Occasionally it so happens that when I'm playing or watching something, I will recognise someone's voice, and practically jump out of my seat. Then, at the nearest opportunity, I will run off to Google, Wikipedia, and occasionally IMDB if things get desperate to double check. And more often than not, my gut feeling on who actually did the voice is correct.
For example, last night I was playing Dragon Age, as is my want nowadays so that I may play Dragon Age 2 - of which a certain review I read tells me in no uncertain terms that playing it is something I want to do.
For anyone who hasn't played Dragon Age, and doesn't care, this next part will sound like gibberish.
I was in the Circle of Magi Tower, trying to deal with their demon problem, when a demon put me to sleep and entrapped me in The Fade. For those who don't know, the Fade is a dream world from which stems all magical power, dreams, emotions etc. Nothing there is as it seems. In there, I met another mage named Niall. As he spoke to me about being trapped by the Sloth Demon, I recognised his voice from elsewhere. It eventually dawned on me that it was Ieyasu from Sengoku Basara!
Same.
The problem with this kind of thing is, it tends to create a stigma in my mind, character-wise. I discovered the other week that Trishka from Bulletstorm - the somewhat psychotic, foul-mouthed female space-marine from Bulletstorm had the same voice actress as Sheena from Tales of Symphonia. Now when I return to playing ToS with Sarah, Sheena will be typecast as someone who should really have a machine gun!
Though, usually, this subliminal typecast relies on what material I saw first. Another one I picked up on is, again involved with Tales of Symphonia. Ambiguous "is he good is he evil" swordsman Kratos happens to have the same voice actor as Liquid Snake, from the Metal Gear games - a fact I picked up on within seconds of the introduction video! This immediately typecast Kratos as an evil badass, in my mind. I have no idea if he is truly a bad guy - even at the late-ish stage of the game that I am up to, but he just seems that way because he's not Kratos, he's Liquid Snake.
And he should be in a HIND so I can shoot him down with Stinger Missiles.
A few others I picked up on:
- The character which got cast as Yoda in Family Guy's Star Wars parody is Bob from Bob's Burgers (which I saw first. So now, I have a legitimate reason to rename Yoda to Bob).
- Date Masamune from Sengoku Basara is Dante from Devil May Cry. Surprisingly enough, the typecast in my head here fits perfectly!
- Sanada Yukimura from Sengoku Basara is a lot of people, notably Vash the Stampede (Trigun), Lelouch (Code Geass) and Ichigo (Bleach). He sounds most like Ichigo though - in fact I never picked up on Vash until I did some research.
Of course, this effect gets much, much more creepy when it starts happening in a language other than your own, that you barely know. Which is why it creeped me out when I started picking up on a few voice actors in this way while watching anime. IN JAPANESE. Particularly when I picked up that (yet again, Basara) Date Masamune in Japanese was voice acted by Mugen from Samurai Champloo. Or that Isaac in Baccano is actually Vash the Stampede (a fine choice, actually - the character typecast made in my head by this one is actually accurate).
I could mention the Konata vs Haruhi one, but really, I didn't pick up on it without having known beforehand that it was the same actress - besides, half the joke in that series is that its by the same people.
I realise that voice acting is like any other industry, and that the same people get around because its what they do for a living. However, it still tends to freak me out that I can recognise someone I've never met, and seen only in highly unrealistic cartoon/3d model forms, purely from their voice and prior roles.
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