Have you ever looked at a character and imagined how weird it would be if they had a different voice? For example, how different would it be if, in an alternate universe, Joy from Inside Out was voiced by, maybe, Idina Menzel or Tara Strong voiced Blossom instead?
If you found those situations hard to imagine, absurd even, then that means that the voice actors of those characters did a great job in embedding their voices into the soul of their characters. It just goes to show how they made themselves irreplaceable and unforgettable when one thinks, even of just the character.
Below, we compiled a list of 10 characters with the most iconic voice actors that shouldn’t be changed.
10. Jim Cummings (Winnie the Pooh)
Let’s start with something closer to home, Winnie the Pooh. Winnie is a yellow anthropomorphic teddy bear with around five main friends – Piglet, Eeyore, Kanga, Roo, and Tigger. Winnie’s voice that sounded like your sweet grandpa is irreplaceable.
9. Sunflower (Laura Shigihara)
Laura Shigihara composed and sang the credits song of the 2009 tower defense game Plants Vs. Zombies. The song can be accessed by beating the boss level in Level 5-10 for the first time or clicking on credits under the options.
During the credits roll, the sunflower plant, one of the crucial plants in the game, is seen singing in what seems to be a concert on the player’s lawn. The song the sunflower sings is called Zombies on Your Lawn.
Zombies on Your Lawn is often attributed to Sunflower, and if Sunflower were to change her voice actor, it wouldn’t feel the same.
8. The TikTok TTS Voice (Kat Callaghan)
This isn’t a TV character per se, but unless you’re living under a rock, this is a voice you might have probably heard at least once. Once you’ve heard a “computer voice” reading a text in a TikTok video, you might have noticed that they all sound the same. Kat Callaghan voiced the viral text-to-speech voice on the said video-streaming platform.
7. Ice Bear (Demetri Martin)
Ice Bear is the stoic polar bear in the We Bear Bears show. In the show, he is often the opposite of his brother’s outgoing and loud nature, and Demetri Martin truly kept Ice Bear as the character he should be. It’s hard to imagine Ice Bear having a different voice actor with a slightly louder voice.
6. Donald Duck (Clarence Nash)
Clarence Nash is often attributed to having produced Donald Duck’s somewhat intelligible speech. Although, throughout the years, Donald Duck had a change of voice, nothing could top Nash’s slurry Donald Duck’s voice.
5. Bubbles (Tara Strong)
Tara Strong made strong acting for Bubbles, the blue PowerPuff Girl. You could have noticed Bubbles’ sweet voice if you had watched at least an episode. It’s fragile even, like Ice Bear, that changing its actor would risk the character’s authenticity.
4. Dory (Ellen DeGeneres)
Finding Nemo and Finding Dory are two successful fish films featuring some fish trying to look for their lost children, hence the title. Before even being lost, Dory appeared in Finding Nemo and guided Nemo’s father in her search.
Ellen provided the perfect teenager-like voice for Dory and even captured the changes in her attitude caused by her forgetfulness.
3. Elsa (Idina Menzel)
Idina Menzel composed the song Let It Go for the first Frozen film. Moreover, she voiced the character who sang it. Could you imagine how different it would be if Elsa suddenly had a different voice actor, like, maybe, in a hypothetical Frozen III?
2. SpongeBob SquarePants (Tom Kenny)
The titular character of the series is just the soul of the show. Tom Kenny voiced SpongeBob so well that the viewers already had stored SpongeBob’s laugh or annoying voice somewhere in their minds.
1. Heinz Doofenshmirtz (Dan Povenmire)
Dr. Doofenshmirtz is one of the antagonists in the Phineas and Ferb series, albeit kindhearted. In the show, he is characterized as someone who had plans to take over the Tri-State area, and Perry the Platypus always had to thwart his plans.
Doofenshmirtz is not Doofenshmirtz without his signature loud and sometimes creaky voice and his signature, “Curse you, Perry the Platypus!” Now that a new Phineas and Ferb season has been announced, we hope Dan Povenmire is still his voice.