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Starting as a single adventure in 2002, the CGI animated movie was a box office hit and expanded into an entire trilogy.

In the Ice Age, a clumsy sloth named Sid, a woolly mammoth named Manny, a saber-toothed tiger named Diego and an acorn-loving saber-toothed squirrel named Scrat are forced to become unlikely heroes. The first three reluctantly come together and brave the deadly elements of the impending Ice Age. The fourth one has his own parallel Story Arc. He tries to bury his beloved acorn, but he only manages to create mayhem around him.

In the first Ice Age film, Sid is left behind sleeping while everyone else begins the journey to the south. Awaking, he meets Manny, a mammoth who travels to the north, and decides to follow him. When a human camp is attacked by a pack of vengeful sabers, a woman takes her baby and jumps in a river. Before she drowns, Manny and Sid rescue the baby. The two animals decide to search for the father and return the baby to him. Diego, one of the tigers that attacked the humans, comes also claiming the baby. Diego starts to work as a double agent, but along the journey he befriends Manny and Sid.

In the sequel, Manny, Sid and Diego are living in a large valley surrounded by an enormously high ice wall. The trio discover that the ice wall is actually barely holding a massive body of water that could flood the valley to nearly a mile underwater. A vulture tells them that there is a boat at the other end of the valley that may save them all, but they have only three days to make it or die. Manny is having trouble facing the fact that he may be the last mammoth left. Along the way, they meet Ellie, a mammoth who thinks she is a possum, and her possum "brothers", Crash and Eddie.

The third one was released in 2009 and involves a Lost World filled with DINOSAURS! It turns out there is an entire prehistoric world that somehow survived by being located underneath the surface of the Earth. Manny and Ellie are expecting their first child, and Manny becomes compulsively over-protective of her as he tries to be readily prepared for when the time comes. Sid is jealous and raises three abandoned eggs. They turn out to be baby T-rex's, and when their real mother finds out they were stolen, she takes all four creatures underground, and Sid's friends all go to his rescue. There they meet a seasoned, slightly insane adventurer weasel named Buck, who becomes their guide in surviving this new world, and with an agenda of his own.

Also spawned three short films that are on the DVDs: Gone Nutty and No Time for Nuts, both short adventures starring Scrat, and Surviving Sid, obviously centered around Sid.

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Provides examples of:

• The Apple Falls Far
• Anachronism Stew (Crosses over with Misplaced Wildlife and Somewhere A Paleontologist Is Crying)
• Anthropomorphic Shift: from Surviving Sid onwards.
• Arson Murder And Jaywalking (Buck listing the rules for getting his help)
• Badass: Buck the Weasel of Dawn of the Dinosaurs.
• Badass Spaniard: Sure, it may be a stretch, but that was probably the reason for giving a Saber-tooth Tiger a Spanish/South American name.
• Butt Monkey (Sid. Not even his family wanted him.)
• Carnivore Confusion: Lampshaded in the third movie.
• Chekhovs Gun (The omnious vibrating icicles.)
• The Chew Toy (Scrat and Sid)
• Chirping Crickets ("We're gonna miss the mi... the mi... gration...")
• Cloud Cuckoo Lander:
  • Ellie.
  • Buck the Weasel of Dawn of the Dinosaurs.
  • The Dodos.
• Crazy Survivalist:
  • Buck the Weasel, the delightfully deranged Rambo/Ahab Expy.
  • The dodos are preparing for living billions of years underground with a stockpile of... three watermelons! They failed.
• Crouching Moron Hidden Badass (Scrat and the piranhas. Or Scrat and Sid.)
• Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming:
  • Manny and the baby in the cave. Also Diego and the baby when the last one learns to walk. Also when Sid is accepted into the dinosaur family in Ice Age 3.
  • Manny and Ellie's daughter Peaches...just generally!
• Dead Little Sister (You can call it dead little son and wife for Manny.)
• Deadpan Snarker (Diego and Manny.)
• Did Not Do The Research ("Rudy", the main antagonist of the third film is a large albino Baryonyx that is considerably larger than the mother T.rex in the film. One tiny problem: Baryonyx only grew to be around 28 ft long while Tyrannosaurus rex grew to be around 40 ft long.)
  • It is surmised by some that Rudy may actually be a Suchomimus, a relative of Baryonyx that was closer to T.rex's size.
• Disney Death
• Ensemble Darkhorse (SCRAT!!!)
• Expy
  • (Buck the Weasel in Dawn of the Dinosaurs is a clear allusion to John Rambo, another traumatized jungle warrior.) His maddened quest to take down a giant white beast that took a part off of him makes him an Captain Ahab expy as well. He also seems to be channeling Captain Jack Sparrow.
• Eye Open:
  • In Ice Age 2, one of the "alligators."
  • In Ice Age 3, Rudy does this fairly often.
• Falling Chandelier Of Doom (Technically are sharp icicles, but...)
• First Installment Wins
• Fluffy The Terrible: Rudy, the fearsome white Baryonyx in Dawn of the Dinosaurs. Lampshaded by Manny:
  Manny: Oh, I was thinking it'd be something terrifying, like... Sheldon, or Tim.
• Getting Crap Past The Radar:
  • Pulled off twice in Dawn of the Dinosaurs; first when Sid tries to milk a "Cow" ("I thought you were a female!") and at the end when Ellie's daughter is born ("Oh look, it's a boy!" - "That's her tail, Sid." - "It's a girl!")
  • Also Buck mentions that he knew a rainbow-colored butterfly when he was a little caterpillar, "before he came out", and when he turned a T-Rex into a T-Rachel. Also, when Diego and Manny are pressed up against each other, Diego says, "I feel all tingly!" Manny says, "Don't say that when you're pressed up against me!" "Not that kind of tingly!"
• Grumpy Bear (Manny.)
• Heel Face Turn (Three guesses who...)
• Heroic Sacrifice (Nadja, the baby's mother and Manny and Diego, both subverted)
• Hey Its That Voice: Buck the Weasel is voiced by Nicholas Angel!
• Ho Yay
  • Buck and Rudy (C'mon, don't tell me you didn't think it)
  • A scene in the plant between Manny and Diego.
• I Am Big Boned (Manny)
• I Am Not Weasel (For the record, Rudy is a Baryonyx, not a Suchomimus as he's often mistakenly called. An unusually large Baryonyx, but still a Baryonyx.)
• I Got Better (Diego in the first movie)
  "Nine lives, baby!"
• Insistent Terminology ("I'm NOT fat!")
• Instant Birth Just Add Water: Ellie gives birth in the middle of a raptor fight, screaming and wincing, and Peaches comes out already happy and sleepy. One of the most exaggerated Hollywood births ever.
• Jerk With A Heart Of Gold (Obviously, Manny.) Also, Diego.
• Like Family: The term "Herd" is used to describe the characters.
• Mama Bear ("Momma" in the third. Helps that she's a T-Rex.)
• Midair Repair: Buck performs mouth-to-mouth on a pterosaur knocked unconscious by a mid-air collision..
• Misplaced Wildlife
• Never The Selves Shall Meet: Averted in No Time for Nuts when Scrat ends up meeting himself via use of the time machine. Hilarity Ensues when both Scrats start craving the time traveling one's acorn.
• Nightmare Fuel-"Where's the baby? THERE HE IS!!!!"
• Pick On Someone Your Own Species: Buck and Rudy. Mostly due to the latter's allusions to a certain whale-hunter.
• Record Needle Scratch: Abrubtly ending Scrat's stay in his Fluffy Cloud Heaven at the end of the second movie. Again, in the begin sequence of Dawn of the Dinosaurs, ending the first encounter of Scrat and Scratette.
• Red Wire Blue Wire - Hilariously spoofed in the carnivorous-plant action-sequence in Dawn of the Dinosaurs.
• Road Runner Vs Coyote (Scrat and the Acorn)
• Sand In My Eyes (Invoked and subverted by Diego after Peaches is born, as well as Crash and Eddie)
• Snake Oil Salesman (Fast Tony...)
• Shout Out - "Yabadaba DOO!" "Don't Ever YabadabaDOO that again!"
  • Moby Dick=Rudy and Buck.
• Somewhere A Paleontologist Is Crying - AND HOW!
• Super Persistent Predator (Rudy. Justified, as Buck took out one of his teeth.)
• The Ditz: Sid, who is also a Genius Ditz occasionally, especially in the second movie.
• The Speechless (Despite being very noisy, Scrat.)
• The Woobie Scrat, Sid.
• Tongue On The Flagpole
• Too Dumb To Live: The Dodos
• Travel Montage
• The Vamp - Scratette. Might also count as a squirrel version of Lady In Red.
• Wasn't That Fun?
• When A Jerk Loves A Tsundere: Manny and Ellie in the second movie.

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