Examples of Fantastic Racism from Animated Films.
- An American Tail is an obvious one, the mice represent the oppressed ethnicities of the world and the cats represent their oppressors. The theme might have worked a little better if the respective persecutions hadn't been confined to one country apiece: Russian mice by Russian cats, Italian mice by Italian cats, and so forth. It makes more sense if the mice stand for Jews specifically.
- A major focus of The Animatrix was the growing distrust between humans and robots, growing out of humans treating robots as inferior slaves; ultimately this led to a robot purge, followed by the surviving robots leading a successful rebellion. The historical parallels are plentiful.
- The Bad Guys (2022) has this in a world of humans and anthropomorphic animals. The main characters are a gang of animals that humans have historically treated like monsters (wolf, snake, piranha, shark and tarantula), and seeing no way to live better lives, they dedicate themselves to a life of crime as a Caper Crew. Professor Marmalade, an adorable guinea pig, exploits this racism by stealing a meteorite and framing the gang, knowing no one would take their word over his, despite the gang trying to reform and earn the public's trust. Governor Diane Foxington avoids all of the Foul Fox stereotypes and is publicly beloved, but had lived up to the stereotype before as the master thief Crimson Paw.
- Balto faces mistreatment from humans and other dogs because he's half wolf.
- A Bug's Life: Hopper sees the ants as little more than slaves and has worked tirelessly to instill this sense of inferiority into those he has terrorized into submission. Heck, he seems to hold this view against all other bugs he meets, as he will not hesitate to order his men to squish them if he deems them a nuisance to himself.
- Cats Don't Dance is pretty much about the discrimination black actors faced in Hollywood during the late 30s/early 40s...but with ANIMALS!
- In Ernest et Célestine, the bears don't like the mice and vice versa. The mice live below-ground, the bears above, and the children mice are told scary stories before going to bed about the dangers of bears. Until the end of the film, only Celestine can see past all of this.
- Felidae:
- Bluebeard refers to humans as "Can Openers" believing that the only thing a human is good for is opening cans of food for cats to eat. Yes, a cat making speciesist remarks about a human.
- Claudandus believes that humans are pure evil, and is also racist against other breeds of cats, since he murdered any cat he deemed "unworthy" of mating with his "superior" breed of cat he had created through selective breeding. This should come as no surprise, since the film (and the book it's based off of) draw parallels to Nazi Germany.
- In Frozen, the Duke of Weselton Does Not Like Magic and reacts with incredible fear and hatred to witnessing Queen Elsa's ice powers, quickly convincing his men that she is a monster who must be destroyed. He also takes time to harass Elsa's normal sister Anna, asking if she's a monster as well.
- This exists between monsters and humans in the past of Hotel Transylvania, bad enough that monsters went into hiding as humans became more adept at killing them. Dracula perpetuates this attitude on the monster side into the present day; Johnny even points it out in the film. Averted at the end of the film and through to the sequel, where as it turns out, most humans are pretty chill about the idea of monsters existing, and thanks to Johnny, monsters are quite accepting of humans.
- In How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, Grimmel the Grisly is a hunter with a deep hatred of dragons, believing they must be eliminated and that humans are superior to them. According to Word of God, he has zero tolerance for dragons and takes any attempt by anyone to co-exist with them as a personal affront.
- Ice Age:
- Even if they did so for good reason, Manny and Sid were wary of Diego in Ice Age at first mostly because he was just a saber-toothed tiger.
- In Ice Age: Continental Drift, when Peaches leaves the Brat Pack after realizing that they show no care about the danger they're in, Ethan insults her by saying that it's bad enough that she and her family are "half possum", which causes her to give them "The Reason You Suck" Speech.Peaches: "Bad enough"? There is nothing bad about being a part of my family! I like hanging by my tail. And if you geniuses are normal, this species is going to end up EXTINCT!
- In The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild, Orson hates mammals with a passion and seeks to exterminate the ones who migrated to the lost world.
- The Incredibles:
- In the first film, Supers had been outlawed by the setting. Because of Mr. Incredible saving a suicidal man who didn't want to be saved — and then the incident revolving around the deaths of the L Train victims — this caused the Superhero Registration Act to be enforced.
- The Big Bad Syndrome of the first film grew to despise supers because of being harshly berated by Mr. Incredible due to the aforementioned incident. He had since dedicated himself to designing robots powerful enough to kill Mr. Incredible, testing each robot by killing any super he lures to the island.
- Screenslaver in the sequel wants to ensure that supers remain outlawed. To hear Screenslaver tell it, this is for the good of the normal people because without supers, they will act themselves instead of just waiting to be saved.
- The Land Before Time:
- The first movie contains plenty of Fantastic Racism between the different species of dinosaurs. The "races" stay in their own groups at the movie's start, these being the Longnecks, the Threehorns, the Swimmers, the Flyers, and the Spiketails just to name those of the main Five-Man Band. Most, if not all, of the prejudice is gone by the movie's end, when all of the dinosaurs, sans Sharptooth, are living in the Great Valley in peace.
- This shows up in many of the sequels as well. Cera's (the threehorn) father tends to forget the 'racism is bad' Aesop and tries to blame the new problem on anyone and everyone else. The plot unfolds, and by the end he repents for being such a jerk... until the next time. The fourth film also has a song called "It Takes All Sorts" on the subject.
- Leafie, a Hen into the Wild: The titular Leafie is a factory farm hen who manages to escape her cage. When she tries to befriend the farmers other chickens, who live in a coop, she is scorned for being a dirty, "common hen" and told that it isn't her place to live with them. She ends up running off to the local pond and living on her own instead.
- The Little Mermaid (1989): King Triton disapproves of Ariel going up to the surface to see humans, although it is somewhat justified as humans eat fish. The prequel gives an in-depth reveal why he despises humans: because his wife Athena was crushed to death by an out-of-control ship while trying to save the music box he gave her.
- Mars Express: Racism against robots. It is obvious when a violent demonstration against robots takes place on Earth, and things are just slightly more subtle on Mars. Carlos is the backup copy robot of a dead human being, and he seems to suffer from being a machin Some other backup copy of a dead person hands him a card to a support group.
- Once Upon a Forest: The speciesist squirrel, who seems to have something against every species other than squirrels.
- The Painting: The denizens of an unfinished painting are divided by a Fantastic Caste System. The fully-painted Allduns look down upon the unfinished Halfies, and both groups hate the unpainted Sketchies.
- Pooh's Heffalump Movie: Overcoming this is the essential plot point. Pooh and the gang learn that the heffalumps of Heffalump Forest aren't monsters that are out to eat all of their honey & destroy the Hundred Acre Wood and don't have fiery eyes, tails with spikes, or "wingamathings" on their backs. Well, that and the joy that Roo (who never bought into most of that) finds in discovering a best friend in Lumpy.
- Ratatouille has Django, who believes that all Humans Are the Real Monsters and therefore discourages Remy's aspirations to be a chef. He makes his point most vividly when he takes Remy to Aurouze, a pest control shop that's been around since 1872 and ghoulishly hangs dead rats caught in their traps in their front store window.
- Rio:
- Eduardo in Rio 2 is harshly opposed to anything and everything to do with humans; he orders his flock to stay out of their sight, and criticizes Blu for using human artifacts.
- His own daughter Jewel in the original Rio hated humans as well, most likely due to her tragic past, though she overcomes it in the end with the help of Blu.
- In Rugrats Go Wild!, the dog Spike insists that all cats are the same, and takes evident glee in threatening a leopard — boasting specifically that his dog friends will praise him for it.Darwin: Of course, a simple handshake wouldn't do!
Spike: Hey, Twitchy. I. Do not. Shake. With cats. Okay? - Moriarty of Sherlock Gnomes is the mascot of a pie making company, but he greatly despises gnomes, so much so, his main scheme in the plan is kidnapping several of London's gnomes and trapping them beneath Tower Bridge so that when it recedes, all of the gnomes would get smashed.
- Shrek:
- Lord Farquaad of Shrek is aptly named. He hates all "fairy tale creatures" and his self-proclaimed "perfect world" is one where they have all been removed. From what we see in the film, his kingdom is undergoing a family-friendly form of genocide against any and all living things that are magical or supernatural in nature, including human wizards and witches, leaving only Muggles behind. Oh, and the musical reveals that he's a complete hypocrite since he's half-dwarf (and not a human with Dwarfism, an actual dwarf).
- There's also the Fairy Godmother in Shrek 2 who is very adamant that ogres don't get happy endings.
- Fiona's father, King Harold is this way as well, disproving of his daughter's marriage to Shrek, largely because Shrek is an ogre. He gets better, though.
- Storks: The Cornerstore company has a no humans policy, and Tulip mentions that if she were boss, she'd hire a more diverse bird and mammal work force.
- Strange Magic: Fairies seem to hold most goblins in a negative light. Elves too, though to a lesser extent. The king of the fairies actually faints when he sees his daughter kissing an elf.
- Tarzan: Kerchak harbors a huge racism against humans after the bloodthirsty leopard Sabor killed the baby he and Kala raised, who also happened to be the killer of the titular hero's parents.
- Humans themselves are subjected to Fantastic Racism in Titan A.E., as the movie takes place 15 years after an Earth-Shattering Kaboom, and what humans remain are penniless, homeless, and generally reviled by the other species.
- Toy Story 2: With the launch of Sputnik and the Space Race in the 1960's, children became obsessed with toys related to space and all other toys fell into steep decline quickly. This isn't true in modern times, but the old cowboys-themed toy Stinky Pete hasn't quite got over this old grudge, and in his own words, "space toys" like Buzz are upstarts.
- The Wind in the Willows:
- At Toad's trial, the judge notices that Toad's sentence has worked out to 19 years imprisonment, and rounds it up by giving him an extra twelve months' imprisonment "for being green".
- There's also the unfortunate point about the Always Chaotic Evil ferrets, weasels and stoats who are pretty clearly stand-ins for Britains's enemies at the time.
- In Wreck-It Ralph, the video game villains are treated so poorly that they need to create a support group, while the characters of Sugar Rush act this way towards any and all glitches (though it is possible this is wholly due to King Candy reprogramming Sugar Rush). It also appears that Ralph suffers from profiling, as he triggers Surge Protector's "random" security check alarm every time he enters or leaves a game. We don't see if this happens to other Bad Guys, though.
- Bigotry and prejudice is a major theme throughout Zootopia, which is set in a World of Funny Animals that is rife with Animal Jingoism. An unusually complex example, as discrimination in this world seems to run in multiple separate dimensions; in addition to the primary predators vs. prey conflict, there is also the issue of small animals not being respected by larger ones, as well as species-specific stereotypes (e.g. foxes are all supposedly shifty and dishonest criminals, rabbits are all supposedly cute and harmless carrot farmers, elephants all supposedly have good memory, etc).
