Meme Role Reprise

Woolie: Does everyone have to like agree to a clause that says 'if you voice our character, you will also agree to shitpost about said character'?
Gianni Matragrano: I-It's a fine line I walk with the shitposting. [...] not every actor with every role has just full freedom to mess around. I like to subscribe to what I call 'opt-in'. So if the dev or the studio expresses to me that if they think stuff is great, then I'll start to mess around with it a little more. But I try not to assume [I can] mess around with it [...] Everyone has their own wants and boundaries with the characters. I try to respect it as best as I can while also being a horrible, fucking, stupid meme gremlin as best as I can.

— Castle Super Beast, "Voice Actor Contracts Need a $#!tpost Clause"

When an actor decides to be funny and records a line — as a character they officially voice — that would never be heard in the work of origin. This is most often short-form content like a video post on social media. Some actors go the extra mile and make an entirely scripted and edited video featuring their character.

Many of these bits are derived from pre-existing memes and are the actor acknowledging and playing into the humor (also doubling as Parody Assistance).

Not all actors can do this, however, with some facing scrutiny from the producers of the work who don't want the cast engaging with outrageous content like this. Some actors can get a bit more leeway though; small studio works could encourage joke material for publicity, or the actor is simply influential enough that they get a pass.

Compare to Staff-Created Fan Work where a creator that worked on a project makes their own fan content of the work.

Contrast with Blooper, which is the result of an actor making funny errors recording for a work.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Code Geass: Norio Wakamoto, who voiced the Emperor, read a fancomic where the Emperor's speech about inequalities between humans was changed to a speech about the inequalities of breasts. ALL HAIL BOOBIES/TITTIES/BIG BOOBS!
• Dragon Ball Z:
  • Sean Schemmel, Chris Sabat, and Sonny Strait once recorded a gag depicting Piccolo and Krillin reacting to Goku needing to power up in order to fight his own constipation and completely destroy the bathroom in the process.
  • Many of the Funimation dub's voice actors recorded comedically vulgar skits in-character as a way to relieve stress during production. The recordings were originally made for private use but ended up being leaked online in 2019, drawing controversy as a result of their content, which among other things included homophobic slurs and depictions of incest.
• Eric Stuart has recorded a monologue reprising his role as Meta Knight from Kirby: Right Back at Ya!, where he confesses his love to Galacta Knight.
• Princess Tutu: At a panel for Sakura Con in 2010, Luci Christian and Chris Patton playacted an exchange where Duck had something important to confess to Fakir. The improv got sexual real fast.
• Wayne Grayson, dub actor of Jounochi/Joey Wheeler in Yu-Gi-Oh!, has been known to make references to Joey's "Brooklyn Rage!" catchphrase from Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series.

Film — Live-Action

• Andy Serkis has reprised the roles of Gollum and Smeagol from The Lord of the Rings in a number of parodies, such as a curse-filled rant for the MTV Awards, a political ad depicting them as Theresa May, an appearance on Late Night with Conan O'Brien with the two interacting with Caesar, and his interview on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert where he read Donald Trump tweets.
• Anthony Hopkins, known most famously as Hannibal Lecter, reportedly attended a showing of The Silence of the Lambs and at a particularly tense moment, asked the woman next to him "Are you enjoying the movie?" in character.

Live-Action TV

• Dean Norris, the actor who plays Hank Schrader in Breaking Bad, records a skit as Hank playing Among Us with his friends. In the skit, Hank becomes suspicious of Walter White, and calls him a "sussy baka".
• One contestant on the Game Show Press Your Luck was given the question "Whose catchphrase is 'sufferin' succotash?'" The contestant answered Sylvester the Cat but was told that was incorrect. Voice actor Mel Blanc later phoned the studio to amend their error. The conversation was broadcast, with Blanc assuming Sylvester's voice and speech impediment. Show host Peter Tomarken took the correction well, and the studio audience applauded the exchange.

Video Games

• Destiny 2: Lance Reddick, voice actor for Commander Zavala, reads out a meme that expands on the character originally just saying "no".
• On separate occasions around the release of Devil May Cry 5, some Devil May Cry fans convinced Reuben Langdon, Johnny Yong Bosch and Dan Southworth to say in-character lines (respectively as Dante, Nero and Vergil) based on the "Dummy Thicc" memes. The most commonly used voice clip out of this trend is from Southworth when he repeatedly played along with it during a 2019 AMA livestream.
  Dan Southworth: "Dante! Listen man, I'm trying to fight these demons, but I'm dummy thicc and the clap of my asscheeks keeps alerting them... I understand you and Nero have the same problem."
• Dragon Age: The actor who voiced Cullen used to make voice clips by request, including the infamous "Andraste's knicker weasels!" However, reportedly some of the requests got uncomfortably weird, and later his relationship with both the fanbase and the producers became complicated. Especially after he recorded an in-character rant against the company.
• Mark Whitten, the English voice of Seteth from Fire Emblem: Three Houses, would often voice over fanmade edits of his character, with one of the most well-known having Seteth ask Byleth to stop Edelgard from griefing Flayn's house on the Garreg Mach Minecraft server. However, this ended up getting him in legal trouble with Nintendo, so he had to stop.
• Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach: Kellen Goff, the voice actor of Glamrock Freddy, has recorded himself reading a joke tweet where Freddy asks Gregory if he's familiar with Among Us before encouraging him to use a vent in-character. He even expands upon the joke by providing an alibi for Gregory's sus behavior.
  Freddy: Gregory, do you see the small vent on the floor? Have you ever heard of Among Us, Gregory? You need to vent. I know it will be hard for you to be sus, but I know you can do it, Gregory. I will just say we were both in Security watching the cameras. It is partly true. lmao ggs ez.
• Hotel Mario: Marc Graue, who voiced Mario and Luigi, recorded a vulgar version of the game's intro as a nod to the cutscenes' immense popularity as fodder for YouTube Poop videos. Among other things, the joke version of the intro features Mario being sexually aroused by Bowser's ransom note, to which Luigi responds by calling Mario "a gay motherfucker."
• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: Sean Chiplock, the voice of Revali, took to Tumblr around the game's release to dub several fan comics, including some very cheeky ones like Revali crashing the CDI Zelda games. He unfortunately had to stop doing this after Nintendo sent him a cease-and-desist, due to not wanting voice actors affiliated with them doing things that they didn't officially make.
• Metal Gear:
  • David Hayter, the voice of Solid Snake, recorded a video responding to Vinesauce member Vinny's impersonations of Snake, particularly a Running Gag where Snake insists that Raiden "squeeze [his] hog" (itself referencing the infamous Crotch-Grab Sex Check from Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty). In Hayter's video, he, in-character as Snake, states that he's aware of the bit and claims that he can only think of one thing to say in response: "Raiden, squeeze my hog!"
  • Hayter is also responsible for the viral clip of Solid Snake saying "Dummy Thicc".
    Snake: Colonel, I'm trying to sneak around. But I'm dummy thicc, and the clap of my ass-cheeks keeps alerting the guards.
  • After Max0r's "An Incorrect Summary of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance" gave birth to a memetic exchange between Senator Armstrong and Raiden, Quinton Flynn (Raiden) and Alastair Duncan (Armstrong) dubbed the infamous "Nice argument, Senator" exchange.
    Raiden: That's a nice argument, Senator. Why don't you back it up with a source?!
    Senator Armstrong: My source is that I made it the FUCK up!
  • A much darker example than usual came from Paul Eiding: in 2018, he released a video on his personal YouTube channel reading excerpts of the then-newly-released Mueller Report in his Colonel Campbell voice as if he were giving exposition to Snake, invoking the many jokes and comparisons that the themes of Metal Gear of data manipulation, cybersecurity, and misinformation campaigns were getting a smidge too real.
• Overwatch: Cole Cassidy's voice actor Matthew Mercer talked in the early days of the game's release how he would play the game and occasionally enter voice chat and scare his teammates by saying Cassidy's^note at the time known as Jesse McCree Ultimate quote, "It's high noon."
• Aleks Le made meme roleplay videos within the context of Persona 3 Reload, as seen in his official YouTube channel. Sometimes he did them by himself, like "makoto yuki at your door telling you to play P3R (asmr roleplay)" where he voices the Protagonist and Pharos. However, some of his meme clips may also feature his fellow Reload voice actors; "Milkshakes at midnight in Tartarus (GONE WRONG) (HELP!!!)" was made via a collab with Zeno Robinson (Junpei), while "Fuuka completely Fuuked up the cake" was voiced by Suzie Yeung (Fuuka).
  Suzie Yeung: Dear Leader, Do NOT come to the dorm. I've baked an absolute poopoo cake. Just completely fuuked it up. I'm so sorry-
• Persona 5:
  • Morgana's voice actress, Cassandra Lee Morris, did a recording of Go The F*ck To Sleep using Morgana's voice, in reference to how Morgana is always telling Joker that he's tired and should go to bed. She also did a review of the infamously bad Cool Cat movies in Morgana's voice.
  • Ray Chase (the Subway Announcer), Max Mittelman (Ryuji Sakamoto) and Robbie Daymond (Goro Akechi) order a pizza in-character.
    Max Mittelman: We're getting so much spit in our pizza.
• Portal: Ellen McLain, voice actor for GLaDOS has reprised her role multiple times for both fan content or for silliness, including once reading a "Dear Princess Celestia" letter at a convention.
• Resident Evil 5:
  • D.C. Douglas released a "blooper reel" (actually a parody) of various alternate versions of Albert Wesker's big Large Ham villain speech during the game's climax, which included him bragging about the size of his balls, reaching the Death Star, taking a crack at George W. Bush, and making multiple Freudian slips when he has to deliver the "complete global saturation" line, the last of which causes him to blow up and scream "oh, fuck it, we'll do it live!"
  • Douglas also recorded a Twelve Spoofs of Christmas video in character as Wesker during his final death scene.
• Street Fighter 6: Leading up to and past the game's release, Aleks Le, voice of the game's Mascot Luke Sullivan, has provided his voice to tons of memes and humorous videos for the sake of entertainment and garnering interest for the game. This included voicing Luke's "reaction" to the players' hideous character-creator monsters, dubbing over memes on Twitter, recreating the viral "Ryu from Streets" video but as Luke, and being a guest star on "Chun Li's Legs", in which Doobus Goobus gave him permission to write his own joke to voice as Luke.
  Luke: "BOOM! DIVORCED!!"
• Super Smash Bros. Brawl: Lani Minella, the voice actor for Lucas, has done some voice work on request in the past, including one clip where she shouts "Banana!" followed by singing the song used in the Freddie Freaker commercial.
• Team Fortress 2:
  • For a long time, Nathan Vetterlein was famous in the TF2 community for reading out memes and other wacky statements on stream in-character as the Scout. However, he has since retired from streaming and no longer does this.
  • Search for Sandvich is essentially a series of these for the Team Fortress 2 voice cast, as it chronicles them in-character trying to acquire a Sandvich. It features Gary Schwartz as the Heavy and Demoman, John Patrick Lowrie as the Sniper, Ellen McLain as the Administrator, Robin Atkin Downes as the Medic, Dennis Bateman as the Spy and Pyro, and features a Voice-Only Cameo from Nolan North as Merasmus. The only no-shows are Rick May (deceased), Grant Goodeve (dropped off the face of the earth), and Nathan Vetterlein (semi-retired).
  • Like his wife, John Patrick Lowrie enjoyed referencing memes and being silly with Sniper, including once reading a "Dear Princess Celestia" letter as RED Sniper (and threatening to sic GLaDOS on the audience). He also voiced a single line of the Sniper saying "Clever girl" for "A Mann's Guide to the Backburner".
• ULTRAKILL: Gianni Matragrano, voice of the game's main rival Gabriel, does a lot of humorous content in-character separate from the game, including "crashing" a friend's stream to berate them in front of their audience or streaming Ultrakill as Gabriel.
• The End Times: Vermintide: Tim Bentinck, the voice actor for Victor Saltzpyre, has occasionally used his character's distinctive, nasally voice for the sake of humour, like reading memes.
• Final Fantasy XVI: Ben Starr has a Cameo account, so fans have made the voice of Clive ask for a ticket to Barbie (2023), complain about squeezing through narrow passages with his massive pecs, and plug Final Fantasy XIV, the critically acclaimed MMORPG with an expanded free trial up to level 70.
• Mike Pollock has been careful in taking requests to say lines in Dr. Eggman's voice after he was asked to recite "Snooping as usual, I see!" without being told the real reason. While he still occasionally obliges if the lines are benign, it's a rare occasion, and he's specifically denied one popular request; he released a video asking fans to stop asking him to recreate Eggman's "pissing on the moon" bit from the Real-Time Fandub treatment of Sonic Adventure 2, describing himself as a "character caretaker" and not wanting to get anybody in trouble by giving such a profanity-laden speech in-character.
  • Jason Griffith, the voice of Sonic and Shadow from 2003 to 2010, was once asked at a convention to recite Jehtt's "I just love Latinas, Sonic" video in their voices.

Visual Novels

• Jason Wishnov, the English voice actor of Byakuya Togami from Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc once took requests for silly lines to say in Togami's voice on his TikTok. He recorded so many of these silly lines, in fact, that one YouTube compilation of them ended up being thirty minutes long.

Web Animation

• A week after the release of the announcement trailer for The Amazing Digital Circus, Caine's voice actor Alex Rochon posted a video on his YouTube channel where he dubs a meme about Caine snorting a suitcase full of cocaine.
  • After The Amazing Digital Circus's premiere, a fan asked Rochon and Lizzie Freeman, the voice of Pomni, to redub his fan-animation as their respective characters.
• If the Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device: Admiral Burke/SuperAnchors, who voices Rogal Dorn, once read the infamous "Rogal Dorn's Colossal Chainblade" meme on Episode 86 of Warhammer 40,000 fan podcast "Adeptus Podcastus.
• Spooky Month: "Kevin Meets Girlfriend" is a short Friday Night Funkin' fancomic dub featuring Kevin's voice actor ElusiveVA, where Kevin bluntly responds "Ma'am, this is a fucking Home Depot." after Girlfriend tries to order food there. Kevin normally works at a candy store and is working at Home Depot solely for the joke.

Web Video

• Jobby the Hong: David Kaye reprised his role as Beast Megatron for three videos concerning toys regarding his character, partially as a Take That! to the fact that his voice wasn't used for the Masterpiece Figure. He humorously breaks character when he refuses to say Jobby's signature "Putitinmyass".
• Thomas Sanders:
  • Sanders Sides did two Incorrect Quotes videos where Sanders, as the Sides, reenacted popular Incorrect Quotes memes submitted by the viewers.
  • The "Cartoon Chaos" video pulls together various popular voice actors to recite meme lines sent in by Thomas's Twitter followers. These include Greg Cipes saying "Can you feel it, Mr. Krabs?" as Beast Boy, Tara Strong saying "I will find you, and I will kill you" as Bubbles, and Jim Cummings saying "I like big butts and I cannot lie" as Tigger.

Western Animation

• Batman: The Animated Series: Mark Hamill has dubbed tweets by President Trump, using the voice of the Joker.
• Futurama:
  • Comedy Central promoted the debut of Season 7 with viral ads of Fry and Zoidberg, both voiced by Billy West, reading text from various "Not sure if..." and "Why not Zoidberg?" memes, respectively.
  • West has also recorded tweets by President Trump, using the voice of Zapp Brannigan.
• When the Arizona Republican Party created a hotline for reporting instances of voter fraud in the 2020 election, Alex Hirsch made a number of prank calls to the line in-character as Stan Pines and Soos.
• As a backer request for Greg Weisman's Rain of the Ghosts Kickstarter, Steve Blum, voice of Amon in The Legend of Korra, recorded a video in-character where Amon congratulates Korra and Asami on their relationship while reaffirming his goal to destroy the Avatar.
• Looney Tunes: During the height of the "Foghorn Leghorn Rambling To Anime Characters" meme on Twitter, Eric Bauza, who has voiced him since 2018, joined in on the fun by dubbing over a tweet where he rambles at Vegeta for failing to hit Foghorn with his Final Flash.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Tara Strong has reprised Twilight Sparkle for some humorous purposes, such as "Twilightlicious".
• Cissy Jones, voice of Lilith Clawthorne from The Owl House has been known to do voiceover challenges in Lilith's voice on her social media.
• Dan Povenmire has been known to make humorous videos on social media, mainly TikTok, while reprising his role as Heinz Doofenshmirtz from Phineas and Ferb (typically while wearing Doof's lab coat as well). Some videos include:
  • This video parodies the version of the "Part of Your World" number from The Little Mermaid (2023). When he's hit by a wave of water, Povenmire-as-Doofensmirtz expresses frustration due to his lab coat getting all wet.
  • This video is a variation on the "A platypus? Perry the platypus?!" Running Gag from the original show, and also features Alex Hirsch reprising his role as Grunkle Stan.
  • In this video, Povenmire reads several misspellings of "Heinz Doofensmirtz" from TikTok's caption feature while in-character as Doof. Some of the ones he reads include "douchebags" (which he notes sounds "editorializing"), as well as "has to finish first".
  • This video from Thomas Sanders parodies Dream Daddy with father characters from the Disney Animated Canon as the eligible bachelors. Povenmire cameos as Dr. Doofensmirtz, since he is "technically a dad who was on the Disney Channel", looking for someone to help him rule the tri-state area.
• The Spectacular Spider-Man voice actor Josh Keaton released a number of videos where he reads Spider-Man memes in-character.
• Transformers: Animated: Jeff Bennett reprised his role as Ultra Magnus for a meme skit themed around Among Us.

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