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Creator / Troy Baker

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https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/tb_5.jpg

"You know, people often ask me, 'How does one get into acting in video games?', and the process is surprisingly simple. Step 1: save up your money, buy a decent microphone, and then wait for Nolan North and I to die."
— Troy Baker at The Game Awards 2015

Troy Edward Baker (born April 1, 1976 in Dallas, Texas) is a voice actor and musician from Texas whose forte seems to be playing assholes, be they heroic or villainous. On the other hand, though, he's also good at playing comedic characters, even though some of them just might end up being the former.

He has been doing voiceover work in California and with this change his forte has switched to playing Chessmasters. If he voices a character like this, expect a character voiced by Johnny Yong Bosch to oppose him. Also seems to like playing a Fake Brit, generally the Evil Brit note .

He has become a major presence in the Batman franchise, having voiced Batman, two Robins, along with various villains. Most notably, he showed that he was a worthy successor to Mark Hamill's iconic portrayal of the Joker by doing a near-perfect replication of Hamill's voice in Batman: Arkham Origins, thus making him the only actor to date in any medium who has played both roles.

Troy married his wife Pam on October 13, 2012. Apparently, this is one of the main reasons why Matthew Mercer took over his role as Kanji in the second half of the Persona 4 anime. By the time he's back from honeymoon, he's gone to become so well-known and busy in the industry, Matthew Mercer would end up succeeding many of his roles in anime and Japanese games.

Troy is currently one of the most popular voice actors working out of Los Angeles today - you probably know him best for Booker DeWitt in BioShock Infinite, Joel in The Last of Us and its sequel, the default male voice in the Saints Row series from 3 onwards, the first voice of Kanji in Persona 4 (he left halfway through recording of the anime adaptation because of his marriage and honeymoon, and has since been replaced by Matthew Mercer), Hawkeye in Avengers Assemble and Snow in the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy.

While he might not be able to reprise his Japanese-based works, he'll still appear in Western works, examples include World of Warcraft (Gul'dan) and Mortal Kombat X (Shinnok), or if said 'Japanese' work is extremely high profile, such as Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (Revolver Ocelot), and Death Stranding (he even got his name credited in Katakana: トロイ・ベイカー). However, sometimes he did have interest in reprising his old Japanese anime-style roles that he particularly likes, such as Yuri Lowell. When Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition was being localized, he wasn't even contacted to reprise much to his chagrin. While it is probable that his new fame might make the developers think that his lines were going to be super expensive and they wanted to cut cost, Troy made it clear he'd love to do it. This was further emphasized when in the following year, he confirmed he would be returning to voice Vincent in the remake of Catherine. Additionally, he has made a return to voicing anime in the form of the Netflix Baki the Grappler series where he plays the titular character.

On Thursdays, Baker co-hosts Retro Replay, a retro-gaming channel, with fellow voice actor Nolan North. In April 2019, Rooster Teeth partnered up with the show. Unfortunately in April 2020, after an apparent disagreement with the future direction of the channel, Baker left to form his own channel.

Has a Twitter account. Has no known relation to fellow voice actor Dee Bradley Baker or to former doctors Tom Baker or Colin Baker.

Fucking roles, I will read the shit out of you!

Anime

Video Games

Western Animation

Rule one! Be myself. Rule two! Get people to trope me:

  • Action Genre Hero Guy: He has been frequently hired to play generic badass dudes in video games. To the point where being voiced by him is almost a prerequisite for this trope. Examples include Jack Mitchell, Booker DeWitt and Alec Mason to name only a few.
  • Awesome, Dear Boy:
    • Despite becoming a high profile voice actor and leaving behind some of his anime roles, Troy clearly thought that Yuri Lowell is awesome enough that he would love to voice his new lines for Tales of Vesperia Definitive Edition. Unfortunately for him, he was not contacted to reprise, much to his and the fans' disappointment.
    • Despite having rarely reprised his VA work for Japanese-related media in some time, Troy has nothing but fond memories of some of his older works within that sphere, chief among them being the aforementioned Yuri, Kanji and Vincent - many of which helped him become popular around the early 2010s. Luckily enough for him, he still does get to reprise his role as Snow for most related spin-offs (Final Fantasy dubs tend to be union affairs), and he reprised his role of Vincent in the Full Body remake of Catherine.
    • In 2018, he returned to anime to voice the titular character, Baki, much to anime fans delight.
  • The Bus Came Back: After a nearly five year gap from his last anime work (Persona 4 The Animation), he finally returned to doing anime work in 2018's Baki the Grappler. Not long after in May 2019, he reprised his role as Schneizel in Code Geass: Lelouch of the Re;surrection. Though it doesn't appear to be a huge return as the roles are limited to ones he's personally fond of.
  • The Cast Showoff: Having originally been a singer and guitarist before becoming a voice actor, some of the games Troy has worked on take advantage of this. Among them include Resident Evil 6, where he sings the ending theme of Jake Muller's campaign and BioShock Infinite's "Will The Circle Be Unbroken" sequence. He's also sung and played bass at multiple concerts where the Silent Hill songs are performed by singer Mary Elizabeth McGlynn, and songwriters Akira Yamaoka and Joe Romersa.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Some of the characters he had voiced tend to be sarcastic.
  • Evil Sounds Deep: Whenever he plays a villain, expect them to have a deep voice. Especially in Middle-earth: Shadow of War when Talion goes evil.
  • Fake Brit: He's really good at pulling off British accents. Compare November 11, Excalibur, Schneizel, Charles Gregory, Arlon, Van Kleiss, Sinestro Note, Loki, and Jetfire.
  • He's Back!: After a long time being absent in anime or anime-based video game voice acting, Troy slowly made a comeback to the genre where he started; with reprising Vincent Brooks, having a role in Baki the Grappler 2018 as the protagonist and reprising Schneizel el Britannia in the Code Geass Compilation Movie.
  • Man of a Thousand Voices: As expected from a veteran Funimation voice actor residing in LA.
    • Taken to truly ridiculous levels in the Batman: Arkham Series, where he's played five (and a sixth for Two-Face) major characters, both heroes and villains, all of whom sound different. Rocksteady were actually able to use this in Arkham Knight to hide the fact that two of his characters were the same person.
    • Another great example is in Tales from the Borderlands where his character has lines emulating characters played by Dameon Clarke and Patrick Warburton. You can tell Baker is actively trying (And slips up a bit with Warburton) to not perfectly mimic the other actors' voices. Baker does another impression of Warburton in Young Justice (2010) while playing a character who is a reference to one of Warburton's characters.
    • Another good example of this is within the Mortal Kombat games, particularly Mortal Kombat X. Voiced Shinnok, Erron Black, and Fujin.
    • While he may not be as prolific as other legendary voice actors with his output in other domains, video games are the best show of his range.
  • Playing Against Type:
    • Shadow Kanji. Actual YouTube comment: "Why, Troy Baker, why?"
    • If flamboyance could count as against type, then Eikichi probably qualifies too.
    • His performance as Michael Korvac seems to draw mostly from feelings of paranoia and fear.
    • Snow Villiers is a famous example.
    • Jazz is also a good example.
    • A younger version of Mark Hamill's Joker in Batman: Arkham Origins.
    • In recent years, Troy has completely avoided being typecast as he plays a wide variety of distinct roles; in Kid Icarus alone, his two characters are polar opposites.
  • Promoted Fanboy:
    • He's a huge fan of Batman: The Animated Series, and would later get to voice Two-Face, Robin, the Arkham Knight, Red Hood, Batman, Nightwing and Joker.
    • Was also a huge fan of Uncharted and got to work with Naughty Dog on The Last of Us. This has now come full circle with him being cast as Nathan Drake's brother in Uncharted 4.
    • He loves Mass Effect and was thrilled to be offered a part in the third game. He was less thrilled when he learned that part was Kai Leng.
      And they called me, they're like Hey, we've got a role for you, it was like I'm gonna be in Mass Effect!. And they're like This is the guy and I'm like ...I don't have to do this. I really don't. As an actor, it was great. But as a fan of the franchise, I, like, killed Thane, it was like, not...not good, dude. It was not good.
  • Serkis Folk: He does a good bit of mocap work along with the voice acting in many video games such as The Last of Us and inFAMOUS: Second Son. In fact, he's one of the many voice actors to promote this in the American video game industry thanks to the advancing technology in many video game consoles.
  • Star-Making Role:
    • He had two in 2008: Yuri Lowell in Tales of Vesperia and Kanji Tatsumi in Persona 4. However, arguably the former could be considered the most important one, since Tales of Vesperia came out several months earlier and most of the characters he's made ever since are more similar to Yuri than to Kanji. Still, with Kanji he proved his incredible versatility.
    • Snow from FFXIII is arguably the third big one for him. After that, he started landing more and more game roles.
    • 2013 turned out to be yet another year of star-making roles, with highly acclaimed lead roles in three of the most critically acclaimed games of the year: Booker DeWitt in BioShock Infinite, Joel in The Last of Us, and the Joker in Batman: Arkham Origins. That marked something of a turning point in his career, as from that point onwards he has more or less shifted on to appearing in Western-related media, having left behind most of his earlier anime and Japanese-related roles likely due to his status as a union actor.
"Ding Dong, the Bat is dead! Which old Bat? The dumb old Bat! Ding Dong, the dumb old Bat is dead! HAHAHAHAHA!"
"You and your jokes ain't worth spit!"

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