Basic Trope: Someone's voice doesn't sound like what you'd expect.
- Straight:
- Alice is a little girl but her voice sounds like a grown woman and she enunciates very well for a child her age.
- Bob is The Big Guy and yet has a rather high-pitched voice.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice is only three, but she has a very deep, male-sounding voice with a slight monotone.
- Alice sounds like a grown woman, Bob sounds like a pro opera singer, Carol sounds like a man despite being a woman, Dave is an adult but sounds like a little kid, Emily's accent is Japanese despite being fully American, Francis sounds like a woman despite being a man, Gino is a kid that sounds like he's thirty and so on...
- Alice is The Ingenue and The Pollyanna who looks like the most innocent and pure person ever, which she is, but she has a naturally icy cold, unfriendly, emotionless voice that will send shivers up your spine every time she speaks. She has no idea why people are afraid of her.
- Downplayed:
- Alice has an American accent despite being from England.
- Bob is The Big Guy and has a somewhat high-pitched voice that still has a commanding presence (think Johnny Gilbert, the announcer of Jeopardy).
- Betty is 27 and looks her age but her voice sounds like she's 16.
- Justified:
- Alice's voice is artificial.
- Alice, a teenager with a baritone voice, is Transgender.
- Alice is possessed by a male demon and we are hearing its voice instead of hers.
- Alice's voice has a very broad range… maybe she's a Blanc or a Welker?
- Bob may be a Super-Strong Child who towers over everyone, but he's still a child.
- Inverted:
- Alice is a little girl but her voice sounds like an infant speaking immediately after birth.
- Bob is The Big Guy and yet he sounds like a whale when he speaks.
- Subverted:
- It turns out that it wasn't really Alice speaking.
- Bob has a girly voice, but it turns out it's actually because Bob is a Lady Looks Like a Dude or Sweet Polly Oliver.
- Double Subverted:
- It was Bob, but he sounds like a woman.
- Alice's real voice sounds even weirder for a little girl.
- Parodied: The manliest man on earth has a very girly voice.
- Zigzagged: Alice's voice keeps changing. Sometimes it sounds reasonable for a little girl, other times not.
- Averted: Alice and Bob sound just like you'd expect.
- Everybody sounds just like what you'd expect.
- Alice is literally voiceless.
- Enforced:
- Having characters with unusual voices is funny to the writers.
- The As Told By show has no (budget for) additional voice-actors, forcing the narrator to affect an opposite gender voice for some of the characters, for better or worse.
- Lampshaded: "Whoa, you're Alice? When I heard your voice, I thought you'd be an adult!"
- Invoked: Bob invents something to manipulate voices.
- Exploited: Alice uses her adult-sounding voice to pose as an adult over the phone.
- Defied: Bob corrects his voice through vocal pedagogy and surgery.
- Discussed:Bob: And I met this girl Alice. She's only, like, five, but she sounds like a full-grown lady!Charlie: Bob, you literally tower over us, yet you're 12 and sound like it.
- Conversed: "What gives? Can't that character's voice actress try to do a kid voice?"
- Implied: Alice doesn't usually speak, but one day Bob hears a strange voice in her bedroom, and she's the only one there...
- Deconstructed:
- Getting used to Alice's voice is like getting used to a cat barking.
- Bob isn't taken seriously because he sounds like a little girl.
- Reconstructed: People feel that Alice is unique for her voice.
- Played for Laughs: Alice says typically childish things in her adult-sounding voice.
- Played for Drama: Alice's jarring voice is caused by damage to her vocal cords from a violent attack
Back to Vocal Dissonance.
