Fanfic / The Redemption of Gideon Grey

Judy and Nick are given a task that seems more like a fun getaway: providing a little security for the annual Bunnyburrow Fall Harvest Festival. But things aren't as peaceful as they may now be in Zootopia, and the two cops are thrust into a brand new caper - solved with the help of a certain pastry-baking fox from Judy's past.

—Summary from Archive of Our Own and FanFiction.Net

The Redemption of Gideon Grey is a Zootopia Fan Fic written by YFWE, found on both Archive of Our Own and FanFiction.net.

Continuing about a year after the Night Howler Incident, ZPD Officers Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde are outsourced to Judy’s hometown when plans for inclusivity in an annual festival causes controversy among Bunnyburrow’s conservative population. As the Tri-Burrow County’s predators struggle for their involvement (or uninvolvement), the Reformed Bully Gideon Grey does what he can to make amends for the trouble he caused the town as a child.

The Fan Fic is an early Fan Work for the Zootopia fandom, debuting less than a month after the film’s release; it is divided into a little over 100,000 words across sixteen chapters posted from March 28th^(FF)/April 1st^(AO3) to September 9th^(AO3)/12th^(FF), 2016.

It has a Sequel in the form of The Dead Waltz. While the original is a Completed Fic, the sequel has been Left Hanging on the penultimate chapter since June 2023, which was after a Series Hiatus since 2019.

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The Redemption of Gideon Grey contains examples of:

• Abusive Parents: When Belle Thumper’s father found out she had a schoolyard crush on Mike Robins, he hit her over the head for it and removed her from school after she showed up with a welt the next day.
• Adaptational Villainy
  • In Zootopia, an unnamed rabbit was a Bit Character bullied by young Gideon. In Redemption, Belle Thumper has grown into a bigoted adult with a hatred of foxes unable to believe Gideon has become a Reformed Bully.
  • Travis the ferret was just The Bully’s Cowardly Sidekick from elementary school in the movie. In this story, he’s a Schoolyard Bully All Grown Up; one willing to enact terrorism to uphold Urban Segregation.
• Addled Addict: Travis’ parents are implied to be these by Constable Clover’s comment that they’re “scrapping some of that junk out there in their backyard for stuff other than cash.”
• Adjective Animal Alehouse: Not a bar but a café. The Icy Koala is the only coffee shop in Bunnyburrow (and run by a koala of course).
• Alliterative Family
  • Belle Thumper and her siblings, Blake, Bernice, and Billy. This naming is intergenerational, as their mother and father are named Benny and Beatrice, and their paternal uncle on the festival board is also named Barney.
  • Gideon Grey’s father and grandfather are similarly named George and Gabriel Grey. There is also a separate alliteration between his mother and brother, Clara and Colton.
  • Judy’s paternal grandparents are named Roy and Ruth Hopps.
• Alliterative Name
  • Gideon Grey’s name is alliterative like his father and grandfather.
  • A Delinquent jaguar named Jarrod is from the Serengeti Springs neighborhood.
• And This Is for...: Belle Thumper dedicates a throw in her litter’s Produce Pelting of Gideon to Judy Hopps, arguing that she would’ve done it herself had she not gone off and became a City Rabbit. This is a Wrong Assumption however, as Judy has forgiven Gideon and is grateful for him giving her her "Eureka!" Moment on the night howlers.
• Animal Disguise: Travis’ Gang of Bullies disguise themselves with fox masks In the Hood to terrorize the prey festivalgoers.
• Ape Shall Never Kill Ape: Averted for Mike Robins, as he found pleasure in punching Gideon unconscious and hitting Nick with his truck.
  Mike: Took out two foxes that night – two mangy, prey-lovin' foxes. Best I've felt in a while.
• April Fools' Day: Averted. The first chapter was posted on April 1st, 2016, but not even the Produce Pelting and Pie in the Face made it Crack Fic material.
• Armed with Pepper Spray: Travis’ gang disperses a bunch of Fox Away spray on a crowd of prey at the festival.
• Armor-Piercing Question: Nick starts to open up to Judy on his feelings by asking what she thinks her parents think their relationship is, to which Judy nearly stops dead in traffic at his seriousness. She breaks from a Stunned Silence only to say “I don’t know”, with an incoming call from her dad being able to Change the Uncomfortable Subject.
• Arms Dealer: Mentioned in an example from Constable Clover when he explains the Blackmail he has on parents of Travis’ gang members. Amy Growlett’s parents have been running illegal firearms in and out of Zootopia for years.
• The Atoner: Gideon is deeply regretful of the harm he caused his peers as a child and how he perpetuated the Foul Fox stereotype due to his identity issues, which he attempts to remedy by improving the prey’s opinions of predators and contribute to society.
• Attention Whore: Skip Clover turns into a Large Ham when he gets to serve as Bunnyburrow’s master of ceremonies. Clover enjoys his position so much, he’s more than willing to frame the upstart Reformed Criminal Carl Pumaski when he suspects the panther wants to take his position.
• Basement-Dweller: Downplayed. Gideon moved out of his parents’ house at 21, but he lives in a cottage still within the property of the family farm which he still tends to.
• Batter Up!: When Travis and his Gang of Bullies arrive to burn the rule sheets given to the predators at the festival, Mike Robins (a Foul Fox) and Jarrod Catstantino (a Delinquent jaguar) are equipped with ones for intimidation. The narration lampshades how they’re probably not for Mailbox Baseball, but young Jarrod is quick to explain they were just for show when Officer Wilde sneaks up and takes them.
• Bear Hug
  Then came the much-anticipated meeting of Bonnie Hopps and her daughter’s co-worker. A hug was in order, and so it came. Nick felt as though his ribs would never be the same.
• Berserk Button: Nick has a talk with Gideon on theirs after the latter guilts himself over a Moment of Weakness.
  • To Gideon; threatening his friends. When Travis suggests giving Judy another scar with the glass from his broken windows, Gideon loudly growls at him in public, leaving both of them feeling that Travis won their “friendly chat”.
  • To Nick; insulting his mother. He tells Gideon of an incident five years back when he went drinking with Finnick, wherein he was Blinded by Rage and clawed a speciest pig for disparaging her with Foul Fox stereotypes.
• Big "NO!"
  He barely had the time to utter a quick, staccato "No!" before Judy pumped a dart into his arm.
• Bigot with a Badge
  • Belle Thumper favorably envisions Judy Hopps to be one, believing the Righteous Rabbit readily targets foxes in Zootopia as revenge for what Gideon did to them as children. Belle finds out she’s Wrong Genre Savvy when Judy returns to Bunnyburrow, bringing her fox coworker with her.
  • Constable Clover is the trope Played Straight, as he conspires to keep the predators segregated from the Bunnyburrow Fall Harvest Festival, conspiring with similarly xenophobic predators to drive the wedge between the town’s folk.
• Blackmail: Constable Clover has several predators from across the county under his thumb because of the evidence he has on their parents’ illegal activity. When confronting the constable, Judy intentionally guesses wrong that Clover was blackmailing them with their records to get him to smugly admit he was using their parents.
• Bookends: The story starts and ends with Gideon Grey making a delivery to 133 Whitehare Lane, the address of the Thumpers.
• Brick Joke: When Stu welcomes Nick to the Hopps home, Nick deadpans that he’ll use the opportunity to Plunder the place before clarifying it’s a joke. One day and two chapters later, Nick’s openness to Judy on his enjoyment of Bunnyburrow has her consider if he actually has stolen something.
  Stu: Stu Hopps. It’s a please to finally let the great Nick Wilde into our home.
  Nick: Just wait ‘til I steal all your silver. (Beat) Kidding! Kidding. Pleasure, sir.
  Stu: This guy!
  […]
  Nick: Y'know, Carrots, I'm… really happy I'm here, actually.
  Judy: Wait, did you really steal my parents' silver?
• Broken Pedestal: When Judy Hopps was twelve, she look up to her hometown’s constable and tried to get an apprenticeship under him. Now an adult in her mid-twenties, she uncovers Skip Clover as a Dirty Cop and arrests him for an Urban Segregation conspiracy.
• Broken-Window Warning: Gideon comes home to find that all six windows on his house have been smashed in, a note tied to a rock each. Reading the note confirms it wasn’t by the Thumpers that attacked him earlier, but grievanced predators.
• Can't Hold Her Liquor: Judy got a bit nauseous when she, Nick, and Gideon were sharing some of his grandfather’s moonshine. The foxes consider whether rabbits are lightweights or if it’s a testament to Gabriel Grey’s brew. Gideon helps her to the bathroom, but she manages to keep it down.
  Nick: Did the porcelain god get involved?
• Calming Tea: Gideon drinks tea to calm himself, something influenced on him by his tea-loving mother. While he hated it when he was younger, his efforts in becoming a Reformed Bully grew him accustomed to the taste, to the point where he drinks a cup at least once every morning.
• Car Fu: Nick is bedridden when a truck hits him on a country road after dark. It turns out to have been a targeted attack that could easily be labeled an accident.
• Cell Phones Are Useless: Largely Averted. Taking Judy for example, she uses hers to communicate with her coworkers and family, report to Chief Bogo on the case, and use its flashlights during investigations.
  • Exploited when Constable Clover barricades the county police in a room in the schoolhouse‘s basement where there’s no cell phone or radio reception.
• The Chase: Judy runs into the forest after Constable Clover when he becomes a Liar Revealed.
• Chekhov's Gunman
  • Judy’s cousin Avery picks up her and Nick when they first arrive in Bunnyburrow. Eight chapters later, he’s also the one to rescue Nick when he finds him as the victim of a hit-and-run.
  • Edmond, a rabbit volunteer who fetches a fire extinguisher for a tiny trash fire Constable Clover simply Trampled Underfoot. He ends up overhearing Clover scheming with Travis and reports The Reveal to Judy.
• Cleaning Up Romantic Loose Ends: Belle Thumper stopped trying to pursue Interspecies Relationships with foxes years before the story, after her father Benny hit her over the head and pulled her out of school.
• Cliffhanger
  • Chapter 6 ends on two; one each for Judy and Gideon’s point of views. Judy is informed that Carl Pumaski has been arrested for the theft of festival vendors’ stock, while Gideon runs into Travis at the coffee shop.
  • Chapter 7 ends with Travis, who has arrived in front of city hall and his gang in pickup trucks, starting a trash fire out of protest.
  • Chapter 9 ends with Judy beginning to question Pumaski on what he knows about Travis.
  • Chapter 11 ends with Nick talking a walk down a country road, at night, oblivious to a truck veering from the opposite lane to run him down.
  • Chapter 14 ends with Belle Thumper confronting Judy and Gideon, assuring them "[they’re] gonna have a little chat, y'hear?"
  • Chapter 15 ends with a festival assistant telling Judy he found Constable Clover harboring Travis and his missing gang on his property, along with cans of unknown substances.
• Completed Fic: The final chapter was uploaded to Archive of Our Own on September 9th, 2016 (September 12th on FanFiction.Net).
• Continuation Fic: This story takes place after the three-months-long events of the movie. By Judy and Nick’s respective recollections, it has been over a year since they first met, but less than one since Bellweather’s arrest.
• Cooking Duel: Discussed by Gideon when he tells Judy how cooking Reality Shows inspire yet confuse him.
  “Yeah, they can get silly, and sometimes there’s drama for no reason, but boy, I’ll tell ya, the stuff they can accomplish, it’s mindblowin’.”
• Contrived Coincidence
  • At the festival, Nick recognizes a cheetah selling vitamin water as a regular from his days as a pawpsicle salesman. His and Judy’s conversation with Scott and his wife reveals that a different curfew had been issued to the predator vendors than the prey.
  "Ayyyy, it's the pawpsicle fox! Honey, honey, Amy, this guy!"
• Correction Bait: Judy guesses that Travis’ gang was working with Constable Clover because he had blackmail on them, prompting Clover to smugly correct her, correcting that he was lauding evidence against their parents. Judy smirks and admits she knew that already, as she found the blackmail in the county jail’s archives.
• Cruel Coyotes: Amy Growlett, the Token Female of Travis’ gang. A Schoolyard Bully All Grown Up, she’s more than willing to lash out whether by intimidating festivalgoers with trash fires, or gleefully ambushing Gideon with a Tap on the Head, or participating in gassing a crowd of prey with pepper spray.
  • Implied with her parents as well, as there’s damning evidence that they’re both Arm Dealers that have been smuggling firearms in and out of Zootopia for years.
• Dirty Cop: The Sheriff of Bunnyburrow, Constable Skip Clover. He’s more than willing to Blackmail minorities to get them all banned from the city festivities he curates, and is confident his reputation will make anyone saying otherwise The Cassandra.
• Double-Meaning Title: Chapter 4’s title, “A Stone’s Throw”. It refers to how Gideon’s cottage is a stone’s throw away from his parents, as well as the stones thrown through its windows.
• Dramatic Shattering: When Gideon growls at Travis in the coffee shop, the latter is startled into dropping his mug on the floor. This helps draw everyone’s attention in the shop to them, guilting Gideon for his very public Moment of Weakness.
• Dramatic Unmask
  • Defied when Constable Clover catches one of the masked predators attacking the festivalgoers, an attempt at distancing him from his minions that Judy has seen through. She bluffs him to unmask the predator to prove Travis and his gang weren’t smuggled into town, but Clover refuses with the valid justification that doing so would “[loosen his] grip on [the] wrongdoer” and risk their escape.
  • Played Straight when Judy sees that the mammal that helped her take down Clover wasn’t one of the county police but one of the masked predators. The figure removes the fox mask, revealing himself to be Travis.
• Easing into the Adventure: The story starts with Gideon making a delivery to a customer.
• Enemy Mine: In a mix of this and Blackmail, Constable Clover recruits Travis and his gang to sabotage the Fall Harvest Festival and get predators banned from attendance as all of them believe they shouldn’t fraternize with the prey.
  • The instability of this leads one between Judy and Travis, as the ferret ends up giving her the opening to subdue and arrest Clover once he has enough of the constable’s machinations.
• Engineered Public Confession: Judy’s specialty. She uses her trusted carrot pen yet again to record Constable Clover’s Just Between Her and Him, prodding him into confirming or correcting her suspicions.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Half the reason Travis and his gang work with Constable Clover is because he’s Blackmailing them over their parents’ various crimes to get their compliance.
• Everything Is Racist: Bunnyburrow had to retire their mechanical bulls from the Fall Harvest Festival a few years back because some bulls complained.
• Evil Gloating
  • Travis taunts Gideon by insinuating he and his Gang of Bullies were the ones who broke all of his house’s windows the day prior, mentioning how the glass could be a good tool to cut Judy Hopps’ face up with.
  • When Judy details how she found him out, Constable Clover gloats how easy it was for him to blackmail Travis’ gang and manipulate the town, and how his authority will have all of Bunnyburrow believe him over her. The fact his gloating was Caught on Tape and an eavesdropping ferret turns on him says different.
  • Mike relishes in telling Gideon that not only did he punch him unconscious, he was the one that ran Nick over, and how he’s confident Clover will clear him of culpability.
• Exactly Exty Years Ago: When the ban on predators attending the Bunnyburrow Fall Harvest Festival is lifted, the town is anticipating their one hundred and fiftieth such celebration.
  Nick: Ah, they sure picked a banner year to let us undesirables in.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Chapter 3, titled “The Reunion of One Gideon Grey, Fox, with One Judy Hopps, Rabbit”. Same with Chapter 1, “Prologue”, being the prologue.
• Fighting Back Is Wrong: The Thumper siblings are a case of this when they accost Gideon. They never stood up to him like Judy did as children, only confronting Gideon over a decade after the fact when they’re all adults and Gideon a Reformed Bully. Their Produce Pelting is especially cruel as Gideon was Lured into a Trap when he thought they were giving him a chance.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing
  • Gideon walks past fields of tomato plants as he delivers two cherry pies to Mrs. Thumper. It’s those very crops that the Thumper siblings begin Produce Pelting him with a moment later.
  • Nick recalls Finnick’s advice that a lamppost burning out overhead is a Portent of Doom. He gets hit by a truck a few steps after.
• Flashback
  • Chapter 7 “Red” starts with a Pseudo-Canonical flashback to young Gideon and Travis after the former’s fight with Judy.
  • Chapter 12 “On Settling Down” has in the middle of it a flashback of Nick visiting his mother sometime after becoming a police officer, wherein she talks with her son on his lack of a significant other.
  • Chapter 14 “County Line Road” starts with a flashback to Judy to back when she was a few weeks shy of turning seventeen, visiting Constable Clover to try and convince him into giving her an internship for the summer break.
• Flat Scare: Nick exploits the bigotry of the protesters blocking the city hall by playing up how much of a Foul Fox he must be, ergo it wouldn’t be Out of Character for him to go “BOO!”… scaring the crowd into parting and letting him and Judy through, which she half-scolds him for.
  “Psh. I gave ‘em the international sign of a spooky ghost,” he scoffed. “No harm in that.”
• Flintstone Theming: The author Lampshades doing this in a note at the end of Chapter 2, also citing a point in said chapter where they found it wasn’t necessary.
  Side note: OK, so I totally have been trying to change the names of different things as they come up in order to seem fitting to an animal-run world rather than a human one, but come on, Yelp would totally be called the same thing in Zootopia. Wonder if Nick's old pawpsicle biz was on there.
• Foil
  • Judy Hopps serves as a Foil to two characters…
    • …to Belle Thumper. Both were bullied as children by Gideon Grey and held animosity for it years after the Carrot Day Festival. Over the events of the movie, Judy became aware of and overcame her biases and has forgiven Gideon by the time of the story’s start. Belle, however, never saw any reason to change her opinion of Gideon or other predators, becoming one of the anti-pred protesters that got Judy and Nick outsourced to Tri-Burrow County to help with festival security. They’re not too different after all, as both rabbits have some hidden romantic feelings for foxes, and Belle has a Heel Realization of her own when Constable Clover becomes a Liar Revealed and Gideon Takes the Bullet for her.
    • …to Skip Clover. While Judy is a Righteous Rabbit who is Living Out a Childhood Dream to be a police officer, Skip Clover was appointed constable out of necessity, and is blatantly more interested in curating Bunnyburrow’s festivities than policing the law. Especially since he’s a Dirty Cop with Good Publicity using the position to keep himself in the spotlight and the predators out.
  • Gideon Grey and Travis Ferris. Initially The Bully and his Cowardly Sidekick, the two’s falling out spurned differing ideologies.
    • Due to his mother’s intervention and psychiatric help, Gideon is a Reformed Bully who regrets the harm he caused as a child and has become a Sweet Baker with hopes of adding something constructive to Bunnyburrow’s culinary scene and interspecies relations. His self-doubt problems still lingering despite the help he has, he is adamant he Must Make Amends and that every Rejected Apology is all his fault.
    • Left to lead their childhood Gang of Bullies, Travis is a Schoolyard Bully All Grown Up with little regret for anything aside from losing Gideon as a friend. Making living wages with his parent’s scrapyard and the occasional side job, he sees no reason for him or any predators to try and appeal to the world’s predominantly prey population; he considers Gideon a Category Traitor for trying to defy the Foul Fox trope, and he is willing to work with a rabbit to keep their species out of each other’s way (but he draws the line somewhere).
  • Compared to the original film, Leodore Lionheart and Carl Pumaski. Both are large pantherine predators of fair reputation in their respective cities only to get Put on a Prison Bus in the middle of the plot because of a diminutive rival’s scheming, however they differ from there.
    • Mayor Lionheart is a lion who was in a notable political position; one in which (as a self-professed Well-Intentioned Extremist) he hid a burgeoning crisis to keep himself in office, and is still imprisoned at the end for the abuses committed in his position.
    • Carl Pumaski is a puma who is a repeat offender that has turned his life around, started a family, and inherited a car dealership. He’s only just getting into the political scene by trying to get on Bunnyburrow’s festival board, which he is only doing to give the city’s predator population a voice. For this he is framed and jailed, but is freed once his innocence is proven.
• Foreshadowing: Lengthier examples than the Five-Second Foreshadowing listed above.
  • Gideon notices a dent in Mike Robins’ truck. A monologue with Mike reveals that he was the one to run Nick Wilde over two days prior.
• Foul Fox
  • Exploited by Nick Wilde, as per canon. Not even minutes after setting foot in Bunnyburrow, Nick confronts some protestors outside the city hall on their preconceptions of predators, hammily playing upon their belief in the trope before scaring them out of his and Judy’s way with a Flat Scare.
  • Also per canon, Gideon Grey was one before becoming a Reformed Bully. Some people continue to see him as one, especially his past victims, their families, or the café patrons that witnessed his outburst at Travis.
  • Played Straight with Mike Robins, as he is a prey-hating Sadist that is amused that a rabbit ever had a crush on him and got beat by her father for it, tried to kill a police officer of his own species using his truck, and engaged in terrorism with chemical weapons to further predator-prey segregation.
• Furniture Blockade: Tri-Burrow County Police gets barred in the schoolhouse’s basement by a chair at the handle.
• The Ghost: Nick recalls a few relevant times he had Finnick the fennec, but he never directly appears at any point in the story; the closest is a quote to Nick of how it’s a Portent of Doom if a streetlight burns out above you.
• Gang of Bullies: Travis wasn’t Gideon’s only Satellite Character as a child, as a few other delinquent predators hung out with them. Despite Gideon’s mother forcing him to cut ties with them, the gang is still together All Grown Up now under Travis.
• Gun Nut: One of the Hopps’ neighbors are trap shooting hobbyists, so much so that they have a gaudy mailbox made to look like a handgun.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: It is by his own arrogance that Constable Skip Clover is found out to be conspiring with Travis and his Gang of Bullies to sabotage the festival, by carelessly leading the county police into a trap with instructions that could be traced back to him, as well as harboring his co-conspirators on his property. He digs himself deeper when he boasts in a Just Between You and Me with Judy how it was easy to manipulate Travis’ gang and that he has the influence to get away with it. He is unaware that his Engineered Public Confession is Caught on Tape and being eavesdropped on by his Dragon.
• Hopeless Suitor: As teenagers, rabbit Belle Thumper had a crush on fox Mike Robins. While she never confessed, she was obvious enough for Mike and her father to find out; for which her father Benny struck her over and Mike mocks her behind her back for ever harboring feelings for a fox.
• Hypocrite: A rabbit who beat his teenage daughter for having a crush on a fox admonishes a fox, saying criminals never change their ways.
• Hypocritical Humor: When Judy’s youngest sister asks Nick why he isn’t as big as Gideon, he explains to the toddler that it’s because of differing lifestyle… in a way Judy has to comment on.
  Nick: Ahhh, the Pie Guy. Well, look, when you’re eating pastries all day, I suppose you’ll gain a few more pounds than someone as in-shape as I.
  Judy: Nick, you still can’t run a mile without throwing up.
  Nick: …diet is everything, sweetheart.
• Insecure Love Interest: When Nick sees Gideon help Judy when she Can't Hold Her Liquor, he feels inadequacy to the country fox. He considers that if Judy would be interested in a fox, the larger, stronger, and softer Gideon would probably be the best option for Judy and for Gideon.
• Instant Sedation: The Big Bad conks out pretty fast when hit by a Tranquillizer Dart.
• Ironic Echo: Benny Thumper is of the opinion that criminals — the unspoken implication being “predator” — are Beyond Redemption. Constable Clover reveals to Judy that he shares the same sentiment.
• Irony: Benny Thumper insists that criminals never change their ways… saying this to Nick and Gideon. Skip Clover agrees.
• Joke and Receive: When Gideon mentions that he didn’t have a good experience with Belle and her siblings when he had them as customers, Nick jokingly asks if they booed him off stage while Produce Pelting; Gideon admits that he was right with the latter half.
• Jurisdiction Friction: Defied. The ZPD outsources Judy and Nick to Bunnyburrow’s sheriff department to assist in festival security.
• Lemony Narrator: The story has moments of this when Nick and Judy aren’t snarking with each other.
• Literal Metaphor: Bunnyburrow’s Mayor Cotton keeps all the doors and windows to the Bunnyburrow City Hall open as a literal representation of her open-door policy. Her secretary isn’t fond of the noise it lets in though.
• A Lizard Named "Liz"
  • The Catstantinos, a jaguar family from northern Bunnyburrow.
  • Skip Clover, the rabbit constable that’s more interested in managing Bunnyburrow’s harvest festivals.
  • Travis Ferris, a ferret.
  • Trevor Hornsby, the goat receptionist at Bunnyburrow City Hall.
  • Violet Lamberson, the sheep in charge of drafting the festival’s rules and regulations.
  • Larry Goatsby and Carrie Woolington, a goat and sheep pair from Bleatonton that are acquaintances of Stu’s.
  • Carl Pumaski, a panther car dealer from Bunnyburrow’s gated feline community.
  • The Thumpers, another rabbit family down the road from the Hoppses.
• Lured into a Trap: The story starts with Gideon making a pie delivery to the Thumpers only for it to be one. He didn’t have time to discern whether the note telling him to Duck! meant the bird or the action before he gets pelted with a tomato.
• Mailbox Baseball: Discussed by the narration when two of Travis’ lackeys menace with a pair of baseball bats, noting the absence of any mailboxes in the scene to show an Aversion of the trope.
• Mayor Pain: Averted. Mayor Cotton is a kindly, welcoming doe that cares for Bunnyburrow’s residents, both predator and prey. She’s been optimistic for Gideon’s Heel–Face Turn since her days as the school superintendent, and keeps town hall’s doors open as a Literal Metaphor of her open-door policy.
• Meaningful Name: At one point, Judy recalls a honey badger named Melissa that worked records at the precinct; her name literally meaning “honeybee” in Ancient Greek (μέλισσα).
• Minority Police Officer: Like Judy Hopps, Constable Skip Clover is one of the few (if any) rabbits in the Tri-Burrow County Police. Since Judy was young, a majority of the department has been canines, with a prominence of coyotes in the present.
• Mistaken for Racist: When Judy and Nick arrive at Bunnyburrow’s town hall for their meeting with Mayor Cotton. The goat receptionist pleads for them to go thinking that the Torches and Pitchforks outside protesting predators from the Fall Harvest Festival are trying to come inside again, only to recognize them as the extra security.
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: After eavesdropping on Officer Hopps’ and Constable Clover’s Just Between You and Me moment, Travis jumps Clover for his Evil Gloating over his power over his and his gang, giving Judy the opportunity to Tranquillizer Dart the Dirty Cop and arrest him.
• Moment Killer
  • Downplayed when Stu gives a call to Judy, who is just starting to contemplate her and Nick’s Relationship Labeling Problems when the latter bring it up.
  • Bonnie is one too, startling Nick and Gideon just before the former was going to admit his feelings for Judy.
• Named After First Installment: The series on Archive On Our Own, containing The Redemption of Gideon Grey and its Sequel The Dead Waltz, is titled The Redemption Series.
• Named by the Adaptation
  • The unnamed rabbit girl from Zootopia’s Gideon Grey scene is named Belle Thumper.
  • Gideon’s former ferret lackey, Travis, is provided the surname Ferris (a case of a A Lizard Named "Liz" and Rhyming Names).
• Never Learned to Read: Discussed by Gabriel Grey, as he makes a few comments whether rabbits can read or not. When his son and grandson scold him for his comments, he argues that they say the same for foxes.
• Never the Obvious Suspect: Judy is doubtful of Carl Pumaski’s guilt when he is arrested, as a Reformed Criminal who isn’t content with the Bunnyburrow Fall Harvest Festival suddenly being found with a supply of merchandise stolen from it seems like too simple of a conclusion.
• Non-Appearing Title: The work’s title The Redemption of Gideon Grey is said or written at any point in the story itself. The same applies to these chapter titles, as they do not appear in their respective chapters:
  • Chapter 1 “Prologue”
  • Chapter 2 “The Chief’s Office”
  • Chapter 3 “The Reunion of One Gideon Grey, Fox, with One Judy Hopps, Rabbit”
  • Chapter 6 “The Rules”
  • Chapter 12 “On Settling Down”
  • Chapter 13 “This Must Be the Place”
• O.C. Stand-in: Belle Thumper is implied to be the unnamed rabbit girl Gideon bullied alongside Shiela and Gareth in the movie.
• Official Kiss: Double Subverted. When Nick returns on the topic of his and Judy’s Relationship Labeling Problems to tell her to forget he asked, Judy gives him an impulsive "Shut Up" Kiss… after which they awkwardly part ways to talk with the mayor and the county police, continuing to avoid the conversation for a while later. It isn’t until after everything else is settled (at the second to last scene) that the two decide to start a relationship, marked by Nick giving Judy a kiss on the forehead.
• Offscreen Karma: While both Skip Clover and Mike Robins’ defeats and arrests are shown, Travis and the rest of his gang are mentioned to haven been apprehended as well by the time Mr. Pumaski is released.
• One-Steve Limit:
  • Averted in some cases…
    • One of Stuart and Bonnie’s many children is Stuart Jr.
    • Two Bit Characters are named Amy. One is a cheetah whose husband is an acquaintance of Nick, and the other is a Cruel Coyote in Travis’ gang.
  • …Played Straight with others.
    • Two Original Characters — Mayor Cotton the rabbit and Sharla the koala barista — were created by YFWE for the story, but two canon characters of the same name — Judy’s niece Cotton and childhood sheep friend Sharla — make no appearance.
• One-Word Title: Chapter 1 “Prologue” and Chapter 7 “Red”.
• Original Character: There are quite a few to populate Bunnyburrow, whether they be Bit Characters or not.
  • Gideon’s family are minor characters. His parents are named George and Clara, and he has a younger brother named Colton, with their paternal grandfather Gabriel also living with them.
  • Bunnyburrow’s law enforcement is shown in the form of Constable Skip Clover and his Posse, with the police of the Tri-Burrow County being a pack of coyotes led by Officer Perkins.
  • Travis wasn’t Gideon’s only lackey as The Bully, as he still runs the old gang; the named members of which include the fox Mike Robins, weasel Roland Weiss, coyote Amy Growlett, and jaguar Jarrod Catstantino.
• Original Flavor: The Redemption of Gideon Grey is largely true to the original work, both in terms of its setting of a Deconstructed World of Funny Animals (albeit focused on Bunnyburrow and not Zootopia), and the plot following Judy and Nick in a Fair Play Who Dunnit. Specifically of an anti-predator conspiracy by a small prey mammal who turns out to be a Wolf in Sheep's Clothing that abuses their position as a public servant. The biggest differences are the Unresolved Sexual Tension between Judy and Nick, another plot thread giving Gideon Grey a Day in the Limelight, and three utterances of “damn” that make it marginally Ruder and Cruder.
• Out Sick: Nick is put out of commission when he gets hit by a truck in the Cliffhanger to Chapter 11. Fortunately, he was not injured critically, and was starting to get back on his feet within a couple of days.
• Passing the Torch
  • Bunnyburrow’s previous grand marshal of ceremonies held their role for forty long years before naming Skip Clover as their successor.
  • How Carl Pumaski acquired his car dealership three years prior; after rising to the rank of manager, he inherited the place when the owner retired.
• Pie in the Face: As Gideon is being run off the Thumpers’ farm, Blake and Belle take the cherry pies he delivered (stolen, as Gideon wasn’t left the promised payment but a note telling him to Duck!) and throw them into his delivery truck’s windshield as a “parting gift”. Gideon is grateful his mom convinced him to install wipers a few days prior. Ironically, the chapter that had this traditionally light-hearted trope was posted to AO3 on April Fools' Day.
• Plot Armor: Foxes, man.
  • Nick survives being hit by truck on an unlit country road, and is able to get out of bed to use the bathroom by himself within two days.
  • In a lower stakes case, Gideon Takes the Tranquilizer Dart for Belle Thumper. He doesn’t even get sedated, as the needle merely snagged on his shirt sleeve.
• Portent of Doom: Finnick is Agent Scully for everything except one thing; if a streetlamp goes out over you, it's a bad sign. Whether it be your cousin gets mugged by two polar bears or your stepdad crashes the family car. Nick remembers his friend’s advice when one burns out above him before he gets hit by a truck.
  "Bad omen, Nicky. Don't you forget it."
• Produce Pelting: When Gideon makes his first delivery to someone outside of the Hopps, their neighbor Mrs. Thumper, some of her children that he bullied in elementary begin throwing the tomatoes from their field at him. To dig the knife, they throw the unpaid-for pies he brought into his windshield as they chase him off their property.
  • Later on, when Gideon vaguely mentions the Noodle Incident around Judy and Nick, Nick lampshades the trope jokingly asking if the Thumpers booed him off stage and threw tomatoes. Gideon admits he’s not far off, and assures that he deserved it.
• Redemption Quest: Gideon is set out to apologize to the peers he bullied as a child, and to an extent, prey mammals for their fear of predators.
• Reformed, but Not Tamed: Despite becoming a Reformed Bully, Gideon has lingering anger issues, only now flaring up due to his protectiveness of his friends.
• Reformed, but Rejected: Some of Bunnyburrow doesn’t trust Gideon despite his Heel–Face Turn, Belle Thumper and her siblings being prime examples of the Xenophobic Herbivores, while Travis and the old gang resent him as a Collaborateur to prey.
• Relationship Labeling Problems
  • Nick and Judy have a few before confessing their feelings.
    • Nick gives Judy an Armor-Piercing Question on what her parents think of them, and what Judy thinks their relationship is. Judy is only able to respond with an “I don’t know”, leaving the two of them in silence before her father calls her.
    • A few hours later, Nick apologizes for putting Judy on the spot earlier, taking her uncertainty as her finding them Better as Friends. When he tries to part with a joke about meeting her high school boyfriend, Judy shuts him up with a kiss.
  • In the Flashback to Gideon and Travis after the former’s fight with Judy at the Carrot Day Festival, Travis asks if he and Gideon are friends or not; Gideon shrugs in affirmation but threatens to claw him like he did Judy if he “get[s] mushy or tell[s] anyone”.
• Shame If Something Happened: When Travis strikes a nerve with Gideon by bringing up the clawing incident with Judy, he finds that Gideon’s opinion of her has turned around and can be used against him.
  "Would be a shame if she got another scar somewhere else on her pretty little face. Maybe some of that glass from yer broken windows'll do the trick…"
• Sleepyhead: Nick seems to have a bit of a habit finding time to nap regardless of work hours.
  Nick: Good, because I need some shut-eye. We're just blowing through naptime today, aren't we?
  Judy: You mean the nap you take in the squad car when we're doing our rounds each afternoon that I don't tell the chief about?
  Nick: Those aren't documented in the daily paperwork, Carrots, so I challenge you to find some evidence.
• The Sheriff: Bunnyburrow’s constable, Skip Clover. Everyone in town knows that he does it out of necessity and prefers his role as an event organizer.
• Shout-Out: Once Judy and Nick get past the Torches and Pitchforks outside the town hall, Nick gives a parting One-Liner paraphrasing Hamlet.
  “Though I doth think they protest too much!” He elbowed Judy once he was inside, snickering. “Get it? You got the joke, right, Carrots? Because they’re protesting and… oh, hello!”
• Speak of the Devil
  • When Gideon makes a delivery to the Thumper family farm, he wonders whatever happened to the Thumper kids he bullied as a child, as they haven’t seen each other in years. Just seconds later, he finds out he’s been Lured into a Trap by the same quartet.
  • Stu quotes the trope when he hears Judy talking about Gideon with her siblings, saying he was just on a phone call with him.
• Species Title: Chapter 15 “The Big Bad Fox”.
• Spotting the Thread
  • When Constable Clover gives Travis his cause for arresting Carl Pumaski for theft, Judy notes the ferret exasperated wording of “Him, though?!". This was because despite knowing Clover would frame someone, Travis wasn’t told it would be one of the most respectable predators in town.
  • The Tri-Burrow County police get barricaded in the schoolhouse’s cellar with no cellphone reception. Judy notes that someone — such as the constable that sent them to check there — could have known about that property of the room.
• The Summation: Judy has the Liar Revealed by explaining where the evidence leads, later elaborated Just Between You and Me.
• Taking the Bullet: When Belle refuses to stand down to the newly-revealed liar Clover’s threats, the constable fires a Tranquilizer Dart at her to provide an escape. Gideon lunges to shield her, the both of them nearly avoiding the dart as the needle just barely snags on the fox’s shirt sleeve.
• Title Drop: While this doesn’t apply to the story’s title, ten of the sixteen chapters are titled off of a line within them.
  • Chapter 4 “A Stone’s Throw”.
  […] with minor help from his father and grandfather, plus a few of the cousins, Gideon would have his own home a stone’s throw from where the rest of his family stayed. […]
  • Chapter 5 “Nothing to Something”.
  Gideon: “When I look at what I got, I think about all the possibilities in this world, and how even I could make stuff, build from nothing to something, make my own way.”
  • Chapter 7 “Red”.
  Red.
  • Chapter 8 “Down to the Wire”.
  "Down to the wire," muttered Nick.
  • Chapter 9 “A Fox Thing”.
  "I'm with you there," agreed Gideon with an enthusiastic nod. "Maybe it's a fox thing."
  • Chapter 10 “House Call”.
  Nick: "Your ol' friend Nick's got a house call to make."
  • Chapter 11 “A Different Animal”.
  But Nick was, well, a different animal.
  • Chapter 14 “County Line Road”. Thrice, actually.
  County Line Road, followed by Travis, and then trees.
  County Line Road did just as its name suggested, and the county itself stretched a good while.
  They just needed to make it through to his delivery van, thrust the key into the ignition, maybe speed a bit down County Line Road, but Gideon did not expect the county cops to be patrolling raucous speedsters at that time of the weekend.
  • Chapter 15 “The Big Bad Fox”
  "All right," he growled, unsheathing his claws on both paws. "Come and get the big bad fox."
  • Chapter 16 “The Flowers Among the Weeds”
  Gideon: "I guess that's what we do, you know? We find the folks who are worth it through all the other stuff, the flowers among the weeds. You got someone like that, Hopps? Well, I don't know if you do or you don't, but if and when you do, don't lose sight of 'em, you got that?"
• Took a Level in Jerkass: In his sole scene in the film, Travis is the shorter yet smarter sycophant of the town bully. In here, he is a Schoolyard Bully All Grown Up who has seized control of the old Gang of Bullies, became The Dragon to a Dirty Cop, and engages in terrorism Armed with Pepper Spray.
• Torches and Pitchforks
  • Several of Bunnyburrow’s residents protest the mayor’s decision to allow predators to the Fall Harvest Festival, something that hasn’t been done once in the one hundred and fifty years since the festival’s founding.
  • Later, on the first day of the festival, Travis and his gang arrive to intimidate the city council over the restrictions placed on the predator vendors. After Judy talks Travis into discussing his problems with Mayor Cotton, Nick deconstructs the trope and how it doesn’t always have literal pitchforks.
  Nick: […] Then two mangy pickup trucks holding a couple highly pissed-off predators come rolling in wielding pitchforks – OK, no, not pitchforks, but they might as well have, you guys have those around here in bulk, right? Pitchfork store? Anyway, […]
• Trademark Favorite Food: Gideon’s mother has a fondness of Calming Tea, a partaking she has ingrained into her elder son. Mrs. Grey has an affinity to the Earl Grey blend, jesting that perhaps they’re related.
• Twirl of Love: Stu gives one to Judy to welcome her home… only to almost drop his daughter when he stops to clutch his back.
  “Oof, can’t do that anymore, can I?”
• Urban Segregation: As its name would imply, Bunnyburrow started off mostly with bunnies and a few other prey such as sheep and goats. The first foxes (such as Gideon’s great-grandfather) settled in enclaves outside the border, and even in the present, most of the felid population is confined to residential communities in the town’s north. While Bunnyburrow’s has the only schoolhouse in Tri-Burrow County that accepts both predators and prey, the Fall Harvest Festival was one of a few things that never allowed predators despite the several passing decades; but after a charge spearheaded by the Hopps, that year’s festival opened up to all species. This spurns an interspecies conspiracy to sabotage the festival so the two demographics will be divided again by next year.
• Villain Respect: When Constable Clover gets arrested by Judy Hopps, he praises her for finding him out and admits he missed an opportunity when he denied taking her on as a volunteer when she was twelve.
• Walking Spoiler: Most of the spoilers here conceal how Constable Skip Clover is the Big Bad with Travis as The Dragon.
• Wham Line
  • When Gideon goes through the Broken Window Warnings around his house, the last one’s message makes it clear that prey aren’t the only mammals against him: “Traitor”.
  • When Judy gets a call from her dad (before she can articulate what her and Nick’s relationship is) to inform her that someone has been arrest for the stolen commerce.
  “They found out who stole everything the other night. He's in custody. It's Carl Pumaski.”
  • When Edmond tells Judy what he saw Travis doing with another one of the festival’s staff.
  “He's got all these cans of something, I don't know what. And he's... Clover was there, Judy, they were just talking. It was them. I know it.”
  • When Mike Robins gloats to Gideon about assaulting him and Nick.
  “Took out two foxes that night – two mangy, prey-lovin' foxes.”
• When He Smiles: Nick is aware of how little he smiles rather than smirks, which is Played for Laughs when he looks at the selfie Judy took of them on the train to Bunnyburrow.
  He lingered on the photo a while longer, for there was something about it that was out of the ordinary.
  Nick was smiling.
  He would have to get Judy to delete that later.
• Whispered Threat: Blake Thumper gives one to Gideon while the latter chauffeurs Nick to question some residents. He tells the civilian fox that if he sets paw on his family’s farm again, his home's windows wouldn't be the only thing busted.
• Wicked Weasel: Travis seems to have Took a Level in Jerkass since he was a young ferret, as had Roland, a weasel in his gang.
• Work Info Title
  • The Fanfic’s title indicates that Gideon Grey is a main character and his attempts to better himself are a plot point.
  • The title of Chapter 3, “The Reunion of One Gideon Grey, Fox, with One Judy Hopps, Rabbit”, sure enough informs how the fox Gideon and the rabbit Judy will meet up with one another.
  • The title of Chapter 1, “Prologue”, alludes to there being a prologue.
• Wrong Assumption: Belle expects Judy to be impacted by Gideon’s bullying like how she had been, readily treating foxes as the criminals she was Taught to Hate, and would join in protest against allowing predators in the festival. It isn’t until she reunites with Judy that she realizes they don’t see the same.
• The X of Y: The title of the Fanfic is The Redemption of Gideon Grey. Same with Chapter 3’s title, “The Reunion of One Gideon Grey, Fox, with One Judy Hopps, Rabbit”.
• Xenophobic Herbivore: Both Played Straight and Inverted. Some of Bunnyburrow’s prey mammals are against accepting the predators from the county, just as some predators refuse to give any prey the chance to reject them as a Yank of the Dog’s Chain.