Patrick Warburton

Patrick Warburton's voice does most of the introducing: a flat, enormous baritone that sounds like a man reading a weather report during a disaster. Seinfeld put it to work as David Puddy, a boyfriend defined almost entirely by his refusal to react to anything, and a recurring part across several seasons made him instantly castable.

The insight that built everything after belongs to The Emperor's New Groove. Kronk sounds like a henchman and is in fact the sweetest character in the film, endlessly loyal, hopeless at scheming, conducting arguments with his own shoulder angels. Warburton plays the gap between what the voice promises and what the character delivers, and that gap is the joke in most of his best work: Joe Swanson on Family Guy, Ken in Bee Movie, Steve Barkin in Kim Possible, Ian in Open Season.

Occasionally he inverts it. Brock Samson in The Venture Bros. is the voice used exactly as advertised, a killing machine with no irony applied at all, and it is one of the great American voice performances. On camera he has led sitcoms for years, most durably Rules of Engagement, played the title role in The Tick, and narrated A Series of Unfortunate Events as Lemony Snicket, which may be the ideal use of him: a man calmly issuing warnings that nobody in the story intends to take.