Basic Trope: A character speaks with an accent that they naturally shouldn't given their background and upbringing.
- Straight: Charles speaks in an American Midwestern accent, even though he lives in England with his parents Alice and Bob having English accents.
- Exaggerated:
- Charles speaks in an American Midwestern accent despite the fact that the story takes place long before America was even discovered.
- Everyone in the story has accents much different than the rest of their family.
- Downplayed:
- Charles speaks with an American Midwestern accent, but refers to things by using British words instead of their American ones; such as football instead of soccer, lorry instead truck, crisps instead of chips, etc.
- Charles mostly sounds English, but has occasional slips and inexplicably sounds Midwestern occasionally.
- Justified:
- Charles spent most of his childhood in the American Midwest rather than England.
- Some members of Charles' family are Midwestern, and he learned their accent.
- Charles' favorite show features characters with Midwestern accents, and he (subconsciously or not) copied their accents.
- Inverted: Only one actor affects an accent appropriate to the setting of the work, with the others using their natural accents despite it being illogical for their characters to have them.
- Subverted:
- It turns out that Charles' family is actually Midwestern and his parents have just been faking their English accents.
- Charles' actor actually is Midwestern.
- Charles is adopted.
- Double Subverted: But he was adopted at a very young age and would be likely to have adopted the English accent.
- Parodied: ???
- Zig-Zagged: Charles with jump back and forth between speaking with an American accent and speaking with a British one.
- Averted: Charles has an English accent like the rest of his family.
- Enforced:
- The Kids Are American
- "How do we show that Charles is different from his family?" "Let's have him speak in a much different accent."
- Lampshaded: "That's almost as perplexing as Charles and that American accent he has no business having."
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: ???
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: "Why is he speaking in an American accent when his parents are British?"
Back to Unexplained Accent
