WMG / Zootopia World Building

Any WMGs that are about Zootopia itself and the larger world around it, and are by someone who has seen the movie, go here. New entries should be placed at the bottom of the page.

WARNING: Unmarked spoilers!

Nighthowler isn't going away.

That proverbial cat is out of the bag and people in the real world do crazy things to get high. It's pretty likely Nighthowler in some form will become a street drug similar to bathsalts, popular among people stuck in poverty whose lives completely suck with no hope of improvement and are desperate for some sort of release for all the stress that makes the pain go away. The streets of Zootopia just got a lot more dangerous. The sort of thing that someone discriminated out of legitimate work like Nick but without the skill as a conman might turn to so that for a few hours at least they won't have to worry about where the next meal or rent payment is going to come from.

• Probably not, for exactly the same reason that PCP isn't a popular street drug in Real Life any more. Because there are probably drugs out there with much more pleasurable effects than semi-permanently turning you into a murderous raging lunatic.
  You mentioned the "bath salts", but the main issue with that drug is that for a while, it was actually trying to skirt around anti-drug laws by being labeled as actual bath salts not for human consumption, since it wasn't actually a controlled substance (yet), and the fact that it was technically legal and available for "legitimate" sale at shady gas stations rather than as an actual illicit street drug made it briefly appealing to junkies despite its properties as a drug not otherwise being particularly desirable. Nighthowler, on the other hand, is probably going to be enforced against very vigorously now that a plot to use it as a chemical weapon has been uncovered, so it certainly won't have the advantage of being an easy drug to obtain, so that's not a very good parallel.
  If there is a drug problem in Zootopia, the junkies will probably stick to things like catnip, rather than try to use Nighthowler recreationally.
• A fair number of points, though this person would like to clarify that the bathsalts was a comparison of effects in this case, not street availability and legality. Also would like to reiterate that people do far crazier things to get high IRL and are likely just as crazy in Zootopia.
• Alternatively, it will be used as a performance enhancer; if it is more potent when concentrated, then logically it would be less potent when diluted.
  • or undiluted for illegal underground fights.
• Even if it's not used as a recreational drug, Night-howler will be weaponized by organized crime: don't pay our protection racket? We'll Night-howler you and you'll eat your own kids.
  • Unlikely, due to the inherent overtness of such an act compared to organized crime staples like staging an "accident" for their target. In places where rule-of-law hasn't completely gone down the toilet (and I don't believe it has in Zootopia; this isn't a 1930s' Chicago type of city), organized crime can only thrive when it covertly blends in to the background. They wouldn't want to attract much public attention to themselves, and copying Bellwether's terrorist tactics would unavoidably do just that.

This movie takes place in the same universe as Robin Hood (1973).

And Nick might be Robin and Marian's descendant.

• If the above is true, Judy is a descendant of the rabbit family and Mayor Lionheart is descended from King Richard.
• Going with this idea, "Lionheart" might actually be a name that was passed on from King Richard to his descendant, the Mayor.
  • Nevermind that the real Richard the Lionheart never had kids and was succeeded by John, who made a significant impact on Europe's gene pool.
    • But then, neither was he an anthropomorphic lion.
    • Alternatively, Lionheart might be John's descendant instead.
    • They do favor the same species of henchmen.
• But Robin Hood had anthropomorphic birds and reptiles, while Zootopia is just mammals. So, what happened to the birds and reptiles?
  • It is interesting to note that most reptiles/birds seen in Robin Hood are Prince John's minions. He may have introduced them from another city, The Lion King style…
  • Also, nobody said that Nottingham was Zootopia; just that Nottingham and Zootopia shared a universe. It's not because Zootopia only includes mammals that other cities on Earthy might not have also included reptiles and birds.
  • At one point, it was specified that this was a mammal city, which implies that there are other cities for other types of animals. Looking at the precinct maps on the wall at the police station shows that each area in Zootopia is built to be habitable to certain kinds of mammals (like, you know, a zoo), so one presumes they have similar tailor-made cities elsewhere.
    • Considering how much Zootopia suffers from Fantastic Racism (Judy Hopps, a rabbit, gets lowered to the position of meter-maid because she's a tiny animal), it makes sense why mammals and birds would live in entirely different cities each.
    • Not to mention that the city already put a lot of effort into suiting the different needs of the various mammal species. Birds, reptiles, and especially fish have very different physiology and thus different needs, and making the city suit them as well would require a lot more effort.
    • Then add in the differences in the bird world alone as well. We have terrestrial based birds, ones that fly, those that swim. We have birds of prey, song birds, and carrion feeders. If birds are in this world, the differences in them alone would probably be at least 2 cities in and of itself as well as the Fantastic Racism of the differences I mentioned.
• If fact #97 on the 107 Facts About Zootopia video is any indication, Robin Hood does in fact take place in the Medieval times of Zootopia.
  • Not entirely confirmed. Fact 97 states that the crew considers it to be set in the same universe, but Disney itself has not said either way if this is actually true.

This movie takes place in the same universe as The Lion King!

No humans ever appear in The Lion King. It could place take in literally any time period current animals existed... even .... in the past. The city of Zootopia could be what descendants of the animals all evolved into in the future, and set in the United States instead of Africa, when they immigrated there. Major Lionheart could be distantly related to the royal family of the Pride Lands!

• Even if it isn't a historical documentary, The Lion King could still be a popular movie; one of the pivotal scenes involves Simba switching from the "barbaric" consumption of prey species (zebra, antelope, hippo, etc.) to a more "civilized" insectivore diet.
  • Though if uncut it wouldn't be a movie for the kids. The scene with Scar dropping a severed zebra leg and the hyenas chowing down would almost definitely push it into R-rated territory.
  • Maybe more of a heavily dramatized/fictionalized treatment than a historical documentary, but it could still be based on historical events from this universe, if the animals developed sapience and speech before developing the anthropomorphic body shape. Maybe this world really does have King Simba I as an actual historical figure, who was raised by a warthog and a meerkat after his father's assassination. As a result of this upbringing, upon returning to the throne after a power struggle with his uncle, he issued a series of decrees outlawing the depredation of mammals, and set up institutions for enforcing this law and for supplying alternative food sources for predators. This resulted in the first known instance of a civilization where prey no longer had to fear being eaten. It's possible Simba being a very well-remembered leader and reformer could have lead to most species having a widespread high opinion of lions in leadership positions, and a big part of Lionheart's political success comes from capitalizing on this image, even if he's not a direct descendant.
    • On top of this, it's possible that rather than being the primary version of this historical story in-universe, The Lion King is actually a musical parody of a much more accurate version. Assuming there are no sapient birds in the Zootopiaverse, that would mean that Zazu was not even part of the actual historical story, but was thrown in as sort of like a Non-Human Sidekick or Sidekick Creature Nuisance as part of the many, many creative liberties employed in making this version.
    • And, since apparently primates don't exist in the Zootopia universe either, Rafiki is a magical-mystical fantasy creature rather than something based on an existing animal species.
• Alternatively, it could be possible that The Lion King and The Lion King II: Simba's Pride are merely this universe's incarnation of Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet, the famous William Shakespeare plays.
  • And the movies still exists in-universe, but as a direct rather than a loose adaptation of these plays.
    • Which links back to Robin Hood (1973), where the opening narration states that the folks of "the Animal Kingdom" have "their own versions" of human tales and legends.
  • The creator of these plays was a lion named William Manespeare.

Alternatively the movie The Lion King (1994) exists in this universe as lion propaganda

Lions in this movie seem to be the equivalent of Mighty Whitey and White Man's Burden – lions are supposed to be the rulers, and it is Simba's "burden" to return to his Pride and take back his kingdom. All the non-lions in the movie have a rather stereotypical portrayal - Rafiki being the equivalent of a Magical Negro, Timon and Pumbaa being mainly comic reliefs, the hyenas being antagonists (but not even getting the honor of being the main villain) – and Scar represents what lions are not supposed to be (self centered and lazy).

• Additionally, it is also anti-hyena propaganda.
• Meercats and warthogs considered it Fair for Its Day when it came out due to being portrayed as, while lazy and comic reliefs, still heroic characters and allies of Simba.

This movie takes place in Naboombu

More than Lion King or Robin Hood, Bedknobs and Broomsticks goes much farther with Fantastic Racism and the problems with different species living all in the same place, and it is implied to be a Crapsaccharine World… Zootopia is the future of Naboombu.

• That being said, Robin Hood might have taken place before Bedknobs, making it a Disney Funny Animal Trilogy.
  • Or tetralogy, if The Lion King is also in the same universe.

It is set in the same universe with Kung Fu Panda.

Both movies are set in a World of Funny Animals with no humans around. Only Kung Fu Panda takes place many centuries earlier.

• Although in the Kung Fu Panda franchise, fauna across the animal kingdom’s entirety is anthropomorphic, even small invertebrates, while in the world of Zootopia, flesh-eating animals survive on fish and insects.

The scene for Naboombu, The Lion King, Robin Hood, and Zootopia are the same universe separated by time.

In The Lion King, the animals are still animals except with human-level thought. It's explained in the Naboombu scene that a wizard made animals more human. The animals eventually managed to leave the island and either found their own land or integrated with humans (yeah, The Rescuers I and II, most of Disney's sidekicks). The Middle Age Kingdom in Robin Hood was founded on non-human populated land and gradually became the modern Zootopia, though the birds and reptiles were forced to live in other cities.

Rabbits are an ethno-religious group who have their own traditional beliefs.

Said religion is a sun-worshipping religion very similar to the creation myth followed by the rabbits in Watership Down. May be called Lapinism or Frithism or something similar and may include the use of a traditional language similar to Lapine.

• This could explain why Judy's dad said Amen early in the film.
• As a huge fan of both Watership Down and Zootopia, if someone fanfics this I will happily read it!

The anthropomorphic animals did not evolve

They were uplifted by a precursor species who disappeared so long ago that the memories of the uplifting has been largely forgotten, perhaps existing only as one of the many religions of the anthros. It would also explain why Dawn Bellwether has domesticated traits which should not exist in a natural selection evolution. The reason why we don't see other anthros with domesticated traits is that the anthros descended from Domesticated animals prefer to live in separate settlements from anthros descended from wild animals.

• If so, then said precursors (humans presumably?) also completely exterminated all non-anthropomorphic mammals.
  • OR, they were exterminated by anthros slightly later on but well before the present. Before predators stopped eating preys, non-anthro preys were probably easy pickings for hyperintelligent predators, and may have been hunted to extinction. Also, anthro preys living at the same time as both anthro and non-anthro predators may account for the idea later on that predators used to "go savage" and have wild rampages in the past (leading in turn to mistaking the Night Howler effects for a re-emergence of this phenomenon), and the natural history museum had an exhibit of a group of spear-wielding anthro caveman-rabbits surrounding and presumably about to kill a larger "savage" predator.
• One major support for this idea is that every mammal we see is bipedal, despite the fact that most of these species are not capable of bipedal locomotion (with any degree of practicality, at least) in real life. It would be effectively impossible for any quadrapedal species to gradually evolve to bipedalism, since any intermediate states would have great difficulty walking in either manner and would quickly be killed off by natural selection.

The animals exterminated humans

What reason would animals of such diverse and wildly different species (including predator and prey) have for banding together and building a common civilization? Perhaps a massive existential and otherwise insurmountable threat? This would also explain why they just happened to evolve institutions, aesthetic, and architecture that looks so similar to that of humans; they picked up the habits of their defeated foe (which might also make this a case of Full-Circle Revolution.

• If this is the case, then they have gone great lengths to ensure that no one remembers that humans ever existed.
  • Not necessarily. It's possible that in this world, Humans and Animals achieved sapience at around the same, and that it wasn't until just before the start of Agriculture that everything went downhill. Perhaps humans didn't spread and explore as far as they did in real life, or at least not as fast. Not fast enough, at least... It would have been around then that humans would consider domesticating animals, which, given the nature of the setting, could be seen as utterly horrifying. To be sure, the Dog was domesticated far earlier, but the dog mostly domesticated itself at first. Anyway, if we say that humans didn't migrate any further than the Fertile Crescent by this point, it would be quite possible for a combined group of animals that held a unanimous terror and hatred for this apex predator of such... creativity with what could only be considered murders here. The remaining artifacts, tools, and buildings could be mistaken for those of animals living in the area, and the skeletal remains would be similar to those of primates, if they exist in the world of Zootopia (and if they do, by this same logic, I'm scared to think of what the Gorillas and Chimpanzees are faced with). At this point in history as well, wiping out your enemy entirely was not seen as exceptionally cruel, and was in fact boasted about by some kings, to the point of fibbing results of battles. If a threat were this horrifying (which to add, the utter hairlessness probably wouldn't help their image of humans, and as mentioned above, if Lions and Tigers were akin to [[Batman Bane]], Human's hunting style of chasing prey animals until they simply perish of exhaustion, and then using tools made expressly for slaughter should the prey still be alive when they get there, would be more akin to The Joker.
• That begs the question of what happened to all the other primate species, though. Did they side with the humans and get exterminated alongside them? Were they the original victims of humans' hostility, such that the other mammals realized they had to kill off humanity so they wouldn't be driven to extinction next? Were they innocent bystanders whom the other mammals targeted, simply for being related to their true enemies? Or did they just happen to get caught in the crossfire?

Most animals in Zootopia are fixed.

Basically, we're shown that the animals reproduce at a rate comparable to their real life counterparts, but unlike in real life they have no natural predators or other external means of keeping the population growth at check. So how have they managed to avoid a crippling overpopulation problem? The answer is, with voluntary removal of reproductive functions. It's socially expected that the animals in this society have to choose between career and family at a young age, with the majority choosing career and giving financial support to their siblings who decide to start a family, which tends to involve taking care of dozens if not hundreds of children over the decades, making it a full-time job in its own right.

• Or they use, you know, contraception.
• Given that the only family we see in the film with multiple children (granted, Nick doesn't talk about his family much) are farmers, and family farms are one of the few places where child labor is still allowed, it's possible that most stop at one litter or 1.5 average single births.
  • An average of 1.5 births per family would actually result in a rapidly declining population over a relatively short amount of time, which does horrible things to an economy and how a society functions. A flat replacement rate (barring heavy casualties due to some outside force, such as predators in the real world) would be 2.11 on average (this replaces the parents and allows for some deaths before the animals had a chance to reproduce along with those that choose not to reproduce at all.
• Not sure how relevant this is, but another factor to consider is that while Fru-Fru shows us that the animals here reflect their real world counterparts gestation period, Judy shows us they have human like lifespans, seeing how she's shown as a 9 year old in the opening sequence, then as a 20 something when she becomes a cop, an age where a real life rabbit would be...well if not dead, then extremely old. Also if Judy's math with Nick's earning is accurate (Assuming she had a file on him, she did use his full name) then that puts his age somewhere around 32, once again a nearly impossible age for his species in real life.
  • Does Fru-Fru show us that, though? According to Word of God, there's actually a Time Skip of about three months between Judy inadvertently playing into Bellweather's plan at the press conference and her returning to Zootopia to mend bonds with Nick and stop Bellweather. That's plenty of time for a woman to get pregnant and develop a visible baby-bump, especially if we presume the conception happened on the wedding night — or even before it...
• The theory is supported by a poster seen in the background, showing two adult bunnies and a bunch of small bunny children asking if it was time you get fixed. Maybe vasectomy is a common practice in Zootopia.

Related to the above: most rabbits are fixed.

If the reproductive rate isn't the only thing about their reproduction that's the same as with real animals, then that would mean un-altered bunnies would be "in heat" (i.e, extremely horny) almost all the time. Even if less extreme methods of birth control are available, this could make spaying & neutering an attractive option for them.

Animals in Zootopia don't have litters

The shrews seem to have a gestation period like real life, but Mr. Big refers to his future "grandchild" in the singular and shrews have large litters irl. In addition, most rabbit species average four litters of five per year, the timeskip suggests Judy is in her twenties, she could have over four hundred younger siblings if her parents bred like real bunnies. But if they had an average of two per birth and a gestation period like real life they could easily produce the 276 kits they are stated to have in 35 years.

• While Fru Fru does seem to support that theory, Judy actually already had 275 siblings when she was nine, and her parents continue to be surrounded by babies and children well into her adulthood, indicating that the number is much higher in the present day of the movie.
  • Those babies and children could be Stu and Bonnie's grandchildren from older offspring who stayed on the family farm, alternatively.
• The Ottertons have two kids that appear to be different ages. River otters have litters as large as five.
• Bunnies probably use the Hawaiian Kinship system in which all persons of the same generation are "brothers" and "sisters".
• Or maybe the Hopps are big on adoption and/or being foster parents.

Zootopia is a City-State

We're told that Zootopia is where predators and prey first started working together and there's no indication of other major metropolitan areas, just small farming towns like the Bunnyburrows.

• "Zootopia" is written on the address card at the DMV where a state name would be.
• Problem: Judy blackmails Nick into helping her through a "federal tax evasion" charge. City-states are typically too small to be federations. Maybe Zootopia proper is a capital territory or simply the largest state/province in the country?
  • Yes, the references to a federal government mean that it's quite unlikely to be an independent city-state. And even though its high level of urban planning is reminiscent of capital cities like Brasilia or Canberra, a capital territory seems unlikely as well, as there seems to be no political leadership there above the level of its own City Hall; this obliquely-referenced federal government seems to be headquartered elsewhere. It's still possible that the city could still be its own province or something of similar level to a U.S. state, even though it's probably not a "state" in the "sovereign country" sense. It's probably not even anywhere near the largest state/province in the country in terms of geographical size, though it's probably a contender in terms of population due to being such a big and dense city, and seems to have a highly prominent cultural position regardless of its actual size. In other words, Zootopia's role in the setting seems to be loosely comparable to New York's role in America, except that the city might be its own state with no connection to an "upstate Zootopia".

This world has non-mammal animals, but only mammals became sentient.

Predator mammals survive by eating birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians, and insects. "Try Everything" uses the word "birds," and this interview states that the carnivores eat insects (although nothing like a "Bug Burger" appears anywhere in the film), but they could very well eat other meat.

• There are signs for and trash from restaurants that serve bug burgers, though.
• Possibly jossed, as Word of God hinted that birds and reptiles are anthropomorphic like the mammals and live in different cities.
• At least partially confirmed. We see non-anthropomorphic flies buzzing around Yax, so there are at least some non-sentient animals in this world. I think the creators have said that mammals, birds and reptiles are sentient but other animals such as fish and invertebrates are non-sentient, and many of them are eaten by the sentient animals.

Zootopia is relatively new.

Several areas of the town : tundra, dessert and the jungle is clearly man-made ...er, animal-made, and it would require a high technology to create and maintain it. Assuming the technology progressing like in human world, Zootopia is relatively new.

• It is mentioned it is (one of?) the first town where all kinds of mammals live together, which implied they mostly lived on their own beforehand.
• This WMG suggest that : Zootopia (as we know it) was just recently created when Judy was 9 years old. It was a hot news and advertised as a town 'Where everyone can be anything' in order to attract many kinds of mammals to inhabit the city.
• Word of God has stated that the city is built around a water hole that was the first place in history where predators and prey learned to live in peace with one another. But it's perfectly possible that it only grew up to its current magnificence during the last couple of generations.
  • Well, if they just recently decided to make a super-metropolis where absolutely everyone could live together, as a symbol of the unity of all mammals, I guess an important historical site with huge significance to predator-prey relations would make sense as a site for it.

Zootopia suffered a major cataclysm within the past twenty or thirty years or so.

Continuing some of the points from the "Relatively New" WMG posted above, the technology necessary to achieve some of these habitats can't have existed hundreds of years ago. The thought behind this is that at some point, a major earthquake or other disaster nearly completely wiped out Zootopia-that-was, clearing out most of the buildings and infrastructure. This led to the City being rebuilt using modern technology to create the various ecosystems that make up the city today. There is precedent in our own world; after World War II, European infrastructure was nearly gutted, allowing all the factories that would make up the majority of their infrastructure to use new technologies, making them more efficient.

• It might also explain why Judy and her classmates were putting on a play advertising Zootopia; the city was trying to attract new people to come to the city after the disaster, and was paying the class or whoever was putting on the play for the ad.

There will be discrimination against sheep instead.

It isn't easy to erase discrimination. They just change the target from predators toward sheeps.

• This is actually sort of implied at the end of the movie. Though it was sort of Played for Laughs as a Literal Metaphor version of a "wolf in sheep's clothing", a wolf police officer at the end is shown putting on a sheep costume for an undercover assignment. This sort of implies that sheep are now going to be targeted for heavy police surveillance at the very least, in the aftermath of Bellwether's conspiracy.
  • Another possibility is that the "wolf in sheep's clothing" was part of a team trying to address violence against sheep. Imagine the surprise when some thugs ambush a "helpless sheep", only to discover that it's really a wolf ZPD officer with backup.

Some of the Zootopians are descended from immigrants.

I mean, you don't usually see creatures like a fox and a rabbit alongside creatures like a lion and a cape buffalo in real life, except in a zoo. So, depending on where on Earth Zootopia is located, either Nick and Judy's ancestors were immigrants or perhaps Chief Bogo's or the mayor's.

• Considering the vegetation around Zootopia (as seen when Judy takes the train), the climate appears to be temperate rather than sub-tropical. So most likely foxes, rabbits, deer, bears etc. are native to the area while lions, buffaloes, elephants, gazelles etc. were those who immigrated.
  • And yet, the scene starting with walking to Manchas at dusk to the Skyway ride during the solar morning, combined with the extremely short sunrise, suggests a far north locale in late spring/early summer. Or this could just be a Lampshade for Cartoonland Time or the Writers Cannot Do Math.
  • If the African species immigrated, then they must have done so very early in the city's history, because they seem to be the ones with most of the established institutional power. The mayor is an African lion, and with the exception of a few tigers, bears, and wolves, the police force seems to be composed almost entirely of African megafauna like cape buffalo, cheetahs, elephants, hippos, rhinos, and lions. Also, one of the most blatantly racist characters in the movie is an elephant, who has unbridled contempt for the (apparently native) foxes. A bit of Fridge Horror there in that this raises the possibility that African mammals founded Zootopia in Europe or North America as a "colony" and in the process basically run roughshod over the rights of the native peoples like foxes, rabbits, sheep, weasels, etc, similar to how natives were often treated by conquering powers in real life. This seems like it might contradict the backstory of Zootopia being founded at the watering hole where predators and prey first made peace, but it could still make sense if the African species started conquering other lands even before, for example, the lions agreed to stop eating the zebras and such.

Zootopia was founded around the water hole in Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa.

As mentioned above, Word of God states Zootopia was founded around a water hole where predators and prey learned to live in peace with one another. The majority of Madagascar 2 takes place next to a water hole that is exactly like that, with anthropomorphic animals of near-human intelligence to boot. This can also mean that Lionheart descended from the pride of Alex! (Maybe a great-great-grandchild of the pompous, sleazy, manipulative Jerkass Makunga?) Of course, this contradicts the whole "humans never happened" idea, so rather unlikely.

Zootopia is set in the same universe as Shark Tale.

The two films have a lot in common: both are set in a world of anthropomorphic animals living in a modern city, full of pop culture references, and feature at least one animal who doesn't like being stereotyped based on their species (Lenny the shark, who dresses up as a dolphin to avoid becoming a mobster). Both movies even have a Godfather-like mob boss in their cast. It's speculated that besides the mammal city there's a bird city, a reptile city and a fish city - maybe the fish city is Reef City from Shark Tale.

• A lot of Fridge Horror in that considering that it's implied that polar bears and other predator species eat fish.

Only mammals are intelligent.

The creators put a lot of thought into how everything else works, perhaps there was a reason why the film only uses mammals. Consider this: Predators have to eat meat in order to survive, no way around it. The meat has to come from somewhere, but if all animals were intelligent, that would raise a few moral questions. So, only make one type of animal (mammals) intelligent, while the rest stay more or less like they are in real life. That way, the world can function normally without raising too many questions.

• Potentially Jossed as per this tweet by the director◊.

It's a world where 'humans never happened...'

...because it literally is not Earth. Humans are space-traveling aliens who terraformed some random world and dumped genetically uplifted species on the place For Science!!

• It's the humans from Freefall! Either Ecosystems Unlimited, or more likely, some kind of Querty/Dvorak project (it's exactly the kind of thing these two would come up with). Which means there are probably descendants of Florence Ambrose running around. Hopefully no sqids, though...

The ZPD forces in Precinct One are the elites of the ZPD

And the police stations in the other districts are less capable graduates. When Lionheart was giving his speech at the graduation ceremony for Judy’s class, he specifically mentioned that she was being assigned to Precinct One and that she was the Valedictorian of her Class.

It is likely that the students who cannot overcome all the obstacle courses but still pass are assigned to the district that they did the best in. They mainly solve crimes in their district because they cannot overcome all the other districts.The Precinct One officers proved that they could face every district. When there is nothing going on, they simply patrol their beats. When something big is happening, or when there is a crime that crosses between districts, they are the officers assigned the case.

• Notice how wolves are the most common cops in the canteen. Wolves are animals that live and roam across many ecosystems, letting them thrive and operate in most/all districts easily. The other cops in the room were from species that would struggle outside of their ecosystems (Polar Bears overheating in the desert, lions and elephants freezing in the tundra, etc). The non-wolves in the class worked hard to overcome their biological limitations and managed to get assigned to the city center. Judy and (presumably) Nick had to learn to fully exploit their agility, but both had the advantage of being animals from temperate regions, letting them experience the same advantage as the wolves.
• Judy may have been upset at being put to parking duty because the officers assigned to Precinct One are usually tasked with bigger things than simply ticketing cars, which a cop from one of the other districts might usually do, or even have designated civil servants who were not full cops doing that task.
• Most of the assignments Bogo gave out are the kind of things that are handled by detectives instead of uniformed officers in most police agencies. Missing persons, undercover, tracking a known street racer...

The ZPD are now getting immunizations against Nighthowler

The public has been informed that it was a plant causing the savage attacks. While this relieved the public, it also told prospective criminals one way they can make a distraction and escape from the police: hit one of the cops with Nighthowler and escape while the cops are busy restraining their comrade. The ZPD might head this idea off by making themselves immune to the plant, or carrying the antidote to protect their partners from future attempts.

• Acquired Poison Immunity and Carrying the Antidote don't really work that well in real life, but Disney might not know that.

Tools in Zootopia are very different than the ones in our world.

Basic and maybe even more advanced tools could be more directly inspired by the natural abilities of certain animals that the tool emulates. For instance knives are likely very obviously claw shaped like say a kerambit◊ and shovels and spades are designed and function more like hooves used for digging. We kind of see something like this with how the cars in the world are designed.

• The equivalent of knives would probably be even more claw-like than the karambit. Knives (or at least daggers, kitchen knives and utility knives might be a different story) would probably never have even been invented. Instead, prey animals probably would have invented metallic strap-on Wolverine Claws to allow them to imitate the natural fighting style of predators. Predators would probably eventually go full circle and adopt these weapons as well, since steel is far superior to keratin.

Guns for killing exist in Zootopia's world; the city just has stringent gun control laws.

There are tranquilizer guns and the gun that shoots nighthowler pellets. Why wouldn't there be lethal guns?

• So, in other words, the reason we don't see firearms isn't that they don't exist, but simply that the ZPD is a European-style police system where guns are not issued to ordinary patrol officers under everyday circumstances, but rather only to specialized personnel in extreme situations.

The reason the world isn't overrun by species that birth large litters is because many animals end up in inter-species romances that cannot produce children.

Inter-species romances - and the rare offspring they produce, such as ligers or zebroids - aren't seen as a negative thing, or even particularly uncommon. However, relationships between predator and prey are very much looked down on.

Rabbits are raised communally

While it makes for a funny one-liner, It wouldn't make sense for Judy to be getting so much of her parents' attention if she was only one of hundreds of siblings. If "siblings," in the context of rabbits, instead meant "all the young rabbits in the area," with all local rabbits thinking of each other as family, that would mean that the eight to ten youngsters seen trailing the Hoppses are her only actual blood relations. Still a large family by human standards, but not completely insane.

How adoption works

The species that apply for adoption most often are homosexual couples, couples whose species are completely genetically incompatible (marrying outside a species is rare but not unheard of) and mules. (Due to sterility.) The species most commonly put up for adoption are rodents and lagomorphs. (Lets face it, most families just can't raise a whole bunch of kids and eating your young is not socially acceptable in this world.) Adoption agencies try to put kids with similar species. (A mule for example stands the best chance of adopting a horse, donkey another mule or even a zebra.) Size is taken into account (Can you imagine a shrew trying to care for a baby elephant?) as is environment. (A polar bear cub might not be able to adjust to living in the rain forest even with the nicest of jaguars as parents.) Also, it's rare that a predator is allowed to adopt a prey. There's no practical reason beyond prejudice for this, but it happens.

The world of Zootopia has an offshoot of BDSM, Prey play

Well, if you already have a relationship between a prey and predator animal... Well, use your imagination, the Judy and Nick shippers will have already.

• They've already got something like that IRL.

Under Da Sea....

Yes, there is a place where sea mammals live, but of course it can't exist in Zootopia. It has to be under the ocean. It's inhabited by cetaceans, manatees and pinnipeds (and possibly sea turtles and seabirds), with the pinnipeds making limited visits to land. Otters may visit/live in the suburbs of Seaville, but are more frequently seen on land. Land animals rarely visit Seaville for obvious reasons. They get the odd land tourist, there to take pictures and maybe buy some souvenirs, but they're usually gone by lunchtime. They've developed an underwater breathing helmet that allows communication through a speaker, but they can't eat with it on.

Under Da Sea again....

Here's how the plot of The Little Mermaid worked in this universe. It was called "The Little Hippocamp". It was the story of a young hippocamp named Ariel who sold her voice so she could have (hooved) legs to walk with on land after she fell in love with a horse prince.

• Or Ariel in this universe is a seal who falls in love with a dog prince. Or a manatee who falls in love with a bull prince.
• The fact that the equivalent of "Part of Your World", as seen on Judy's playlist, is called "Part of Your Wool" implies that Prince Eric might, in fact, be a sheep in this universe.
  • Then Ariel might be a dolphin (since dolphins and sheep are both artiodactyls).
• Considering the World of Pun nature of Zootopia, the tale about the hippocamp princess and the horse prince is called "The Little Mare-maid".

How barbers work

Very few of the animals have head hair. Gazelle might be wearing extensions and some sheep might use product to make the wool on their head extra fluffy. Fur needs occasional trimming and those bits on the back and hard to reach places require a little help. Animals with very long fur might want the fur around their buttocks trimmed so it doesn't get matted with fecal matter. (All the more reason for Mr. Big to be insulted by the skunk rug.) Many barber shops in this world have private rooms where a customer can be groomed discretely by a same gendered barber. Woolly animals like sheep, alpacas and some breeds of rabbit may even be paid to be sheared so less furry animals can have sweaters.

Massive property damage is a frequent occurence in Little Rodentia

Weaselton is probably not the only small-but-still-much-bigger-than-rodents criminal to figure that ducking into Little Rodentia is a good way to escape the police since they are too big to follow. This is mitigated by A) The fact that the houses are made out of such lightweight materials that not even a mouse could be crushed to death in the event of a collapse, and B) Instead of conventional construction, most of them are mass-produced using similar factory methods to a toy dollhouse. The reason they don't appear to have foundations is that they don't, most of them are just set in place, as they are replaced frequently.

• But that doesn't make much sense. Surely if you build foundations it'd prevent larger animals from knocking them over and thus not need to be replaced?

This world averts There Are No Therapists

As noted on "Sophisticated as Hell" on the character page: when Gideon apologizes to Judy, he gives an uncharacteristically eloquent statement about his "self-doubts that manifested in the form of unchecked rage and aggression" when he is otherwise portrayed as not being very good with words. This leads me to believe he'd been seeing a psychotherapist, and that statement was more or less a verbatim repetition of something his therapist told him.

• Confirmed in a podcast with Gideon's VA.

Sheep in this universe have a Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism

While they are all born as cute, anthropomorphic lambs, females (such as Bellwether) remain that way, while males (like Doug, Woolter, Jesse and the other rams we see) grow larger and less anthropomorphic when hitting puberty.

• That's an interesting interpretation, although I always just assumed that Bellwether was some obscure breed of miniature sheep.
• It could be that the male sheep were Merino, while Bellwether was another breed.
• Her name is Bellwether, long standing theory that Bellwether's traits are due to her being intersex and was "Gender Corrected" in youth which used to be a very common practice all over the world. Especially in America. This would lead to her never becoming a full adult.

Musings on what animals exist and are sentient in the Zootopia universe

So first of all, we know for a fact that mammal species that would exist without human intervention exist and are sentient. Hard to dispute that one. More interestingly, though, some animals that wouldn't normally exist without humans appear: namely domesticated pigs and sheep. My goal here isn't to say how or why they exist but that does open up the door to other animal breeds that humans have created. In fact, C. lupus familiaris (domesticated dogs) had to at least have existed at one point because dingoes are referenced in supplemental material, and worst case, it's not like a dog is a completely different species than anything else that existed in canon because even if it is a different subspecies, C. lupus familiaris is still C. lupus, the common wolf. More complicated are cats. Known to exist in canon are wildcats (F. silvestris) which are close genetic ancestors to housecats (F. catus) but unlike dogs and wolves, it is an actual distinction of species, rather than subspecies. Thankfully, once again the example of sheep to the rescue, as domesticated sheep (O. aries) are classified as a different species than wild sheep. Also, consider the rabbits of Bunnyburrow. In our world, wild rabbits, for instance the Eastern cottontail, come in a very limited range of fur colors - the cottontail's fur is a sort of dappled brown-gray called "agouti". Zootopia's bunnies, though, appear in a wide variety of fur colors, most of which are associated with domestic rabbit breeds (which are all descended from the European wild rabbit). Stu, Judy's father, gave her his gray-and-white fur, while Bonnie, her mother, who passed on her purple eyes, is brown-furred with white accents.So tl;dr pretty much any mammal has a place in Zootopia canon, domesticated or wild.What about reptiles, fish, birds, and other kinds of animals?Well, fish are easiest to cross off the list. They exist, and they're used as food in Tundratown. Probably not sentient. This is also helpful because clearly it means that the requirement for sentience isn't just being a vertebrate animal. Birds almost definitely exist because they're referenced in "Try Everything," though no mention is made of their sentience. Reptiles, etc. aren't mentioned. so we need to look at the details, which means it's time for my favorite topic, linguistics. The police department is dealing with a number of missing mammal cases. Not missing persons. Not missing animals. Mammals. If mammals were just one kind of sentient creature, why would it be specified like that? I mean, sure a lot of people are pretty racist, but in real life we've never felt the need to specify a "missing white person" case. If anything it would be more likely that it would be specified if the missing individual is of a demographic OTHER than that of the speaker.So tl;dr while all mammals exist and are sentient, ONLY mammals are sentient.

• The problem with this otherwise fine theory come with the movie poster for "La La Lamb", which mentions an actor named "Emu Stone": in other words, a bird.
  • Yes, because parody film posters are totally canon. In all seriousness, though, it seems like the truth of the matter, in terms of author intent, was that they left non-mammals out of the movie because they felt that including them would muddle the Fantastic Racism even more than it already was. They already had both the predator/prey divide and the individual species stereotypes, so divisions between mammals, reptiles, and birds would only make it even more complicated, and was seen as excessive. Beyond that, they didn't seem to have made a hard world-building decision that only mammals exist, which, among other things, probably explains why whoever was delegated to come up with the animal puns for the poster felt free to mention emus. But WMGs,^note (at least the ones that take WMG somewhat seriously, as many on this page do, though apparently it's supposed to be quite a bit sillier than that) tend to be based on a purely Watsonian analysis that only considers the content of the work rather than what the authors meant to do. And analyzing from that perspective of just looking at what the movie actually showed, it can only be concluded that either non-mammals don't exist, or else there must be a very good reason for their society to be entirely separate from the mammal society such that we never see a single bird or lizard anywhere in Zootopia or Bunnyburrow.
  • And if there is a bird actor named Emu Stone, there could be Steven Seagull, who is, well, a seagull, and a bird singer Taylor Swift who is actually a swift.
  • Here's the thing: the directors have never explicitly denied that there might be intelligent non-mammals in this world, and there are two things in one of Byron Howard's tweets◊ that make me agree with this belief. First, if non-mammal tetrapods (that is, birds, reptiles, and amphibians) were not intelligent, you would expect that they would be used as food by Zootopia's predators, much as they are in our world. But according to Howard, Zootopia's predators eat "fish, insects, and plant protein". If birds weren't intelligent, poultry would logically be fair game, but evidently that is not the case.
    Second, and perhaps more importantly, Howard was actually asked if there are animals other than mammals in the world of Zootopia. His answer? "Maybe. Probably :)" Now, this could be taken a number of ways. But the use of the word probably followed by a smiling emoticon seems like a subtle way of saying that these animals do exist.
    Which brings us back to that poster. If animals other than mammals were really specifically not allowed in the setting, then that "Emu Stone" pun wouldn't have even been there. But the fact that it is, along with the fact that Howard has hinted that non-mammal animals do exist in this world, leads me to believe that we will see them in the future.
    • Ultimately, it's not that they're absolutely banned in the setting, so much as that the directors neglected to decide at all. I take the emoticon not so much as a "yes", as a "sure, you can think that if you want". But by not deciding if they wanted to make non-mammals anthropomorphic or not, the end result was a world where reptiles and birds appear to not exist at all. You're correct that if they existed as non-sapient they'd probably be on the menu, but if they were sapient we'd have seen them. I don't buy the "they have their own city" explanation, that's not enough to justify there being absolutely none of them in Zootopia, as their needs are not really so different to completely prevent coexistence. Though it is almost certainly not what the directors intended, looking at what the movie shows seems to lead to the conclusion that reptiles and birds don't exist. Except, that doesn't make sense either, because Gazelle's song references birds. So at the end of the day, this whole thing is just a messy plot hole that makes no sense from any angle whatsoever. I don't doubt that the directors are reserving the right to possibly include anthropomorphic non-mammals in any possible sequel, but they're going to have a heck of a time getting it to make sense if they do. Regardless of what the directors had in mind, the movie itself completely ignored non-mammals and did not address them at all. As a result of this, it's not surprising that many people looking for an internally consistent headcanon would conclude the that only mammals are sapient. This still isn't perfect because of Gazelle's reference to birds raising the unanswered question of why non-sapient birds are not used as a food source if they exist, but in light of this gaping hole in the canon it's about as close to making sense as you can get.

Intelligent animals other than mammals exist, but rarely overlap because of vastly different infrastructure requirements

Zootopia's layout is optimized to make it a city for mammals first and foremost, so even if intelligent birds, reptiles, and amphibians do exist (a possibility that, as mentioned above, the director has hinted at), they would find it difficult to live there. A city for land mammals would need a very different infrastructure than a city for birds, which would be very different from a city for sea mammals, and so on. As for what those cities might be like, here are my ideas:

"Aeropolis"—a city designed for birds and bats (though a few of the latter also live in Zootopia). It is built vertically, resembling a gigantic artificial tree. There are no roads or walkways in this city, and all windows essentially double as doors. A ground-dwelling animal would find it almost impossible to navigate this city, but its layout is perfectly suited for creatures that can fly. Ground-dwelling flyers and flightless birds inhabit the lower layers of the city, while more accomplished flyers (e.g. raptors and seabirds) inhabit the upper layers. Ground-dwelling animals who visit this city must use helicopter packs to travel. It’s possible gliding arboreal mammals also reside here.

"Greater Ectothermia"— a city inhabited by reptiles and amphibians. Like Zootopia, it is divided into habitat-based sections, but the habitats it contains are designed to suit creatures with ectothermic metabolisms, such as rainforests, swamps, and deserts. Since most reptiles and all amphibians are predators of some sort, predator/prey issues are virtually nonexistent here. Unlike Aeropolis, the infrastructure here is technically usable for a mammal, but most mammals find its climate uncomfortably hot and humid.

"Hydropolis"—A city designed exclusively for marine tetrapods (whales, seals, sea turtles, penguins, etc.). As with Aeropolis, the infrastructure here is unnavigable to a land animal, with the "buildings" being organically-grown structures made out of coral, with only a few outcrops protruding above the water. The citizens of Hydropolis, unlike all other intelligent animals, have no nudity taboo— clothes are impractical underwater. Most have very little contact with land-dwelling or flying species, and likewise land-dwelling animals cannot visit Hydropolis without using submarines or scuba gear.

Alternatively, a country inhabited by (sentient) amphibians do exist. Its name is simply Amphibia.

As see in the show, amphibian culture also deals with Fantastic Racism, such as frogs viewing toads as brash and violent, and toads in turn considering frogs small and weak.

Amphibia is generally more backwards in terms of culture and technology, still having monarchy, and not having phones or cars (and still being reliant on horse - era, snail carriages for transportation).

Which leads me to my next point: Insects/insectoids seem to replace pretty much any non-sentient animals, both serving as livestock, pets, and food (the latter canonically also being the case with mammals). They generally don't seem to be sentient, but they can be domesticated and are often much bigger than average insects (maybe Amphibia's insects are just larger that Zootopia's!)

Also, they seem to be more relaxed about (partial) nudity than mammals.

• Whether humans exist in a parallel universe like they do in the show is up to you to decide...

Ambassadors and Diplomats for the above Cities

• Hydropolis has the easest in chosing diplomats as since the city is a melting pot of Tetrapods (Seals for Mammalan Zootopia, Penguins for Avian Aeropolis, Sea Turtles for Reptilian and Amphibian Greater Ectothermia.)
• Diplomats from Greater Ectothermia to Zootopia are usually located to the districts like Rainforest district and Sahara Square.

Pigs and sheep are descendants of slaves

Somewhere during the development of civilization, predators went through a Spartan-like phase where the predators were warriors and certain prey were slaves bred for work, wool and food. The predators were later defeated by civilized prey and forced to give up on this system. This is why the world of Zootopia, where humans "never happened" according to Word of God, has clearly domestic pigs and sheep, rather than wild boars and mouflons, but no dog breeds (because wolves were not enslaved). This shameful past has made pigs and sheep very sensitive to racist attitudes against them, and at the same time strongly prejudiced towards predators.

• This could be one additional reason why Bellwether, in particular, has anti-predator sentiments.
• It also adds an interesting layer to the disgusted glare that Bellwether gets from the sow prison guard in the end credits.
• Elaborating on this: The berserk buttons for sheep are touching their wool (which they only have because they were bred for it back when) and calling them "sheeple", unless it is said by other sheep. The ones for pigs are calling them gluttonous, filthy, or ugly; and talking about putting lipstick on a pig, in particular.

Cheap mass-produced ready-made clothing never became economically viable in this world

due to the wide variety of species with very different needs (wildly different overall sizes, different limb lengths and girths, size and placement of the tail hole on the pants, etc). Instead, everyone has to visit a tailor to get all their clothes custom-made.

"Mutton chops" is extreme profanity by sheep standards

To a sheep, "mutton chops" means "chopped up bits of old people". To the viewer, it may seem like a folksy minced oath, but for Bellwether, it was actually a Precision F-Strike.

Bunnyburrow is not the name of Judy's home town, but rather a larger region surrounding it.

The sign as she was leaving Bunnyburrow listed the population as over 80 million. Even accounting for the fact that it might not have been that high when she was 8, the Carrot Days festival, crowded as it was, didn't seem nearly big enough to be the main harvest festival for nearly that big of a population, and the area didn't seem that densely populated. Instead, perhaps it was the harvest festival for an unnamed small town within the Bunnyburrow region.

• Another possibility which takes into account the relatively small size of the Carrot Days festival, as well as other WMG's related to the possible communal raising of rabbits as well as the availability of contraception and surgical birth-control measures (vasectomy/spaying), is that the Bunnyburrow sign is a joke aimed at tourists to play off rabbits' reputation for fecundity.

TaleSpin occurs in the past of this universe

Both show technologically advanced societies of animals. If Zootopia is set in the 2010's, Talespin is their version of the 1940s or 50s. The cultures of the islands might have had more tolerant approaches to predator/prey relations. It might also reflect changing standards of clothing decency as many of the characters are depicted as wearing pants, but others aren't.

• Having a fox (Don Carnage) as an airplane pirate also makes sense given foxes' tendency to be criminal in this universe. In fact, there might have been a lot of fox pirates in the past!

A variation of The Jungle Book exists in this universe as a movie

It takes place in the past, before animals evolved to the stage they are now. Mowgli, rather than being a human, is instead a fantasy/mythological creature – maybe some kind of elf) – that developed clothing, cities, etc. before "real" animals did (which would also explain why King Louie wanted to be like him so badly). In the end, Mowgli moves into the Hidden Elf Village and stays there.

• In that case, TaleSpin could still exist as a spinoff, maybe a modern AU (where "humans"/elves/whatever don't exist)

Predator/Prey relations were actually quite good for a long time until fairly recently.

This is sorta related to, but not necessarily dependent on, WMGs such as the one directly above this one that put Zootopia in the same universe as other World of Funny Animals media that completely ignore predator/prey issues.

Maybe for a long time predators and prey got along just fine, until people started studying... anthropology? zoology? Not sure what it would be called in this universe, anyway, at some point they rediscovered the long-forgotten fact that, shock horror, these mammals used to eat each other. Which, understandably, freaked everyone the hell out and put them a bit on edge, setting the stage for Bellwether's plot.

However, this may be a mostly separate issue from why everyone seems to hate foxes. Foxes may have been a discriminated group even before this happened, though it may have given those with the inclination to hate them an excuse to hate them even more.

Sexuality amongst these animals is not fully anthropomorphized

Although monogamous marriages seem to be standardized across all species, other elements may remain more animalistic, such as female desire being regulated by a seasonal estrus cycle in most species, and male desire being based almost entirely on pheromones released by females in heat. This theory probably throws off most people's shipping, but putting it out there anyway.

• Additionally, the animals may not have the same association between sleeping/beds and sex that humans have. In animals both wild and domestic, sleeping together is usually done solely for warmth and has no sexual connotations whatsoever, and sex usually occurs standing up, in broad daylight, and not necessarily anywhere near the place they normally bed down to sleep. While the "in broad daylight" part would probably not apply in this world, as they would probably want to seek privacy, there is not necessarily any reason for anything else about this to have changed, especially since they are equally capable of assuming the quadrupedal stance of their ancestors, as well as standing upright. As a result of this, the usage of "sleeping together" as a euphemism for sex would not exist in this world.

Related to above: Sapient animals in heat act like teenagers

Like their wild ancestors, these animals have a mating season in which they are flooded with hormones that make them want to copulate. Unlike their wild ancestors, they are people. How would these two factors interact? How would they behave? To find the most likely answer, we look at the real-life examples of people who are flooded with such hormones: teenagers. They would likely become irritable, moody, and constantly horny. The only difference is that instead of being associated with a specific age group, this behavior is instead associated with a specific time of year regardless of age. Although due to this scheduling, the in-universe cultural connotations might actually be more similar to All Periods Are PMS rather than Hormone-Addled Teenager.

Birds and reptiles don't have as much of a nudity taboo as mammals do.

Because birds and reptiles don't really have external genitalia or nipples in real life (just a small and barely visible "vent" on the underside of the tail), unlike mammals, so there isn't much to cover.

Most predators are ashamed or afraid of their heritage to some degree

Having grown up believing that eating other mammals is very wrong, knowing that their ancestors used to do it must be rather unsettling for them, to say the least. Especially considering the fact that substantial elements of their biology (sharp teeth, keen sense of smell in some cases, etc.) are the way they are primarily to help them hunt down and eat prey, making their very bodies into a constant, hard-to-ignore reminder of this heritage.

Although Nick got angry at Judy for suggesting that the savage incidents were related to biology, most other predators didn't seem to blame her, with the predators in the crowd at the press conference looking more worried than offended, Clawhauser not seeming to blame her for his getting reassigned, and Mrs. Otterton willingly turning to Judy for comfort shortly afterward when confronted with the sight of her feral husband. Rather than seeing the idea as the offensive and obviously untrue spoutings of a racist, most of them probably thought it to be rather plausible and responded not by being offended, but instead by being afraid that they too might suddenly go savage.

Remember that it wasn't even Judy who came up with the idea; she was just repeating speculation she heard from a badger. The badger doctor's mistaken suspicions may be indicative of a deeply repressed fear, which is fairly widespread in the predators' culture, that their origins would one day come back to haunt them in such a way because something savage and monstrous from their past was still hiding in their DNA.

Another example of this is how Gideon, while threatening Judy as a child, mentioned that "that killer instinct's still in our dunnah". It could be that his childhood insecurities stemmed from this idea that something immutable in his genes made him a monstrous killer, and that pretending to be proud of it and using it as a basis for bullying prey was his immature way of coping with it.

Probably the reason Nick took offense to it when other predators didn't, had to do with his childhood trauma where he was bullied for being a fox, which lead him to associate any reference to the idea of predators being biologically predisposed to violence with hostility to himself and his kind. Most other predators, particularly better-respected species such as otters and big cats (which under normal circumstances, outside of the unrest that ensued after the press conference, don't seem to usually be subjected to nearly as much shit as foxes), probably didn't have similar experiences. This means that unlike Nick, their own personal experiences didn't lead them to assume any ill-will on the part of Judy, as they didn't associate the ideas she was spreading as being used as excuses to mistreat them, but were familiar with the ideas only as fears already lurking in the backs of their minds.

Sheep Jesus

There is clearly a religion similar to Christianity in Zootopia (with the characters mentioning "God", "Amen", "Hallelujah", "Kumbaya", etc; we also see Koslov crossing himself at the mention of the late grandmother of Mr. Big). Jesus in our universe is often referred to as the "Lamb of God". What if Zootopia's world had a Jesus equivalent who was literally a Lamb of God, i.e. a sheep? A Messiah who preached that any animal, predator or prey, is welcome to the Flock of God in the Kingdom of Heaven. He was captured and crucified by an empire of predators who ruled over the majority of the world (a Roman Empire equivalent). This would add a further layer to Bellwether's villainy, as she could see herself as some sort of Messiah (albeit one that wants to put prey over predator, rather than make them equal).

• Indeed, early concept art by Art Director Matthias Lechner shows some illustrations collected by a believer in "sheep-conspiracy". It includes a medieval representation◊ of a sheep with the iconographic attributes of the resurrected Christ such as the standard, the red cloak and the cruciform halo.

Lion Jesus

Aslan. It's Aslan.

Sheep and Lion Jesus

A religious song does claim that "Our God is the Lion" and "Our God is the Lamb" at the same time. Zootopia's Jesus is depicted both as a lion and as a lamb (although predators prefer to use the lion iconography, whereas prey prefer to portray him as a lamb), and his dual nature is one of the greatest religious mysteries.

• Or popular depictions of Jesus contradict the historical accounts, like how he tends to be depicted as white in most religious imagery.

Ewe-daism

Continuing the "Sheep Jesus" theory from above, sheep have a historic religion similar to Judaism. It teaches that sheep are the Chosen People, and the Lord is their Shepherd. It's called Ewe-daism and is believed to be founded by a ram named Abram. Jesus was born into a Eweish family thousands of years ago.

Mammoths were the Precursors that created civilization and Zootopia, then went extinct

The statue at the museum is not just a quick gag. And when civilized animals call themselves mammals they don't mean it in a taxonomic sense, but it is their name as "followers of the way of the mammoth".

• For the record, the real-life etymologies of "mammal" and "mammoth" are completely different, both in language of origin and meaning ("mammal" is derived from mamma, meaning "breast" in Latin, while "mammoth" comes from the combination of two words from an Uralic dialect, respectively translated as "earth" and "horn").
  • That does nothing to disprove this WMG, though. All it's suggesting is that in this world, "mammal" has a completely different etymology from in Real Life, and in this world actually is derived from "mammoth". It also could have the side-effect of meaning that some creatures not classified as "mammals" in our world are in Zootopia.

Prison food in this world is very similar to cheap, dry-type pet food in Real Life

A wolf who was convicted of a crime and sent to prison, would be stuck eating something resembling Purina Dog Chow every day. Similarly, herbivorous inmates would get nothing but little pellets of desiccated, highly compressed plant material.

In addition to being fed to prison inmates, these foods' combination of low cost, high nutrient density, and long shelf life might lead to them also being used as emergency rations.

The simultaneous evolution of all mammals into anthropomorphic, intelligent species did not occur naturally

Rather, it was brought forth by a monolith. In the near future, as animals start exploring space, they will find a monolith buried in the moon, and mammals will then ascend to the next level of evolution.

• Sounds like an interesting basis for a Space Odyssey/Zootopia crossover fanfic.

Animal by-products such as dairy and wool are still produced and sold in this world

It works similarly to how some women in Real Life sell their own breast milk, except much more widespread and socially acceptable.

Judy's minced oath "cheese and crackers", and the existence of the "Chez Cheez" restaurant in Little Rodentia ^note (which showed up in the final movie in the form of a billboard, despite not being a significant plot point as it was in an earlier draft) implies that dairy does exist in this world, unless "cheese" is somehow actually a completely different substance there, which seems unlikely. There was also the "wool" rug that Nick sold Mr. Big.

The mammals of Zootopia are not the descendants of rabbits/foxes/etc...

But are the descendants of furries who genetically engineered themselves to look like rabbits/foxes/etc before some cataclysmic event which lead to all of the humans who looked like animals forgetting that they are humans. They can all mate with each other and produce viable offspring, they just don't, or at least don't often.

• The biggest problem with that theory is that many of the species that appear are not among those that furries normally like to dress up as (for example, the elephants, pigs, hippos, shrews, pangolins, etc). It's also not clear how, in that situation, they would even know that the non-anthropomorphic versions of these animals (which are definitely extinct) used to eat each other.
• "Normally" doesn't mean no one ever would. Also, they know that predatory animals hunted prey animals in the past for the same reason people know that now. It's just part of history. Also, it's pretty evident that sharp teeth are good for tearing meat and square teeth are good for grinding grass...

This world has pretty much no natural wilderness left at all; it's nothing but farmland and residential areas

Humans have been disruptive enough in Real Life, and that's only one species. If instead an entire major zoological order, namely the mammals, removed itself from nature in favor of civilization, the natural ecosystem and food web would pretty much be utterly destroyed. In addition to the mammals themselves being gone, hawks, snakes, crocodiles, etc. would pretty much all starve without mammalian prey to eat. Birds and reptiles which pose a threat to mammals in any way, and any insects or spiders with venom strong enough to kill a mouse, may also have been actively exterminated.

Also, judging by Zootopia's "ecosystem districts", the mammal society is capable of urbanizing pretty much any area, and unlike with humans, this requires little to no terraforming. For example, there's no reason to believe that actual rainforests in this world are any less tame than Zootopia's rainforest district, with the only real difference being that they get their moisture from actual rainfall rather than a sprinkler system. Despite still being covered in its characteristic lush vegetation, the Amazon Rainforest in this world is probably a massive metropolitan area.

The only area possibly still in its wild and natural state in this world, would be the ocean. And maybe not even that. If marine mammals like dolphins, whales, seals, etc. did not escape whatever phenomenon caused all mammals to evolve sentience at the same time, then even the seas may be tame, with cetacean cities all over the place, and schools of fish all being controlled like herds of free-range cattle which are eventually mass-harvested and sent out to predators on land as a profitable export.

The donuts and "Lucky Chomps" consumed by Clawhauser are actually made of animal protein.

Clawhauser seems to eat a lot of food containing cereal (in the form of flour or flakes) and sugar, appearing to be a Vegetarian Carnivore with Sweet Tooth. But cheetahs, like all cats, are obligate carnivores who cannot consume too much sugar either. What if, instead of the major Artistic License – Biology, the "Lucky Chomps" cereal is more akin to dry dog food, made from dried and ground-up bugs and fish (or maybe even birds, if they are also non-sapient and consumable). Similarly, the donuts he eats are also baked from powdered animal products such as fish meal rather than flour. "Normal" cereal products still exist and sold to herbivores, but carnivores have their own special food.

• That makes some sense, although true herbivores like rabbits, buffalo, etc. would have just as much trouble with the conventional baked goods as obligate carnivores would. So the "normal" products that are identical to their Real Life counterparts, would probably be eaten primarily by omnivores such as rats, pigs, bears, etc, while herbivores would need a high-fiber alternative made up of ground-up hay or some such.
• This actually has a bit of support in the movie, seeing that, putting aside the stylized packaging and the splash of milk, the "Lucky Chomps" cereal shown on the box appears to be a dark brown color suggestive of dry cat food.
• Actually Jossed by the detailed concept art of the cereal box◊ which mentions only vegetal byproducts as ingredients.

The Ice Age movies are this world's prehistory.

Those films focus on the life of prehistoric mammals, in a setting where predator hunt prey, but can hold conversations with each other. Over the course of the movies, the mammals are becoming more and more anthropomorphic, being basically talking Nearly Normal Animals in the first, but having more human-like gestures and using rather advanced tools in the sequels. Although humans appear in the first film, they are absent from the sequels and possibly have gone extinct during one of the cataclysmic events (be it the meltdown, the continental drift or the collision course), leaving the world to the anthropomorphic mammals.

Also, although it requires a bit of Artistic License – Biology, maybe in this setting the prehistoric mammals were the direct ancestors, rather than "cousins", of their modern relatives. This means Flash could be a descendant of Sid, Lionheart and the other big cats could be descendants of Diego and Shira, the various elephant characters may have descended from Manny and Ellie, and Duke Weaselton could be a future relative of Buck.

• Unlikely, as humans appeared in the first film.
• Maybe humans went extinct and "humans never happened" means human civilization.

"Bunny" is a preferred term to "rabbit" in-universe.

In the film, Judy's species almost always refer to themselves as "bunnies" and never as "rabbits", and so do most other mammals. The only characters using the word "rabbit" in the film are three predators, Lionheart, Nick and Weaselton. In the case of the latter two, it's used in a somewhat offensive context (referring to Judy as her species instead of her name), but the fact that Lionheart uses it in a formal speech indicates that it's not a politically incorrect term either.

• It could be that rabbits and hares adopted the term "bunny" as a blanket term for both, and started identifying themselves by that term rather than by their specific species as a show of solidarity with each other. Meanwhile, members of other species are often not even aware of the distinction betweeen rabbits and hares, and consider the terms "rabbit" and "bunny" to be interchangeable.

Zootopia and Sing are part of a shared universe.

Both films are set in a World of Funny Animals that pays attention to the height differences between the characters. It's not hard to imagine these cities both existing in the same country.

• However, Sing has anthropomorphic reptiles (lizard, crocodile), birds (chicken), mollusks (snail) and primates (gorilla) that don't exist in Zootopia. That said, it's not impossible that these species are also anthropomorphic, they just don't live in the city of Zootopia.
  • A bigger issue is that in Sing the animals' buildings and technology more or less resembles that used by humans, whereas in Zootopia it is obviously designed specifically for animals.

Zootopia and Nu, Pogodi! are set in the same universe

Just like Zootopia is a furry megapolis set in an American cultural setting, the city, megapolis or country Nu, Pogodi! is set in is modelled after the Soviet Union and later Russia. They may have either improving relations or rising tensions again like in RL, may be ruled over by a quasi-dictator like in RL and Jack Savage may be a go-between between the countries' secret services to prevent a new Cold War and e.g. foil a terrorist attack threatening both countries / cities (a furry version of DAESH/ISIS maybe, using Night Howlers as a bioweapon?).

Origin of the peace between predators and prey

It can be assumed that even after the mammals became sapient (all at once, somehow), predation continued to occur for some length of time before it ceased. What caused them to give up their natural food supply in favor of alternative protein sources? Old traditions that go back as far as anyone can remember are hard to break. Even if some pred philosopher concluded that it was immoral to hunt other mammals for food and that the practice should be abandoned, this way of thinking would have trouble catching on amongst the general population.

There are multiple possibilities of why they stopped eating their usual prey and made peace with them, but here's my theory. I think initially, it was simply a matter of survival. As Bellwether said, prey make up 90% of the population, and united they would be unstoppable.

Take, for example, the relationship between lions and zebras. Back when they were just simple beasts running on instinct, it didn't matter that the zebras greatly outnumbered the lions. A single lion could approach a large herd of zebras, and they would always predictably respond by running away all at once, and the lion could just easily pick off a weak sickly one from the rear of the herd.

But the development of higher intelligence and tool-usage ability would change the dynamics considerably. The increased intelligence allows for strategic and tactical thinking, and the development of artificial weapons allows those without natural weapons (teeth and claws) to fight back against those that do. Now, if a lone lion attempted to approach the herd of zebras, he would be quickly surrounded and killed by spear-wielding zebras. Even if the whole pride of lions tried to attack the zebras all at once, they would still be sorely outnumbered.

And the discovery of powerful poisons, which weapons could be coated with, allowed even something as small as a mouse to develop defenses that would make large predators think twice about attacking. It would reach a point to where mammalian "prey" could no longer actually be safely preyed upon.

This left the preds with really only two choices. Either very quickly find an alternative food source and negotiate a peace treaty with the prey, or continue to fight a losing war against the prey and ultimately face extinction.

And so they made peace. Probably ones that did not eat very many prey mammals to begin with and could easily eliminate them completely from their diet (such as raccoons, badgers, otters, and bears) were the first to make peace with the prey, and may have helped to facilitate further negotiations with the other predator species.

After this, over time they gradually became more comfortable coexisting with each other in close proximity, even though prey's distrust of predators (and possibly predators' feelings of superiority over prey) never really completely went away.

As for herbivorous megafauna that were never really actually prey to begin with, such as elephants, rhinos, and hippos, they probably remained neutral in the initial pred-prey wars, considering the whole matter to be beneath them. When the joint pred-prey society started to develop, they too came to participate in it, but probably the whole time retained an attitude of superiority over both groups, due to neither having a legacy of eating people, nor one of being eaten. An example of this is the elephant shopkeeper being hostile towards Nick and also dismissive of Judy.

If sapient reptiles and/or birds exist, then there is a severe language barrier

Only mammals are shown to be sapient in the movie. If sapient non-mammals do indeed exist in this world, then they appear to exist pretty much entirely separately from the mammal society. There would have to be a pretty good reason for this, and a language barrier would go far towards explaining it. Maybe to the mammals, bird-speech just sounds like unintelligible chirping.

Rodent housing

In the movie, we see that the small rodents do have a district which is basically an ordinary city in miniature.

Elsewhere, however, it might be that some rodents (poor ones especially) actually live under the floorboards of larger mammals' houses, similar to real life house mice except that they pay rent.

It may be common for larger mammals to rent out small spaces in their house (under the floor, behind the walls, etc.), which would otherwise go unused, to small rodents.

Cultured meat

With the level of technological development in this world corresponding fairly closely to real life, it's likely that cultured meat technology is in its early stages of development. It's possible that some carnivores and omnivores might want to move away from eating fish out of sympathy to the fish, just as real-life vegetarians avoid meat out of sympathy for animals in general. ^note Depending on how you interpret a certain Byron Howard tweet, Nick may or may not be a vegetarian himself.

As in real life, most of the effort would be towards reproducing the meats that are considered normal — in this case, various kinds of fish. However, on the fringe, there might be some who would propose using this technology to produce taboo meats that had long been forsaken — beef, pork, rabbit, venison, mutton, etc. This would probably garner more support and be taken more seriously than real-life proposals to produce edible human flesh this way, due to there being an actual substantial difference in taste and texture in mammal meats versus fish meats in addition to just the mere novelty of eating something that's normally forbidden. However, for obvious reasons this would be hugely controversial, and the controversy it stirred up would probably muddy the waters in the public debate about whether the technology should be used at all, which would probably otherwise play out exactly the same as in real life were it not for that.

Dairy is much more expensive in this world than it is in real life

Because in real life, milk cows don't have to be paid.

• As a result of this, it's possible that alternatives such as almond milk may actually be cheaper than the real thing here, rather than more expensive.

The planet is a Rimworld

In the official Rim World Longsleep Revival Briefing [1] underneath the section "The biology of plants and animals" it states that some colonies have developed advanced genetic engineering, and have created "Trans-animals" with human-level intelligence, the ability to create and use tools, speak human languages, form complex societies, and can think of complex abstract thoughts. So perhaps whatever this planet that Zootopia takes place in, maybe thousands of years ago it was a human colony? We could assume that all the humans died and/or mass-migrated to another system. One could say that animal history as displayed in Judy's play could disprove this, stating that the animals evolved past their savage ways, however, one could also say that perhaps the human part of history was long past forgotten over the course of whatever many thousands of years ago this period of history was.

Zootopia is under a dome

The sky is a projection to hide the dome structure, Bunnyburrow is a separate dome dedicated to agriculture and the train and road leading between it and Zootopia are enclosed. Whatever's outside could be a post-apocalyptic hellscape or a colony planet with no oxygen. But it explains why we don't see anything outside the city or the town and how they could implement such precise temperature controls on entire city districts.

Animal Farm is Zootopia's Soviet Union

Animal Farm is still existing in that universe. It has been running for hundreds of years after all of the animals overthrew THEIR humans. However, Napoleon created a dysopia. Napoleon is still there, for he is immortal, and his family rules alongside him, with their dysopian ways. It is now a lot like North Korea.

• The problem with this theory is that it assumes humans did exist at some point in this universe - which contradicts the "humans never happened" premise statement from the trailer.
  • The animals at least in Zootopia just forgot (by accident or design) humans from even happening.

Abusive Wives are either Female Shrews or they are hens.

It's a pun. That means in their shows, wives like Helen Bemis or Debra are either literal shrews or they are Hens. Shrew means "bossy women". Hen means that the husband is henpecked. So Henry Bemis may be a rooster, or something else.

Reptiles and birds don't exist.

Not only are they not sapient, they don't exist at all. Let's break this down:

If they existed and were sapient, we'd have seen them. Though most theories where they exist tend to have them in their own city or their own continent, that's really not enough to explain why we don't see any of them at all. Barring a very complex situation involving some sort of cold war or some other tension that causes them to actively avoid each other at all costs, we would surely still see a few of them in a city as diverse as Zootopia, even if the majority of their population was elsewhere.

However, if they still existed but were not sapient, but just existed as normal wild animals, they would probably be fair game as a food source for predators. However, predators apparently only get their protein from insects and fish. No mention of them eating chicken or alligator, etc.

If they exist neither as sapient nor as non-sapient, that only leaves the possibility that they simply don't exist. The biggest obstacle to this is Gazelle's lyric "Birds don't just fly, they fall down and get up", an unambiguous reference to birds. A possible solution is that in this world birds exist only conceptually, as a fantasy creature akin to a unicorn. The mammals of this world may have a concept of what a bird is, but to them it's imaginary.

Alternately, reptiles and birds are extinct

Basically the same as the above theory, except reptiles and birds used to exist, but went extinct at some point. It may or may not have had something to do with the mysterious event which somehow caused all of the mammals to evolve anthropomorphic traits all at once, or they may have been exterminated, or something else. Exactly what happened to them is outside the scope of this theory, the point is, they're all dead now.

Other than that, the same reasoning applies. Even about birds being seen as fantasy creatures (after all, dinosaurs are often thought of like fantasy creatures in real life).

Judy's grasp on history is flawed.

Nothing against her but it seems based on the hints we get from the Museum scene that Judy might be using sundays school lessons as her basis for understanding history. After all in the diorama at the Museum we see that the "meek prey" species of rabbit were once saber toothed and adept with spears for hunting much larger predators, not just poor helpless little balls of fluff. It might actually make sense given she's from the countryside which at least in the United States is stereotyped as less then stellar education and substituting religious zealotry/biblical education in place of factual knowledge. A lot of the movie is subtle commentary on social issues so this wouldn't be much of a stretch to show someone from an area with stereotypes of stupidity as being very intelligent but misguided.

• Problems with that. For one, there's not actually any indication of any "Sunday school classes" being the source of her understanding of history; her play was for a harvest festival's talent show and showed no indication of being connected to a church.
  
  Secondly, the diorama in the museum more likely represents an intermediate stage between the primitive wild stage where the food chain functioned as in real life, and the modern civilization, rather than an indication that the food chain and predator/prey dichotomy are mere myth. As Bellwether said,^note From a Doylist perspective, the diorama serves not only a world-building purpose showing the early history (as opposed to prehistory, which was the focus of Judy's play) of this animal civilization, but also functions as potent symbolism for what Bellwether wants to do. prey make up 90% of the population and would be unstoppable when united against a common enemy. Predators might have been able to dominate in the "mindless beast" stage, but once mammals are even just barely smart enough to make crude weapons and use basic skirmish tactics, the tables would pretty much immediately be turned. Thus the tribe of loincloth-wearing rabbit berserkers who apparently wear fake fangs (perhaps made from those of predators they killed?) to look more intimidating.
  
  While it ultimately implies that the view of history shown in Judy's play is oversimplified, this mainly just means that she failed to grasp the chaos and strife that occurred between the evolution of anthropomorphic traits and the founding of a peaceful society where "predator and prey live in harmony". It doesn't mean that her understanding of the "prehistoric beast" period where predators instinctively ate prey to survive is actually incorrect.

Selective breeding still exists in Zootopia, in a way

It is true that selective breeding of many animals in Real Life owes its existence to humans, who do not exist in Zootopia world. However, this cannot fully rule out that it doesn't happen in Zootopia just because of the lack of humans. One word: Eugenics.

Think of it this way: Eugenics is generally a fancy term for selective breeding: Let or promote certain group/ethnic of people to procreate, and prevent some others to have offsprings. It's definitely possible that the sapient mammals in Zootopia, either in ages past or in contemporary history, dabbled in eugenics and thus there may still be different breeds of mammals belonging to the same species. The lack of it in the movie can either be chalked up to simplifying the contrast of different mammals (like, having several breeds of wolves might get confusing or complicated; although taking this example, the fact that we still have wolves of different fur colors, primarily grey, white and tan, seems to indicate that there might still be eugenics at work somewhere), or that eugenics practice in Zootopia is just rare.

• Why would wolves exhibiting color variations found in the wild indicate eugenics?
  • The wolves are a really terrible example, but some sort of selective breeding, at some point in history if not necessarily in the present-day of the setting, would explain the existence of domesticated animals like pigs and sheep. However, this is already covered by the earlier WMG about pigs and sheep being descended from slaves...

The Fantasy Genre

In this universe, anthromorphical fantasy animals take the place of fantasy humanoids. For example, the works of J.R.R. Tomcat feature Hoppits, a race of bipedial jackalopes who live in fully furnished holes in the ground. Elves are replaced with anthro unicorns and dwarves with anthro kirin. Children are told if they're good, Sandy Claws will visit them on Christmas. Sandy Claws is a griffin who needs no flying reindeer because he has wings. His toys are made by unicorns, but they're imagined to be more short and pudgy like the baby unicorns in Fantasia. A pegasus is imagined to be palm sized, though some tales give them magical ability to become pony or horse sized, making them analogous to fairies. In fact, "fairy tales" are often called "pegasus tales". (Sometimes 'tails' by punsters.) Traditionally, witches were portrayed as sneaky nine-tailed kitsune, but in modern works like J.K. Howling's Harry Trotter series, any animal can be a witch or wizard.

So, do humans exists in Zootopia-verse fantasy. In a way. Every Easter, children get a visit from the Easter Buddy, a strange mostly hairless creature with no tail who hides eggs and candy for them to find. Smaug from Tomcat's tail of a Hoppit who goes on an adventure was a giant rather than a dragon. The Patronuses in Harry Trotter take the form of armored knights with a shield bearing a charge that looks much like the caster, unless the caster was only able to conjure up enough good memories by thinking of someone of another species. Which brings up another WMG:

Zootopia is set in the same universe as The Last Unicorn.

"She will remember your heart when men are fairy tales in books written by rabbits."

In Sheep heavy populated areas, Black Sheep are opressed and segregated

They are viewed as trouble makers and being most likely to upset the balance of the herd. This is specially bad in families, who view them as The Unfavorite at best.

• Bellwether despises this kind of mindset and has zero sympathy towards anybody who holds this kind of prejudice. To her, hating preds makes sense due to the ancient history from before Zootopia's founding. But to hate someone over being a different color than you? How do you justify doing something like that?
  • In particular, Bellwether actually looked up to a militant black sheep rights activist, Lincoln X (a black furred Lincoln sheep).
    • Bellwether got into politics in order to help fix White Sheep-Black Sheep relations in Ovis populated areas. But others kept shutting her down as no one believed prejudice against colors are a thing.
• In a world where species from across Mammalia and potentially other entire classes of animals live together, I highly doubt they would pay attention to details as small as that.
  • That's why nobody takes the prejudice against Black Sheep seriously, they don't believe prejudice against colors is real. They think it sounds like a preachy metaphor then an actual thing.

In-universe cannibalism fiction

Soylent Green and Mrs. Lovett's meat pie were made from preys and A Modest Proposal was about eating veal.

Bats are viewed as untrustworthy by both birds and mammals

It all started during the Bird-Beast War from before Zootopia and Aeropolis (see above) were founded. Due to being flying mammals, it was unknown if they were considered one or the other. They were even considered bugs at one point.

• they have gained the name Flying Foxes thanks to this reputation.
  • In real life, that's an actual term used for many species of fruit bats, due to their relatively large sizes and the fact that their facial structures look almost more fox-like than bat-like. Though I think the fact that they are seen as looking more like a fox than a typical bat is seen as a compliment rather than a slur, since most bats are considered ugly.

If primates exist in this world, let alone sentient, they have there own belief system

They believe that one of their kind were meant to rule the planet as the dominate life form and all other animals were never meant to stand up right and talk.

• If they have their own cities, imagine all the prejudices that probably occur within them. Apes, particularly great apes, would likely see themselves as superior to other primates, and them as well as monkeys would look down on the more “primitive” lemurs and other prosimians.
• Primates may have a Fantastic Caste System where great apes (gorillas, orangutans and chimpanzees) are the elite. Gibbons are one rank below them (and are explicitly referred to as lesser apes to remind them of their lower status), followed by monkeys, and finally prosimians (lemurs, tarsiers, bush babies, pottos and lorises) are treated as the lowest-ranking citizens.

The Bunnies in Bunny Burrows don't believe in having abortions...because they find the process to be overly complicated for something they could prevent on their own.

As stated in the Zootopia page, Bunny does have a natural birth control, that kicks in if the doe isn't getting enough food for two. So bunnies see abortion as unnecessary when the doe could just absorb the fetus if she didn't want to go through with the pregnancy.

How animals from other Disney products fit into this world

• Br'er Rabbit, Br'er Fox and Br'er Bear are characters on an old kids comedy show. The sneaky Br'er Fox and his dimwitted mook, Br'er Bear are constantly trying to cook and eat the clever and trickster Br'er Rabbit but are always foiled by Rabbit's quick thinking. The actors playing Br'er Fox and Br'er Bear have reported to have said they hated working on the show and felt they weren't doing their respective species any favors.
  • The show is a huge hit in Bunny Burrows for portraying a Bunny as more then a cute character, but rather a subversion of the Dumb Bunny trope. In fact, it was one of the main inspirations for Zootopia's First Rabbit Cop.
  • The show is actively despised by Foxes and Bears alike. As they see the main antagonists as idiotic stereotypes.
• Remy owns and cooks for a highly popular restaurant in Little Rodentia called Ratatouille. He has plans to expand to a more animals of all sizes business, but faces hardships due to being a dirty rat.
• Bonkers D. Bobcat is comedic actor specializing in slapstick who join the ZPD after his show got cancelled. Fawn Deer is his wife.
• Atta and Hopper are characters in the animated film Bugburg (a film about a hard-working ant constable and a lazy grasshopper musican solving a speciesist conspiracy in the titular city).
• J Thaddeus Toad is an ambassador from Greater Ectothermia infamous for his wild rides with the ZPD.
• The Pridelands was one of the kingdoms that predated Zootopia. The War of the Suns, which began with the murder of Mufasa VIII and ended with the crowning of Simba IV, is a popular subject among fiction and nonfiction writers alike - the most notable example being George R.R. Pinemarten's Game of Rocks franchise.
• Robin Hood is a Legacy Character dating back to the start Zootopia, when King Richard the Lionhearted (ancestor of former Mayor Leodore Lionheart) of the Pridelands and Bambi, The Great Prince of the Forest meet after the Prey-Predator war. Nick's father may or may not have been a Robin Hood.
• Tigger, Heffalump, Woozle and Silly Old Bear (S.O.B.) are all slurs for tigers, elephants, weasels and bears respectively. Little do they know that these slurs come from the timeless tales of a child's beloved stuffed tarantula...
  • If Winnie the Pooh is a tarantula in this world, then why would Silly Old Bear come from it?
    • Christopher Robin and A.A. Milne were bears, probably.
• Kerchak Greystroke II is the current leader of the Primate City, Kala is his wife, and Terk is an ambassador. Terk's best pal is still Tantor, an elephant from Zootopia.
• Up is a popular kid's movie about an old pig going on an adventure with a young panda. Wolves are displeased with the portrayal of their species as either villainous or dumb.
  • Only Alpha has a voice collar because he had his voice removed by Muntz.
• Lady and the Tramp is a film about a rich wolf and a poor wolf falling in love, written in a time/place where class divisions were commonplace.
• Old time Bear dating rituals consisted of slapping one another in the face. This practice had not aged well and is looked down on many other species as Domestic Abuse.
• Amphibia is part of the Greater Ectothermia.
• Duckburg is located at the bottom floor of Aeropolis, inhabited mostly by waterfowl.
• Perry the Platypus / Agent P, the iconic semi-aquatic, egg-laying mammal of action, headlines a James Bond-esque spy adventure franchise.
• The Muppets remain a puppetry troupe, founded by Jim Hopson. Famous puppeteers in their ranks include Frank Ox, Dave Goatz, and Richard Hunt (no pun required).
• Wakanda is a technologically advanced nation ruled by a literal black panther, King T'Challa. Zootopia has adapted many of Wakanda's developments and integrated them into its city planning, like the district biomes.
• Basil of Baker Street supplants Sherlock Holmes as the archetypal detective.
• The Rescuers is High Fantasy, complete with mythical hairless giants. Birds dislike it due to an albatross being used as transportation.
• Tiana Whitetail is a proud owner and chef of a highly popular zootopian restaurant Tiana's Palace and wife of Prince Naveen of Deerdonia. Louis is a trumpeter for jazz band from Greater Ectothermia and friend of the duo while Charlotte is blonde american quarter horse and Tiana's Childhood Friend who was supportive of her before she married Naveen and opened her restaurant.

A rabbit was the first mammal on the moon.

It was actually by complete accident. Smaller mammals were used as test subjects for the more dangerous missions and were used to see if it was safe for large mammals to go into space. The rabbit, Strong Arms Neil, was meant to be sent in a space rocket to see how far it could get to the moon before something bad happened. They had no intention of him actually reaching before the ship exploded or anything. The fact is when he got there, they decided to just wing it with the footage.

Since mammals, birds and reptiles are scaled-up and sapient, it stands to reason that arthropods got the same treatment

In other words, bugs (mostly) aren't intelligent, but they are large enough to be Zootopia's fauna; people have pet crickets and mantises (standing in for dogs and cats), ranchers herd wetas and millipedes (sheep and cattle), spiders (bears?) are a hazard out in the wilderness.

• Maybe there's some stand in for parrots/songbirds, too?

Differences in Science Fiction

It stands to reason that the aliens in their fiction more closely resemble animals than humans.

Star Gallop has Sphinxans, sphynx cats with primate-like ears and have a culture focused on solving riddles instead of simply being logical. Orions are replaced with Frankens, who can resemble any mammal except with multi-colored, pastel toned fur that is regarded as beautiful and desirable. The counterpart of the Q Continuum is the Order of Hoo, a race of all powerful beings who hide under cloaks and have metallic owl-like faces. Andorians are Armordeans, armadillos whose leathery armor shells are replaced with dark blue shells with beetle horn-like protrusions on them. The Dominion here is the Holy Umbrella, giant amorphous jellyfish who make up the "sky" of their home planet instead of the ocean and can break off as tentacles that can morph into other forms. The Ferengi are instead the Loocee, a race resembling the extinct Australopithecus afarenis. The Cardassians resemble the Gorn and are pretty much the same. You get the idea. And plenty that are just normal animals in funny hats.

Star Prowls mostly uses Mammal Aliens, while those who aren't meant to resemble animals are differentiated by having multiple limbs, being larger or smaller than their "real life" counterparts, and painting up mammals skin and dyeing their fur in colors unnatural for their species, often styled in strange ways to make it look even more exotic. Many of them, notably Chewbacca (an arachnoid alien) actually resemble invertebrate animals. There are also many robot characters of variable shapes and sizes.

Battlefur Zoolactica has Cylons who look like metallic reptiles. And bizarrely, statues of the Lords of Kobol all look like these odd smooth-skinned primates.

Animus 5 is considered a very progressive show for having not only mammals play major roles, but reptiles and birds as well; and all of them are treated as real, fleshed-out characters. It's also notable for having the Deer captain (Trots Sheridan) defy stereotype and be a pragmatic, cunning captain who favors using nukes in his strategies. (Even in Zootopia, John Sheridan is a badass.) It's also notable for treating a reptile/mammal relationship as a normal thing.

• How about Star Fox? Would it be the same?

Bunnyburrow carrot farms and the like raise benefical bugs for their gardens

Benefical bugs such as Ladybugs and Mantises are trained to hunt bugs looking to harm the crops.

• Judy has fond memories of one of the mantises growing up.

There are gang wars between Felidaes (Katz) and Caninae (Dawgs)

Though both sides of the gangs are both good and bad, the media tends to portray the Dawgs as the heroes and Katz as villians.This war indirectly led to the infamous Lone Digger brawl

The worst slur you could possibly call a fox is Reynard.

Bunnyburrow has its own militia force.

It's official that there has never been any rabbit police officer before Judy, but there is a militia in Bunnyburrow, consisting of rabbits, that provides security - although it's less powerful and less well-armed than the police. It's called "Owsla".

Zootopia takes place on a planet separate from Earth

Zootopia is set on an Earth-like planet, uninhabited by humans. No locations from our planet are ever mentioned. The anthropomorphic animals (or their ancestors, at least) are originally from Earth. Many animals from Earth adopted the lifestyles of humans, but got sick of coexisting with them, so they left Earth and moved to this planet, but took much technology from Earth with them, and they established themselves as the “humans” of the planet. Night Howlers are probably exclusive to that planet and the animal inhabitants do remember their ancestors being wild like in our world.

In Zootopia, concepts like sexism, homophobia and other real world bigotry is beyond their comprehension.

The Zootopian Fantastic Racism of Pred vs Prey, small animals are inferior to big animals and their species specific stereotypes are so ingrained the peoples minds that the concept of real non metaphorical bigotry is laughably childish to them.

• For example; the insult You Hit Like A Girl, wouldn't make sense to them unless you specified the girl's species. (If you had said "You hit like a doe" that means you were talking about either a female bunny or a female deer, which are seen as being weak, therefor the insult makes sense to them.)
  • the most popular form of this insult is You Fight Like a Cow.

Outback Island is a Crapsaccharine World

While it might seem like a typical "G'day Mate, put another shrimp on the barbie" Land Down Under. The truth is it's actually a dangerous district for any not native species, especially rabbits.

• Alternatively, Outback Island was conquered easily by Rabbits after it was visited by one Captain Coney, and there was a demographic collapse of the Bilby natives.

Cats exist in Zootopia.

If pigs and sheep look domestic, then there's no reason why some other animals can't look domestic. In real life, African wildcats sort of domesticated themselves, so it would make sense for the same thing to happen in Zootopia.

Domestic dogs/cats exist, but they aren't evolved

Basically, the prey when they began to become intelligent needed something to turn the tides against predators, so they began to tame some of them as weapons of war and companions, allowing them to keep fed. Gradually, they adjusted to invertebrate-focused diets and synthetic products. What's more, a small enough prey animal could also use their pet as a steed, making them function like equines. (Maybe equines were domesticated by predators as a spare food source and as steeds?) So, basically, Scooby-Doo doesn't have to be an enormous mantis; but still a Great Dane, and perhaps doubling as the Mystery Machine at the same time.

Video games with Character Creation generally isn't a thing.

Barring a few rare exceptions that use entirely fictional species and no real species (such as The Elder Scrolls), the video games of the Zootopia-Verse don't have create-a-character. Meaning that, among other changes to the gaming scene in general, Sonic Forces has Gadget the Wolf, rather than the Rookie, and the Player Characters of the major Fallout games have fixed identities ^note This lead Fallout 76 to be a very different game more in line with the three entries before it, and the perks revolving around being a variation of The Casanova being replaced with a perk that makes Speech Checks easier all around and generally ups combat prowess. This also means that most MMOs are vastly different, with some not even existing.

If Zootopia is on a planet separate from Earth, then Character Creation and MMOs aren't things, period.

The only sea life that is intelligent are whales (and maybe octopi).

Whales are very smart in real life, so it makes sense that they'd be the same in Zootopia. It's just very impractical for them to live in Zootopia due to both their habitat, and their sheer size.They're very philosophical when coming up to speak with land-dwellers, because it's a big ocean, and it gets very lonely in the depths.

The Horror genre is very different.

Slasher films are seen in bad taste, so the focus is on more psychological horror. Cosmic Horror is also quite popular, but not as much.

• Silence of the Lambs and The Killing of a Sacred Deer would need name changes.
• That said, murder films do exist; A Nightmare on Elk Street is about Freddy Kangarooger, an antilopine kangaroo who was accused of kidnapping and killing several children, was killed in retaliation by more aggressive predator parents, and returns as a monster in the dreams of the teens of Springbokwood.
  • Maw is about animals of all sorts being put in deathtraps by a mysterious mastermind, who communicates with a demented puppet named Billy, who resembles a tiny hippo child. The mastermind is called the Big Maw Killer, and his true identity is John Tamer, a lion.

In this universe Beastars is a live action drama.

Live action television shows from Japan aren't quite as popular as anime, but there's a niche market for it. Judy and Nick found a bootleg copy when busting a certain shady weasel and watched out of curiosity. The picture quality was only so-so and the subtitles were so laughingly bad as to be nearly useless. (They have become popular memes, however.) Though it was in Japanese, it was clearly about a young wolf and young bunny in love. Nick kinda leered at Judy during Haru's first undressing scene. She retorted "Don't even think about it!"

Other anthro stories that needed changing:

• Maus is called Flieg and depicts spiders persecuting flies. (Of course, the title now has a double meaning.)
• Animal Farm is called Plant Farm and imagines fruits, vegetables and other plants becoming sentient and rebelling.
• My Little Pony is now My Little Birdie, assuming birds are not sentient in this universe. The toys are colorful plastic birds with feathery topknots. Barring that, they could be My Little Human and look like Barbie and her friends.
• A lot of shows aimed at small children feature talking insects. Care Bears is now known as Say Hi, Butterflies and features butterflies with wing patterns depicting symbols of love and friendship. Arthur is now an ant. Hello Kitty is now Hello Ladybug.
• For Kemono Friends, The Friends are now more animal-like.
• Usagi Yojimbo is a Jidaigeki aimed at rabbits.
• Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid is the biggest Russian Reversal ever if we assume that dragons are replaced by humans.
• Azumanga Daioh: In Zootopia, Sakaki IS the Iriomote Wild Cat!

Zootopia takes place in the very distant future after humanity became extinct by COVID-19:

Black markets exist within the world of Zootopia

Similar to Beastars, these black markets sell parts from animals who, for the most part, died of natural causes, but there are also illegal poaching rings that may target rare and exotic animals in their prime, all the more reason for the ZPD to be on their toes. Nick had to have gotten that skunk butt rug from somewhere.

Sapient, anthro nonmammals exist in this world, but they're victims of prejudice far worse than anything shown between mammals in the movie

There's no real evidence that non-mammal people don't exist in this world beyond the words of the characters and two relatively close cities in the same country. It's also kind of odd that such a diverse group of animals as mammals was able to evolve sapience while apparently no others could, despite the fact that there are very intelligent nonmammals (cephalopods, corvids, parrots, etc.) out there. Surely there must be societies of squid-folk and raven-people in this world of talking rabbits and foxes... so why don't we see any? The answer is simple: 40K-style institutional speciesism. The government of whatever country the film takes place in sees nonmammals as an enemy and thus bars them from entry and kills them, Orwellianly falsifying history so it seems that only mammals evolved sapience.

A variation of Animal Farm exists as a book in this universe (or maybe even happened in real life) ...

... except the "humans" are represented by a predator species (maybe lions). This could build into the above theory about some species having domesticated/enslaved others in the past. George Boarwell, having heard about the horrors that happened on such farms, wrote this book in response, while also (correctly) predicting a Full-Circle Revolution where the previously domesticated pigs would slowly turn into the same oppressive predators they were rebelling against.

• Bellweather and her fellow sheep are not very fond of this book given its stereotypical (and likely rather offensive) portrayal of sheep.
  • It might also be why no one expected sheep to be evil masterminds - portraying sheep as slow and dimwitted in fiction is very common in this universe, which could subconsciously affect how others view them.

Dinosaur documentaries are basically the same

They still have the undertone that Meek Mesozoic Mammals lived in the shadows of their dinosaur overlords until they inherited the Earth.

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