-related. See any instance on Critical Role when the horror tropes come out, and his walk-through of a haunted house for their Kickstarter stretch goal.
  • Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Towers over his wife, Laura Bailey.
  • Ink-Suit Actor:
    • Paul DeMarco in Halo 4 is essentially Willingham with a shaved head.
    • Infamous Second Son uses motion capture performances so his character, Reggie Rowe, is directly modeled after him.
    • Harvey Dent in Batman: The Telltale Series is also modeled on him.
    • The physical appearance of Grog Strongjaw on Critical Role was based on him. This included Grog getting a beard, despite Grog being a goliath — a race in Dungeons & Dragons that normally can't grow beards.
  • Kill It with Fire: The modus operandi of several of the characters he has been cast as in his career, something he himself is happy to point out.
  • Large Ham: There's a reason why he's called Travis WillingHAM! Apparently he auditioned for Armstrong in the 2003 anime adaptation of Fullmetal Alchemist, but got Roy's part instead.
  • Order Versus Chaos: If Rank Scales with Asskicking rings a bell, a lot of his characters he voices will fall into the "order" side. Grog Strongjaw from Critical Role is a rare exception, as Grog is Chaotic Neutral in-universe.
  • Playing Against Type:
    • Gazlowe. Seriously, Ratchet's Boss or whatever, do you actually expect Travis doing a goblin? Note: He's not using any sort of baritone he's known for, and he still pulled it off.
    • Charlotte from Bleach is a very muscular and flamboyant Drag Queen which is a far cry from the other large, hammy characters he's played.
    • Relius Clover is practically the furthest character from his pigeonhole, being a Mad Scientist and all. Unless you count that despite this, Relius is still one of the highest ranking members of NOL and one of the few people who can match Hazama in terms of power, thereby adhering to Rank Scales with Asskicking.
    • Theodore, from Persona 3 Portable, has a deep voice, but is also very soft-spoken and has a dulcet tone.
    • Brady, from Fire Emblem: Awakening, is a huge softy who happens to look like a thug.
    • When Darrining Dameon Clarke as Cell in some DBZ video games, he portrayed Cell in all of his forms, each with their own distinctive voice. His Imperfect Cell voice, much like Clarke's, is high-pitched and raspy, quite unlike his other roles.
    • Phasesmith Karax from StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void is a soft-spoken Khalai class (the lowest class of the Protoss caste system) Protoss, phasesmith being the Protoss equivalent of "engineer". That's about as far from Large Ham Badass Authority Figure as you get.
    • Grog from Critical Role plays with this. On the one hand, the character is very much a Blood Knight who LOVES fighting and bloodshed. He even gets an Evil Weapon named Craven Edge that encourages violence on anyone it can talk him into hurting, which isn't tough since Grog's Intelligence stat is 6. On the other hand, Grog is very much the black sheep of his clan, having been beaten to shit and left for dead by his Always Chaotic Evil uncle Kevdak after defending a gnome from what would have been a fatal encounter with them. He also has a powerful attachment to the members of his adventuring party Vox Machina, especially Pike Trickfoot, cleric of Sarenrae and daughter of the gnome he risked his life to save.
    • Loki, a weaselly, fast-talking Smug Snake and The Starscream, the polar opposite of several of his other roles.
  • Promoted Fanboy:
  • Rank Scales with Asskicking: With Roy Mustang, among others.
  • Running Gag: A likely unintentional one. He and his wife, Laura Bailey, frequently play characters that seem to wind up fighting one another quite often when they play competent fighters (See: Avengers Assemble, Infamous First Light and Fullmetal Alchemist).
  • Typecasting: Normally the high authority/military figure or law-abiding character who shows his authority by kicking some ass - e.g. Roy Mustang, Guile, and Knuckles. However, he's slowly moving away from his typecasting ever since he moved to California.
  • What Could Have Been: Was set to continue voicing Cell in Dragon Ball Z Kai, but Dameon Clarke — Cell's original voice actor — opted to rejoin the project.
  • Vocal Evolution: There's a quite noticeable difference in his performances in the two Fullmetal Alchemist series. In the 2003 series, he was just starting out and went through some growing pains. In Brotherhood he'd racked up several years of experience and was far more confident in his performance.
''TV Tropes Will Ruin Your Life, so go home and be a family man.

 
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Video Example(s):

Belt of Dwarvenkind

What does the belt Grog got from Gilmore's shop do? Not much beyond grow a beard...but that's plenty for Grog!

Example of:
Spontaneous Mustache

Pike's Parting

Nevash Nevan Kl...

Ball Tag

Vox Machina Vs....

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Belt of Dwarvenkind

What does the belt Grog got from Gilmore's shop do? Not much beyond grow a beard...but that's plenty for Grog!

How well does it match the trope?

4.91 (11 votes)

Example of:

Main / SpontaneousMustache

Media sources:

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Belt of Dwarven...

Pike's Parting

Nevash Nevan Kl...

Ball Tag

Vox Machina Vs....