Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping

Michael: Does... does it slip? (referring to his friend's mutilated, detached face)
Finn: You mean like your accent?

— The Punisher MAX

When an actor has a Fake Nationality, they may not always be able to hold their accent in place and may start to lapse into their native accent. This is especially likely when yelling or for emotional scenes. This trope can also occur In-Universe with Bad "Bad Acting" where a character tries to do an accent (perhaps as a part of impersonating someone else) but ends up just sounding like a weird version of their normal accent.

Similar tropes are Accent Slip-Up, which is where a character temporarily goes back to their native way of speaking usually due to being taken by surprise, and Accent Relapse, which is the more permanent version (AKA they quit doing the fake accent).

Also see Not Even Bothering with the Accent, where an American actor is supposed to be say, British royalty but just speaks in General American, and What the Hell Is That Accent?, when someone speaks with a seeming mix of various accents.

Contrast Surprisingly Good Accent, where this is the opposite: an actor is able to pull off the accent flawlessly, or the slip-ups are so small and so few that the average viewer doesn't pick up on them.

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Examples:

• Films — Live-Action
• Live-Action TV
• Video Games

Advertising

• Claude the Cat has an English accent, but sometimes his voice actor's New Zealand accent will pop up. One especially prominent example of this is how he says the word ventilation in the one about caravans.
• While The Most Interesting Man in the World is ostensibly a Dashing Hispanic, and at first had the appropriate accent, in later spots his actor's New York Jew twang bleeds through every other word or so.
• A TV advert for PayPal had a long thin blonde girl stepping through a room full of goodies whilst extolling the virtues of the service. But her accent perceptibly wandered around the English-speaking world traveling five thousand miles within the same sentence. Here possibly British; there a hint of Suid-Efrrrrikka; they're New Zealand; here American; there it's Irish; and ooh, now she's back in England again.
• Miss Cleo, the popular Psychic Readers Network spokeswoman, claimed to be a mystical shaman from Jamaica (she was actually born and raised in Los Angeles). She played the part with a notoriously over-the-top and inconsistent Jamaican accent and can occasionally be heard lapsing into an American accent. Despite this, it wasn't common knowledge that she was actually American until her employer was sued by the FTC in 2002.
• Patrick Stewart is currently having fun in adverts for Yorkshire Tea. In this advert he begins in his sonorous Royal Shakespeare Company/Jean-Luc Picard voice as he wishes a colleague a happy retirement. Then he can't hold it in any longer and reverts to his birth-accent, which is very broad Yorkshire.

Anime & Manga

• Happens occasionally in anime dubs recorded in Canada or Texas.
  • With Canada, it's noticeable with words like "about," "house," and "sorry" often being pronounced as "aboht," "hohse," and "soarry." It got really bad in the original dub of Sailor Moon with words like "Sailor Scout" in constant use. Dragon Ball Z got it with "Dragon" sometimes being pronounced as "Draygon." In Sailor Moon, Canadian terms like "bad marks" (instead of "bad grades") would also sneak into the script. Ranma ½ got this bad in an episode that revolved around a drama club. Every usage of the word "drama" was pronounced like "drayma" instead of "drauma." This was all more common back in the 90s before the US production outlets could easily keep tabs on the ADR process. Today, very few anime dubs are recorded in Canada, and this is often cited as one reason why. As late as 2008, however, this occasionally popped up in dubs recorded at The Ocean Group's sister studio Blue Water, one example being Kurapika's voice actress in Hunter × Hunter (1999) pronouncing "Phantom Troupe" as "Phayntom Troupe".
  • Texas anime dubs from ADV Films and Funimation are almost always pretty good about avoiding this, but they ran into it a bit early on. In Neon Genesis Evangelion, Asuka, Misato, and Kaworu all straight-up sounded like they were from Texas, and in Dirty Pair, it was obvious with Yuri pronouncing "Kei" closer to "Kai." FUNimation's early years with Dragon Ball Z had it with Gohan, Bulma, Chi-Chi, Trunks, and even Android 18 slipping into mild Texas accents from time-to-time. It's actually kind of amazing how little they run into this now, with several of their voice actors having thick Texas accents away from the microphone.
    • Of special note is Pan in Dragon Ball GT, with Elise Baughman’s thick Louisiana accent on almost full display, to the point where some viewers assumed it was an intentional choice to give the character a southern dialect.
    • Humorously, FUNimation's Dragon Ball Z even ran into the Canadian version of this with Future Gohan saying "Let's forget aboot becoming a Super Saiyan for a while." Some Canadian quirks also slipped into Cell’s dialogue, such as “soarry” and “agayn.” Their voice actor was indeed from Canada.
• The English dub of Hetalia: Axis Powers has a few characters with this problem.
  • It seems to be the opinion of the voice actors themselves that the most Egregious accents were intentionally chosen.
• In Dragon Ball, Commander Red goes in and out of an Irish accent. It became especially apparent just before he got shot by Staff Officer Black.
• Many early Manga Entertainment dubs had British actors putting on American accents with varying degrees of success, often so bad it's hilarious. These also included colloquialism failures, such as saying "knickers" instead of "panties" (for women's underwear), etc.
• Even AnimEigo's old dubs (Ah! My Goddess, Bubblegum Crisis, You're Under Arrest!, etc) had this, since they were recorded in North Carolina. Characters ranged from having no accent at all to a thick Southern drawl (Megumi in Goddess being an example of the latter). Notably, this wasn't the same as the Texas accents heard in dubs from ADV and Funimation, but more of a Mid-Atlantic way of speaking.
• In Himouto Umaruchan, Nana Ebina shows her Akita accent when she feels comfortable, for example when eating something from Akita, as seen in episode 11. She seems to have a hard time hiding it, though.
• In ADV's dub of Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water, the lead character, Jean, has to speak with a French accent which is noticeably inconsistent in at least the first couple of episodes. Keep in mind, though, that his actor (Nathan Parsons) was only twelve years old when he did the part, and otherwise the accent works in favor of the character. He gradually improves on the accent as the show progresses.
• In the 6th episode of Gintama this happens to Kagura, Gintoki even lampshades it.
• The Chilean Spanish dub of Little Witch Academia (2017) has many instances when the Chilean accents are very notable, especially with Akko, Diana, and the Professor.
• The same goes with the Peruvian Spanish dub of Gamba: Gamba to Nakama-tachi movie since the Peruvian accents are very notable with basically every single member of the cast.
• The Latin American dub of Smile Pretty Cure! (aka Glitter Force) is a pretty egregious example, as many characters slip into their voice actors' native accents at times, mainly American or Cuban accents. This is justified, as the dub was dubbed in Miami, Florida, a city with a big Cuban community.
• In the Disney dub of Castle in the Sky, Sheeta's accent seems to wander between Canadian, British, and Kiwi. The only thing consistent is that she sounds different from everyone else, who just use American accents.
• The English dub of Jojos Bizarre Adventure's first arc, "Phantom Blood," features British characters while being dubbed with an American cast. Jonathan Joestar noticeably loses his English accent a few times when he begins getting enraged at Dio for kissing Erina near the end of the first episode.
• In Mobile Suit Gundam 00, there's a Scottish police officer who almost apprehends Setsuna. His accent wasn't anywhere near Scottish.
• In the original Japanese dub of Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club, Mia Taylor is an American from New York, but her Japanese voice actress, Shuu Uchida, is Australian, and it's pretty clear that Mia does not have a New York accent. This is not as jarring as one would imagine since Mia's spoken English is kept to a minimum (as she interacts with a Japanese cast and thus primarily speaks in Japanese) and her accent mostly disappears when singing.

Audio Plays

• Lifelong Doctor Who fanboy David Tennant, before being cast as the Tenth Doctor himself, was cast in several Big Finish Doctor Who audio plays — at the time, the only new dramatic Doctor Who being produced. In one play, "Colditz", he played an evil Nazi. The very Scottish Tennant performed his role with a very German accent, and only slipped once: "I vil do my" (in a massively Deutschland accent) "DOOOO-ty!" (sounding nothing so much like the most stereotypical Scotsman you have ever heard).
• The audiobook of the Doctor Who novel "The Coming of the Terraphiles" is read by Clive Mantle, whose struggles to reproduce Amy Pond's Scottish accent result in him sounding not entirely unlike Mrs. Doubtfire.
• The original radio version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1978) starts off with Zaphod speaking in a neutral English accent, but he begins speaking in a kind of American-ish trans-Atlantic accent in the Secondary Phase which he slips in and out of semi-randomly. This may be down to Characterisation Marches On as his abuse of slang becomes noticeably more apparent at the same time - or possibly Character Development as this change in accent occurs after Zaphod receives a Call to Adventure and the reason for his having two heads begins to be explored. Of course, the character is neither English nor American, but from a small planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse.

Comedy

• Ventriloquist Jeff Dunham manages to invert this by accidentally giving his characters the wrong accent. These instances tend to be brief and extremely rare due to him slipping up when he's playing two characters back and forth really fast. In one special, Peanut spontaneously takes on José's accent while the two are arguing. In another, the banter between Middle-Eastern Achmed and British-educated A.J. causes Jeff to use a strange accent while he talks as himself.
• Bo Burnham's country accent in Pandering slips a few times: the further he gets from the "standard" country song (to make an aside to the audience or realize he's fucking a scarecrow, for example), the closer it is to Bo's normal voice.

Comic Books

• Deliberately invoked with Hank, American Alfred to the British Batman in Knight and Squire. In the text piece, Paul Cornell says he imagines Hank as being played by an actor from Milton Keynes, with an accent that wanders all over the place, just like American characters on British TV when he was a kid.
• In-universe example in The Sandman (1989), as a Chinese character switches between speaking perfectly good English and "Solly, no speakee English" by way of Obfuscating Stupidity.
• Many of the characters in Preacher speak turn of phrases decidedly not American/Texan and more Irish (writer Garth Ennis' homeland). These are usually funniest when the main character is written with his typical Texas drawl saying them.
  • When Cassidy has to fake a Texan drawl, he slips up, and gets called on it - not by the bad guys, but by Jesse, who figures Cassidy only got away with it for as long as he did because he was talking to a German.
• In a blink-and-you'll-miss-it bit of foreshadowing, Molly Hayes of the Runaways, during a fight with a group of deluded former teen heroes who've been hired to shut the Runaways down, comments that Chamber's British accent sounds fake. It's later revealed that he's not Chamber, but a mole from the New Pride.

Fan Works

• Dumbledore's Army and the Year of Darkness itself commits a variant. It makes a credible effort at imitate Rowling's own style, but American spellings such as "mom" and "curb" and words such as "sweater" spoil the effect.
  • Of course, the American versions of the Harry Potter books actually did Americanize the spellings and word choice, so it's almost justified.
• The Marvel Cinematic Universe AU fic "Captain Carter And The Spider's Silk" features an in-universe version of this. As part of Peggy Carter's bondage kink, she and Peter Parker at one point role-play a fantasy where Captain Britain has been captured and is undergoing interrogation, but Peter's German accent is so exaggerated that Peggy briefly stops the scenario as she can't take him seriously with that accent, prompting them to continue the game with Peter talking normally.

Films — Animation

• A couple of examples in films by Don Bluth:
  • In An American Tail, the Irish mouse Bridget's accent comes and goes.
  • In A Troll in Central Park, the kids' parents are voiced by Jonathan Pryce and Hayley Mills, neither of whom do a good job of hiding their British accents.
• Only God and Maisie Williams know what accent Goona was supposed to have in Early Man; it varies wildly across both England and Scandinavia.
• Olivia in The Great Mouse Detective has several different accents at once. English? Scottish? American? Who can tell? (Olivia's voice actress was actual Scot Susanne Pollatschek, while her dad was voiced by Alan Young - who as Scrooge McDuck must have sorted his accent out by then.)
• In Hotel Transylvania and its sequels, Dracula’s accent isn’t very consistent.
• How to Train Your Dragon:
  • Stoick the Vast has a Scottish accent. Intermittently. The rest of the time, it tends to fluctuate. Again, it's Gerard Butler.
  • See also Cate Blanchett's... um... uneven Scottish accent as Valka in How to Train Your Dragon 2.
• In My Little Pony: The Movie (2017), Songbird Serenade, voiced by Sia with a Fake American accent, occasionally lapses into Sia's native Aussie accent. Tempest Shadow, voiced by British actress Emily Blunt, likewise sometimes suffers from this.
• Ratatouille: Of all the French accents in the film, that of Janeane Garofalo (the voice of Colette) is the one who slips the most in and out.

Literature

• In The Encyclopedists, the foppish Imperial diplomat Lord Dorwin normally has a severe case of Elmuh Fudd Syndwome. But when he views a book-film on archaeology (his pet hobby) during his tour of the Foundation, Salvor Hardin is amused to notice that Dorwin is so honestly excited that he "pronounced his r's".
• In an early Nero Wolfe novel (Over My Dead Body), the suspect Madame Zorka, exotic foreign fashion designer, always used an incredibly thick Pottsylvanian accent. Until, of course, her real identity was discovered - Pansy Bupp of Ottumwa, Iowa - whereupon she collapsed into a Midwestern American accent. (After all, is High Society going to patronize a fashion designer from Iowa?)
• In Crippen: A Novel of Murder by John Boyne, an upper-class woman is revealed to be a lower-class social climber when she gets angry and says, "He's still handy with his dukes."
• In Night Watch (Series), Edgar usually speaks with a perfect Moscow accent, but tends to slip into his native Estonian accent when agitated.
• Doctor Lao has a fluid relationship with his accent in The Circus of Doctor Lao (and in the film based on it).
• Terry Pratchett's Discworld has many characters whose accents slip - the younger Igors occasionally forget to lisp, and Doreen Winkings (aka the Countess Notfaroutoe, a vampire by marriage) has an Uberwaldian accent far thicker than any native Uberwaldian, except when she forgets.
• In the Gaunt's Ghosts novel Blood Pact, when Baltasar Eyl Damogaur catches up to Gaunt and Mabbon for the last time, he goes back to his natural outworld accent, having difficulty maintaining his civilized veneer.
• In The Queen's Thief series, Eugenides fakes an Attolian accent and no one even thinks to look for his Eddisian one (despite knowing he's Eddisian) until he slips because he's talking in his sleep.
• This was a key plot point in a Nancy Drew Case Files mystery. A supposedly American man said that someone was "in hospital" instead of "in the hospital", and used other Britishisms, leading Nancy to suspect that he wasn't who he claimed to be. It's capped off during a scene in which he gets into an argument (a classic "highly emotional scene" as mentioned in the page description) when he suddenly begins speaking with his British accent.
• Sally Pyne's "Lady Sarah" accent in Aunt Dimity and the Family Tree "hovered precariously between the Queen's and a fishmonger's." Willis Sr. could only say of it, "I cannot bring myself to discuss her accent except to say that it is strikingly original. I do not believe that it has ever been heard before on this or any other planet."
• In Murder Most Unladylike (titled Murder Is Bad Manners in the US), two girls in the 1930s investigate the murder of a teacher at their boarding school. When another teacher mysteriously goes missing one morning, the French mistress "Mamzelle" must take the form register instead, and the narrator notes that Mamzelle has somehow forgotten to roll her Rs. It is later revealed that Mamzelle is not French at all and was posing as a French person in order to get teaching work.
• In Going Too Far by Catherine Alliot, the protagonist Polly meets Amanda, who speaks with a very strong Cockney accent. Polly responds in kind (thinking that Amanda is putting on the accent for a laugh), but realizes too late that this is how Amanda really speaks. Polly feels obliged to keeps speaking in a Cockney accent so that it won't look like she was making fun of Amanda, but she can't keep it up for long, and Amanda finds the whole thing very funny.
• In Georgette Heyer's The Unknown Ajax, only one character notices that Hugh's Oop North accent tends to fail when he's not paying attention, rather than appearing then, and even warns the heroine by way of a (to her) cryptic comment about his reprehensible sense of humor.
• An odd example with Bandera in Blood For A Dirty Dollar. Sometimes he's written with an accent, sometimes not.
• How Wayne in Wax and Wayne spots the impostor kandra. Wayne is a Master of Disguise who specializes in accents, good enough to infiltrate a neighborhood by perfectly mimicking the local accent. While searching for an immortal kandra, he spends a lot of time with another kandra, MeLaan, and picks up on how she says her a's. The impostor says them the same way.
  • In a later book, Wayne hitches a free ride from a gondolier by first dressing and speaking like a rich lord, promising to pay a lot of money, before letting his accent slip into something slightly thuggish in the middle of the ride. The gondolier picks up on things being wrong, suspects that Wayne is trying to set him up for a robbery, and immediately drops him off—exactly in the spot he wanted.
• Miles Vorkosigan usually speaks with a Betan accent when in-character as the Dendarii Mercenaries' leader Admiral Naismith, in contrast to his Barrayaran accent as Lord Vorkosigan. It isn't quite a Fake Nationality, since he is half-Betan, so although it isn't the way he would talk at home, he can generally be fairly convincing. However, among close friends in the Dendarii who know his real identity, and in times of stress, he can allow his accent to blur into something between Betan and Barrayaran. The book doesn't actually demonstrate any differences in pronunciation, etc - the nearest we get is his staying in-character by using different phrasing, like addressing a Barrayaran subordinate as 'Mr' rather than 'Sergeant' or 'Armsman'. We just have to imagine what the different accents sound like - but we do know that Beta Colony began as an American settlement, whereas Barrayar was settled by a mixture of Europeans including British, Russian, French and Greek settlers, so the resulting accent almost certainly sounds like nothing on Earth.
• A rare instance of the written equivalent, Ooh, me Dialectal Spellings're Slipping, the medieval German Lay of Hildebrand ("Hildebrandslied" in German) appears to have been written by a speaker of Old High German trying to imitate Old Low German. The result would sound, to a native speaker of the latter, like when English speakers try to write in Scots without knowing much of the language.
  Ik gihorta ðat seggen ðat sih urhettun ænon muotin Hiltibrant enti Haðubrant untar heriun tuem [[note: "Ah haird it said that twa warriors met; Hildebrand an' Hadubrand amang twa airmies" roughly captures the mixed dialects.]]

Music Videos

• In the dialogue sections of the music video for the Genesis song, "Jesus He Knows Me", Phil Collins is playing the part of an American televangelist from the Deep South. At first, Collins, born in the West London district of Hounslow, manages the accent well, but as it begins to slip it almost comes out as Irish-sounding!

Podcasts

• In Sequinox, Cassidy claims Jake's Southern accent for his character Chell is so good that it caused her own Southern accent to start coming out. However, Alan, also from the South, claims it was like "being dragged through hell".
  • During the Gemini arc, Sid's Transatlantic accent slips into Irish. She claims it's practice in case they get sent to a sailor dimension.
• In The Adventure Zone: Balance, Griffin occasionally (ok, frequently) has trouble keeping his character voices straight. Especially notable with Kravitz, whose Cockney accent was so inconsistent (lapsing into a more generic British accent or even a slightly fancy-sounding American one), Griffin decided it was just his work accent, and that off-the-clock he spoke basically like Griffin.
• In Interstitial: Actual Play, Wheels mentions in the first episode that they have to go through a small spiel to get into Criss Angel's proper voice. Otherwise, it starts to slip into Donald Trump.
• In the D&D podcast The Lucky Die, Zaltanna the dwarf has a New York accent; Casey the player does not, and cannot maintain it while shouting. And Zaltanna shouts a lot.

Pro Wrestling

• Hilariously Lampshaded in an episode of WWE Raw. The Ghanaian-American Kofi Kingston has been portraying a Jamaican character, complete with the stereotypical accent. In the episode in question, he inexplicably speaks in his American accent during a promo, and the ever-Jerkass With a Heart of Gold Triple H just had to call him out on it.
  Triple H: Aren't you supposed to be Jamaican? What happened to your accent?
  • Doubling as Hypocritical Humor and Hilarious in Hindsight as Trips originally tried a French accent earlier in his career, failed and settled on just being New England though the intention was to flesh out Kofi.
• King Booker uses an obviously put-on fake aristocratic British accent and returns to his Booker T-ish way of speaking when sufficiently riled or angry.

Radio

• ''Chris and Ciara: Chris and Ciara's friend Fran once tried to surprise Ciara for her birthday with a phone call allegedly from Ciara's Celeb Crush Roger Federer:
  Chris: Roger Federer, are you still there?
  Fran: I am... uh, oui!
  Chris: (laughs) Roger Federer almost sounded like he was from North Dublin there for just a second!

Theatre

• The Broadway production of the musical Spamalot plays with this — the usually good British accents are sometimes dropped for comedic effects on certain lines, like "you are so gay" after Lancelot's angry outburst in the castle.
• Haven's SeasideSquad2023 has Jaz the bear, with a Midlands accent. Her accent tends to switch between that and a London accent.
• In On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, Daisy's British accent starts to fade when she stops recalling memories of her previous life in 18th-century England.
• When popular West End Elphaba Kerry Ellis transferred to the Broadway production of Wicked, she seemingly could not decide if she was playing an American or a Brit, her accent wavering seemingly every other sentence.
• The Broadway Cast of The Secret Garden seemed to have had a good dialect coach and try very hard, but unfortunately can't really carry the Yorkshire accent. Those attempting RP have more success.
• The 25th anniversary English cast recording of Les Misérables featured factory workers who seemed to wander from Cockney to 'generic northern accent' to Irish in the same phrase. Fortunately it only really happens in At the End of the Day.
• In Vanities, Mary and Kathy both drop their Texas drawl for generic accents in the third act. In some productions, Kathy acquires a New York accent. In the HBO version, they kept their accents, although less strong than before. In the added scene of the musical, Joanne may lose her accent as well.
• In a Carnegie Hall performance from 1962, Julie Andrews and Carol Burnett sing a Texan-themed duet called "Big D" (from The Most Happy Fella); Julie's attempt to sing with a Texas draaaaawl is arguably just as embarrassing as the fake-Cockney that Dick Van Dyke would do a year later in Mary Poppins.
• Gamila in Pilgrims Musa and Sheri in the New World slips between an American accent and her native Arabic accent. Justified, as she attended an American school in Egypt.
• In the Donmar Warehouse production of Cabaret (as seen in the 1993 TV movie), Adam Godley is a very American Cliff Bradshaw. Until he gets upset. Then he's a very Irish Cliff Bradshaw. Made even stranger by the fact that Adam Godley isn't even Irish to begin with.
• On Matilda's Broadway cast album, Mrs. Wormwood often sounds more New York-ish than British (the actress, Lesli Margherita, is actually from California). Bruce Bogtrotter loses his accent for the first few lines of "Revolting Children", but regains it afterward.
• In King Lear Edgar adopts a variety of personae to keep an eye on his brother’s plotting, and later to protect his blinded father Gloucester. At one point he switches from “West-Country Peasant,” and Gloucester notices: "Methinks thy voice is altered, and thou speak’st/ In better phrase and matter than thou didst."

Web Comics

• Girl Genius: When Zola stabs Zeetha, Higgs proceeds to go into a Tranquil Fury, his calm manner betrayed only by a slip in his accent which turns out to be a bit of foreshadowing;
  "Yes. But I vas starting to like her!"

Web Original

• Climate Town: While talking about how banks fund the fossil fuel industry while claiming to be environmentally friendly Rollie points out one (French) bank that does not to invest bankers money in fossil fuels and proceeds to finish the segment in a comically bad French accent that slips into a British accent by the end.
• Critical Role: While the cast are all professional voice actors, several of their characters have accents that are difficult even for them.
  • In the first few episodes of Campaign 2, Nott spoke with a strange, vaguely Cockney accent. Sam Riegel noticeably struggled to maintain both the accent and Nott's shrill, cracking voice, and slowly dropped the Cockney over time.
  • Taliesin Jaffe famously struggled with Mollymauk's accent, which ended up in the realm of "General American with a hint of Irish". Made more obvious when Lucien, the person Molly was before losing his memory, starts speaking with a heavy Irish brogue, since Matthew Mercer can do an Irish accent. Taliesin lampshades this when he has to play out a conversation between Mollymauk and Caduceus, who has a General American accent.
    Taliesin: The following accents I will not be responsible for.
  • Strangely inverted with Imogen from Campaign 3, whose Southern American accent is so strong it causes several other characters' accents to wander in the same direction.
• In early episodes of Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series, Yugi's accent, in particular, had a tendency to wander, most notably in the episode where he meets Mako Tsunami. It's gotten quite a bit better since, though there are some telltale signs if you're paying attention (notably, over-pronouncing the letter "t", enunciating the "g" at the ends of "-ing" words, and in one instance pronouncing "idea" as "idear").
  • That is probably Hypercorrection due to the fact that British accents often drop or slur those sounds and so he over-emphasizes them to sound more American, even if they're not actually emphasized that much in American.
  • Perhaps a bit forgivable because LittleKuriboh plays almost every character and each of them has a different, equally ridiculous voice and "accent". If you listen to the first episode with the original voices and the first episode with the newer, redone voices, they're remarkably different.
  • Lampshaded in episode 48. Yugi has a flashback to his accent slip-up in the Mako episode, referring to it as the time he inexplicably started talking in a British accent. Naturally, flashback!Yugi's speech degenerates into a list of stereotypical British terms.
  • And again in the Alternate Episode 6.
  Yugi: Remember when Li'l Kuriboh could barely voice-act? That's what's 'appenin' now, gov'nah!
• In The Slayers Abridged, Zangulus has some New England dialect that can slip, and Vrumugun's French accent slips constantly. projectshadow99 himself has admitted that he can't really do accents and he really regrets giving Vrumugun a French one.
  • In the revised versions of the first few episodes, Zelgadis was going to have either a British or Irish accent, simply because ps99 wanted to try one. This was dropped when he realized he couldn't do those accents either.
• Tenchi in Tenchi Muyo Abridged slips into British a lot. Eventually, he just got comfortable with it, and it's part of their version of the character. The fact that the dialog has British shibboleths doesn't hurt either.
• This is intentionally done and Played for Laughs in the "Beauty is Blind" sketch from Brandon Rogers. At one point during this sketch, Jurgen, a blind German fashion designer — I mean — professional hairdresser who has been literally running with scissors all day long predictably ends up suffering an accident and exclaims "I'M IN SO MUCH PAIN THAT I LOST MY ACCENT!"
• The cast of Ranma 1/2 Abridged get this sometimes. Most of the characters have North American accents of one type or another, and Mythros, Sithis Bear and Aymehx are all New Zealanders, making this trope come into play on occasion. Mythros' English RP for the Jusenkyo Guide often slips into a Kiwi RP instead; in one scene Mythros plays three of the characters in conversation with each other, in a single take, making the slips stand out more.
• In Corrupting The Classics With Contemporary Crap episode 3, when the contestants on Project Playwright threaten to leave, Heidi Klum says "But you can't go!" On those last two words, Gwenevere Sisco's natural American accent reveals itself. Probably done intentionally for comic effect.
• Deliberately done, to amusing effect, with Applejack in My Little Pony: Camaraderie is Supernatural.
• Strong Bad of Homestar Runner had a slight Mexican accent in his early SB Emails, which has disappeared gradually over time. This is parodied in a bonus sbemail when Strong Sad predicts how Strong Bad's accent will sound several years in the future, showing Strong Bad speaking without the gravelly quality his voice usually has in addition to completely lacking the accent.
• Tobuscus is a man of many voices and accents, as evidenced throughout his work. Too bad he seems incapable of remaining in them for very long. He has also been told by genuine Aussies and Brits that his imitations of their accents are awful.
• "I teach potion to Herry Podder" (at 4:15)
• Chester A. Bum serving as The Nostalgia Critic's 'engineer' during his Star Trek: The Motion Picture review. He briefly tries to put on a Scottish accent to do the 'I dinnae have th'powah' gag. It goes about as well as you'd expect. The Critic himself had his accent fade out whenever he was doing positive stuff, letting Doug's real voice come through. He got much better though, and now the only time Doug drops the voice (in-costume) is for bloopers.
• From the same website, comic reviewer Linkara's new show "Longbox of the Damned" has this in spades
• Moviebob usually does his reviews in a standard American accent, but when he gets really angry, he quickly devolves into his native, thick Boston accent.
• When playing his character Aevil Gloomshroud at D20 Live events, Joey "Roo" Desena cannot keep the character's accent constant. He himself lampshades this during the 2014 game.
• Lonelygirl15: Bree is supposed to have an American accent, but her actress occasionally slips and uses her New Zealander accent.
• AFK: Most characters on the series are played by New Zealanders, but aside from one they use American accents (except for some gamers from Russia and China) in the first season, so their natural ones can slip through at times. The second season has more who are explicitly New Zealanders, and one (who's Maori) references the "influx" of them, so they don't have to bother with it anymore.

Western Animation

• Captain Planet and the Planeteers:
  • Linka had a tendency for her Slavic accent to slip all over the place. ^note A Slavic accent is often difficult for Americans (including Linka's voice actor, Kath Soucie) to convincingly mimic without exaggerating. Also, Linka was only confirmed to be specifically Russian in Season 4. Until then, her accent could have originated from any of the 15 Soviet Republics, though it was generally assumed that she was either from Russia, Ukraine, or Belarus.
  • Gi had a vague Asian accent that slipped on and off for the first few episodes but was then basically abandoned. ^note Gi's voice actor, Janice Kawaye, is Japanese-American and fluent in Japanese. However, Gi's early concept art clearly depicted her as South Korean, and she easily read a Chinese sign in "The Big Clam-Up", so her actual nationality was never specified.
• Regular Show's future Mordecai and Rigby talk with fake British accents up until they begin panicking; at which point they talk in their normal voices.
• King of the Hill:
  • In "Joust Like a Woman" guest star Alan Rickman voices a Renaissance Fair owner who speaks with an exaggerated British accent until he gets sued by his female employees; then he lapses into his native Texas drawl, which is obviously slipping.
  • In "A Beer Can Named Desire", when Bill introduces his friends to his extended family in French, he pronounces their names in a French accent, except for the last one: Boomhauer.
• G.I. Joe:
  • Character Destro has always been Scottish, but when it comes to G.I. Joe: Renegades, it seems nobody noticed that Clancy Brown was actually doing an Irish accent all the way through the first season. Realization seems to have come about for the finale, where Brown suddenly started adding an exaggerated Scottish inflection to some sentences and spent the whole episode oscillating back and forth between the two accents.
  • "The Viper" has an accent that affects how he pronounces Ws, yet he can say "West" just fine.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • The show has three examples of this without really using accents:
    • Andrea Libman voices two characters: energetic Pinkie Pie and soft-spoken Fluttershy. When Fluttershy has a musical number in the episode "The Cutie Mark Chronicles", Libman apparently has trouble keeping the character's voice consistent when she's supposed to be very excited, with the end result that she sings the second half of the song basically as Pinkie Pie (which is very noticeable, since she doesn't do Pinkie Pie's singing voice, only Fluttershy's). This is especially noticeable in "Sonic Rainboom", when Fluttershy tries to learn energetic cheering: she struggles during the whole episode to barely come to 1 decibel above her usual tone, but finally at the end, she succumbs to excitement and screaming her joy; but ends up sounding just like Pinkie Pie (In the scene where Pinkie Pie takes a taste of the rainbow, Libman inverts the case; Pinkie Pie's shocked breathy gasp sounds remarkably like Fluttershy's.)
    • Tabitha St. Germain voices Rarity and Princess Luna. In "Luna Eclipsed", while Princess Luna normally sounds very royal and high standing, there are a few lines that make Princess Luna sound almost exactly like Rarity. Although, both characters happen to be Large Hams. Even stranger is that Rarity doesn't even appear in the episode at all, as her scene was cut.
    • This happens to Ashleigh Ball (the voice of Applejack and Rainbow Dash) during the "At the Gala"-Song in Season 01, Episode 26 ("The Best Night Ever"). She seems to have problems singing in Applejack's heavy southern accent, as well as getting Rainbow Dash's rough voice and her singing together at the same time. Ball's accents also slip in both of her roles during "Winter Wrap-Up", where the two sound nearly identical, and "What My Cutie Mark is Telling Me" and "Generosity" when singing as Rainbow.
  • Minor character Pipsqueak, a young colt celebrating Nightmare Night for the first time in "Luna Eclipsed", is introduced with a British accent, but by the end of the episode seems to lose it. When he reappears in later episodes, his new voice actor does a much better job of holding the accent.
  • As with many other US/Canada animated co-productions, Canadian voice actors performing for shows and movies mainly intended for viewers in the United States are typically given directions to sound American. While they do so flawlessly most of the time, an "aboat" (as opposed to an "ah-bow-t" someone in the United States normally expects) does occasionally pop up, such as Fluttershy uttering one in "The Crystalling Part 2."
• The Tom and Jerry cartoon "Robin Hoodwinked" has Tuffy speaking with an English accent which slips on and off throughout the short.
• An in-universe example on The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy and Played for Laughs: in the episode, "Wishbones", Billy's wish from Thromnambular is to have some exciting adventures, which results in a parody of Jonny Quest, with Billy as Jonny and Irwin as Hadji. This prompts this exchange between them:
  Billy: (to Irwin) Why're you talkin' funny?
  Irwin: (Indian accent) Because I am from Calcutta, in the mystical east.
  Billy: No, you're not, you live down the block, and what's with that weird thingy on your head?
  Irwin: (drops accent; shouting) IT'S A TURBAN! IT'S WHAT I WEAR! I'M FROM THE MYSTICAL EAST! I'm in character, yo, so WHY DON'T YOU JUST GET OFF ME?!?!
• The Beatles' manager Brian Epstein took umbrage to Paul Frees and Lance Percival voicing the group on their Saturday morning cartoon show (which Al Brodax imposed so the boys could be understood by American audiences) that he ordered the cartoons to never be shown in England (but they were, by ITV. One of the regions to run the series was Granada - which covers Liverpool.) Lance Percival (Paul and Ringo) was an actual Briton, but Paul Frees' attempts (John and George) to sound Liverpudlian were not incredibly successful.
• X-Men: The Animated Series:
  • The show was recorded in Canada, so occasionally the actors would slip up, such as pronouncing "about" as "aboot." It's especially noticeable for Jubilee, who usually pronounced "Sorry" like "Soh-ry".
  • Despite Storm being from Kenya, she was originally voiced by American voice actress Iona Morris, who was not instructed to put on a Kenyan accent. She instead used a more generic round tone that sometimes sounded British, sometimes American. She was later replaced by Barbadian-Canadian actress Allison Sealy-Smith, who wanted to use a Kenyan accent, but instead settled on an imitation of Morris. She later claimed that the producers had no idea what they were really looking for, other than just a Black actress that didn't sound American.
• In Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: The Movie, Eric Idle voices Slyly the arctic fox who speaks in a Brooklyn accent, occasionally Idle's natural British accent will slip out.
• Sir David Jason is very British, known as the voice of Danger Mouse. His attempts at American vary. His Count Duckula with an American voice was a mix of Daffy Duck and Porky Pig on Danger Mouse, but on his own show, it's pretty straightforward. He voiced an American cowboy named Texas Jack McGraw in hopelessly stereotype fashion, and his Agent 57 in "The Return Of Count Duckula" was a very thick John Wayne.
• After Angie Harmon replaced Stockard Channing as the voice of adult Barbara Gordon in Batman Beyond and Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, the character suddenly gained traces of Harmon's native Texas accent.
• In Kaeloo, the voice actors are Australians speaking with American accents. Sometimes, Mr. Cat's voice actor slips into a weird half-American half-Australian accent.
• In Steven Universe, Lisa Hannigan’s Irish accent occasionally slips through when she voices Blue Diamond, who she otherwise tries to give an American accent ("You cae-naught imagine how much ay've mourned!"). She stops trying to hide her natural accent in later episodes.
• In Totally Spies!:
  • The American actor who voiced Jerry with a fake English accent (as in "from England") during the first two seasons did an OK job, even though traces of his American accent still seeped through here and there. For example, he would say "can't" in a North American way ("kaent") rather than in a typically British way ("kahnt").
  • The evil Simon Tucker's Irish accent occasionally slips and sounds more like a British one.
• The Latin American Spanish dub of Paradise PD pulls a very weird one: Due to the setting of the series, almost all the characters speak with Mexican accents and slang, which wouldn't be so unusual by itself if wasn't for the fact the series was dubbed in Argentina.^note For English speakers, that would be the equivalent if the original English voice acting being acted by Australians with Texan accents. Keep in mind for Latin American viewers this is very notable since Argentinian Spanish is notorious in that region for having a very thick accent, albeit sometimes the voice actors slip between Mexican and their native Argentinian accents at few times and sometimes they switch between the use of Mexican slang or Argentinian one.
• The British accents in Redwall will occasionally slip and reveal the actors' native Canadian accents. One example would be Brome, who tends to speak in his actor's Canadian accent, and in "Heroes and Fools" there is a pretty big example: when Keyla says "I'll show you how Keyla digs!" he loses his British accent.
  • Not even Matthias was safe from this trope. In "Captain Snow", Tyrone Savage slips back into his Canadian accent whilst Matthias is saying "Matthias, from Redwall Abbey. Who are you?" to Guosim.
• On WordGirl, Tobey always speaks with a British accent during his evil plans, but it dissolves into an American accent when his mother shows up to stop him, causing many fans to assume that it's an in-universe example. However, Word of God has stated that the accent is genuine, meaning it most likely is a coincidental out-of-universe example.
• In the Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat episode "Fur Cut", Dongwa slips back into Oliver Grainger's native accent when he and Sheegwa are confronting Sagwa while she is telling a story. He ends up pronouncing "You gotta!" as "You gatta!"
• In Ninjago, minor character Captain Soto usually speaks in a vaguely-defined Asian accent, but on occasion he randomly speaks a few lines in a more typical "pirate" voice that doesn't match his usual accent at all. None of the other characters ever notice or comment on this.
• Batman: The Animated Series: During the flashback in "Mad Love", Harley Quinn has a generic American accent instead of her regular thick New Jersey/New York one. The accent is implied to be part of the Harley persona. Alternately, it could be her real accent, which she suppressed for reasons of appearance.

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