The subtitle to Zistopia isn't Racist Animal Hell AU for nothing. There are many dark themes and imagery throughout this webcomic.
- The many, many health risks the shock collars present are this. Some of which includes the possibility of causing miscarriages and shocking the Preds so much that they can potentially be brought to ground in spasms and die from that.
- Just how insanely racist this version of Zootopia is. It certainly earns its title as a Dystopia-based AU.
- The mere fact that shock-collars have been put on fully sentient beings. Especially since we see both the physical and mental side affects of this form of oppression.
- Like in the movie, there are mammals that go absolutely savage. Unlike the movie, some of these mammals are explicitly stated to have succeeded in eating other sentient beings. Let that sink in.
- Manchas going savage.
- The setting is jarringly similar to both WWII-era Germany and Nineteen Eighty-Four.
- How about the fact that there's a secret society that conspires against the Preds that goes back at least two generations. Not helped by the fact that they have succeeded many times.
- They have such an iron grip on things that not even other Prey can make strides to change things.
- A bit after the half-way point we're introduced to "The Collars That Don't Shock." So if they don't shock, what do they do? They brainwash any Pred that wears them it into a smiling fool that won't even so much as lift up a finger when they're being brutally assaulted.
- During a concert one of Gazelle's tiger-dancers is drugged and made to attack her on stage.
- "Page 63.1 - 63.5: Carnifaux." ...Just, all of it.
- The Gas Mask Mooks who are also goats. They look downright demonic.
- The room housing what appear to be test subjects of "the collars that don't shock" is where the comic gets viscerally scary for a moment; in big part because of how it's presented. During the intense chase scene, the protagonists barge through a door into a room and proceed to run down a walkway. And in the next panel, "the camera" zooms out and focuses on a throng of collared predators standing everywhere around, absolutely still (in contrast with the dynamic chase that was just happening), grinning absentmindedly despite bleeding and missing parts of their bodies and faces. And in the very next panel, the protagonists of the chapter get out of the room, never even acknowledging what was in there.
- The first disfigured Pred Bucky finds has a good portion of its face torn off. Bucky is understandably horrified.
- During the chase scene everything turns red due to the security system. It only serves the make the scene more frightening.
- The Gas Mask Mooks are stated to force the Preds to fight bloody battles with each other. They even have betting pools on it!
- How Zootopia won the war with Purrussia despite being outgunned. They would use the prisoners as living bombs, after the prisoner exchanges, the rescued Prussians would go feral and shred their fellow comrades in their own camps. How is this possible? It is because one of the founders of The Cud Club invented Collar Zero, which would later become the prototype of the Shock Collar used in present day.
- After Nick is made to believe that Judy has betrayed him he seems to briefly suffer from a bout of Sanity Slippage.
