Vocal Dissonance / Western Animation

Vocal Dissonance in western animation TV.

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• Adventures In Music: The Runt at the End is a bass, whereas the rest of the characters are sopranos and tenors.
• Adventure Time: A major stylistic theme is pairing over-the-top-cartoony character design with matter-of-fact, naturalistic voices.
  • Lumpy Space Princess has a gruff voice that sounds nothing like a princess. Combined with a Valley Girl accent for Rule of Funny.
  • For bonus points, the season 5 premiere promos featured a clip from the episode of teenage Finn in full Action Hero Mode followed immediately by an audio clip from season 1 of 12-year-old Finn shouting "Aaaaadventure Time!" in a much higher-pitched voice, a result of Children Voicing Children.
  • The Lich is a a horned skeleton, with no lips, but his voice is a perfectly soft, albeit very deep, tone.
  • The Moon from the "Stakes" arc is a small woman with an incredibly deep and demonic voice. Lampshaded by Jake.
  Jake: That's her voice?!
  • Played for laughs in "Ring of Fire", where Tree Trunks as a young adult keeps her soft old lady voice.
• In an episode of American Dad!, Stan meets a Strip Club bouncer who's a black man with the voice of a little girl, due to a rather odd medical condition...
  Stan: Wow, your voice is... sweet.
  Bouncer: Yeah, my gonads are tucked inside my abdomen. I was born with what doctors call "Bashful Testicles".
• In the episode "Hero of the Hourglass" of American Dragon: Jake Long we discover that, when young, the future Huntsman had a very high pitched and childish voice (getting him mocked by everyone, from his fellow Huntsclan apprentices to his teachers and a time-travelling Jake) while still being a formidable foe. Then, after Jake threw him in a pit to get mauled by a giant crab-thing, his voice changes to the Evil Sounds Deep we know, scaring the other apprentices with his oath to slay all dragons. And causing another vocal dissonance: while his deep voice is scary and appropriate for his modern self, he was slim and almost wiry when he was young.
• In The Animals of Farthing Wood when Fox and Vixen's offspring are young pups they sound more like teenagers even though they're supposed to be the animal equivalent of 7- or 8-year-old children at that point.
• Arthur: The Tough Customers are all 4th-graders but sound (and look) like teenagers.
• De Avonturen van Varkentje Rund: Greetje, Rund's girlfriend, always speaks in an uncharacteristically deep and masculine voice.
• Brian Epstein, manager of The Beatles, took umbrage of having Paul Frees and Lance Percival as the voices of the group in their Saturday morning cartoon show, (Frees as John and George, Percival as Paul and Ringo), which ABC insisted to make them understandable to American audiences. Epstein ordered the cartoons to never air in England, even though the group's corporate entity, Apple, now owns them.
• Big City Greens:
  • Cricket Green is only 10, but sounds like he's at least 20, given that he's voiced by Chris Houghton.
  • Same goes for Remy Remington, who is around Cricket's age yet sounds like he's a preteen.
  • Weezie has a rather deep adult voice despite his age.
• The kids from Big Mouth even though they’re 12-13 years old they sound like grown adults, some of them are established that they haven’t hit puberty yet.
• The Adventures of Blinky Bill gives us Slick Possum, an adorable possum with a foxlike face and Puppy-Dog Eyes who sounds like Eddie Murphy when he talks.
• Blue's Clues: In an episode, Blue goes into a world where she can talk and has a childlike voice, very different from her usual yips and whimpers. Then again, she is supposed to be a puppy.
• Bob's Burgers: Tina sounds exactly like a guy, for she is actually voiced by one. This is because the family's oldest sibling was originally intended to be male. By the time they decided to swap the gender, they had already cast the voice actor, and rather than recast, they decided to just roll with it.
• Centaurworld: Horse is a stout, imposing horse with the high-pitched voice of Kimiko Glenn.
• City Island (2022): Mark's voice is very deep for someone who's in the second grade.
• Codename: Kids Next Door tended to avert both Crossdressing Voices and Children Voicing Children, and had adult male voice actors voicing the 10-11-year-olds. Nigel Uno (AKA Numbuh One), voiced by Benjamin Diskin, was hit by this the hardest of the leads. While he had a slightly higher pitched voice in early episodes, his voice became deeper and more authoritative as the series went on, ultimately ending up with a voice more suited for an older teenager than an eleven-year-old.
• The title character of Dave the Barbarian is a tall muscular man but he has a high pitched, scratchy voice. This is justified in the series as he's a coward.
• DC Animated Universe:
  • In Batman: The Animated Series, Mary Dahl (better known as "Baby-Doll") looks like a little girl and usually sounds like one but actually has the voice of a bitter middle-aged woman. Justified in that she has a condition that stunts her aging, so she Never Grew Up physically.
  • In Superman: The Animated Series, Justice League, and Superman/Batman: Apocalypse, Granny Goodness is voiced by a man (Ed Asner) who is not trying to hide or pitch his voice at all. Hearing an old woman being voiced by what is obviously a man is disconcerting at best, which is probably the effect the creators were gunning for, given the kind of person Granny Goodness is.
• Played for laughs in one episode of Dexter's Laboratory after Dee-Dee's voice became a very exaggerated baritone after fooling around with a piece of Dexter's equipment too much. (But it worked out for her in the end; she gained a part in a Barbershop Quartet.)
• The Dog City episode "Radio Daze" took this tack when Ace met the cast of the WFIDO soap opera It's A Dog's Life. The Vamp was overweight, The Hero was a broken-down drunk, etc.
• Dora the Explorer: Dora's cousin Diego is eight years old, but sounded at least 15 in the first two seasons he appeared. Come Go, Diego, Go!, he now has a higher-pitched pre-pubescent voice to fit his age.
• The Dragon Prince: Aaravos is a very young looking and attractive elf, but he has a deep menacing voice more befitting a large monster.
• For the DuckTales (2017) reboot: Huey, Dewey, Louie, and Webby are voiced by adults (Danny Pudi, Ben Schwartz, Bobby Moynihan and Kate Micucci) who sound more like teenagers than children.
  • In the Italian dub Magica, in her viler incarnation so far, is voiced with a Neapolitan accent, that in Italy is synonymous with cunning, joyfulness, and hamminess, and is just not supposed to be used by such a psycho... A desired effect for one of the main villains.
• The main character Duncan from Duncanville despite being 15 and having been established to have hit puberty, his voice due to being voiced by a woman (Amy Poehler) sounds closer to that of a preteen.
• In The Fairly OddParents! special "Channel Chasers", the mysterious ninja chasing Timmy falls into the world of Paula Poundcake (a Captain Ersatz of Strawberry Shortcake) and meets Donny Donut, a tiny, big-headed, cutesy child with the deep, suave baritone of Kevin Michael Richardson.
• Family Guy:
  • Baby Stewie has a deep if slightly-effeminate theatrical British accent (sounding similar to Rex Harrison's character in My Fair Lady — at least in the pre-2005 revival episodes). That's hardly the wackiest thing they've got.
  • Chris is a big lummox but has a really grating, high-pitched voice (though the earlier episodes, his voice was low and dopey-sounding, it wasn't the kind of Simpleton Voice you hear in many other cartoons. It sounded more like Seth Green's real voice, but goofier, since it was based on Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs). To add to the irony, his voice actor, Seth Green, is a rather short man with a naturally deep and gravelly voice (especially when he does his documentary narrator voice on Robot Chicken).
  • Meg was originally voiced by Lacey Chabert in the early episodes. Chabert's high-pitched, girly voice was rather ill-fitting for the pudgy, teenaged Meg. Chabert was replaced by Mila Kunis, whose raspy contralto is more suitable for Meg.
  • Mike Henry, who initially voiced Token Black Cleveland Brown until 2020, is actually as white as a guy can get. His stepson Rallo (also voiced by Henry), who was introduced in The Cleveland Show, is five years old, but has a deep, adult sounding voice much like Stewie.
  • Neil Goldman doesn’t normally qualify, generally sounding as nerdy as he looks. But “The Story On Page One” shows that when he’s not wearing his retainer, his voice is deeper and sounds more sophisticated.
• Fanboy and Chum Chum:
  • The Child Mage Kyle is said to be a pre-teen (around 9-12 years old), but sounds like he's at least 20.
  • Out of FB and CC's classmates, the blonde jock Duck has a deep and manly voice that fits nothing of his age.
  • The dark-skinned toddler Joey has an oddly deep adult voice for his young age.
• Jack Mercer played all the voices in Joe Oriolo's TV revival of Felix the Cat, so sometimes some of his other familiar voices will come out. The voice of Popeye is heard coming from a sentient airplane in one short while the voice of Wimpy is heard during a phone call to Felix. Inversely, two Felix voices are heard elsewhere, in Paramount's Modern Madcap "Bouncing Benny" (a doctor with the voice of the Professor) and the Noveltoon "Miceniks" (a beatnik mouse with the voice of Rock Bottom).
• While June Foray's voice fit Karen and most of the other kids in the original version of Frosty the Snowman, the same can't be said for the voices Paul Frees gave the two main boys. They have raspy, gravelly voices that made them sound like chain smoking midgets. This is probably why they were later redubbed with actual boys sometime in the 1970s.
• The animated version of Good Times has Dalvin, a literal baby with the deep, deep voice of Slink Johnson.
• Gravity Falls:
  • Voice actor Jason Ritter, as Dipper, doesn't sound like a twelve years-old boy and more like a 14 years-old teenager—but Dipper is the viewpoint character for the series, so it's possible that Dipper is giving himself the voice he imagines. In the episode "Bottomless Pit!", twelve-year-old Dipper is embarrassed about his squeaky puberty voice (and the techno remixes thereof) and takes a voice-altering tonic that gives him a deep announcer voice. Dipper thinks it's awesome, but everyone else is creeped out. Grunkle Stan drinks a similar tonic by mistake, and winds up sounding like a Sassy Black Woman.
  • Though Grenda has a huge build for her age, it is obvious that she is young and female but her voice is deep and manly. Apparently, she isn't aware of this due to the fact that when Stan asks if she has a cold or if something was wrong with her voice she seems genuinely hurt and asks "Why would you say that?" By the time of "The Last Mabelcorn", she seems downright proud of her unusual voice. According to her first appearance in "Double Dipper", she used to sound like Pacifica until her voice changed to as it was now.
  • In the time travel to Soos' 12th birthday in "Blendin's Game", Soos sounds much older than a 12-year old, almost the same as he sounds now. Young Robbie also sounds the same as he does in the present.
• The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy: The “Mandy intro” before the episode “The Love that Dare Not Speak its Name” has this.
  Mandy: (in Grim’s voice) Things are not always as they seem.
• In the Shazam animated series, Mr. Atom's voice is strangely soft and pleasant for such a large imposing robot.
• The classic Christmas-themed stop-motion short Hardrock, Coco, and Joe: The Three Little Dwarfs is a famous example. Joe, the youngest and smallest of the three titular dwarfs, has a comically deep baritone voice. He's the last of the three dwarfs to introduce himself, making it all the more humorous.
  Chorus: Oh-lee-oh-lay-dee, oh-lay-dee-i-oh!
  Hardrock: I'm Hardrock!
  Coco: I'm Coco!
  Joe: (deep voice) I'm Joooooooe...
• Hey Arnold!:
  • Since the series used real children to voice the child characters, it was inevitable that their voices would change. Most of them were recast when that happened (Arnold was recast five times) others weren't (Gerald, Harold, Stinky and all of the girls). Gerald, Stinky, and Helga ended up possessing deep, teenaged voices in the last few seasons despite only being nine years old. Gerald's change of voice (justified in-universe as a result of getting his tonsils removed) was even the plot of one episode.
  • Tish Wittenberg is a pretty blonde but has a deep, gravelly voice befitting a 50-year-old chain smoker.
  • Most of the 5th graders (especially Wolfgang) not only speak in voices that make them sound more like they're in high school, they're even built like they're in high school.
• Shannon from Home Movies is a school bully who happens to have the voice of Emo Phillips.
• How Murray Saved Christmas: The Easter Bunny looks all cute and cuddly then he opens his mouth and has a surprisingly deep voice. Likewise the narrator of the story, Baby New Year.
• I.N.K. Invisible Network of Kids: Despite being a preteen girl, Zero speaks with the voice of a adult woman.
• Jade Armor: Despite being the biggest guy on the show, the Crimson Lord has a fairly high voice for a man.
• Jem:
  • Stormer seems like the type of woman who would be softspoken but still, it's hard to imagine that cute, squeaky voice coming from her. It's even odder as her singing voice is quite deep.
  • Techrat has a cartoony high pitched voice that blends oddly with his looks.
• Kaeloo: Mr. Cat is only a preteen, but he sounds like a grown adult.
• You wouldn't expect Kevin Spencer's title character, a cough-syrup swilling, chain-smoking alcoholic sociopath with a broken home, to have the voice of an angel... but as seen during his brief stint with the school choir, he does. He chalks it up to getting whacked in the 'nards a lot.
• Kick Buttowski is around 10 years old and happens to be quite short in stature, but he has a quite deep and adult-sounding voice. This is especially true in the Ukrainian dub, where he has an even deeper baritone voice, almost as if he's singing opera, which is really noticeable when he does a Big "NO!".
• In Kim Possible, the villain of one episode is actually named Falsetto Jones.
  Ron: Why do you think he's called Falsetto?
  Falsetto: (high-pitched) Welcome, humans and canines alike, to my annual dog show!
  Kim: Freak helium accident.
  Ron: Ouch.
• In Kim Possible Movie: So the Drama Drakken once employed a "sumo-ninja." Although in his first appearance during a battle with Kim and Ron, his voice was as deep as would be expected, thanks to a nasty wedgie from Ron, in his last, his voice was so high it prompted Kim and Ron to giggle uncontrollably.
  Sumo Ninja: What?
  Ron: (giggling) Dude, don't talk. The funny voice, yeah, it kind of ruins your mystique.
  Sumo Ninja: (same high-pitched voice) I am strong like the mountain! I am swift like the wind! I am vengeance!
• The Legend of Korra:
  • General Iroh II appears to be at least 30, but he shares the same voice actor and voice of 16-year-old Zuko from Avatar: The Last Airbender. Also a case of Reality Is Unrealistic, since Basco is 37, and he sounds exactly like that even when not acting, making him a real-life example of Vocal Dissonance.
  • The same thing happened with Zaheer in season 3, who's old enough to have his hair go grey but sounds much younger. This is Henry Rollins natural voice and he's in his 50s.
  • Tahno, a lissome Agent Peacock Pretty Boy, has Rami Malek's rocks-on-velvet purr for a voice.
• Looney Tunes:
  • Whenever Wile E. Coyote talks in a Bugs Bunny cartoon, he sounds like a refined gentleman.
  • Director Friz Freleng liked this gag.
    • In "Yankee Doodle Daffy" his protege, a slack-jawed little juvenile duck, sings in a booming baritone.
    • In "Back Alley Op-Roar", Sylvester hands over singing duties to a big, bulky, dim-looking cat... who breaks into a dainty, lilting soprano.
    • In "Curtain Razor", we begin at a talent agency where one hopeful is auditioning in the next room with an earth-shaking baritone voice. The singer finally emerges from the door, revealing that he is a grasshopper.
  • The Tex Avery cartoon, "Page Miss Glory", features a young bellhop in a small-town hotel named Abner, who is awaiting the titular celebrity's arrival. Abner is a tall, lanky guy with buck teeth, who looks like he would speak in your standard hillbilly Simpleton Voice, but instead, is voiced by the ten-year-old The Little Rascals cast member, Tommy Bond.
  • In "The Night Watchman," Chuck Jones' directorial debut, Tommy Cat normally sounds as young and childish as you would expect him to, but while trying to silence the rats in the kitchen, he eventually yells "QUIET!" at the top of his lungs in a deeper voice provided by Mel Blanc.
  • In Meet John Doughboy As a tall and short men looks at the draft numbers, the tall guy comments on their draft numbers with a high voice. In the next scene they are marching and the short guy comments in Billy Bletcher's deep voice, "You!... and your education!"
• In the Looney Tunes Cartoons episode “Kitty Krashers” the kitten who first appeared in Kitty Kornered guest stars with the other cats who appeared in that short, in the original short he spoke in a high pitched Tweety esque voice, but when he speaks in this cartoon he has a deep, gruff manly voice provided by Fred Tatasciore.
• In The Loud House, we have:
  • Luna Loud is 15/16 years old, yet has a rather raspy, croaky Tomboyish Voice.
  • Luan Loud is 14/15, yet she sounds more like a little girl, highlighting her immaturity.
  • Lucy Loud is 8/9, yet her voice is rather deep and monotone.
  • Lana Loud is 6/7, yet her voice sounds gruff and raspy.
  • Lisa Loud is 4/5, yet she sounds like a grown woman.
  • Ronnie Anne is only eleven or twelve years old, yet she has a deep and raspy voice reminiscent of a older teenage girl.
• Major Lazer has 23-year-old John Boyega voicing Blkmrkt, an Asian and Nerdy 11-year-old, without much change to his natural pitch.
• The titular main character of Mao Mao: Heroes of Pure Heart is a 3-4 foot tall black cat with a serious baritone.
  • Tanya Keys is slightly cutesier than Mao Mao (slightly shorter too), but has a surprisingly mature voice that fits her Femme Fatale persona like a glove.
  • Pinky looks like a Care Bear Cousin yet has a voice like sandpaper. His behavior is anything but cute as well.
  • Ol' Blue sounds like a normal, if deflated, person despite looking like a different Blue.
• On Terrytoons' TV series The Mighty Heroes, Diaperman — a baby — has a deep, rough, husky voice.
• Often in Mighty Mouse some of the cutesy looking male mice with long girlish eyelashes would sing in deep baritone voices.
• The title character of Milo Murphy's Law is a thirteen-year-old voiced by the fully-grown "Weird Al" Yankovic.
• In the British dub of The Mr. Men Show, Mr. Nervous has quite a high-pitched voice, especially when he screams.
• In the French dub of Muppet Babies (1984), several of the male characters have slightly deeper voices, compared to their original English versions. The cast was changed after the second season, and Gonzo's second actor gave him an extremely deep voice that sounds nothing like a child.
  • Similarly, the Castilian Spanish dub gave Kermit a deep-sounding voice that sounds the same as his adult counterpart on Barrio Sésamo (the Spanish European co-production of Sesame Street).
• My Goldfish is Evil: Admiral Bubbles has a deep sinister voice for a tiny goldfish. Then again, he is evil.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • Happens In-Universe to Fluttershy in the episode "Bridle Gossip", when, due to touching the Poison Joke, the normally soft-spoken Pegasus is highly embarrassed to find herself speaking in a baritone voice. Spike jokingly calls her "Flutterguy".
    • Invoked in "Filli Vanilli" when Fluttershy drinks a Poison Joke-laced potion to purposefully get a deep voice and temporarily replace Big Mac in Rarity's singing quartet after he loses his voice doing a turkey call. This time everypony refers to her with that voice as (again) Flutterguy.
  • In the Polish dub, Spitfire is voiced by a guy. From season 2 onward, she is voiced by a woman and sounds much different.
  • Derpy Hooves, as voiced in "The Last Roundup" (before it was redubbed), has a husky, almost boyish voice in contrast to her airheaded appearance and personality. According to Tabitha St. Germain, she didn't realize Derpy was female and did the voice with a neighbor's son in mind. In the Hungarian dub, she's actually voiced by a male.
  • Babs Seed seems to be about the Cutie Mark Crusaders' age, but her voice sounds significantly deeper than even Scootaloo's.
  • Similar to the Derpy example above, in "Trade Ya!", Minuette has a boyish voice similar to Spike; possibly a mistake on Cathy Weseluck's part.
  • In "The Mane Attraction", during Applejack's flashback of her and Coloratura at camp, Coloratura sounds nothing like a filly when singing the Equestria anthem.
  • Due to their voice actresses hitting puberty, Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle sound older than intended in later seasons. By season 7 the series got around to aging them a bit in order to excuse their voices.
  • The Romanian dub is guilty of this due to them trying hard to give nearly every single female character (the princesses and elders are mostly an exception to this, thankfully) the voice of a little girl, which really doesn't work with most of the ponies being adults. One of the most egregious examples is in the song "At the Gala", where they chose the still young Iulia Tohotan to sing the chorus, which not only heavily contrasts with the original's (and really, any other language's) deeper voices that make the chorus, but it results in even grown men sounding like little girls. Later seasons start to avert this, however.
  • In the early seasons of the show, Bon Bon had a plethora of different voices due to the background ponies not having consistent voices. This was averted as of Season 5's "Slice of Life", with Andrea Libman voicing her from that point onward.
• The Magic School Bus: Most of the voice cast stayed the same throughout its run, but several of the voice actors were going through puberty; as a result, characters like Ralphie sound significantly older in later episodes. Meanwhile, at least two characters (one of them being Arnold) were recast.
• Numberjacks:
  • Four and Six are meant to be only four and six years old respectively, yet they sound like grown men.
  • Downplayed for Zero, who has the vocabulary of the infant he is, and has a high voice, but when he does speak, he enunciates very well for a baby.
• Francios from O.G. Readmore Meets Puss In Boots. He looks to be about 10 years old, but his voice actor Will Ryan makes him sound more like a teenager or young adult.
• Presumably done for comedic effect, but in the Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoon “The Stone Age” the big bulky, peg legged bear villain and a gorilla he encounters later have female voices, and Oswald’s cat girlfriend, and a female dog and mouse speak in male voices.
• Braxas, a recurring child character in The Owl House, has a hillariously deep and demonic voice. Not quite as dissonant as most, since he actually has a giant, teeth-filled maw for a face. Then we find out that he's the son of Warden Wrath, who has a similar teeth-filled maw-face, but also has a completely normal voice.
• Penn Zero: Part-Time Hero:
  • Boone usually averts this by having a mellow voice that suits his laid-back personality, but his scream sounds like nails being scraped down a chalkboard. The first time Penn hears it, he has to ask to confirm that it's Boone who's making the sound.
  • One of the toy citizens in "Baby-Pocalypse" is a tiny baby giraffe with a deep baritone voice.
• In Pepper Ann Pepper Ann's younger sister "Moose" is around 8 or 9 years old and she has a deep husky voice like a teenage boy. This causes much in and out of universe Viewer Gender Confusion.
• In Pet Alien, 13-year-old Tommy Cadle has a surprisingly deep voice (provided by Charlie Schlatter) that makes him sound like an older teenager or even an adult. It's averted in season 2, where his voice got higher-pitched and more childlike, making it more appropriate for his appearance.
• In the two-part Grand Finale of Peter Pan & the Pirates "Ages Of Pan" in which Peter is tired of being a child and causes himself to age several decades at a time, when he's an adult in his thirties he still has the voice of a then 16-year-old Jason Marsden. As an old man, Marsden uses a slower, weaker, sounding voice.
• Isabella of Phineas and Ferb is an adorable Fireside Girl with exactly the voice you'd expect, until called on to announce a monster truck rally or hockey game. At that point, she switches to a deeper voice with enough volume to knock a grown man out of his seat.
• Brucho from Plasmo has a high-pitched voice and thick lateral lisp, which heavily contrasts the somewhat threatening armor that he constantly wears.
• In The Powerpuff Girls (1998), Lil' Arturo of the Gangreen Gang is a midget (maybe under 2 feet) and he speaks in a deep, gruff voice. Mitch Mitchelson also has a gruff voice, and he's five. Incidentally, they're both voiced by Tom Kenny.
• Tex Avery's classic short, Red Hot Riding Hood, has the title character speaking in a feminine Katharine Hepburn voice; however, when she rejects Wolfie's advances, she does so in an unfitting man's voice for comedic effect.
• In the Regular Show episode "Don", there is a flashback to Rigby's sixth birthday party. The human children at the party sound appropriate for that age, but Mordecai, Rigby, and Don sound almost exactly like their adult selves.
• In Rudolph's Shiny New Year, for the song "It's Raining Sunshine" the chorus is performed by OM's dinosaur friends, but it is sung by a children's choir, they are fully grown dinosaurs not babies.
• In an episode of Sabrina: The Animated Series, an adult man walking down the street had a high-pitched little girl voice. Done by a girl.
• In the 2018 reboot of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, Hordak has a smooth and refined voice, despite being a seven-foot tall alien with bat-like facial features, glowing red eyes, fangs, and claws. It's a sharp contrast to his gutteral, raspy voice in the 1980s series.
• In the Pith Possum segment "The Bride Of Darkness" from The Shnookums & Meat Funny Cartoon Show we have villainess Shirley Pimple, a cute little girl who speaks with the deep gruff voice of Brad Garrett.
• The Simpsons:
  • In "The PTA Disbands", Bart gets hold of a construction supervisor's bullhorn and starts giving out destructive orders. The supervisor grabs the horn away and complains that people should have been able to tell the difference between his voice and that of a 10-year-old boy — the joke being that the supervisor sounds exactly like Bart (including using the Catchphrase "¡Ay caramba!").
  • Ned Flanders literally Screams Like a Little Girl, and at one point Bart mistakes him singing in falsetto for that of Jessica Lovejoy.
  • In "Stark Raving Dad", Homer is put in a mental hospital. His roommate, who claims to be Michael Jackson, is, in fact, a very large, intimidating man... with Michael Jackson's voice. Subverted when it turns out his real voice is actually deep and gravelly. (He's actually a white, Polish-American from New Jersey, but Homer fails to pick up on this important clue, not having ever seen Michael Jackson before.) In an interesting twist, the character actually was voiced by Michael Jackson (who was surprisingly gifted as a vocal mimic). However, due to a contract dispute, he was billed as "John Jay Smith" in the credits.
  • In The Last Temptation of Homer", a trip to the doctor gives Bart several treatments that make him look much nerdier and as a quick gag, when Bart's throat gets sprayed, his voice and even speech patterns sound exactly like Jerry Lewis from The Nutty Professor.
  • "Treehouse of Horror V": In one of the dystopian futures, Maggie not only speaks, but does so with a deep male basso voice (courtesy of James Earl Jones).
  • In "New Kids on the Blecch," Bart, Milhouse, Nelson, and Ralph are recruited for a boy band. Their voices are altered using NASA technology to make the elementary school-aged boys sound like teenage/young adult male singers. Hilariously, Ralph's altered voice is the deepest.
  • In any episode that’s set in the future, Bart, Lisa, and any of their friends all still have the same voice actresses, and still retain their prepubescent sounding voices, despite being adults.
  • Kearney, one of the bullies, is fat, bald, and rather ugly, with a very Vague Age. However, he has the highest-pitched voice out of the Gang of Bullies, sounding like pre-Vocal Evolution Nelson.
• For the French dub of The Smurfs (1981), the Smurflings still retain their adult-like voices, after having been de-aged in Father Time's clock in their debut episode. (The same goes for at least Nat and Slouchy in the German dub.)
• Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM): Princess Sally resembles a cute squirrel with the voice of a mature, grown woman.
  • Later, in Sonic Boom, you have 15-year-old Sonic and 12-year-old Amy, who both sound like adults.
• South Park:
  • Plenty of elementary school boys sound like teenagers or even adults. Take Stan and Clyde for instance.
    • This is even more true for most foreign dubs as the voice actors aren't pitched when voicing the children. For example, Craig's first voice in the Latin American Spanish dub sounds absolutely nothing like a boy.
  • Played for laughs in the episode "Good Times with Weapons", in which the boys are pretending to be ninjas. Whenever we see the scenario as the boys imagine it, the animation shifts to an animesque style in which the boys look like fully grown adults, but they all still sound the same as always.
  • We get a similar effect in the episode "Make Love, Not Warcraft", where the boys' World of Warcraft gameplay is rendered as machinima. This time, their conversation is shown through their (much older-looking) avatars speaking to one another in-game, again with the same silly high-pitched voices we're used to.
  • Wendy Testaburger in the later seasons, around season 11 onwards, sounds more like a teenage girl or grown woman rather than a 9 or 10 year old girl. April Stewart, her current voice actress, said that Matt Stone and Trey Parker told her to use a more mature sounding voice.
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • Plankton's voice is basically a long-running play on this. Most fans are used to how he sounds now, but in earlier episodes, Plankton's deep voice along with his extremely small size was not a common combination, and even played into a few jokes. Meanwhile, certain dubs, like the Japanese dub, choose to give him a high-pitched voice to go with his small body, which makes him sound outright weird to those who know him for his deep voice.
  • In a few early episodes, the normally squeaky-voiced SpongeBob tends to get a deep manly voice when acting heroic.
  • In "Mind the Gap", Squidward drills SpongeBob's front teeth together to seal the gap to stop his whistling; this somehow causes his voice to suddenly become deep and swave-sounding.
  • Prehistoric Gary in "Ugh" is much larger and looks more intimidating than his modern counterpart. However, he has the exact same high-pitched meow that Gary is known for.
• The titular character in Sport Billy is a young boy around 10-12 years old, but he sounds more like a teenager or young adult.
• In Star vs. the Forces of Evil, Star looks like a young girl but her voice is a lot huskier sounding than her youthful appearance and childish attitude suggests.
• In Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Darth Maul looks like a demon from hell, but as voiced by Sam Witwer, is often soft-spoken, velvety, and smooth with a light British accent (in-universe a Coruscanti accent, given he was raised by Palpatine who has one as well) that makes him sound more like a cultured university professor instead of one of the most feared Dark Siders in the galaxy.
• Steven Universe:
  • Sour Cream is a noodle-skinny rave kid, with the fairly deep voice of Brian Posehn. He's also had that voice since he was a baby.
  • Topaz is a giant, imposing gem Fusion with a sweet, gentle, and surprisingly high pitched and young-sounding voice.
  • Sunstone is about as big as Topaz and has a massive upper body, but speaks in a high female voice.
  • Episode-specific example: Shortly before she attacks the Crystal Gems in "Ocean Gem", Lapis speaks through a water clone of Steven in her own voice.
  • Pink Diamond is a woman-child with a mature, sultry voice.
  • All the Rubys speak with Charlyne Yi's rather soft-sounding, gentle voice, which makes the fact that the majority of the Rubys spend a lot of time furious and either yelling or growling quite funny.
• Summer Memories: Jason's 7-year-old brother Tim speaks with a deep, mature voice like that of a 30-something year old adult man. While it initially seems like the show's way of establishing his desire to appear more adult than he actually is, it's ultimately revealed to be the result of Jason's Unreliable Narrator status and the Tim outside of Jason's memories (i.e. the "real" Tim) speaks like a regular little boy.
• Speaking of Weird Al Yankovic contributing to this trope, he guest starred on Teen Titans Go!, voicing none other than freaking Darkseid! He sounds deep and gravelly at first, but after taking a cough drop, he begins to speak in Weird Al's natural speaking voice, and as a result, the Titans are no longer afraid of him. It truly has to be seen to be believed.
• Thomas & Friends:
  • Henry, despite being portrayed as a large tender locomotive like Gordon, actually speaks in a high pitched, whiny voice in the US dub. The UK dub, as well as Thomas and the Magic Railroad, gives him a deeper, more fitting voice.
  • Similarly, James has a high-pitched, raspy, feminine-sounding voice in Magic Railroad, whereas he has a more masculine voice since the CGI switchover.
• ThunderCats Roar: Lion-O looks like a child, but has a very deep and heroic-sounding voice.
• In classic shorts Jerry from Tom and Jerry had a deep voice in the few times he spoke, which was at odds with the fact he's a small, cute mouse. In modern adaptations Jerry is given a much more high pitched, often even feminine, voice whether he speaks or is just making noises.
• Total Drama:
  • DJ has a surprisingly squeaky considering how old he looks and how tall/muscular he is.
  • Harold, despite his skinny stature, he has a fairly deep and hoarse voice.
  • Lightning from Revenge of the Island is a built, black Jerk Jock with an incredibly high-pitched voice.
• Ped in Transformers: Robots in Disguise (2015). An intimidating worm-bot with paralyzing pincers and giant claws who looks straight up menacing. He sounds like Mandark.
• The Butt Witch of Twelve Forever has a deep masculine voice, but is clearly a woman. Granted, she's voiced by Matt Berry.
• The Venture Bros.: Doctor Girlfriend (now Dr. Mrs. The Monarch) has a really gravelly voice that doesn't sound like it belongs to a woman, especially one of that figure. Jokes about her being transgender aside, it seems to be that she just smokes a lot. One episode that flashes back to her high school years has her voice occasionally break into a more feminine tone, confirming that she used to have a normal female voice before the three-pack-a-day habit.
• Jake Amore in What About Mimi? is a very big, muscular man who stars in lots of movies. In his films, he has a very deep, baritone voice. However, his voice is digitally altered in them. His real voice is very high and squeaky.
• In the Yogi Bear TV special "Yogi's Great Escape", one of the three orphan bear cubs, Bopper, despite being a small cub, speaks in a deep, raspy, gravely voice, provided by Frank Welker.
• The third season of Young Justice (2010), Outsiders, has a bit in the episode "Nightmare Monkeys" homaging Teen Titans Go! with the Doom Patrol, complete with the voice cast of Go as the Patrol—resulting in the Chief sounding like Robin.

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