Adorkable: Tod. Whenever he's around Vixey, he gets all goofy and tongue-tied.
Angst? What Angst?: Tweed drops Tod off in the forest minutes before a rainstorm, leading to the most miserable night of his life. The next morning, he gets one look at Vixey and forgets all about those pesky abandonment issues. Even when we see him forlornly looking down from a hill at the end of the movie, it's framed more as him missing Copper than the woman who raised him.
Applicability: Two innocent young kids become friends because they're oblivious to how the rest of the world sees them, and then grow up into the roles society expects of them and are torn apart. There's also these lines from the song "Best of Friends":
If only the world wouldn't get in the way
if only people would just let you play
they say you're both being fools
you're breaking all the rules
Broken Base: Disney fans are split between whether this is a heart-wrenching childhood classic or the red flag of Disney Animation's Audience-Alienating Era finally hitting an all-time low.
Dinky & Boomer and Squeaks are some of the funniest characters in the film and people enjoyed just their presence in the movie.
The bear only appears for a brief scene at the end of the movie, but his appearance is considered one its highlights.
Fan-Preferred Cut Content: Originally, Chief was going to die when he was struck by a train while chasing Tod, but this was changed to him just injuring his leg in the final film. Many fans feel that Chief dying would've given Copper better motivation for him to turn against Tod in the third act and made their final confrontation more emotionally impactful.
Harsher in Hindsight: In-narrative, considering the traditional mating patterns of foxes, since only Tod's mother is seen taking him to safety, it's likely that the rest of his siblings (foxes never have just one cub at a time) had already been killed, and his father likely stayed back to try and protect them from the hunters. When Tod takes a stand to try and protect Vixey, he may be unknowingly following his father's example.
Heartwarming in Hindsight: The arc with the Widow taking care of Tod and raising him takes on a sweeter undertone when one bears in mind how domesticating foxes as pets has come to fruition by 2020.
Tod and Copper's friendship could be seen as this. Interestingly, this fits further with the above-mentioned Applicability — just imagine if this story was about two human boys.
Even more so in the sequel where Tod and Copper's relationship troubles are compared to couple Cash and Dixey, plus as mentioned Zelda and a tomcat she knew.
Jerkass Woobie: Chief may be an aggressive hunting dog, but it's hard not to feel bad for him in the second half of the film, since he gets put into the back seat, when his owner starts favoring Copper as a hunting dog, and he gets badly injured when falling off the bridge- and even then nobody seems to check up on him when he's alone at home while injured. Amos even threatens to "break his other leg" when he comes out to greet Amos and Copper.
Just Here for Godzilla: There are actually some people who only watch the film for the Dinky and Boomer and Squeaks scenes.
One-Scene Wonder: The bear is onscreen for less than three minutes, but no one who's seen it will forget it any time soon.
Padding: The Dinkey and Boomer side-story where they spend their time trying to catch a caterpillar serves no purpose but to add a couple comical scenes for the movie.
Given the fact that their relationship drives the plot, it's not surprising that Tod and Copper get their share of this. Even better, it takes the above mentioned Applicability to a whole new level...
Widow Tweed and Amos Slade also count, hilariously enough. Tweed fussing over Slade's injuries at the end and bandaging him despite his protests looks almost Slap-Slap-Kiss.
Spiritual Successor: While the film is largely an In Name Only adaptation, critic Cardinal West says in this video that Disney's film could also be seen as an adaptation of a more obscure book titled The Ballad of the Belstone Fox which does center around a fox and a hound who become friends, then enemies, and reconcile in the end.
Sweetness Aversion: A common misconception of the film due to how it's advertised. While there are a few overly cute scenes during the eponymous duo's childhood, the movie is actually taken very seriously and is much more adult-appealing than most people seem to realise. However, this is definitely true for a lot of the corny songs present in the movie, which a lot of people agree clashes with this more serious tone.
Many fans think Chief should have been Killed Off for Real to make Copper and Amos Slade's anger more justified and overall have made the latter half of the movie a lot darker. It turns out that the writers were going to kill Chief off (as in the novel) but decided against it because they thought it'd be too dark. Chief's original fate is apparent when Copper finds him after he's jumped off the bridge: a dog lying motionless with his nose in the water is pretty much dead. But Disney decided to draw the line there.
When Copper returns from his hunting trip with Amos and Chief, some fox pelts can clearly be seen on the pile of fur he's helped collect. You'd think it'd be an interesting/important moment to show the first time he had to chase a fox and/or watch Amos shoot it, but we never see it.
The movie as a whole is this for some. While it's obvious the film really wants to dip in the dramatic parts and be seen as a serious film, it can't commit itself fully to presenting itself that way due to having to stick to "Disney elements" like the out-of-place comic relief or the shallow love story.
Unintentionally Unsympathetic: A case that can be blamed entirely on Executive Meddling. As noted above, Chief was originally going to be killed by his fall from the train tracks, and by having him live but not changing anything else, Copper comes off as unbelievably petty for wanting to murder his childhood friend and his mate over an accident that had no permanent consequences.
Values Dissonance: Amos Slade's comments to Widow Tweed after she takes away his gun and at the end of the film would mostly likely be derailed as sexist today and he would be displayed as more out and out villainous. Also notable is Widow Tweed and Tod. Foxes aren't common pets, but nowadays more and more people own them. Slade's distrust of Tod messing around with his chickens is understandable, but hunting someone's pet fox would be unthinkable nowadays.
Tod, oh so much. His mother is killed when he's only a baby, he gets chased and shot at by Chief and Slade, respectively (twice!), Copper first disowns him and then wants him dead, Tweed drops him off in a wildlife preserve for his own safety leaving him without survival skills and a friend in the world, not to mention his neighbor is a cantankerous Bad Ol' Badger. Things get a lot better after he meets Vixey, though... then worse... then better.
Tweed as well; it's made very clear that Tod is her only source of companionship, and that it's just as heartbreaking for her as it is for him, if not more so, when she has to Shoo the Dog to protect him.
The novel:
Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: It's a Mature Animal Story, right? Well, for some readers the best they can say is that the two title characters come across as intentionally written as very alien in their thinking since they're animals that don't have human morals, and at worst they come across as a pair of Villain Protagonistswho are hostile to each other. The other characters are either, again, animals without human morals, or humans seen through animal eyes: mysterious, unpredictable, and seemingly all-powerful. The final chapters rail against urbanization to the point of Author Tract and careen headlong into a massive Downer Ending. It was so dark that some readers couldn't sympathize with even the eponymous characters, and that's one reason Disney decided to give their film adaptation a complete overhaul for all characters.
Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Some find that the title characters are too unlikeable to feel too bad about their world being destroyed.
Values Resonance: In contrast if you have any kind of pro-nature and pro-rural (or called anti-urbanization views), Mannix's last two chapters are this big time. It can be very jarring how the setting of the previous chapters has become so more less natural due to the seemingly never stopping reach of human dominion. The last two chapters stand out in contrast heavily to the previous chapters which had depicted both animal and human hunting as a romantic duel of opposing beings. This even extends to trapping which is depicted in a very personal dynamic as the hunter tries to cleverly outsmart the animal while Tod becomes fascinated with figuring out how to trip them without being caught. When the rabies epidemic hits, the humans simply lay out poison that from the animals' perspective completely slaughters entire portions of the ecosystem in an impersonal manner and the only time a human starts to care, is of course once a human child accidentally eats the poison. Which follows with an increased human desire to just plain exterminate the foxes in heavy contrast to the more sporting and/or utilitarian minded goals that were the norm in the first part of the book.
that Disney's film could also be seen as an adaptation of a more obscure book titled The Ballad of the Belstone Fox which does center around a fox and a hound who become friends, then enemies, and reconcile in the end.