Film / Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022)

Saving the world takes a pair.

"Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers: The show that defined a generation, and turned two unknown chipmunks into international superstars. But as success took Chip 'n Dale to new heights, no one ever imagined it could all come crashing down. Torn by vanity. Is it possible that two living legends are destined to reunite?"

— Real Hollywood Stories, teaser trailer

Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers is a 2022 live action/animated adaptation of the 1989 animated series of the same name (sort of) starring John Mulaney and Andy Samberg as Chip 'n Dale respectively. It is directed by Samberg's Lonely Island collaborator Akiva Schaffer (Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, Hot Rod) with animation and VFX by Moving Picture Company (with assistance by Passion Pictures and Top Draw), and was released on Disney+ on May 20th, 2022.

The film portrays the chipmunks as being Animated Actors in a world not unlike that of Who Framed Roger Rabbit^note with Roger himself cameoing to boot where humans and cartoon characters coexist. 30 years after the conclusion of their animated series, Chip and Dale are brought back together when a former cast mate mysteriously vanishes. To save their friend from falling victim to The Mockbuster industry, the duo must put aside their differences and become the heroes they were on TV to save both their friend and their own friendship.

Additional cast members include KiKi Layne as Ellie Steckler, Will Arnett as the film's Big Bad Sweet Pete, Eric Bana as Monterey Jack, Flula Borg as DJ Herzogenaurach, Dennis Haysbert as Zipper, Keegan-Michael Key as Bjornson the Cheesemonger, Tim Robinson as Ugly Sonic, J. K. Simmons as Captain S. Putty, Chris Parnell as Dave Bollinari, and Seth Rogen as Bob the Viking. Original series cast members Tress MacNeille and Corey Burton also reprise their respective roles as Gadget/Chip's chipmunk voice and Zipper's buzzes/Dale's chipmunk voice.

Teaser Trailer, First Trailer

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Tropes:

• 555: There's a company called "Sweet Pete's Porta Potty" whose number is 213-555-0127.
• Actor Allusion: At one point, Bob the Dwarf runs into Pumbaa, Mantis, and B.O.B., all four of which are voiced by Seth Rogen.
• Affectionate Parody: Of the modern, reboot-riddled entertainment industry, with a specific focus on animation.
• Alien Catnip: Monterey Jack's cheese addiction from the original series returns.
• All for Nothing: In the backstory, Dale decided to break away from Chip and the Rescue Rangers to star in his own spy show Double O Dale, believing it wouldn't affect Rescue Rangers. Not only was Rescue Rangers cancelled, but Double O Dale didn't make it past the pilot stage.
• Ambiguous Situation: This film may very well take place in the same universe as Who Framed Roger Rabbit given both films show worlds where toons live together with live-action humans and many toons working as actors filming cartoons like live-action shows (complete with Roger himself appearing, Jessica being mentioned, and a bottle of Dip making a cameo), but this is never explicitly stated, and it's just as possible that Who Framed Roger Rabbit? could have been a film in this universe (maybe even a biopic).
• And I Must Scream: Bootlegging. The process involves kidnapping cartoon characters, mutating their bodies, and taking them overseas, forcing them to star in mockbusters. Their mouths are even erased so they literally can't scream, as demonstrated with Flounder. Thankfully it's later revealed the characters were actually all at the docks Sweet Pete works out of and the changes made to their bodies are reversible.
• Animated Actors: The premise of the film is that Chip and Dale are actors famous for their work on the original series. This applies to CG characters in live-action movies, stop-motion, and even hand puppetry.
• Arc Words: "The biggest risk is not taking any risks at all."
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: When Ellie is listing all the nefarious things The Mole has done for Sweet Pete, she ends with "And worst of all, you made me doubt myself", as if that is really his worst crime compared to... well, everything else.
• Artistic License – Biology: Sea creatures usually live longer when they are in the water, but Flounder was able to survive without being in the water when Monterey Jack explained about Flounder being held hostage.
• Artistic License – History: The film takes a few liberties with the history of the original Rescue Rangers show, and the characters of Chip and Dale themselves. Then again, this is a world where cartoon characters are real living beings instead of drawings on celluloid or a bunch of ones and zeroes made to look like 2D or 3D images.
  • The characters were originally created in 1943, and appeared in multiple Disney cartoons before and after the Rescue Rangers series. The film shows the pair meeting as children in 1982, and ignores their appearances outside of the show, which is treated as their first and only major foray into show business.
  • Blaster was shown as a member of Chip and Dale's high school, yet he would have likely been on TV at the time given that, in between the years of Chip and Dale's transition from school to Hollywood, Blaster would have joined the cast of his show in 1985 for the second season.
  • Dale keeps a map of the highest ratings for Rescue Rangers in 1991, recalling that it was the show's most successful year. The original series actually ended in November 1990, having only aired in first-run for 20 months.
  • The duo escape the bootlegging machine by recalling "Episode 121", apparently titled "Mission: Chippossible". No such episode exists, as the series only ran for sixty-five episodes.^note According to Tad Stones, this 65 episode rule was heavily enforced at Disney to ensure that they would be guaranteed to air on syndicated reruns. Very rarely were they extended beyond that, with Aladdin: The Series getting an extension due to its popularity. However, the three-digit number could be referring to "Season 1, Episode 21," therefore meaning the twenty-first episode of the whole series, which is a common way of numbering episodes in a series; then again, Season 1 of the real Rescue Rangers series only had 13 episodes, the 21st episode would've been in the second season, and that one was "Battle of the Bulge"—there's no "Mission: Chippossible" episode at all in the real-world series.
  • Similarly to Chip and Dale, many animated characters who are still highly beloved and popular, such as Lumiere, Flounder and Peter Pan, are presented as a bunch of a down on their luck has-beens.
  • On that same note, there is no mention of any of the sequels those characters appeared in, or the side projects (i.e. Kingdom Hearts, the Disney Junior shows), leaving it unclear if they were actually made in this universe, or if these characters were simply "recast" with lookalikes. This is particularly noteworthy in Lumiere's case, as the appearance of the live-action remake Disney characters (either as the originals having undergone CGI surgery or just new iterations altogether) suggest that Beauty and the Beast (2017) was made, but he still looks like he did in the original, implying he wasn't invited to participate or declined.
• Ascended Meme: Gadget at one point wears an outfit inspired by fan artist FtK's Gadget on Break Time meme.
• Ass in a Lion Skin: Chip and Dale, two chipmunks, disguise themselves as rat plumbers to sneak into a spa.
• Bait-and-Switch: In the beginning of the film during a convention as Dale was finishing with his vlog as a crowd was cheering for a famous Disney Afternoon character which seemed to be him. Then it is revealed that Baloo was whom they were cheering for.
• Bat Deduction: Ellie gives the name of an episode of the old show to Dale over the phone as a hint regarding her and Chip being kidnapped. Through this kind of deduction, he manages to identify the whole situation! While the exact method he took differed from what Ellie intended, he still arrives at the correct conclusion.
• Bathos: Invoked a number of times, most notably when Ellie narrates the LAPD losing a fight against provoked Nick Jr. characters after mistakenly raiding their studio as seriously as one would narrate a tragic accident.
• Bears Are Bad News: Sweet Pete's main henchman Jimmy is a polar bear. Subverted with Baloo, who is actually a nice actor as he happily greets the chipmunks at the fan convention without causing any trouble.
• Better than a Bare Bulb: So many things are lampshaded, such as Police Are Useless, Dale driving a human-sized car, and the Rescue Ranger airship's improbable flight ability.
• Beware the Nice Ones: According to Ellie, the otherwise kindly characters at Nick Jr. are not afraid to fight back if threatened, which is what happened when their studio was mistakenly raided due to a bad tip Ellie received while trying to find a missing Peppa Pig. One officer is stated to have been injured so badly by an unidentified member of the PAW Patrol that it rendered him sterile.
• Big Bad: Sweet Pete, formerly known as Peter Pan and currently the leader of the Valley Gang, known for his infamous crimes of extorting and forcing numerous Toons to make bootleg versions of their works, even attempting to do the same to the chipmunks when they tried to reason with him into settling off Monty's debt.
• Biting-the-Hand Humor:
  • Chip constantly rejecting the idea of the show getting a reboot is basically the audience's opinion of Disney's recent live-action lineup. Ironically, the last show that got a reboot, DuckTales (1987), was very well received.
  • A neighborhood based off of Main Street USA is depicted as a Wretched Hive where tons of illicit activity goes on beneath the seemingly wholesome surface.
  • The scene where the 2019 version of Pumbaa pokes fun at Bob's "weird, dead eyes", with it being made abundantly clear that he's calling the kettle black.
• Bland-Name Product: Fan Con is much like ComicCon.
• Blunt "No": When Dale asks Tigra if she'd like to spend time together outside of convention appearances, she responds with a casual decline so immediate he calls it "meanly fast".
• Bookends:
  • Chip and Dale defeat a Bootlegged/mutated Sweet Pete in the climax of the movie, in the same manner as their episode filming at the start, when they defeat Fat Cat.
  • Adding to that is Gadget invoking an "Everybody Laughs" Ending with a pun at the start and end.
• Both Sides Have a Point: While Chip wasn't wrong to point out that Dale's stunts are superficial and tasteless, Dale was also right to call out Chip for the latter's My Way or the Highway attitude.
• Brick Joke:
  • Ugly Sonic claims that he's been cast in a Reality TV show in which he works with the FBI. Dale doesn't seem to believe him. Come the climax, Ugly Sonic leads The Cavalry... in a FBI helicopter.
  • When Chip and Dale go to Main Street, Dale claims a doll-looking girl is in charge of Muppet fights. We later see her in the credits collecting bets for a Muppet fight.
• Brig Ball Bouncing: Played with; the last time we see Captain Putty, he is sitting in a prison cell, using the clay from his body to form balls that he throws at the wall. But since they're made of clay, they don't bounce back and instead get stuck to the wall.
• Carpet of Virility: Sweet Pete has a hairy chest underneath his outfit.
• Cel Shading: CGI is used to create most of the main traditionally animated toons in the movie.
• Chekhov's Gag: Ugly Sonic mentions that he has a new reality show where he rides along with the FBI. The end of the film has him call the FBI to capture Sweet Pete at the docks.
• Chekhov's Gun: A few:
  • One is the bad Rescue Rangers brand cologne Monty was using before his capture. While at the LAPD station following the failed sting at the docks, Chip and Dale suddenly realize they can smell it again and trace it to Officer Putty's office, where he and Ellie are, throwing suspicion onto both of them (though ultimately Ellie turns out to be innocent while Putty is the one on Sweet Pete's payroll).
  • Another is the last Rescue Rangers Pog, which saves Dale's life when he takes the Bullet Bill to save Chip.
• Circling Birdies: Invoked several times by the main characters. In the fictional episode of Rescue Rangers being filmed at the start of the film, Chip bops Dale on the head in order to summon a bunch of circling birds in order to distract Fat Cat. Towards the end of the film, Dale has to bonk Chip on the head to summon circling birds in order to distract Sweet Pete, who has been given the head of a cat from his own toon transformation machine. At this point, due to it being so late at night, the birds don't show up right away, since they're in bed, sleeping. We see one of them getting called in on their cell phone, reluctantly getting up to go, claiming it to be his job.
• Company Cross References:
  • Multiple in both trailers. Looking closely, one can see characters from Cars, Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid (1989), Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, The Lion King (2019), and nods to Pinocchio, Aladdin, Phineas and Ferb, and even Kingdom Hearts.
  • The chimera creature, the result of Sweet Pete's run-in with the malfunctioning Bootlegging machine, chasing Chip and Dale contains parts of multiple cartoon characters. It has Wreck-It Ralph's left arm; Peter Pan's torso; Woody's left leg; Shredder's right shoulder; the left leg of Bumblebee's incarnation of Optimus Prime; a Bill Blaster on his right arm mounted just like Megatron's Arm Cannon; and what looks like a cross between the heads of Felicia, Marie, and the Fat Cat from the original Rescue Rangers show.
  • Among the characters released following the climax are a large number of identifiable Disney characters: Bigfoot (wearing Fred Flintstone's iconic outfit), Phineas (seeming to have been merged with Go-Go Do-Do), Zazu, Abu, Launchpad (with Daffy Duck's face), Dipper (who appears to have had his art syle changed to one resembling The Smurfs), Jiminy Cricket, the Cheshire Cat (seeming to have been merged with Rajah), Kaa (with fronds of Randall Boggs), Elliot, Bambi (seeming to have been merged with Pegasus), Toby (with the body of one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), Tiana (in her frog form), and Bonkers. Monty is also revealed to have been bootlegged into a hybrid of both himself and Dumbo.
• Conveyor Belt o' Doom: When Chip and Dale first go through the bootlegging machine, it's presented like this. Chip comes out with a Snoopy ear.
• Cops Need the Vigilante: Ellie actively encourages Chip and Dale to find evidence on their own and assists them in an investigation that isn't sanctioned by the police force. This would ensure that any proof they find of Sweet Pete's criminal activity wouldn't be legal to use, so their bust at the warehouse would cause a huge problem. Especially egregious since part of her backstory is a failed sting operation and she should know better. This is later justified as Captain Putty was working with Sweet Pete, therefore would hinder any investigation under him.
• Covers Always Lie: The poster for the film used as the page image above greatly exaggerates the amount of action in the film. Chip and Dale never walk away from an explosion, never wear sunglasses, and the makeshift crossbows they're carrying are never used in the film at all. ^note Gadget wielded such a crossbow in the series episode "Adventures in Squirrelsitting", from which a brief clip was implemented into the show's opening sequence. Though this could be part of the film's satire.
• Cover Version: Post Malone does a cover of the Rescue Rangers theme. Amusingly, in the film itself, this comes after Chip notes how annoying it is how reboots always end with a serious cover of the theme song when fans really just want to hear the original.
• Crapsaccharine World: The neighborhood based off Main Street USA is depicted as a Wretched Hive where a lot of illicit dealings take place, despite having an extremely happy and cheerful exterior.
• Creator Cameo:
  • Director Akiva Schaffer has many small roles, such as a TV director and the voice of E.T.
  • The original show's creator Tad Stones appears as an executive.
• Critic-Proof: In-Universe. During the credits, a news article talks about the Rescue Rangers movie being a box office success, despite the critics asking "Who cares?".
• Delicious Distraction: At a couple points in the film, Chip and Dale summon some Circling Birdies in order to distract a villain who happens to be a cat. It works both times.
• Demographic-Dissonant Crossover: The film features cameos from some cartoons whose content would definitely fall outside the realm of the typical Disney family-friendliness, such as South Park, Big Mouth, and Beavis And Butthead.
• Demoted to Extra:
  • Despite Rescue Rangers being in the title, Monty, Gadget, and Zipper don't have much screen time. The only times they are all seen together is at the beginning and very end of the film.
  • Fat Cat, the main antagonist of the series, only has a brief non-speaking cameo in the film where he is merely an Animated Actor on set. The Big Bad of the film is actually Peter Pan of all people, aka Sweet Pete.
• Denser and Wackier: The original cartoon was goofy but fairly restrained. The movie is far more bonkers and meta. Given who is making the movie, it really shouldn't come as a surprise.
• Digital Piracy Is Evil:
  • The Big Bad's plot involves capturing toons, altering them just enough to avoid copyright infringement, and making rip-off movies with them. It's referred to as piracy, invoking this trope, but in reality it's more akin to The Mockbuster.
  • In the film, the word "piracy" has been replaced by "bootlegging", averting this trope.
• Dinky Drivers: Dale owns and drives a human-sized car, but modified it with special seat, steering wheel, and pedals to make it easier for him to drive. He points out that it's much cooler this way when Chip points out that they actually make chipmunk-sized cars.
• Disney Death: Twice.
  • After Chip and Dale escape from Sweet Pete's office by flushing themselves down the toilet and into the sewers, once they're out, Chip assumes Dale drowned in the process, but it turns out that it was just a Double-O Dale doll, and the real Dale is all right.
  • At the end of the final showdown, Sweet Pete, before he's arrested by the FBI, tries one last attempt to shoot Chip, but Dale ends up Taking the Bullet. He tries to wake Dale up, even telling Dale about his Dark and Troubled Past that he never had any friends growing up, but then it turns out that Dale was shielded by the golden Pog that Chip gave him earlier.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?:
  • Dale has apparently gotten "CGI surgery" to look more realistic. This is portrayed much like someone getting plastic surgery. Dialogue suggests Dale is far less flexible than he was as a traditionally animated toon, much like plastic surgery renders people similarly stiffer.
  • Sweet Pete's illicit dealings are similar to a Loan Shark (lend money to desperate people and then take advantage of them when they can't pay them back), Human Traffickers (force someone to undergo unnecessary cosmetic surgery, then get sent off to parts unknown), and modern day slavery (being forced to work against their will with no chance of being paid for their time).
• Donut Mess with a Cop: The anthropomorphic doughnut cops from Wreck-It Ralph appear checking Monterey Jack's apartment.
• Doppelgänger Crossover: The 2019 Pumbaa, Mantis, and B.O.B. appear at the convention to mock Bob the Dwarf, all four characters being played by Seth Rogen. They even all do his signature laugh.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: As successful as Rescue Rangers was, Dale was tired of his Plucky Comic Relief role and everyone treating him as such outside the show. He tried to star in his own show so the public would respect him.
• Employee of the Month: When we first see Chip in the present day, he has won yet another "Employee of the Month" award in his job as a successful insurance salesman. He's won enough of these that he keeps them in several storage boxes.
• Entertainingly Wrong: Chip suspects that Ellie might be lying about being a Rescue Rangers fan and is actually working with Sweet Pete because she couldn't name her favorite episode and claims her grandmother used to tape the show for her. Turns out everything she said was true and she's been Good All Along.
• "Everybody Laughs" Ending: Early on the Rangers are filming an episode of the TV show where they catch Fat Cat under a net. Gadget makes a pun about the cat being "in the bag" and all the Rangers laugh for a little too long, with the laughter becoming more and more forced until the director yells, "Cut!" This gets a callback near the end of the movie, when Gadget makes a similar pun about the chipmunks "driving us nuts!" Everyone laughs, including Ellie, who's excited to participate until it goes on a little too long again. As Gadget explains in the middle of it, the reaction is involuntary and the laughter gets longer the worse the joke that triggered it was.
• Fantastic Ghetto: The Uncanny Valley is a rundown Toon Town inhabited by realistic but creepy CGI cartoon characters.
• Follow Your Nose: Monty and the mice in Bjornson's cheese shop will float through the air to follow the scent of cheese.
• Foreshadowing: The first minutes of the film show Chip flashbacking to his school years, which subtly establishes that the cartoons can age. This ends up being the reason why Sweet Pete turned to villainy because he got too old for his role.
• Former Friends Photo: A collector's pog featuring all the Rescue Rangers together functions as this for Chip and Dale, who have become estranged by the start of the film.
• Furry Confusion: Despite the clear difference between real animals and anthropomorphized animals, a few of these come up. Chip owns a pet dog, and when he tries to explain this to Dale the latter takes him to mean he has a girlfriend who is a dog. This makes the mention of peeing on the carpet come across differently to Dale, and Chip's insistence that she's a dog to explain don't help.
• Furry Reminder: While the main "species" dichotomy in the movie is toons/humans instead of animals/humans as in the original series, there are still moments in which Chip and Dale do very chipmunk-like things, such as scamper on all fours. It's most notable when they casually scale down the wall of Monty's apartment building — simply because it makes the most convenient exit for them.
• G-Rated Drug: Monterey Jack's cheese addiction in the cartoon is treated much more like a drug problem in the movie, to the point where he is in debt from the Valley Gang after buying a chunk of Gorgonzola. This ultimately begins the caper when he is abducted along with other toons. Another scene has other animated mice shown eating cheese in what would appear to be the equivalent of a crack house or opium den hidden in Main Street.
• Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal: Referenced a couple of times.
  • At the beginning of the film, a young pantsless goat is told by a teacher that she is “not Donald Duck”, and should put some pants on.
  • Later, when Sweet Pete is holding Chip hostage:
    Chip: Where’s Dale?
    Sweet Pete: He’ll be here. Keep your pants on.
    Chip: I don’t wear pants.
    Sweet Pete: Yeah, I noticed. It’s not something to brag about.
  • A CGI snake named DJ Herzogenaurach, wears only a black gangster beanie and a white shirt with a blue mark on it, but no pants, but considering that he is a snake and snakes don't have limbs. So a hat and a shirt was the only thing DJ Herzogenaurach could wear.
• Hand Puppet: During the investigation into Monty's disappearance, a sock puppet cop talks with the captain.
• Healthcare Motivation: Captain Putty explains that he started working for Sweet Pete because his mother needed an operation after she got buzzed playing Operation... Then he starts breaking down in laughter admitting that he's just a "greedy little Smurf who did it for the money".
• Hypocritical Humor: The movie derives humor from mercilessly skewering trends with modern reboots or revivals of older properties, while simultaneously playing with some of these trends for purposes of Rule of Funny.
  • It skewers reboots that stray wildly from the tone or formula of the originals, while itself being quite different in tone from its source material.
  • It makes fun of cartoon characters rapping in order to appear relevant. Sure enough Chip and Dale end up creating a rap themselves during the film, though the rap mostly falls under Stylistic Suck.
  • At the end of the movie, Chip mocks pop stars doing cover versions of shows' theme songs for reboots "when everyone just wants to hear the original". Which is followed by a cover of the Rescue Rangers theme song by Post Malone playing over the credits.
• In Name Only: The movie really doesn't have anything in common with the original cartoon apart from the title and main leads - although it features as a show that the characters worked on as Animated Actors. The show is used as more of an outlet to tell a self-aware satirical story about reboots and the animation industry.
• Inkblot Cartoon Style: One Cartoon Creature reporter for "Black & White News" is drawn in this style, complete with Rubber-Hose Limbs. Another is shown earlier in the film working Main Street as a shoeshiner who steals Social Security numbers.
• Insane Troll Logic: The reasoning Dale comes up with in order to crack Ellie's code.
• Internal Deconstruction: Monterey Jack's reaction to cheese has always been a running gag of the original series, and it still is in the history of the show in this adaptation. Only here, the reality treats it dramatically, as an addiction he struggles to manage that directly leads him into being kidnapped by Sweet Pete. In-universe a show for children made a regular gag of a drug addict character being tempted into a binge.
• Ironic Echo: After revealing that he's with Sweet Pete, Putty tells Ellie "Don't be so fragile!" This is what she says to him after freezing him and before shattering him.
• Janitor Impersonation Infiltration: Chip and Dale disguise themselves as plumbers to get them into a spa to steal a fitness tracker from Sweet Pete.
• Karma Houdini: Bjornson and all of the other toons who work on Main Street all manage to get away with their illegal activities in the end.
• Killer Rabbit: The Nickelodeon Jr. Studios, despite being friendly toons intended for little children, will fight back if threatened, with the Paw Patrol even mauling an officer so badly it rendered him infertile.
• Lampshade Hanging: In the convention pursuit, Dale tells Chip to grab the first thing he can as a disguise, only to come out of an Indiana Jones themed store with his original outfit from the show, referencing how said outfit is a Shout-Out to Indiana Jones.
• Laser Hallway: The inside of the toon transformation machine contains a fairly long passage of lasers that Chip and Dale must try to avoid or it will transform parts of their bodies. Chip ends up getting one ear transformed into a Snoopy ear.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: The movie borders on Postmodernism, such as the jokes about reboots, Dale going through surgery to become a 3D animation, and having a street named "Uncanny Valley" inhabited by characters straight out of it. invoked
• Literal Metaphor: The police's battering rams are cartoon rams.
• Logo Joke: Parts of the traditional Disney castle are zapped into parts of castles from other Disney works, then the logo gets scanned, foreshadowing the Bootlegging Machine and Sweet Pete's fate.
• Massive Multiplayer Crossover:
  • Characters from other Disney films and shows and even a few outside their company make cameos to show this takes place in a world where toons co-exist with humans à la Who Framed Roger Rabbit (who fittingly likewise makes a cameo).
  • In the credits, we see a very Smash-inspired video game featuring various members of the Disney Afternoon duking it out.
• Massive Numbered Siblings: Gadget and Zipper have forty two children.
• Mean Character, Nice Actor: The scene where an episode of Rescue Rangers is being filmed shows that Fat Cat and Professor Nimnul are just acting for the cameras and are quick to applaud the others' work once they stop filming.
  • The same applies to Skeletor who is doing a convention booth with He-Man. Although Skeletor still calls He-Man "You boob!" at one point.
• Medium Blending: Multiple forms of animation are on display, from traditional hand drawn to computer animation, and even Animesque. Notably, Dale (in the modern day) has undergone a procedure to make him more photorealistic CG while Chip and other characters from the show are presented in a more Cel Shaded look that more closely resembles their original designs.
• Mega Crossover: Has its own page.
• Meta Sequel: Set in a world where the original Rescue Rangers was a TV series the characters starred in as Animated Actors.
• A Minor Kidroduction: The film begins with Chip and Dale's first meeting in middle school.
• Mix-and-Match Critters: Sweet Pete end up as a hodgepodge of cartoon body parts after an overload of his toon transforming machine.
• The Mockbuster: Referred to as "bootlegging", this is the primary racket of Sweet Pete, transforming deeply in debt toons into mix-and-matched legally distinct copies of themselves and shipping them off to cheap overseas studios to star in bad movies.
• Mouse World: Due to the world being populated by many toons of all sizes, including rodent-sized, there are several rodent-sized objects alongside human-sized ones. There's a miniature table in the school cafeteria that Chip and Dale sit at as kids. Chip lives in a miniature house while Monty lives in a miniature apartment building. Chip mentions that they make chipmunk-sized cars. Bjornson's cheese shop has a special underground room specifically to accommodate mouse-sized customers.
• Mundane Utility: Not all toons in the film are actors or want to be actors - so we see toon rams working as battering rams or toon cars working as regular cars.
• Muppet: No characters from anything Jim Henson-related appear in this movie (unless you count the Wembley Fraggle/Patrick Star hybrid from the final minutes), but a few minor characters evoke the aesthetics of the Muppet style. Bjornson, Monty's cheese dealer, references the Swedish Chef, and according to Dale, a seemingly wholesome toon girl on Main Street makes her money from an underground "Muppet fighting" ring. During the credits, we see a snippet of "Fuzzy Fights", basically a boxing match between two Sesame Street-style monsters.
• Mythology Gag:
  • One of Monty's paintings is of a mouse woman strongly resembling Glitch, Gadget's Palette Swap rival from the Boom! Comics series.
  • Ellie brings up episode 45 of the series, in which Chip wore a rat disguise, but he claims to not remember it. In fact, that episode was "Double 'O Chipmunk", which presumably gave Dale the inspiration for the failed "Double-O-Dale" spinoff in this universe.
  • In the opening school introduction, a toon goat child is called out by a teacher for not wearing pants, with her telling the kid "You're not Donald Duck!". This may be a reference to how Clarence Nash's iconic duck voice was originally meant to be an imitation of a pet goat he had, before Walt thought it sounded more like a duck and created a duck character for him to voice.
• Nice Character, Mean Actor:
  • Ellie discusses how a bad sting on Nick Junior studios led to a cop being mauled by the cast of PAW Patrol. Apparently all the toons, who are all Nice Guys and are the epitome of innocence, attacked the cops all at once. Then again, they were being threatened.
  • It's never shown exactly what she does, but Linda's presence on Main Street suggests that the oblivious but otherwise kindly mom has a criminal background of some kind outside of Danville. In a very dark twist on the show's running gag that Linda is never aware of her children's antics, her TV son Phineas is later seen among the mutated bootlegging victims.
  • According to Bob the Dwarf, Jack Skellington embezzles from his own charity, and apparently it's a bit of an Open Secret.
  • Peter Pan/Sweet Pete turns out to be one of these, though he didn't go bad until after he was kicked from his most famous role.
• Not Now, We're Too Busy Crying Over You: After their harrowing escape from Sweet Pete's factory, Chip sees what appears to be Dale drowned and lying face-flat in a puddle and falls apart. As he does, the alive-and-well Dale approaches Chip from behind and confusedly asks what Chip is doing. Chip waves Dale off saying "Not now..." before he realizes that Dale is alive and he has been crying over a prototype plush for "Double-O-Dale".
• Official Couple: Gadget and Zipper ended up getting together after the original series ends.
• Paddleball Shot: A 3D toon reporter does this with her microphone, openly admitting that it's obnoxious.
• Parental Bonus: Aside from the more family friendly properties featured, there's also references to adult animation, including cameos (e.g. Beavis and Butthead, South Park, Big Mouth) and art styles (e.g. Rick and Morty).
• Patchwork Kids: Gadget and Zipper have forty-two mouse-fly hybrid kids.
• People in Rubber Suits: When Chip and Dale go to an audition for chipmunks, one of the "chipmunks" in the room waiting to audition is a live-action man in a chipmunk suit.
• Piss-Take Rap: When Chip and Dale infiltrate the Russian spa and need a distraction, Dale starts rapping. Under the pressure, he is only able to rhyme "Dale" and "whale", while stuck on the idea of protecting whales.
• Pocket Protector: After Dale takes a bullet for Chip during the climax, it is shortly revealed that he was protected from the brunt of the impact due to having a collectible pog in his shirt.
• Production Foreshadowing: While Optimus Prime's leg is featured as part of Sweet Pete's homunculus form, the leg itself serves as one to Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. A film that not only Moving Picture Company is also involved with, but would reuse the CGI asset from as part of the monster.
• Rainbow Puke: In the prologue, showing Dale's first day at school, he tries to impress his new classmates by pretending to jab a pencil into his eye. The students are frightened and grossed out by this, with one of them, a cartoon unicorn, vomiting a rainbow into her lunch bag.
• Reboot Snark: The film parodies the frequency of Hollywood reboots/revivals in the 2010s, and the Disney Live-Action Remakes especially. Dale, one of the Animated Actors stars of Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers, yearns for his glory days and is angling for a revival, pointing out that it has done wonders for his friend Baloo. His former co-star Chip finds it unnecessary and self-aggrandizing.
• Reference Overdosed: The movie has cameos from lots of properties, and a few movie references to boot (see The Cameo and Shout-Out for more details).
• Retraux: The "Fat Cat Attacks" clip at the beginning is done up in the style of the original cartoon, with the Rescue Rangers also depicted in their usual 2D for the segment.
• The Reveal: The climax shows that Sweet Pete's bootleg operations were not sent overseas like originally thought, but done all at the docks he works out of.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: After Ellie tells Dale her favorite episode as a clue, Dale figures out that Ellie and Chip are in danger and that Putty was working for Sweet Pete. His conclusion was correct, but his reasoning for getting there was completely off.
• Roger Rabbit Effect:
  • The animated characters remain animated in the real-world setting (aside from Dale, who converts into photorealistic computer-animation), with everyone else portrayed by live actors.
  • The film also lampshades this, as Roger Rabbit himself even makes an appearance.
• Ruder and Cruder: Unlike most live action-animated hybrid films/TV shows let alone one by Disney this one despite being based on a TV-Y7 Disney Afternoon show was somehow produced by The Lonely Island and it's gonna make sure you remember that. A decent amount of mild swearing, Ellie and Chip and Dale drinking a beer, allegories for both human trafficking and drug addiction, swatting Nick Jr. and the preschool characters starting a massacre, sex jokes and bestiality implications... it's possibly the most edgy "kids'" movie Disney has ever greenlit.
• Sheep in Sheep's Clothing: Chip wrongly assumes that Ellie is lying about being a fan of the Rescue Rangers and that she is working for Sweet Pete, since some details of her story don't seem to add up. But it turns out she was being completely honest with them and her boss, Captain Putty, is the one really working for Sweet Pete.
• Shifted to CGI: In-Universe, 2D toons can go through a CGI lift. To look more modern, like Dale did, and/or in order to be cast into a live-action remake like Baloo did.
• Sir Not-Appearing-in-This-Trailer: The trailer deliberately hid the non-Disney properties that appear in the movie. For instance, Mantis and B.O.B. are not shown joining 2019 Pumbaa to poke fun at Bob in trailers.
• Smart Animal, Inconvenient Instincts: Part of Pete's One-Winged Angel transformation at the end involves a CGI cat head. He seems to retain his personality just fine despite this, aside from meowing when he reveals himself, but as soon as he sees a flock of cartoon birds his instincts take over and he tries to eat them.
• Speak in Unison: Chip and Dale start to say the same things at the same time after finishing their awful rap, mostly commenting on how incredible it is that they keep saying the same thing.
• Spinoff Babies: Dale sees a poster for The Fast and the Furious Babies.
• Subverted Catchphrase: A couple of Sweet Pete's bootlegged victims have their catchphrases altered: Pooh's "Oh, bother" is changed to "Boh, bahbah", and Bart Simpson's "Ay, carumba" is now "Ay, pechanga".
• Suddenly Voiced: Zipper, whom Dale reminds us was a double menace of "funny and mute" in the show, now has a very deep voice.
• Sympathy for the Devil: After his mutation and capture, it's shown in the credits that Peter Pan got a documentary where he told his story, painting him in a sympathetically tragic light.
• Take That!: As is tradition for a The Lonely Island project.
  • The duo literally visit the Uncanny Valley, where Tom Hooper's infamous adaptation of Cats and the Robert Zemeckis motion-capture films of the early 2000s such as The Polar Express being openly mocked.
  • The discarded Sonic the Hedgehog design appears, named "Ugly Sonic" and full of Self-Deprecation about the backlash he got when he was revealed. Some have also theorized that he is a take-off of reviled Archie Sonic comic artist and storywriter Ken Penders.
  • The film makes fun of cartoons, such as Alvin and the Chipmunks, rapping in order to appear relevant.
  • While investigating the disappearance of Peppa Pig, Ellie received a faulty tip which led to them raiding Nick Jr. Studios... and the toons fought back. One officer in particular was said to have been mauled by the PAW Patrol so badly, it rendered him infertile.
  • There is a poster shown for a movie called Fast & Furious Babies, seemingly mocking the kid-oriented spin-off of the Fast Saga, as well as the general trend of making baby versions of popular intellectual properties. Vin Diesel then appears during the credits, seemingly the star of the in-universe Rescue Rangers reboot.
  • Chip works at Coercive Insurance and his coworkers include various animals in poorly-done CGI as stand-ins for insurance mascots in general; the unfunny frog apparently one to GEICO in particular.
  • An animated member of the press is rendered in a way that requires 3-D glasses to view properly, and the only thing she does is get in the protagonist's personal space and shove a microphone at them. And of course, her animation is sub-par.
• Taking the Bullet: During the climax, while Sweet Pete is being arrested, he ends up firing one final bullet at Chip and Dale. Dale jumps in front of the bullet before it could hit Chip, saving Chip, but leaving Dale apparently lifeless on the ground.
• Technologically Blind Elders: Discussed. When Chip voices his suspicions about Ellie to Dale, he cites her claim that her grandmother allegedly used to tape all of the episodes of Rescue Rangers for her.
  Chip: Old people don't know how to use technology! That's their whole thing!
• This Is Gonna Suck: After a bag of barrels was about to fall on him, Sweet Pete looks at the audience and gulps while opening his umbrella hoping it'll protect him, but it didn't.
• Toilet Teleportation: While trying to escape from Sweet Pete and his mooks, Chip and Dale end up locked in a bathroom. The only way out is by flushing themselves down the toilet. While it does work, Chip is very clearly distressed at the idea.
• Toon Physics: Downplayed; toon characters are shown squashing and stretching at will, which makes them durable for slapstick comedy, but are far from their usual invincibility so that suspense can still be maintained from threats. At one point, Chip restores a fake ear that got lasered off by blowing into his thumb. Apparently being CG lessens it further, as Chip complains that Dale can't be squeezed out of a restraint like he could if he were traditionally animated. Dale says it's because his new appearance, "Is for looking, not touching." This makes sense - being closer to being real means your physics are closer to being real as well.
• Toon Town: Cartoon characters mostly live alongside humans but there are two notable toon neighborhoods:
  • Main Street is a Crapsaccharine World visually based on Disneyland's Main Street USA but is actually a front for illegal toon businesses like G-Rated Drug cheese dealers and Muppet fighting rings.
  • The Uncanny Valley is a rundown Fantastic Ghetto inhabited by realistic but creepy CGI cartoon characters.
• Toon Transformation:
  • Dale had himself converted into CGI which is implied to be an equivalent to plastic surgery for toons in this universe. Baloo had the same for his live-action reboot.
  • Bootlegging is a method of converting toons into a shoddy looking version of themselves in order to make mockbuster movies overseas.
• Transformation Ray: The machine that alters toons for bootlegging does so through laser beams. Chip gets grazed and ends up with a Snoopy ear for an extended period of time. At one point, Sweet Pete's bear henchman gets turned into a fairy from a direct hit. Sweet Pete himself is hit with the beam multiple times, turning him into a mixture of Felicia, Marie, Fat Cat, Long John Silver, Mickey Mouse, Woody, Optimus Prime, Wreck-It Ralph, The Shredder, Megatron, and Bowser's Bullet Bill Blaster.
• Unrelated in the Adaptation: Downplayed. Chip and Dale's relationship has always been left ambiguous in previous media as to whether they are brothers or simply friends. This film firmly establishes them to be childhood friends who met in elementary school.
• The Un Twist: Chip and Dale suspect Steckler over Putty as The Mole, because the latter would be too obvious. Turns out Putty was the traitor all along.
• Visible Odor: The stinky cheese that Monty has in his fridge, as well as the many stinky cheeses being sold by Bjornson, have visible wafts of odor emanating from them. Bjornson even brags about his cheese's "smell lines".
• Visual Pun:
  • The driver of the bus Chip and Dale take to Hollywood is a greyhound.
  • Detective Putty at one points calls for the battering rams to bash into a room. Cue cartoon rams battering through some doors.
  • To get to Main Street, Chip and Dale cross some train tracks with a warning sign calling it the "Wrong Side", therefore Main Street is on "the wrong side of the tracks".
  • At the end, Sweet Pete is shown in a straightjacket and face mask in a room whose walls are made of pink Pearl erasers...a literal "rubber room."
• Vocal Dissonance: Zipper, who's known in The Series as a creature that squeecks, buzzes and hums, and at the very best gets a Corey Burton "Yuh huh" as a DEEP baritone when he's using his regular Real Life voice, courtesy of Dennis Haybert, better known as President David Palmer.
• Vocal Evolution: Owing to the gap between the original series and this film. Gadget sounds older than she did previously.
• Walk of Shame: In the prologue, a young Dale experiences this in the school cafeteria after his "pencil-in-the-eye" gag doesn't go over well with his classmates.
• Wham Shot: When Chip and Dale flee the recently-mutated Sweet Pete, they enter through a door that reveals a movie set based on Winnie the Pooh, complete with bootlegged versions of the characters, revealing that Sweet Pete was not shipping the bootlegged toons overseas as he claimed, but was instead holding them at the docks.
• Writers Cannot Do Math: Chip and Dale meet in 3rd grade in 1982. In 1990, they're at the height of their career filming the Rescue Rangers show (after graduating, moving to Hollywood, and getting small parts in other shows). Unless they skipped several grades, Chip and Dale would have been in 11th grade in 1990.
• You Are Not Alone: Chip and Dale try to give this speech to Sweet Pete. Unsurprisingly, it fails.
• You Monster!: Chip says this when Sweet Pete says he's more of an Alvin and the Chipmunks person.

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