Hollywood Tone Deaf / Western Animation

• The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius: Carl and Sheen. Compared to Sheen's singing, Carl's is angelic. No really, Sheen's singing voice is really horrible. However, in Attack of the Twonkies, Sheen's singing voice proved useful in stopping the horrible beasts the eponymous creatures turn into from exposure to music. His singing merely put his Twonkie to sleep because it was so bad that the Twonkies couldn't even register it as music. In the end, as reward for helping save the town, Sheen gets the solo for the school chorus’ song at the grand opening of Retroville's new library, and finally gets to perform his singing...from inside a soundproof glass booth.
• In Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, the episode "Sonic's Song" has Robotnik singing horribly off-key. Considering his voice actor is famed Blues musician Long John Baldry, this qualifies as a meta-joke.
• Adventure Time: The episode "Wizard Battle" has Peppermint Butler singing his first and only song in the show. For context, Peppermint Butler's voice is high, reedy and cracks often. Hilarity Ensues.
• In a single episode of Amphibia, Polly's singing voice is so bad it gives people headaches and causes bats to faint. In every other episode, she regularly participates in musical numbers.
• Happened in Arthur when Francine attempted to play the drums while singing. What ensues resembles nothing so much as a sick eagle wrestling a cat in a tumble dryer. In the end, it turns out she can sing just fine; she just can't do both at once. In another episode, she sings "There's-Nothing-to-Do-Today Day" in an Imagine Spot. Cut back to the real world, she tries to reprise the song and it comes out... a little off, but believably so.
  • Arthur himself also reveals be his in Elwood City Turns 100!, so much that Francine actually tries to help him (with little-to-no success).
• In The Beatles episode "I'll Be Back", three outlaws try to steal the boys' thunder and are immediately pelted off the stage with rotten fruit and vegetables. Their "singing" was actually a Beatles recording of "Ticket to Ride" distorted on purpose.
• Eddie in one episode of Birdz sings so badly that his entire class begs him to stop. As does his family after he breaks some dishes.
• The cast of Bob's Burgers can all sing very well, as expected of a musical cartoon. The characters of Bob's Burgers can be as bad singers as the plot needs. In an early episode, Gene and Tina cannot sing on key, resulting in a Zany Scheme where they lip-synch while their aunt and landlord sing behind a curtain. In later episodes, Gene is a rather competent singer/songwriter, and Tina becomes a soloist for a puberty-positive music group.
  • In "The Quirkducers" the kids put on a terrible musical, but when episode ends, a competent version with actually good singing (by the same actors) runs as a Credits Gag.
• In the Classic Disney Shorts, Pluto the Pup is often depicted as a terrible "singer". In Pluto's Blue Note, at springtime, Pluto attempts to join in with the birds singing, the bees buzzing and the crickets chirping, but each time, he howls off-key. At the end of "Pluto's Christmas Tree", when Chip 'n' Dale sing "Deck the Halls", Pluto once again howls so badly that Dale runs offscreen to slap a "DO NOT OPEN 'TIL XMAS" sticker on his mouth.
• In Danny Phantom, Jazz's singing is yet another misuse of the term tone deaf. But not as severe as Tucker who abuses this trope.
• Happens in an episode of Dexter's Laboratory with Dee Dee, who was so bad at singing that Dexter, after trying unsuccessfully to get her to stop singing and disrupting his work, attempted to use science to give Dee Dee a more pleasant singing voice... and instead wound up giving her an incredible barritone bass, which allowed her to join a barbershop quartet.
• In an episode of Disney's Doug, Doug and the gang discover that Patti is a terrible singer when she tries to perform her entry in the "Bluffington anthem" contest. They spent the rest of the episode trying to stop her from performing it at the contest without actually letting her know she can't sing. Sadly, this casually disregards a few episodes of the original series in which Patti sings passably. Of course, given the reception of the Disney version, we might disregard the retcon.
  • In one of the Nick episodes, Doug, Skeeter and Porkchop heard Mr. Dink howling in agony. They run to his house to find a video of Mr. Dink singing rather horribly.
    Mr. Dink: I made it this morning. Do you like it?
    Skeeter: Like it? We thought you were dying!
    Mr. Dink: (stops the tape) What was that, Skeeter?
    Doug: He said we were dying to hear your song.
    Mrs. Dink: Right you are the first time, boys.
• In the DuckTales (1987) episode "Launchpad's First Crash", Launchpad plays his harmonica, and Scrooge says the sound is "torture". This leads to a Flashback story of the time they first met, where he's able to use it to confuse some giant bat monsters who use echolocation to fly in the dark.
  • Regarding the DuckTales (2017) reboot, in what's probably a predictable move, Donald's nigh unintelligible voice isn't any better when he sings...which is exactly what they needed to kill a duck-eating plant. Still, that doesn't stop Jose and Panchito from side-eyeing Donald while he sings.
    Huey: Uncle Donald, your voice is terrible! Keep singing!
• A Dudley Do-Right short has Nell having such a bad singing voice, that it puts the audience to sleep, giving Snidely the idea of making her a "star" so he can pickpocket the sleeping listeners.
• One episode of The Fairly OddParents! has Timmy having a singing voice so bad, he can't even be in the school's play. He then uses Cosmo and Wanda's help to have a voice like Chip Skylark—with disastrous results.
• Invoked by Seth MacFarlane as the plot demands on Family Guy. One of the characters he voices can be a stellar singer in one episode and totally amateur the next. Seth has perfect pitch in real life and is freakishly good at staying just out of tune enough to sound believably bad; see episode "The King is Dead" featuring Brian (fantastic) and Peter (awful) back to back. Even better the actual episode version of Peter's ''I Need a Jew'' (off-key and mediocre) vs a live performance (perfect).
• In the Futurama episode "Spanish Fry", Leela is shown to be such a bad singer that when she tried to sing Whitney Houston, she convinced the Omicronions that Earth was launching a surprise attack. Katey Sagal, as mentioned earlier, is a very good singer, and she provides a good singing voice for Leela in other episodes like "The Devil's Hands are Idle Playthings" and "How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back".
• Huckleberry Hound ("Oh m'darlin', oh m'darlin', oh m'daaaaaaaaaaaarlin' what's her naaaaaaaaaaaaaaame...") and Quick Draw McGraw are both examples, since they were voiced by Daws Butler, who could sing rather well.
  • Yakky Doodle was as well. An episode even revolved around his lack of ability to sing.
• Jane and the Dragon: Both straight and subverted with Jane Turnkey. One episode shows she can't even perform scales without screeching like a sickly cat. Yet that's her singing the show's theme song.
• Clash from Jem is a groupie who really wants to be a part of The Misfits but can't actually sing or play instruments. "One Jem Too Many" has her masquerading as Jem to ruin her reputation. Her disguise was perfect until she was challenged by Jem to sing. People outright threw tomatoes at her.
• Johnny Bravo. Made even funnier considering his voice is basically an Elvis Presley impersonation.
• Henry on KaBlam!, especially if you compare it to June's singing (which is angelic, even if she's kinda devilish).
• Kaeloo: Kaeloo, Stumpy, Quack-Quack, and Nombril are all horrible singers. The former three are so terrible at singing that their friend Mr. Cat contemplates shooting them with a bazooka when they sing a song for him, and Nombril's sister snarks that their parents should have named her "Casserole"^note originating from the French expression "chanter comme une casserole", meaning "to sing badly and off-key instead of "Nombril".
• Girl racer Ninki in The BBC's pre-school show Kerwhizz sometimes breaks horribly into song, causing her canine companion Pip to howl in agony.
• As seen in the Kim Possible episode "Hidden Talent", hitting high notes is one of the few things Kim can't do. Though otherwise, she's a fantastic singer. Of course, her voice actress Christy Carlton Romano is — like many other Disney Channel stars — a trained professional singer.
• Kahn Souphanousinphone on King of the Hill sings '80s pop songs in horribly off-key fashion every chance he gets. There's even an episode where he becomes a karaoke star, much to his father-in-law's dismay.
• Alfalfa in The Little Rascals is this, carrying over from the Our Gang theatrical shorts. In "Beauty Queen for a Day", he hides backstage during the pageant and interrupts Darla's song, to her shock.
• In one episode of Megas XLR, Coop uses his mediocre singing as a weapon, "The Jammer". To specify, it's the one weapon Megas has that Coop considers cruel to use and has more safety measures preventing its activation than Megas' NUKES!!! Although Coop's singing isn't all that terrible, more flat than horribly off-key. The extreme sonic amplification is what makes it devasating.
• Invoked by the producers of Moral Orel with the character Bloberta Puppington who was played by Britta Phillips (a Truly Outrageous! woman) known for her powerful vocals, she was directed to sing loud and off-key when it came to Bloberta's enthusiasm for singing even though she couldn't sing.
• My Gym Partner's a Monkey: "OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH! (Glass shatters) I'M A FRIENDLY ARMADILOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! I'M A GENTLE PUSSY WILLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW!"
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • In "The Show Stoppers," Scootaloo's singing voice is so horribly off-key it helps her team unintentionally win an award for best comedic act in a talent show. She does a rather better job in "One Bad Apple".
  • Pinkie Pie, whose talent for singing random songs out of nowhere is legendary, throws pitch and meter out the window when she sings about Zecora in "Bridle Gossip".
  • Sweetie Belle, normally the best singer of the Cutie Mark Crusaders, screeches her way through a campfire song in "Sleepless in Ponyville". Justified in that she's singing a G-rated version of "99 bottles of beer", which is supposed to be sung as terribly as possible.
  • Sweetie Belle tries to conduct Scootaloo and Apple Bloom in "On Your Marks" and grows annoyed that neither of them can carry a tune. In what could be seen as an animated take on Gameplay and Story Segregation, about a minute later Apple Bloom is given a solo song and pulls it off perfectly.
• Ninjago:
  • Cole cannot sing on-key to save his life, which he actually weaponizes in one episode to distract an entire bar of rowdy bikers.
  • One episode has all the ninja singing the show's original theme song, hideously out of time and off-key (given they've just apparently thwarted the Big Bad, the implication is they've been drinking).
• In one OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes short, Shannon sings a commercial Jingle for Boxmore. She sounds just as bad as you would expect a teenage girl with zero vocal training to sound. Her actor, Kari Wahlgren, can sing perfectly well, but is quite good at sounding believably out of tune.
• In one episode of The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show, Bamm-Bamm had a thoroughly awful singing voice — unless he was taking a shower, in which case his voice suddenly and inexplicably became gorgeous. Chances are, Jay North voiced both versions of Bamm-Bamm's singing voice. You can imagine the exaggerated bad notes of the "bad" voice....
  • That episode was basically a recycled episode of its parent show, The Flintstones. In the episode "The Flintstone Canaries", Fred forms a barbershop quartet with Barney (and two other guys), but soon discovers that Barney can only sing well while taking a bath. Like Father, Like Son.
• The ReBoot episode "The Crimson Binome" has Bob singing along wordlessly and horrendously off-key to his music player. It's hilariously dreadful.
• The Ren & Stimpy Show has Stimpy portrayed as this in the Games Animations-era episode "Hermit Ren", where he butchers "Kumbaya", despite having previously appeared on the "You Eediot" music CD, where he sings quite well.
• In the Ruby Gloom episode "Unsung Heroes", Ruby and Iris sing in off-key, off-rhythm shouts that, although still not totally realistic, are not as overdone as some examples of this trope. Misery (while awake) does sing in the top-of-her-lungs, randomly-pitched shrieking wail that exemplifies this trope, but it's justified, as she appears to actually be a banshee. They still produced a Ruby Gloom image single in Japan, though, with a professional singer portraying Ruby. All three eventually develop into fine singers, so their early stumbles can be dismissed as rookie mistakes. Or the No-Talent Ball. Whichever.
• Angelica from Rugrats is inconsistent about this. It's justified seeing that most kids at age three don't really know how to sing well yet. However, it's revealed in All Grown Up! when she's not tone deaf for the sake of comedy or the plot, her singing voice is actually decent.
• In Samurai Jack, the Scotsman's bagpipe-playing is really bad. This actually comes in useful in "The Scottsman Saves Jack" when his playing proves an efficient counter for the Sirens' enchanting singing. In addition, the Siren's singing can't hypnotize the Scotsman because he thinks it is ugly and he can't stand it.
• In The Simpsons episode "Homer of Seville", Homer has a fantastic singing voice following an injury... but only when he's lying on his back; his voice is shown to be terrible when he's upright, meaning when he stars in operas, his characters have to be rewritten to always lie on their back. His voice is also presented this way in "Homer's Triple Bypass" in a flashback scene where Homer's voice changes due to puberty while singing in church, which causes his singing voice to go from angelic to awful. However, when not relevant to the plot or a joke, Homer's singing voice is pretty good even when standing upright (he is voiced by Dan Castellaneta, after all).
• Peewit (from Johan and Peewit), Harmony Smurf, and Sassette in The Smurfs (1981).
• Sticks on Sonic Boom, depicted by her cacophonous nonsensical singing in "Sleeping Giant". Knuckles compares it to bagpipes being eaten by a woodchipper. Amy's singing is only slightly more tolerable, particularly in "The Sidekick".
• Static Shock: In "Duped", the shape-shifting criminal Marvin Roper/Replikon fancies himself an awesome singer and tries to break into the music business, but everyone agrees he sucks.
• Whenever Elmyra in Tiny Toon Adventures sings, it usually sounds very goofy and childlike. Cree Summer is actually a very good singer and has released an album. Unlike Elmyra's, her singing is much more mature and perhaps menacing.

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