Gratuitous Russian

"There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar trying to make up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening."

— A Clockwork Orange, opening lines

Russia is a big place. There are many people living in it and its neighboring countries, especially the ones that were once parts of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Consequentially, there are a lot of people on the planet (quarter billion, according to The Other Wiki) who can speak Russian Language to some extent. It's no surprise then, that non-Russian authors love to put snippets of Russian speech into their characters' mouths, especially if said characters come from Tsarist Russia (in Period Pieces), the Soviet Union (during the Cold War era), or The New Russia.

Very often, however, characters have absolutely no reason to use their (supposedly) native language in the situations the author wants them to, and even when they do, glaring grammatical, semantical, and pronunciation errors render their dialogue absurd and even comical to an actual Russian speaker. Such instances fall squarely under the definition of this particular subtrope of Gratuitous Foreign Language.

See Analysis.Gratuitous Russian for common mistakes and ways to avoid them. See Bilingual Bonus if you know Russian.

This is a Sub-Trope of Gratuitous Foreign Language, and really should be used with extreme care.

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Примеры применения ломаного русского:

Булавкамяч (Pinball)

• Done by the Soviets in Data East's Secret Service pinball, who even put it on the signs in front of their secret base.
  "Nyet Parking!"

Фанатработы (Fanworks)

• Since his first language is Russian, Peter in The home-trip. frequently switches to Russian when he doesn't want his English speaking peers to know what he's saying (usually threats and cursing). He even tells Flash to his face that he can "kill [him] in over twenty ways with [his] shoelace" and Flash didn't even know it.
• After being incentivised by underdeveloped hints in the canon works and by the account of Far Überwald given in The Compleat Discworld Atlas, A.A. Pessimal started to introduce Discworld Russians into his works.Word of God is that he is going back to schooldays and an (uncompleted^note Uncompleted because the only Russian teacher in town was offered twice the pay to work for the British military and teach it to squaddies. Pessimal, aged fourteen, was forced to switch to Spanish.) school-level course in Russian Language to try to get it right. Or at least better. Every work featuring "Rodinian" characters usually has a footnote asking Russian-fluent readers to critique the representation and to suggest improvements. As he says, you can't easily take it up to eleven if you can only count up to five.

Живое действие ТВ (Live-Action TV)

• Airwolf featured something Russian fairly regularly and butchered it with wild abandon. The prime example is the Stavograd two-parter where the crew come up against General Kirov. The location itself is quite ridiculous as a Russian place name, and the Russian signage is complete gibberish that is occasionally hilarious. There is a huge dial they constantly look at that indicates dangerously high level of what could be best translated into English as "ariesources". овноурсы, овно- being something related to Aries, the sheep, and -урсы likely the tail end of the word for resources). It's also one letter away from "shitources".
• The later Arrow seasons that deal with Oliver's time in Russia make a fair attempt at getting Russian right, even though most Russians are played by non-Russian actors. Oliver's accent makes sense, at least, even though his grammar is actually pretty good.
• In The Blacklist pilot, the nerve gas bomb is disarmed by a Russian-speaking man who doesn't appear to know any English (despite the events taking place in the US). As he's running away, Red appears and yells a few words in Russian. Later, he's called a Ukrainian, even though there's no reason to suspect that, considering he only spoke Russian (not uncommon in eastern Ukraine, by the way) and there were no other identifying marks to indicate his nationality. Also, when he disarms and takes out the bomb, he remarks "Uzhasno!", which translates to "horrible/terrible", although his face bears an admiring expression, so, perhaps, "Chudesno!" ("wonderful") would have been a better word choice. This is a little strange, since he was obviously played by a native speaker. Maybe, he or the translator misunderstood the script saying "Terrific!".
• A Burn Notice episode has Michael pretending to be a member of The Mafiya. Being a former spy, he can speak Russian, but he still has an American accent. So, in order to convince a guy that he really does belong, he explains that he was born in Russia but was raised in the US. In another episode, his accent doesn't matter since he's talking to a South American officer, who isn't likely to notice these things (the officer's own Russian is even worse).
• Criminal Minds surpinsingly averts this in "Honor Among Thieves". The Russian that the characters speak sounds very natural and is, for the most part, free of ridiculous accents. Even Prentiss, who, of course, has an accent, constructs her sentences the way a native Russian speaker would do.
• In episode 13 of the first season of Farscape, you can see some Russian names, letters and words on the screen ("А. Новиков", "поэзия наших").
• An episode of Grimm has Nick, Hank, and Renard deal with a Russian "healer" (actually a Koschie) with several characters speaking Russian. Only a few were actually played by Russian actors. Also, surprisingly, Sean Renard turns out to be fluent in Russian, despite a slight accent (the parents of his actor Sasha Roiz were Russian Jews, who immigrated to Israel). Several episodes in the final season also have him video chat with a Russian acquaintance.
• Interview with the Vampire (2022): In "...After the Phantoms of Your Former Self", although Damek hears Daniel Molloy speak English with an American accent when he enters the dining room (and therefore he should've inferred that Daniel is an American), Damek asks him a question in Russian. Daniel doesn't understand, so then Damek chats with him in English.
• JAG: Sarah "Mac" Mackenzie speaks Russian and gets the chance to use it several times throughout the course of the series.
  • In "Silent Service" Sarah Mackenzie is on a submarine as part of a fact-finding mission to determine whether women should be allowed to serve on submarines. An American sailor looks at Mac and says, in Russian, "Do you think they'd look like her?" Another sailor says, also in Russian, "No, more like sperm whales," and they both laugh. Mac, who is fluent in Russian, says, "Let me know if you see any sperm whales. I thought they were rare in these seas."
  • In "To Russia with Love", where she and Harm travel to Russia, two female hotel clerks make some crude remarks about him 'being able to afford' a woman like Mac (they are in civvies). Mac steps forward and rattles off a quick, untranslated, reply, then tells Harm not to bother trying to look up what she said in his phrasebook.
• Law & Order: SVU had an episode called Russian Love Poem. Ironically, none of the actors who portrayed supposedly Russian characters was actually Russian - they were Serbian. The results were... interesting, to say the least.
• Averted in Sledge Hammer!, where Sledge, when assigned to bodyguard a Russian defector and protect him from the KGB, speaks his catchphrase "Trust me, I know what I'm doing" in perfect Russian (subtitled for the benefit of the rest of us).
• The Smallville episode "Run", has Lex opening a crate which has "Fragyl" written upon it in Cyrillic letters. Googling the letter combination provides about a dozen Russian pages, all of them either about this scene, or this trope.
• Several Russian worlds pop up in some episodes of Stargate SG-1, mostly spoken by Daniel Jackson, who is supposed to be a linguist proficient in dozens of languages (not all human). For example, one episode involved O'Neill being upset that he is forced to go on a mission with a Russian team. His comment that he needs someone whom he can trust to "watch [his] six". Jackson remarks that the Russians will watch his "shest'" (Russian for "six"), even though the phrase is meaningless in Russian. A linguist ought to know that.
  • Another episode features a Russian team going through the gate with SG-1. One of them complains in Russian about the most powerful country in the world making crappy coffee. Unlike the other examples of this trope, the actor in question was Russian, so no atrocious accent.
  • SG-1 gets many things wrong about the Russian language, such as consistently putting women's surnames in masculine forms. Not to mention spelling errors in signs, such as "Не курять" instead of the proper "Не курить" ("No smoking"). Most egregiously, the two submarine crewmen in the episode "Small Victories" spoke with such incomprehensibly mangled accents that the Russian translators were forced to dub over them.
    • They kept switching between Russian and Ukrainian. Someone didn't do their homework.
    • At least they lampshaded the "putting women's surnames in masculine forms" mistake in the episode where Daniel goes to Russia and starts looking for a "Captain Voronkov" only to meet Captain Daria Voronkova who emphasizes the last syllable for him. Of course, the same episode then they go ahead and mangle the name of the Russian Minister of Defense into "Miraslov" (the correct name is "Miroslav" meaning "one who sings about peace/world"). It takes a quick Google search to figure that out.
  • The episode introducing Dr. Elizabeth Weir has her try to catch a taxi only for a random Russian guy to try to get the same cab and start speaking in Russian. Being a diplomat, she knows the language and speaks a few phrases to him. Nobody asks why a Russian man in Washington, D.C., would try to use his own language to convince a woman he doesn't know that he needs it more.
• The X-Files had many occurrences of atrociously accented and grammatically garbled Russian, especially whenever Alex Krycek became involved.
  • Possibly justified, since it seems Krycek was born in America and Russian is his second language. (He says his parents were Russian Cold War immigrants, but since he's a pathological liar, who knows for sure.)

Западные Анимация (Western Animation)

• Similarly, an episode of Samurai Jack has a character named Boris, who speaks English, but is otherwise a fan of using "Da!"
• Molotov Cocktease of The Venture Brothers likes to deny Brock Sampson with a "Nyet!"
• Sterling Archer's Russian fiance, Katya, is fond of saying "Bozhe moi!" ("oh my God!") when surprised.
• The SpongeBob SquarePants season 1 episode "Pickles" has SpongeBob briefly saying Nyet! when he fails to properly lie down to sleep on bed at some point.
• Mr. Bobinsky in Coraline often intersperses his speech with rather obviously English-accented "Nyet", "Da", "Do svidanya", but what takes the cake is his word for "mouse" (with a diminutive suffix), which is "mooshka". Actually, the word he means is pronounced as "myshka" (with "y" meaning a sound similar to the Turkish ı), while "mooshka" means "a little fly". He also introduces himself as "Sergei Alexander", having apparently forgotten Russian Naming Convention (although this one may have to do with the fact that the man who does the introduction is the Other Bobinsky, who is actually just a swarm of rats, who probably have never heard of this convention).
• Ivan Steranko, later turned into the rhino mutant Rocksteady, in "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012)", occasionally uses "Nyet!" in place of "No!"

Игра на стол (Tabletop Games)

• The Polish in Twilight: 2000 is mentioned elsewhere, but some of the Russian is little better. For example, actual Russian for a polar bear is beliy medved (lit. "white bear"), not severnaya medved (lit. "northern bear" with a grammatical error).
• BattleTech has a planet called Strana Mechty which in Russian means "land of dreams", it is the most sacred world of the Clans, as it is where their society is founded. However, it seems to be pronounced incorrectly, at least in Mechwarrior 3

Игра телевидео (Video Games)

• Parodied in Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People with Putchnya Shotski, who spouts such elaborate Russian phrases like: "BREZHNEV!!!" "LYSENKO!!!" "GLASNOST!" "SOLZHENITSYN!"
  • Also with Where's An Egg?
• First trailer to Modern Warfare 3, America, featured extremely bad Russian: "Odin. Unichtozhit' vrazhnuyu nadezhdu na pobezdenie!". Some of the forms of the words used do not exist in Russian: "vraznuyu" should be "vrazheskuyu", "enemy's", and "pobezhdenie" should be "pobedu" to get "One. Destroy enemy's hope for victory." Also, when someone is addressed this way, you should use "Pervyj", "first", instead of "Odin": Russians use ordinal numbers instead of cardinal in such cases. The rest were fine, though, even accent was not very heavy.
• Battlefield Bad Company 2 features this marking on the transportation crates. "Внимание! Не трогайте мокрыми руками оголённые провода! Они от этого ржавеют!" (ATTENTION! Do not touch naked [live] wires with wet hands! It makes them rust!). The old joke is grammatically correct, but not a proper marking for a cargo.
• The RTS game World in Conflict features Reds With Rockets and their Mnogo Nukes as The Evil Army, so gratuitous Russian is abound. The most (in)famous monologue, given by a Soviet general standing in his tall fluffy hat near the ruins of Seattle, has since become a meme in Russian internet. In-game, Russian units confirm orders with heavily accented catchphrases like "Tak tochno!" (Literally "Exactly so!", equivalent to "Yes sir!") and "Affirmative, tovarishch komandir!" ("Affirmative, comrade commander!").
  • In addition, the NATO forces are a mix of European forces and as such, the units give out quite a bit of Gratuitous German, French and Italian. And Norwegian in the campaign. There is even some French dialogue in cutscenes.
  • The Norwegian is actually pretty good, although their English is amusingly bad. Not surprising considering that the developers were Swedish.
• Jagged Alliance has an aversion in Ivan Dolvich, who in the first two installments only speaks Russian. By Jagged Alliance 2 he has taken a course and speaks a little English, but mostly Russian. His Russian is always subtitled with Cyrillic letters. His Russian is completely fluent, only occasionally misspelled, e.g. "he sees" is "videt" instead of "vidit".
• Everyone in the second chapter of the DS rerelease of Dragon Quest IV.
• The Command & Conquer: Red Alert Series contains a whole lot of this, naturally.
  • Well, first off all, the Russian-language signs met in the FMVs... Or are they Russian? Let's see. The post-battle cutscene after the second mission of Allies, a bunch of truck overruns a sign 'АПОСНО! НЕ ВЪХОДИТ!' (lit. DARGEN! KEAEP OU!). Makes the ones who know the language ROFL. ^note More correct translation. 'DANGER! KEEP OUT!' -> 'ОПАСНАЯ ЗОНА!' (something like this to fit the context) -> 'DANGER ZONE!' Also, did you noticed another sign in the Red Alert 3's trailer, 'ИЗМЕНЕНИЕ' (Changing), when in the current context, 'ИЗМЕНА' (Betrayal) would fit best.
  • The spoken Russian in FMVs is pretty Яussian as well. The above mentioned fashion of saying 'comrade' instead of 'tovarisch' even in the scenes where the heroes are obviously speaking this language is still here. Seen with Nadya in RA and with general Topolov in Retaliation.
  • Also by him: "ЗА РОССИЮ! (gulps a glass of vodka) ЗА ЖЕНЩИН! (gulps another one) ЗА РУССКИХ ЖЕНЩИН! (does the same)". ^note For Russia!... For women!... For RUSSIAN women!
    • Traditionally, it's the third toast that's generally reserved for women, not second. Men are expected to stand for it.
    • In military tradition second toast is for women, but the third toast is for fallen comrades, standing, not touching glasses and observing a moment of silence before.
  • Tim Curry's portrayal of Premier Cherdenko was... interesting. He did use the phrase "do svidania", which roughly means "until we meet again", correctly when he told the player that he will not say "do svidania" because they will not be meeting (only someone who knows the language would understand this). Most American shows and films usually do not do their research and simply use it on par with "da", "nyet", and "na zdorovye", although, considering the above example, EA just didn't do it fully.
  • General Krukov uses the word "zhopa" ("ass") in the eighth mission of the Empire campaign.
  • The Russian used in the song accompanying the "Soviet March" theme may not bear close examination by a native speaker, either.
• There are also funny or outright obscene Russian writings all over the Red Alert series. One of the books in Stalin's study is labeled "БРЭТ ЖОПА" (lit. Brett Ass, but can be read as "Brett is an asshole"). The Tesla armor is labeled "БИТЧ" ("Bitch", in English but written in Cyrillic letters).
• darkSector features first aid medical kits with "скорая помощь" written on them. "Скорая помощь" means "ambulance" (lit. "rapid aid"). "Аптечка" ("medikit") or "Первая помощь" ("first aid") would be the correct label.
• Ace Combat: Assault Horizon is choke-full with Gratuitous Russian, bordering on Bilingual Bonus. Particularly notable is a dialogue scene late in the game that reveals the Big Bad's motivations and is voiced completely in Russian (with English subtitles).
• In spy RPG Alpha Protocol a lot of supposedly Russian inscriptions are just nonsensical mash-ups of Cyrillic letters, but there are some amusing linguistical in-jokes:
  • The infamous fire alarm button marked with the timeless words: "In an event of fire: steal, kill, fuck geese, wait for return buzz". Based on an Internet meme popular a few years before the game.
  • The yacht Pobeda — "victory" — has lost 2 letters making it "beda" — "trouble". A Shout-Out to 1930s novel and 1970s cartoon series Adventures of Captain Vrungel, the canon translation is "courage" and "rage".
  • The inscriptions in Molo-Tech office read "Welcome. No trespassing." which is a name of 1960s comedy about a summer camp run by an Obstructive Bureaucrat.
• An unexpected aversion by MechWarrior 4 Mercenaries of all games. Early on, one of the missions introduces a Drop Ship captain named Dashka. He speaks fluent English with a vague Slavic accent, though given the cultural melting pot the Inner Sphere has become this is not unusual. He also uses "do svidaniya" properly, as he is an itinerant captain who departs the planet at the end of the mission where you meet him. Becomes Foreshadowing when he unexpectedly appears in a later mission to lend you some help, and your player character is clearly surprised by this—the two of you really do meet again.
  • This may pretty much be zig-zagged, though, since Dashka doesn't seem to be a masculine name at all, but rather a diminutive form of a feminine "Darya" (which, when used by someone else than a good friend is also mildly insulting).
• Both Boris and Dolzaev do this in Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. Boris's vocabulary is of the "simple words that first time learners of the language can pick up, such as tovarich and horosho" variety. Dolzaev, meanwhile, understandably becomes a little more... colorful with his mother language after Raiden ruins his coup and corners him.
• The front cover for the Japanese releases of Brandish includes the backstory written out in Russian for some reason.
• The English version of Silent Storm has all non-English-speaking characters occasionally use words or phrases in their native tongues, including Russian and Ukrainian.
• Popn Music: Those ethereal lyrics in "ZETA ~Sosuu no Sekai to Chouetsusha~'' are actually sung in Russian, confusing many when the booklet was first released, since many fans had interpreted them as some kind of broken English. And when you look at the meaning, they're mostly nonsense about dreams and mathematics, but damn it if they don't sound epic.
• Disco Elysium: The Horrible Necktie refers to The Detective as "bratán" (братан), Russian slang meaning "bro" or "mate". The setting includes a Fantasy Counterpart Culture of Russia called "Graad", and while you never meet any people from Graad in-game it's implied they speak Russian there (French, English, Dutch, Indonesian, Arabic, Greek and Finnish are spoken by various other in-game cultures).
• Shadow Hearts: Covenant is free of this despite having an arc taking place in Tsarist Russia where the heroes join Princess Anastasia in foiling Rasputin's plot of summoning an otherworldly, biomechanical, floating fortress from where he plans to rule Europe. The only place when Russian language comes up is the Gallery of the Dead dungeon, where the gimmick is that there are several gates and levers all marked with a letter from the Cyrillic alphabet that must be opened in the correct order to make it through. Anastasia fills us in on how those are pronounced, as Yuri is totally lost. And even then all letters are given correct pronunciations, and together they spell out a real Russian word - "декабрь" (December).
• Reverse: 1999 has a few Russian characters who frequently speak Russian, and the subtitles are often written in untranslated Cyrillic. One example is Lilya, an Ace Pilot who both has a thick accent and peppers her English with Russian words, but the real kicker is Зима, whose name isn't even translated and speaks even more frequently in Russian, again with untranslated Cyrillic subtitles.

Книги писать (Literature)

• Dale Brown loves making characters lapse into untranslated Russian from time to time, even if they are English-literate.
• Barrayar in Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga was colonized in large part by Russians, and it shows. Unfortunately, while LMB did study some Russian some time ago, it apparently became rather rusty, so we are in for several rather amusing bloopers.
  • Not as many as you would think. The biggest issue is her choice of honorific suffix. It does not occur to a Russian to pronounce "Vor" as "Phor". And "Vor" with a hard v is "thief" in Russian.
  • There is also an odd minor character Vorobyev. That is a completely valid Russian last name, means something like Sparrow. "Phor Obyev" does not sound plausible anymore.
• The Dresden Files: Sanya, a black Russian Knight of the Cross, often quips simple phrases like "Da" ("Yes") and "Bozhe moy" ("Oh my God") in otherwise English dialogue. He often uses them in situations where speaking English all the way (and he is a fluent speaker) is most appropriate. On occasion, his Russian will be mentioned in narration rather than dialogue, obscuring what exactly has been said.
  • More to the point, "Sanya" is a diminutive, not a proper name. The English speaking version would be insisting on calling someone "Dickie" with absolutely no indication that "Richard" or "Dick" exist.
• A Clockwork Orange has Nadsat, which actually is mostly crudely Anglicised Russian. For example "pony" ("understand") comes from понимать, and "rabbit" (work) is from работать. Burgess really did do the research... although used it in a very weird way.
  • The slang's name is itself an example of this. -надцать is the suffix used in Russian numbers from 11-19, i.e. the "teens"; thus, "nadsat" in the slang means teenager.
  • As ''Extra Sci-Fi pointed out in [[their episode on A Clockwork Orange, this was deliberatelyh done to make the youth culture feel as rebellious and dangerous as possible:

"What more rebellious thing was there at the time than to adopt Russian words? In the UK, where the USSR was enemy number one, and communism was seen as the greatest threat in the world, what better way could young people find to push the boundaries and tell off their parents than to make Russian cool?"

• The first book in The Lost Regiment series has a few sentences written in transliterated Russian... modern Russian, even though the people they're talking to are supposed to be descendants of transplanted Medieval Russians stuck in technological stagnation. It seems unlikely that their language would develop along the same lines as Earth's Russian. Luckily, the regiment's Jewish medic has relatives in Poland and is able to provide a passable translation. But it's not long before the locals start learning English and even develop a liking for Shakespeare.
• In The Adventures of Strong Vanya, the main character talks about gifting his Aunt Akulina a samovar (a Russian teapot). The Russian characters also often use words like "Tsar", "Tsarevna" or "Tsarevich".
• The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress has Russian thrown in the laanguage, since it's supposed to be a society that was partly founded by Russians. The second city is Novy Leningrad, peoples use 'gospodin' for mister, call God 'Bog'.

Комические книги (Comic Books)

• Colossus of X-Men used this a lot during Chris Claremont's first, long run. Notably, he does prefer 'tovarisch' to 'comrade.' And he still does, because it caught on. So is his sister, Magik.
• Nikolai Dante often utters Bozhemoi! which means Oh my God! – and although it is a bit off (should be written as Bozhe moi!) but otherwise it's used correctly.
• Spirou et Fantasio visited Russia (with The Backwards Я and every generic Russian stereotype in play all the while) only to discover that the KGB goons speak in random snippets of GratuitousRussian◊. No, REALLY gratuitous - snippets copy-pasted verbatim from random Russian texts that had absolutely no relevance to the happenings on the page.

Музыки (Music)

• Kraftwerk's "The Robots" has the line "Я твой слуга, я твой работник" (I'm your servant, I'm your worker)
• The song "The Khlysti Evangelist" by Therion has a bit of Gratuitous Russian in the beginning. For starters, the word "zapovidil" doesn't seem to exist in Russian language. There is a word "zapovedoval", but it roughly translates to "gave the commandments [to smb]". In context, "zapovidil" is probably supposed to mean "has enchanted". But the Russian for "has enchanted" is "ocharoval". Besides, "on uchil sekretniy um" means literally "he taught the secret mind", or "he learned the secret mind". Either way, doesn't make much sense.
• While t.A.T.u. is in fact a Russian band, their English-language version of "Malchik Gay" still uses the word "malchik" ("boy" in Russian) in the chorus.
• Regina Spektor—a native Russian speaker (she was born in Moscow and lived there until she was nine)—sometimes does this, notably in Après Moi and 8th Floor.
• The Italo Disco song "Tovarisc Gorbaciov" is made of this. Its lyrics are mostly Russian-sounding gibberish and long strings of random Russian words and names (Molotov, Rasputin, Dostoevskij...). There's even a verse in Gratuitous English: "Welcome to the USSR, welcome wherever you are".
• The intro track of Piston Damp's Making The World Great Again is titled "ШУМ"("noise").
• Grimes studied Russian language in university, and she's incorporated it into her music quite a few times: She sings in Russian on "Venus in Fleurs" and "Grisgris" (The latter taking its lyrics from a Russian children's poem). "Sagrad прекрасный" ("Sagrad beautiful") and "принцесса" ("princess") have titles in Russian, but don't feature any Russian lyrics.

Паутина оригинальный (Web Original)

• The Chaos Timeline has some of this. Teddy bears are mishkas, blitzkrieg is molniya (Russian for 'lightning'). Justified in that Russia became a world power earlier than in our history. But also fell deeper.
• In the History Matters video "Ten Minute History - The Decline of the Soviet Union" they put the Russian on the subtitles when they respond "Fun fact: No" to the question on whether Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms helped. The screen shows "Нет" (Latinization: "Nyet").

Плёнка (Film)

• Gratuitous Russian was used as a plot device in A Fish Called Wanda.
• The 60s comedy The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming has an astounding amount of completely untranslated Russian... no subtitles, even.
• In Independence Day, something that appears to be a Russian weather forecast◊ features the nonsensical text "Tucha fznamznon" (maybe they were going for "cloud phenomenon" - currently the words are the Russian Trope Namer), and the map shown is the map of... the Soviet Union. In 1997. The three city labels on the map are "Moskva" (correct Russian name of Moscow), "Petrograd" (the name of St. Petersburg between 1914 and 1924), and "Novosyoyrsk" (apparently supposed to be Novosibirsk). To add insult to injury, the locations of Moscow and Novosibirsk on the map are completely off.
• Salt has it to the point that a track features Ominous Russian Chanting.
• At the start of Despicable Me 2, we are shown a top-secret polar research station. Despite all the symbols using English letters, all the people at the station speak Russian without any subtitles. May be justified, as the Anti-Villain League appears to be a multinational organization, although we're never told that the facility is theirs.
• So I Married an Axe Murderer features a scene where the protagonist walks with his Love Interest, and they pass several Russian sailors. The sailors comment (in Russian) about her looks, and she replies in kind. Her accent, at least, can be justified because she mentions learning a bit of Russian from an old boyfriend.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • In The Avengers, the Black Widow speaks decent Russian (although not like a native she's supposed to be), while working undercover and being interrogated by a Russian general (who also has an accent, as he's played by a Polish actor). At the end of that scene, she exclaims "Bozhe moi!" ("My God!") after finding out that Coulson wants her to bring in Bruce Banner (the only person that terrifies her). Apparently, Scarlett Johansson had a voice coach train her to say Russian words.
  • MCU movies in general do a surprisingly fair job of averting this. Mickey Rourke as Whiplash from Iron Man 2 managed to make a Russian IT meme with his "tvoy soft govno. Software's shit" — one based on content, as opposed to hilarity of this trope. Apparently, Rourke insisted that his character speak Russian at least a few times. Daniel Brühl as Zemo sounds quite passable in reciting Winter Soldier's activation, too.
  • Vanko's "code", however, was just a glossary of general programming operators (such as "AND" and "OR") repeating over and over. Also, a Russian newscast shown in Anton and Ivan Vanko's home displays the caption "Сенаторы вопрос Тони Stark". It's obviously a Google-translated "Senators question Tony Stark", where they use "question" as a noun rather than a verb, rendering it in Russian as, "Senators the question Tony Stark." Also somehow Tony's first name is transliterated to Cyrillic but not his last name.
  • In Captain America: Civil War, between the two scenes in which it's recited, the Winter Soldier's activation sequence has one word replaced from добросердечный ("good-hearted", also "benign [person]"]) to доброкачественный ("of a good quality", also "benign [tumor]").
• Transformers: Dark of the Moon: Played For Laugh by Simmons when he tries to enter a Russian bar.
  Simmons: Do svidanya
  Bouncer: That means good bye (closes slot)
• Justice League (2017) has the Flash awkwardly trying to reassure the daughter of a Russian family he had just saved by saying "Dostoevsky".
• Christmas On Mars, a film by Flaming Lips, has Russian text in the end credits. Though it's meant to look like translations of the English credits, it's actually nonsensical phrases that were chosen for aesthetic purposes: for instance "Make-Up & Hair" is translated as "The sparkle on the mountain peak", while "Feature" is translated as "Loud sounds make me feel fine".
• The antagonists in the first John Wick are Russian Mob, as well as several in subsequent films. As such they often lapse into Russian to speak to each other. Iosef uses this to taunt John, not knowing that John is a Retired Badass who worked for his father, so John just taunts him back.
  • Lampshaded when Viggo starts speaking Russian in frustration during a conversation with his lawyer, who does 'not' know Russian, causing him to exasperatedly request Viggo speak english to him
• In Doctor in Trouble, the Russian Captain peppers her speech with a few Russian words such as "da" and "nyet". Dr. Burke picks up on it too.

Сеть-комический (Webcomics)

• Fedya from Rhapsodies swears quite a bit.
• Bil Nye the Russian Spy is jam-packed with this.
  • Nermal the Russian Blue Cat speaks Russian instead of purring. He does purr, though, but not as much as he expresses himself through Russian.
  • Bill Nye sometimes speaks Russian, although he knows a fair amount of English. "How you say?"s and "English hard"s are prevalent.

Театральный (Theatre)

• In "To Life" from Fiddler on the Roof, a Russian steps up to sing:
  Za vasha zdorovia
  Heaven bless you both, nazdrovia
  To your health and may we live together in peace

Эниме и манга (Anime & Manga)

• Jubei-chan 2 has gratuitous Russian, as half-Russian Freesia Yagyuu will lapse into heavily accented Russian at times, especially when Obfuscating Stupidity.
• The Theme Song to Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 1st gig is mainly in Russian (and Latin). 2nd gig added some English.
• The ancient OVA Crystal Triangle had an impressive scene where a KGB agent (who was also a direct descendant of Rasputin) gives a passionate speech about mysticism triumphing over rationalism... in almost flawless Russian! Of course, the Japanese voice actor's pronunciation is heavily accented but the grammar and wording, however archaic, are on the spot.
• Averted in Girls und Panzer. Until production started, nobody on the team knew that the voice actor for one of the characters - who just so happened from the Russian-themed school - was actually a Russian language otaku herself. Once they found out, they milked it for what it's worth with the character singing songs, spouting proverbs and even lightly conversing, all in appropriately pronounced Russian with a slight Japanese accent - to be exact, with softened consonants.
  • Similarly averted in the film where Pravda High School gets a Russian transfer student (voiced by an actual Russian) who regularly converses with the above-mentioned character in full Russian. Much to the annoyance of their diminutive commander, who does not speak a word of it at all.
• The soundtrack to Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) has a song in Russian titled "Brothers" ("Братья"), which plays quite a few times throughout the series. However, it's also accurate; it's actually sung by Russian children. Although it IS really schmaltzy and the Russian is still stylistically questionable.
• The Sakura Wars OVA also features a few lines in Russian courtesy of the Russian-Japanese character. The actress's pronunciation is painfully bad, but the grammar is okay.
• Balalaika and her boys in Black Lagoon. At least until Rei Hiroe hired an actual Russian as a consultant by the time the second season got to be animated. It turns into accurate Russian afterwards.
• In Planetes manga Leonov's mother speaks to Hachimaki in almost perfect Russian. The only possible flaw is calling her son by last name only. Bilingual Bonus is required to understand it, because nobody cared to translate it. Probably justified by the fact that Hachimaki didn't understand her words too.
• The second season of Darker than Black is set partially in Vladivostok, so most of the visible writing is in Russian, and the title is translated into Russian, too. Spoken... not so much.
• Durarara!!, with Simon Brezhnev and Orihara Izaya. Grammatically it's perfect. Their accents are truly deplorable, though, to the point of being almost unintelligible for actual Russian speaker.You can forgive Izaya, because Russian is a foregin language to him. In Simon's case it's harder to justify, since he's from Russia.
• Hetalia: Axis Powers does this with Russia. Justified since he's... well... Russia, but it's usually lmited to "Da" and "Comrade". Fanfic usually takes this to the point that many hetalia fics have to include translations because he says plot critical things in his own language.
• Dunno about other versions of Trapeze, but the very first episode of the anime has a great aversion - one of the foreign trapeze artists speaks perfect Russian (no accent and colloquial too boot - must be a native speaker voicing that)
• Last Exile: Fam, the Silver Wing suffers from the same problem as Black Lagoon and Durarara!!: Its Russian is almost perfect in grammar and usage, but the accents are... pretty thick to say the least. Except for Viola, whose voice actor is a native Russian.
• World Conquest Zvezda Plot. Cue a colossal wince each time Hoshimiya in anime goes and puts lexical stress on that "Vi" syllable in titular "Bouryaku no Zvizda" (it is "Zvizda" in Japanese version of the title – ズヴィズダー). The "e" to "i" vowel reduction could be an amazing being true to natural, major dialect Russian phonetics, yes. But the said reduction occurs in Russian ONLY when the vowel is NOT lexically stressed.^note Stress is codifyingly important in Russian, and correct pronunciation of the "звезда" word has the lexical stress exclusively on the last syllable. Wrong stress is bad enough as it is, but this is just digging your own hole deeper.
• Haruka Nogizaka's Secret featured two stranded Russian tourists, which tried to ask the eponymous main female lead for directions. Being a Canon Sue, she responded - in Russian. The only problem in this dialogue were brutally mangled accents - it was justified for Haruka, but in case of Russians it sounded really strange.
• Night Raid 1931 averted this: one of the characters, an native Russian violinist, were speaking in perfectly accented Russian, strange enough for a non-Russian work. His lines had some questionable moments, but most of them sounded appropriately.

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A nu, cheeki-breeki i v damke!

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