History Main / MisplacedAccent

* Averted in ''Film/{{Downfall}}''. As the first actor to portray Hitler in a German-language film, Bruno Ganz made a point of perfecting his Austrian accent.

* In the short film "[[https://youtu.be/VlVeoPXFHEA Where Are They Now?]]" by London-based animator Steve Cutts, [[WhiteDwarfStarlet post-fame]] [[Film/WhoFramedRogerRabbit Jessica Rabbit]] inexplicably has a Cockney accent, while Cutts, who performed all the voices, at least [[OohMeAccentsSlipping attempts]] [[FakeAmerican American accents]] for the other characters.

* In the short film "[[https://youtu.be/VlVeoPXFHEA Where Are They Now?]]" by London-based animator Steve Cutts, [[WhiteDwarfStarlet post-fame]] [[Film/WhoFramedRogerRabbit Jessica Rabbit]] inexplicably has a Cockney accent(Cutts performs all the voices), though American accents are at least [[OohMeAccentsSlipping attempted]] for the other characters.

* In the short film "[[https://youtu.be/VlVeoPXFHEA Where Are They Now?]]" by London-based animator Steve Cutts, [[WhiteDwarfStarlet post-fame]] [[Film/WhoFramedRogerRabbit Jessica Rabbit]] inexplicably has a Cockney accent, though American accents are at least [[OohMeAccentsSlipping attempted]] for the other characters.

* In the short film "[[https://youtu.be/VlVeoPXFHEA Where Are They Now?]]" by London-based animator Steve Cutts, [[WhiteDwarfStarlet post-fame]] [[WesternAnimation/WhoFramedRogerRabbit Jessica Rabbit]] inexplicably has a Cockney accent, though American accents are at least [[OohMeAccentsSlipping attempted]] for the other characters.

* In the short film "[[https://youtu.be/VlVeoPXFHEA Where Are They Now?]]" by London-based animator Steve Cutts, [[WhiteDwarfStarlet post-fame]] [[WesternAnimation/WhoDramedRogerRabbit Jessica Rabbit]] inexplicably has a Cockney accent, though American accents are at least [[OohMeAccentsSlipping attempted]] for the other characters.

** ''Films/{{Twins}}'' had Arnold's character Julius be raised on a South Pacific island by scientists, with his main father figure being named "Professor Werner".

* Considering how iconic it is, it's surprising how few times Creator/ArnoldSchwarzenegger's famous Austrian accent has an in-universe explanation, with ''Film/{{Twins}}'' and ''Film/KindergartenCop'' being the only times where his character is Austrian, like the man himself. Every other time he's a homegrown American who just inexplicably has an Austrian accent for some reason. With the exceptions of...

** Creator/MilaKunis and her family were Ukrainian Jews from Chernivtsi located deep within the Soviet Union. In fact, even when she moved to America she couldn't speak a single word of English and only became fluent in the language after watching ''Series/ThePriceIsRight'' which she credits with learning it from show host Bob Barker speaking slowly enough for her to understand. Because she had olive-brown skin despite her Ukrainian roots she was and still is often typecast as AmbiguouslyBrown characters in film.

'''Brennan:''' [[CompletelyMissingThePoint Iranian isn't actually Arab]].

* In ''VideoGame/RoadRedemption'', the biker gang members have Australian accents (likely in reference to ''Film/MadMax), but the road signage, pavement markings, direction of traffic, and vegetation such as cacti imply that the setting is in the western USA.

* Due to only having two accents recorded for all the Inquisitors to use in ''VideoGame/DragonAgeInquisition'', (British and American), a Dalish elf Inquisitor will come off as this, as the Dalish tend to speak with ''Welsh'' accents.

* A lot of students from non-English speaking countries will learn English from teachers who are from the Anglosphere - as a result they may sound British or American when speaking English. Creator/CharlizeTheron for example grew up speaking Afrikaans and didn't learn English until she moved to America - therefore her accent sounds American.

* O-Ren Ishii from ''Film/KillBill'' is supposed to be fluent in Japanese. Her actress, Creator/LucyLiu, speaks it with an American accent.

* In ''VideoGame/BackToTheFutureTheGame'', Trixie Trotter speaks with a thick New York/New Jersey accent, even though she's later revealed to be a Canadian from Winnipeg (and presumably stayed there until at least her young adult years, seeing as she posed for saucy pictures there).

* In ''VideoGame/BackToTheFutureTheGame', Trixie Trotter speaks with a thick New York/New Jersey accent, even though she's later revealed to be a Canadian from Winnipeg (and presumably stayed there until at least her young adult years, seeing as she posed for saucy pictures there).

* The giant pandas from ''WesternAnimation/TheGarfieldShow'' episode "Little Trouble in Big China" speak in Aust1ralian accents, despite living in China.

* One episode of ''Series/Reno911'' saw Officer Garcia going undercover as a migrant worker to expose a farming operation suspected of using illegal immigrant. Unfortunately for him, he was out of practice with faking a Mexican accent; as one of his fellow officers comments, he ends up sounding somewhat Swedish. (It doesn't help that Garcia would have difficulty [[LatinoIsBrown physically passing for Mexican]] as well, being played by the white Argentinian Carlos Alazraqui. Doubly ironic in that Garcia doesn't speak a lick of Spanish, while Alazraqui is fluent).

* The anime ''Anime/NightRaid1931'' featured (historical) British diplomat Victor Bulwer-Lytton in one episode. The actor was clearly a native speaker of English, but he spoke with a distinct North American accent. Also, native residents of Shanghai were apparently speaking Mandarin Chinese rather than the local dialect of the Wu language.

* ''{{LightNovel/Durarara}}'' Semyon Brezhnev is supposed to speak with Russian accent, but his voice actor insted imitates an American one.

[[folder:Film - Animation]]
* Marie from ''WesternAnimation/TheAristocats'' was voiced by Louise "Liz" English. Since the film mainly takes place in Paris, France, Marie has a British accent which is strange since her mother has a French accent and her brothers Toulouse and Berlioz have American accents. Her voice actor Louise is English and later became one of the girls in Hill's Angels in ''Series/TheBennyHillShow''. Marie's voice in the film sounds like a mix between a British accent mixed with a Mid-Atlantic accent.

[[folder:Film - Live Action]]

* Considering how iconic it is, it's surprising how few times Creator/ArnoldSchwarzenegger's famous Austrian accent has an in-universe explanation, with ''{{Film/Twins}}'' and ''Film/KindergartenCop'' being the only times where his character is Austrian, like the man himself. Every other time he's a homegrown American who just inexpiably has an Austrian accent for some reason. With the exceptions of;
** ''{{Film/Commando}}'' was the first film to attempt to justify his accent, passing it off as an East-German accent, despite sounding ''not even remotely'' German[[note]] German is Austria's national language, but the accents and pronunciation are as different from those found in Germany as the spoken English of a native Scotsman would be from that of an American, so Austrians naturally have a different accent in English compared to Germans[[/note]]. Should also be noted for the sake of irony that Arnie was famously not allowed to dub himself in German due to having what can basically be described as the "Country Hick" accent in his native language.

* ''Film/HighAndTight'' - Shane Olsen, in contrast to his two American brothers, has a thicker 'noo yawk' accent. This was apparently an ad-lib by his actor Paul Sparkes in his first key scene, meaning they couldn't change it afterwards.

* The film version of ''Literature/FlowerDrumSong'' was the first Hollywood film to have an all-Asian cast and naturally there was a mix of various Asian backgrounds playing Chinese and Chinese-American characters. The most egregious is Japanese actress Creator/MiyoshiUmeki playing the Chinese immigrant Mei Li - yet with her Japanese accent front and centre. Conversely, Linda Low was born and raised in San Francisco - but her actress Creator/NancyKwan was Eurasian from Hong Kong, and thus Linda has a mixture of English and Chinese in her accent.

* ''{{Film/Midsommar}}'' takes place mostly in northern Sweden, but every Swedish character speaks with a southern dialect.

[[folder:Live Action TV]]

* ''Series/{{Bones}}'': Squintern Arastoo Vaziri faked a Middle Eastern accent in order to justify his devout Muslim-ness to the other characters, pretending he's fresh off the boat from Iran, but the accent he uses is Jordanian rather than Iranian. At one point he loses his temper and speaks without the accent, then confesses. Bones is not surprised.
-->'''Cam:''' Were you guys aware that Arastoo doesn't really have an accent?
-->'''Booth:''' Yeah, he does. Yeah, it's thicker than Achmed the rug merchant. ''Whispering to Brennan'' Was that racist? It sounded racist.
-->'''Brennan:''' I knew that despite the fact that Arastoo said he was Iranian, his accent was Jordanian.
-->'''Cam:''' Don't you find it odd that he was faking an Arab accent of any kind?
-->'''Brennan:''' [[CompletelyMissingThePoint Iranian isn't actually Arab]].

-->''"The south will rise again, 'mon!"''

* One episode of ''Series/{{Reno 911}}'' saw Officer Garcia going undercover as a migrant worker to expose a farming operation suspected of using illegal immigrant. Unfortunately for him, he was out of practice with faking a Mexican accent; as one of his fellow officers comments, he ends up sounding somewhat Swedish. (It doesn't help that Garcia would have difficulty [[LatinoIsBrown physically passing for Mexican]] as well, being played by the white Argentinian Carlos Alazraqui. Doubly ironic in that Garcia doesn't speak a lick of Spanish, while Alazraqui is fluent).

[[folder:Professional Wrestling]]
* Wrestling/KatarinaWaters, when portraying Katie Lea Burchill, continued to speak in her own natural accent, which is quite Germanic and sounds like a cross between German and British RP (she was born and raised in Germany but wrestled in England for years). She was billed entirely from Chelsea, England because she debuted playing the {{Kayfabe}} sister of Paul Burchill.

* While having the civilization leaders speak their native languages in ''VideoGame/{{Civilization}} V'' was a nice touch, several people criticized some of their accents as historically inaccurate: Napoleon speaks unaccented French despite his real-life counterpart having a thick Corsican accent, George Washington has a Bill Clinton-esque American accent despite being born in Virginia at the time that it was a British colony, Catherine the Great speaks perfect Russian despite being born as and raised by Germans and Queen Elizabeth (I) speaks with a posh modern accent that certainly did not exist in her own time. Some of it is justified because nobody now knows how this particular language is supposed to sound (e.g. Ancient Egyptian).

* The [=hitRECord=] story ''{{TroperWorks/Moonflowers}}'' is set in Ireland. However, [[CoolOldGuy Ogma O'Luain]] has an English accent since he went to school in London. He states that he "needed to stop sounding Irish." Since his oldest grandson is in his twenties, that would put Ogma in the time-frame where the Irish frequently adopted British accents to avoid discrimination.
* According to Jessica of ''Podcast/FatFrenchAndFabulous'', everyone from New York has a Brooklyn accent and everyone living prior to 1950 sounds like Winston Churchill.

* In Creator/FedericoFellini's film ''Film/LaDolceVita'', Swedish actress Anita Ekberg plays American blonde bombshell Sylvia. Her accent is unlikely to fool anyone familiar with U.S. English.

* ''Film/TradingPlaces'' plays this for comedy when the heroes all disguise themselves foreigners. Jamie Lee Curtis's character apparently gets mixed up and pretends to be Swedish even though she's wearing German lederhosen. Her baffled conspirators call her out in this in the middle of the con, but it's too late to contradict herself.

* Done on purpose (and hilariously) at the conclusion of ''Film/ThePest'': Pestario Vargas (Creator/JohnLeguizamo), who speaks with a passable American accent throughout the film (when he's not imitating other characters, of course), dresses up as a "German Ambassadorrrrr" and tries a JustAStupidAccent attempt at German - but of course the TrillingRs cause him to come off as upper-class Spanish. The Nazi villain [[LampshadeHanging tries to point this out]] as the police are dragging him away ("He's not even German!") [[note]] which is especially funny because this in-universe German character is being voiced by the [[HypocriticalHumor very American]] JeffreyJones [[/note]], but of course nobody listens.

* In ''Film/{{Allied}}'', Max's French is supposed to be very good, and Marianne is only worried that he sounds like he was from Quebec (which may clue people that he is a spy). Brad Pitt actually sounds like a plain old American struggling with French.
* ''Film/HardTarget'' attempts to pass off Jean-Claude Van-Damme's Belgian accent as a Cajun accent.

* Considering how iconic it is, it's surprising how few times [[Creator/ArnoldSchwarzenegger Arnold Schwarzenegger's]] famous Austrian accent has an in-universe explanation, with ''{{Film/Twins}}'' and ''Film/KindergartenCop'' being the only times where his character is Austrian, like the man himself. Every other time he's a homegrown American who just inexpiably has an Austrian accent for some reason. With the exceptions of;

* ''Film/MrsMiniver'' was set in England but filmed in America. Walter Pidgeon and Teresa Wright were American, so their characters' accents sound closer to mid-Atlantic.

* The film version of ''Literature/MemoirsOfAGeisha''. Creator/MichelleYeoh was the only one of the lead actresses who already spoke English, and so used her natural Malaysian accent for Mameha (who is Japanese). Gong Li and Ziyi Zhang had the surreal experience of learning English for their roles, but also speaking it with a Japanese accent (they are both Chinese).

* ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'': Frenchman Jean-Luc Picard speaks with a British accent. His brother doesn't. Supposedly Patrick Stewart did ''try'' to employ a French accent in early screen tests but [[OohMeAccentsSlipping couldn't get it to sound convincing or consistent enough]] and gave it up as a bad job before they got to filming the actual pilot episode.

** In the episode "Crack Baby Athletic Association", Slash is revealed to be "Vunter Slaush", a parody on the Dutch Sinterklaas, complete with parody song. The problem? The name and song are in German, not Dutch...
** Butters has a ''very'' strong Dallas accent (the new girl he pretended to be in "Marjorine" is even stated to be from Dallas). Yet he's lived in Colorado since he was ''at least'' four (as shown in "Preschool"), was born in Hawaii of all states (shown in "Going Native") and his parents only have a generic Mid-States accent (which means he couldn't have gotten it from them).

* The giant pandas from ''WesternAnimation/TheGarfieldShow'' episode "Little Trouble in Big China" speak in Australian accents, despite living in China.

** Napoleon Bonaparte came from an Italian family living in Corsica, and his contemporaries notes that his Corsican accent was so thick that he was often difficult to understand, yet he's usually depicted as speaking exactly the same as the other Frenchmen around him.
** Adolf Hitler was born in Austria-Hungary and didn't move to Germany until he was 24. He thus had a distinct Austrian accent.
** Stalin was Georgian and grew up speaking the Georgian language, causing him to speak Russian with a thick Georgian accent. He rarely actually spoke in public because of this (and his squeaky voice), and would usually have his speeches read by an unseen voice actor.
** Despite making Mandarin the official language of the People's Republic of China, Mao Zedong spoke it with heavy Xiang accent since he was from rural Hunan Province.