r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Argie_Theft_Auto3 • 7h ago

miscellaneous Voice actor is brought back just to do grunting/mumbling (reused grunts or one voiceline do not count)

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• Smash Bros. Ultimate - In Min Min's reveal trailer, Ryō Horikawa; Captain Falcon's VA reprises his role only to record himself slurping noodles, that's pretty much it. 20+ years of no new recorded lines, just to make eating noodles noises for a trailer.

• Lego Pirates of the Caribbean: The Videogame - Sparrow's actor; Johnny Depp was brought back to "voice" his character, means just recording mumbling and grunting for the game.

1.5k Upvotes

99% Upvoted

34 comments sorted by

384

u/Foreign_Diamond1539 7h ago

LEGO Star Wars III also brought back VAs from The Clone Wars toon!..

Like LEGO PotC, this game lacks actual dialouge...

55

u/ComprehensiveBox6911 7h ago

This was my favorite Lego Star Wars game of all of them

18

u/Foreign_Diamond1539 7h ago

My personal first introduction to the saga!..

14

u/MrFluxed 1h ago

honestly the newer Lego games having normal dialogue has lost so much of the charm for me. The old games having to tell entire movie plots through grunts, mumbles, and sight-gags was peak.

225

u/jbwarner86 6h ago

Joe Mantegna once told the Simpsons writers that he loved voicing Fat Tony so much, he'd willingly come in to the studio even if all they needed him to do was cough or sneeze. They finally called his bluff in Season 20's "Sex, Pies, and Idiot Scrapes", where Fat Tony's only dialogue is muffled grunting and mumbling.

36

u/Sensitive_Golf3889 6h ago

I love in that episode when they do that stupid parkour chase 😂

11

u/AlguienMas2003 6h ago

Parkouring in the elevator

151

u/RubiksCutiePatootie 7h ago edited 6h ago

This isn't exactly what you wanted but it's close enough imo. In the South Park episode "Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride", George Clooney voices the dog Sparky. Except all he does is bark, growl, grunt, & whimper like an actual dog. This early af cameo happened because Clooney was actually a huge supporter of the show when it first started.

40

u/NascarFan1896 6h ago

And Cartman's cat was voiced by Jay Leno as well

13

u/Gaelic_Gladiator41 3h ago

Fun fact as well, apparently they originally offered the role to Jerry Seinfeld who kept asking them for a role but he turned it down due to being insulted

105

u/Bellpow 7h ago edited 4h ago

Freddy Krueger (Mortal Kombat 9)

Voiced by Robert Englund but all he does is laughs and grunts and don’t think it was even known he voiced Freddy in then game until like 2017

22

u/69RobotsInDistress 4h ago

Btw, the only word he says is "No!" in the Bridge stage fatality.

40

u/IceCurrent4264 7h ago

Dragon Ball GT: besides a singular line where you can’t even see his mouth move all Nappa does is grunts and growls in his one scene of seeing Vegeta again after decades of being dead. He’s then killed unceremoniously by Vegeta.

10

u/ApprehensiveEbb7452 7h ago

That’s all that both the Japanese and English vas of him recorded (iirc his Japanese va died a couple years ago)

3

u/Dragonfang65 5h ago

Nappa: Hey Vegeta. You were a Prison.

1

u/Warm-Intention-1424 3h ago

Tbf in this case they didn't actually get his VA back in they just had Kiyoyuki Yanada "voice" him which is probably why he didn't have any substantial dialogue

25

u/ThePotato42 5h ago

Super Kirby Clash brought back Nightmare as an antagonist, and they actually got Banjō Ginga, the Japanese voice for Nightmare from the Kirby anime back just for him laughing and grunting.

2

u/Throwawayman69420666 39m ago

I think the Japanese versons of Smash has the Japanese VA for Meta Knight from the anime. Not DeDeDe, Sakurai does the voice in the smash games. English voice, did not get Eric Stuart because I think Nintendo already stopped using 4Kids for their anime like pokemon by the time of that game's development.

1

u/ThePotato42 22m ago

Just looked it up about meta knight and that’s true! I actually had no idea, that’s really cool

52

u/FinnMuzz 6h ago

Johnny depp came back for a bunch of Lego grunts but he didn't come back for kingdom hearts 2 OR 3 for the same character? 😭

26

u/Noobsysys 6h ago

he has his priorities straight

https://giphy.com/gifs/8JCwuk8n2Y6iI

42

u/sisdom-weeker 7h ago

Tord's last Eddsworld episode before leaving was "Moving Targets"

The only line his voice actor Tord Larsson recorded was him saying "phew"

18

u/TheRoyalRoseTrue 3h ago

MMPH MMPH MMPH MMPMMPMMMMPH (The Pyro from TF2, which had his VA, who is also Spy's VA, mumble all his voice lines)

https://giphy.com/gifs/9YfH4HmziHc9wRSy2P

14

u/itriedtobenice 4h ago

Steven Universe - Aimee Mann is the voice of the fusion Opal, and after her debut in season 1 episode 12, next voices her sighing contentedly in the season finale of series 2 - 66 episodes later. She then wouldn't voice her again until the movie, after the series ended, 78 episodes later.

7

u/Unguilla93 4h ago

In the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers special “Once and always”, Jason David Frank did not reprise his role as Tommy, and in fact passed away 5 months before its release date. His usual voice actor in the Spanish (Spain) dub, Gabriel Jiménez, came in to voice his single line of dialogue and grunts even if it wasn’t Jason David Frank portraying the Green Ranger, probably as a tribute to him.

29

u/heff17 6h ago

The Lego games were ruined when they brought in actual voiced lines.

26

u/DarkWaWeeGee 6h ago

Literally took away from all the prop gag comedy it had become known for

18

u/naynaythewonderhorse 4h ago

When they started having games with more complicated stories, it became a necessity to have dialogue rather than pantomime to get what’s happening across.

I point to the first LEGO Harry Potter game when they reveal that it was Pettigrew and not Sirius that betrayed Harry’s parents. Amongst many other twists and reveals in that scene.

The scene is completely incomprehensible.

Some people say that you shouldn’t have to rely on the games to tell a coherent story, and you should use the source material…Sorry, but what? The game sucks in its ability to tell a coherent story. That’s a knock at the game, saying I should watch or read the source material (which I have) don’t seem to realize that that doesn’t make the criticisms disappear.

1

u/dern_the_hermit 3h ago

Some people say that you shouldn’t have to rely on the games to tell a coherent story, and you should use the source material

Yeah, that's wild. If I shouldn't use the game I just won't play the game, I'll go read the source material. Like it's just a mentality that fundamentally misunderstands the nature of adaptation.

3

u/Theresafoxinmygarden 3h ago

I think Lego City undercover took all of the quality from other voiced lego games 

1

u/yannick5612 4h ago

It depends, as much as Lego marvel superheroes is beloved the dialog in that game is far too cheesy to be enjoyable and would have been better with mumbles, however something like Lego city undercover is 10x better because of the dialog

9

u/Dexchampion99 3h ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/LZGvk8uCSFwGqyzu4I
Matthew Mercer playing Midas (Fortnite)

Not exactly the same deal, since Midas started out with incomprehensible gibberish, and then Matthew Mercer returned to record ACTUAL voice lines, but it’s still a good example, I think.

3

u/CapCrafterRP 3h ago

Johnny Depp actually voiced Jack in the Lego game?!? I thought they just hired a a sound alike and reused voice clips from the movies. That's so cool.