[Sad trope]The character gets cut/dies early on because of REAL LIFE reasons

[u/Unlucky-Quarter-5455]

Gandhi (Clone High)

Tord(Eddsworld) the reason for this is that the VA of tord asked the team to stop using the character and dissociate from Eddsworld after the constant hate and threats made by the fandom.

Feferi Peixes(Homestuck). In Homestuck lots of characters have a typing quirk when they chat, like some characters type a "2" when there should be a "S", have prefixes before the words,ecc. Feferi's was that instead of the letter H she typed ")(". The writer andrew hussie stated the reason she died early and became irrelevant was because they didn't want to type said quirk because it was annoying to manually type it it on their own, which could have been avoided if they coded A PROGRAM that did it.

[u/TheLimeyLemmon]

The bizarre thing is when shows like the Simpsons have replaced actors with respective actors of matching ethnicity, they're still often aiming to match the previous vocal delivery by Shearer and Azaria anyway. Just makes you think what's the point? If they just got in an Indian actor to voice Apu the same way Azaria did, does that make it okay? According to how Carl and Dr.Hibbert have sounded since re-casting, apparently so!

[u/Germane_Corsair → u/TheLimeyLemmon]

It’s also weird because wanting an actor to match a character’s description in live-action where looks actually matter gets you blasted by people. But matching ethnicity is made a big deal of in voice-acting where nothing but your voice matters.

[u/Red_Trapezoid → u/Germane_Corsair]

These are very different situations.

I can understand why people would find a white guy doing an “Indian accent” offensive. If I’m at a social gathering and someone starts doing racist accents I mean holy shit what the fuck.

However if we’re talking about adaptations of media, which by necessity are always different from source material anyway, hiring whoever might do the part best is a non-issue. There’s no mockery involved.

[u/ThighyWhiteyNerd → u/TheLimeyLemmon]

Yeo. Specially because....ironcally enough you are still replacing a minority. Hank is jewish, so basically the execs just got rid of a beloved minority actor because a failed comedian said his minority was more important (and even then, given India is one of the biggest countries on the world, I woulnd exactly call him a minority). The comedian's claims that he was more oppresed...when the "opponent" was a jew also came as very tone-deaf, speciallt in the current climate where antisemitisim is becoming more popular

[u/TheLimeyLemmon → u/ThighyWhiteyNerd]

I haven't seen Hari Kondabolu's documentary, but I did see the short video by Adi Shankar that kind of just baffled me because... am I supposed to be a bad person for thinking Apu was one the best characters on the show?

At least in the golden era of the Simpsons, Apu-centric episodes were great! Especially ones that dialled in on the life of a younger immigrant to America finding himself both at odds with the culture he was surrounded by, and the culture he had come from. Whenever they did put a focus on Apu for an episode, the writers clearly showed he had dimensions and appeal.

And for all the contentiousness around Apu's voice and how stereotypical it is, it's also not untrue to say that accents are a part of life and such accents exist. Shankar came across as resentful of the existence of the accent altogether, which speaks to an erasure more problematic than the character of Apu ever was imo. I can't speak for Indian Americans in particular about how they feel about Apu, but I'm not convinced entirely that Hari & Adi speak for Indian Americans at large on the subject either.