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"The great city of Zootopia, where our ancestors first joined together in peace, and declared that anyone can be anything!"
Judy Hopps

Zootopianote  is the 55th film in the Disney Animated Canon, set in a World of Funny Animals.

Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) is an idealistic, cheery and optimistic young bunny who's left home to be a police officer in the big city of Zootopia. There, she encounters Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman), a fast-talking fox Con Artist whom she manages to blackmail into helping her solve a missing persons case. Soon, however, the two become involved in a conspiracy that threatens all of Zootopia, which forces them to overcome their differences and ultimately become friends.

The film was released in North America on March 4, 2016 (it had an earlier release in Europe and Asia), and is the third Disney Animated Feature to use exclusively anthropomorphic animal characters after 1973's Robin Hood (1973) and 2005's Chicken Little (outside of The '40s package films, at least).

Watch the teaser trailer here, the second trailer here and the third trailer here.

The film's junior novelization was released on January 19, 2016 in both print and eBook formats, along with an essential guide book and several other tie-in products. A read-along with a CD featuring character voices was also released in early February. In early August, a Hidden Object Game called Zootopia: Crime Files was released for iOS, Android and Windows 10.

In December 2020, Disney announced that Zootopia+, a short-form Animated Anthology series focusing on the film's secondary characters was being produced for Disney+. The show premiered on November 9, 2022. A sequel is currently in development. It is set for release on November 26, 2025.

Character tropes go on to the Characters Sheet.


Zootopia provides examples of:

    open/close all folders 

    Tropes A to E 
  • 10-Minute Retirement: Although the exact time Judy spent in Bunnyburrow after she resigns is unclear, the movie features only one scene there before Judy has her "Eureka!" Moment about a vital clue and comes rushing back to Zootopia to solve the case.
  • 1-Dimensional Thinking: Zig-Zagged when Jesse the ram gets chased by the train: after vainly begging Nick to stop (while Judy tells him not to), he eventually dives sideways against the tunnel wall, but doesn't escape the train's passage without getting his belly wool shorn clean off.
  • 555:
    • Doug's phone number is (805) 555-0127.
    • Nick's "Zootopia Benefits Number" on his tax form is 555-16-2239
  • Absurdly Cool City: The city of Zootopia with its multifaceted districts enabled by the installation of artificial climate zones.
  • Acronyms Are Easy as Aybeecee: Gideon maliciously reminds Judy that since he's a fox, the predator instinct is still in his "duh-nuh." When his friend asks him if he means "DNA," Gideon snaps back with "Don't tell me what I know!"
  • Action Film, Quiet Drama Scene:
    • Judy's night of depression after her first day of work.
    • Nick opening up to Judy about a group of prejudiced scouts attacking and muzzling him simply for being a fox when he was about nine years old.
    • In the third act when Judy is apologizing to Nick for what happened at the press conference; there's no music, just dialogue until Nick forgives her. And the quietness of the scene makes Judy breaking down in tears halfway through all the more poignant.
  • Actor Allusion:
    • In-house, Alan Tudyk's Duke Weaselton gets misnamed "Duke Weselton", inverting the misnaming of his Duke of Weselton from Frozen.
    • Mark Smith, the voice actor of the rhinoceros Officer McHorn, used the nickname "Rhino" in Gladiators.
    • This is not the first time J. K. Simmons has played a mayor or been a demanding boss who puts down his subordinates.
    • Tommy Chong as Yax, who may not be explicitly shown as being The Stoner but certainly acts like one.
    • When Assistant Mayor Bellwether is chasing Mayor Lionheart to remind him of his meetings, her collection of three-ring binders is knocked to the ground. One is labeled "Parks and Recreation", a nod to Jenny Slate's portrayal of Mona Lisa Saperstein on Parks and Recreation.
    • Nick's complaints about wolves is a humorous nod to his voice actor, Jason Bateman, playing a teenage werewolf in Teen Wolf Too.
  • Adults Dressed as Children: Nick's hustle involves buying an elephant-size Jumbo-pop for his "baby son" — who is actually a fully-grown fennec fox accomplice.
  • Aerith and Bob: Most characters have normal given names (Judy, Nick, Benjamin, Dawn, Emmett, Stuart, Doug, Jerry, etc.) but there are a few exceptions such as Leodore and Gazelle,note  and most of the surnames are animal references/puns of some sort (Hopps, Wilde, Clawhauser, Otterton, Bogo, Bellwether, Jumbeaux, etc.). invoked
  • Aloof Leader, Affable Subordinate: police chief Bogo, is an honorable but gruff, by-the-book commander. Meanwhile, Desk Officer Clawhauser is far more social and friendly.
  • The Alleged Car:
    • While it's in perfect working order, Judy Hopps' meter maid cart is rightfully referred to as a "jokemobile" by Nick Wilde.
    • Finn's van. Driver's door is silver, the rest of the van is some kind of rusty red, and has the most awesome mural on the side panels. It backfires a lot, too.
  • Affectionate Pickpocket: Played with. After Judy gives her emotional apology under the bridge, Nick reveals that he captured her "I really am just a dumb bunny" confession on her carrot pen by playing it back repeatedly. He says "Don't worry Carrots, I'll let you erase it... in 48 hours", indicating he has forgiven her and calls her over for a Cooldown Hug. After a few seconds of "There we go. Deep breath", he playfully suggests that she's really just doing the hug to try and steal the pen. Judy plays along by giving a few half-hearted grabs at the pen while giggling, but it's clear that this is simply a light-hearted moment to help with the cool-down.
  • All There in the Script:
    • The anchors of the ZNN are listed in the credits as Fabienne Growley and Peter Moosebridge.
    • The polar bear Seargent at the Police Academy is named Major Friedkin.
  • Alphabet News Network: ZNN, unsurprisingly. The anchors are a female snow leopard and (depending on the region) a male moose, jaguar, koala, panda, or raccoon dog.
  • Always on Duty: Apparently Chief Bogo and Clawhauser work day and night.
    • One night Clawhauser takes Judy's 10-91 call and Chief Bogo shows up to receive Judy and Nick after their escape from Manchas.
    • The next night Clawhauser informs Chief Bogo that Judy has located all 14 missing mammals. Chief Bogo is then seen at Cliffside Asylum walking off Mayor Lionheart — although given that the arrest involved a high-profile figure, odds are he wanted to deal with it personally.
    • Both Bogo and Clawhauser still wear their uniforms at the concert during the end of the movie.
  • Amusing Injuries: During Judy's time at the Police Academy she undergoes a Failure Montage showing some rather painful failures as she struggles with her training. However, her toilet mishap is clearly played for laughs even as it foreshadows her later escape from a locked cell.
  • And the Adventure Continues: In the end, Nick Joins the ZPD and becomes Judy's police partner, implying that the two will continue to have exciting adventures together for the foreseeable future.
  • Animal Jingoism: Zootopia suffers from a historical species tension between "predators" and "prey". Bellwether intentionally causes this tension to escalate as part of her plan to gain power.
  • Animals Lack Attributes: In the scene at the "naturalist" club, the naked animals do not have visible genitalia. However, the camera shots are often aimed in such a way that it is easy to imagine them there.
  • Animals Not to Scale: Mostly this is averted, with the size differences between animals being an integral part of Zootopia's society. However, there are a few examples:
    • Assistant Mayor Bellwether is far too small for a sheep, being about the same height as Judy.note  All the other sheep in the film, by contrast, are of normal scale. Her unusually small size is actually something of a plot point, as it is implied that her small stature played a significant role in developing the attitudes that led her to mastermind an anti-predator conspiracy.
    • Another minor example is Duke Weaselton, whose relative size is too big for any of the weasel or stoat species that he resembles.note 
  • Animal Stereotypes: Played with in all kinds of ways. Sometimes averted, subverted, inverted, defied or played straight, in different instances. Overall, it's deconstructed as Fantastic Racism, in contrast to its typical use as a cheap characterization shortcut.
    • Bunnies are seen as cute and harmless. This stereotype makes it very difficult for Judy to be taken seriously as a police officer.
    • Foxes are seen as sneaky and untrustworthy. Nick fits this stereotype perfectly, but it turns out this is entirely due to him having a "Then Let Me Be Evil" moment as a result of childhood trauma. Gideon Grey, on the other hand, while he plays Foul Fox straight, averts the Cunning Like a Fox stereotype by being a thick-headed bully. He later subverts the Foul Fox stereotype too, by becoming a friendly Reformed Bully as an adult.
    • Bulls are seen as the living embodiment of masculinity. Chief Bogo, a top-heavy Cape Buffalo bull with a gruff demeanor, seems to mostly fit with this, but he is also a huge fan of Gazelle.
    • Weasels are seen as deceitful. Judy's father plays Cribbage with one who he claims "cheats like there's no tomorrow", and Duke Weaselton is greedy, cowardly, and all-around crooked, a weasel in the metaphorical sense as well as literal.
    • Otters are seen as playful and harmless. Emmitt Otterton is Happily Married and the preferred florist of Mr. Big, a mob boss. He also becomes a savage beast when shot by a Night Howler pellet.
    • Yax the yak thinks that Nangi being an elephant will "totally remember everything". Her memory turns out to be terrible, while his is much, much better, though somehow he hasn't noticed that.
    • Jerry Jumbeaux Jr., the elephant ice cream vendor, averts the Honorable Elephant stereotype by being a prejudiced jerk who isn't willing to serve foxes.
    • Sloths are typically seen as unbearably slow at everything. The DMV sloths play the stereotype straight, but in a subversion, Flash the sloth surprisingly turns out to be the illegal street racer that Judy and Nick are sent to catch and as a three-toed sloth he can move quickly when he wants to.
    • Cheetahs are seen as fast, graceful, and slender. Clawhauser is shown to be fast (but not graceful or slender) as he chased Mrs. Otterton to Chief Bogo's office, though he fully admits to being a dead ringer for the Donut Mess with a Cop stereotype.
    • Beavers are considered to be hardworking builders, which is played straight with the group of beaver construction workers pouring the concrete that Judy accidentally steps in.
    • Lions are seen as noble, bold, if a bit pompous leaders. Lionheart zig-zags this trope, seeming at first to be a respectable leader, but is shown to be a complete jerk to his assistant mayor and eventually found to have been secretly imprisoning the savage predators. While this was in part to protect his own reputation and livelihood, he certainly had a point about how letting the public know that predators were going savage without knowing why would unleash widespread civil unrest.
    • Sheep are seen as meek and mindlessly following their herd. Bellwether appears to be a straight example, but is actually a very cunning, manipulative mastermind who targets predators with Night Howler serum to ignite a race war and seize power through it. Also averted with Doug, who's shown to be a capable chemist and an incredibly good shooter. He also has no problem in talking back to his boss when (presumably) she questions his marksman skills.
    • Lemmings are believed to mindlessly follow the herd, which is played straight when they are shown buying Nick's pawpsicles en masse.
  • Answer Cut:
    • When Nick points out that Chief Bogo is not likely to give Judy access to the jam cams, she replies that she knows somebody who could help. Cut to Bellwether at City Hall.
    • Judy and Nick are following the traffic camera footage of the truck driven by the wolves who took Manchas. Judy asks, "Where does that road go?" Dissolve to the gates of Cliffside Asylum.
  • Anthropomorphic Zig-Zag: On the Sliding Scale of Anthropomorphism, Zootopia is a World of Funny Animals inhabited by Funny Animals. Usually once the level of anthropomorphism is established in a movie, it remains consistent throughout the story. Zootopia is unique in that it is dealing with a crisis where some of its predators are sliding down the scale and reverting back to the state of savage animal which inflames a historic tension between predator and prey species.
  • Appropriate Animal Attire: Animals in this story are, normally, fully clothed — except for shoes — and Judy feels uncomfortable about the "naturalists'" lack of clothing.
  • Arc Words:
    • "Where anyone can be anything."
    • "Dumb bunny"
  • Armor-Piercing Question: After Judy makes her remarks about predators at the press conference, Nick calls her out with a series of these like "Are you afraid of me?", "Do you think I might go savage?", and "Do you think I might try to eat you?", all of which begin forcing her to confront her unconscious prejudice as she slowly realizes that Nick, as a predator, falls under her statement that predators "seem to be reverting back to their primitive savage ways" leaving her speechless as she almost reached her fox repellent, making Nick think that Judy also sees him as a savage predator.
  • Artistic License – Biology: Besides the obvious example of the animals being anthropomorphic, the film does its best to avert this but doesn't always succeed.
    • Nangi, an Asian elephant, is drawn with very small tusks, which is correct; but Francine, an African elephant, is drawn without tusks, which is incorrect.note 
    • When a jaguar goes savage, he is shown to have slit pupils. Big cats in real life actually have round pupils, with "slit pupils" being a trait of smaller cat species.
    • Bunnies in this movie appear to have an appetite for carrots and often work as carrot farmers, despite carrots not being healthy for rabbits in large amounts.
    • The koalas in the movie have only one thumb on each paw, when real koalas have two thumbs.
    • Gazelle has long horns that are more typical of a male gazelle; in most gazelle species, females have shorter horns. Doubles as Animal Gender-Bender.
    • Gideon Grey is depicted with retractable claws, which foxes don't have.
    • The "cave rabbit" mannequin at the museum that's used to mimic Judy's shadow has a pair of sabre-teeth; however, rabbits are of the zoological order Glires, which do not have canines and therefore cannot have sabre-teeth. It also seems to have antlers too, so both likely fall under Rule of Funny by implying there were prehistoric jackalopes in Zootopia.
    • The backstory about how the animals all evolved to have the same sapience, bipedal locomotion, opposable thumbs, and vocal mechanism all at the same time, despite originally being very different species. It's highly implausible for anyone who knows anything about biology, but it's necessary for the basic premise to work, so you just have to ignore it.
    • The movie is set in a world where animals evolved instead of humans. However there are animal species featured like pigs, sheep, yaks, horses where their visual design is based on the domesticated version of those animals instead of their wild counterparts. The creators stated that this one was intentional (at least for the sheeps and pigs), as the average audience member wouldn't recognize them if designed realistically.
  • Artistic License – Economics: Played with. The school play indicates that Jaguar was going to be an actuary and hunt for tax exemptions. Actuaries, in general, do not deal with taxes instead focusing on analyzing risk in insurance or investment, setting recommended financial reserves for a company or individual, or estimating how long before a person dies given age, gender, race, marital status, region and medical history. However, there is a small, specialist field known as a tax actuary that focuses on corporate risk, investment, and value using those factors to determine the associated short-term and long-term tax liabilities associated with various strategies of growth.
  • Artistic License – Law Enforcement:
    • Judy is excited to begin her first day as a police officer, only to find out she's stuck on parking duty. Most major cities in real life have a separate department of parking services whose primary job is issuing citations so that the police are free to handle bigger crimes. While suburbs and smaller towns (at least in the United States and its Fantasy Counterpart Cultures) might still leave this task to the police, a city as huge as Zootopia would not.
    • Not only that, but she and the other officers get their daily assignments directly from the Chief of Police. In a large city, the Chief is mostly an administrative position and rarely gets involved in such day-to-day management. That's what precinct captains are for.
    • Judy outright commits entrapment to get Nick to trespass on the Tundratown Limo Service property. While entrapment isn't a crime in and of itself and Judy never planned to use it beyond giving herself probable cause to investigate the limo, Nick would be completely justified in filing a lawsuit against her.
  • Artistic License – Physics:
    • During her training montage, Judy manages to knock out a much larger opponent by jumping into the elastic edge of the boxing ring, gaining momentum from the elasticity, and using that momentum to kick her opponent's fist into their face. She's clearly using mostly her leg strength for this; what makes it an example of the trope is that the opponent she's facing is a rhino, a species infamous for delivering heavy blows with their heads.
    • During the scene outside of Jumbeaux Jr.'s ice cream shop, Nick is shown carrying the jumbo-pop and then hands it off to Finnick who is also able to successfully lift and control it. A popsicle is essentially flavored water which weighs 62 lbs per cubic foot. Nick should not have been able to lift it in first place and regardless of whether Finnick had adult-level strength, his size and mass would not be sufficient to counter-balance its weight and should have toppled over with it. Obviously, physics is over-ridden due to Rule of Funny in seeing a diminutive fox carrying an elephant-sized jumbo-pop down the street.
  • Ass in a Lion Skin: At the end, when Officer Wolfard goes undercover, he pulls on a disturbingly realistic sheep costume. It also doubles as a Visual Pun because he's now literally A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing.
  • Astonishingly Appropriate Interruption: Just after Bogo gets caught using the same Gazelle app that Clawhauser had, he's informed that Judy's found all of the missing animals, leaving him in Stunned Silence.
    Gazelle App: Wow, I'm impressed!
  • Audible Sharpness: During Judy's confrontation with young Gideon, he brandishes a claw at her with an inexplicable metallic "chink" sound.
  • Audit Threat: Judy makes the owner of the ice cream shop sell a Jumbo Pop to Nick by noting that the ungloved trunk-to-scoop practice is a Class 3 health code violation.
  • Avoid the Dreaded G Rating: The film has intense subject matter that certainly warrants the higher rating, but just in case it wasn't enough, the naturalist scene was certainly designed to ensure it happened.
  • Award-Bait Song: Shakira's "Try Everything".
  • Back-to-Back Poster: One poster has protagonists Nick and Judy posed back to back to each other. This is fitting since they are polar opposites (Female Flatfoot and Snarky Guy, Predator-Prey Friendship) and the film is about their unlikely partnership.
  • Backstory Horror: It is made clear from the very beginning that the inhabitants of this world had evolved from ordinary wild animals, which naturally tended to kill and eat each other. Also, there are some exhibits in the natural history museum that pretty heavily imply that the evolution of sapience did not happen to all species at the same time meaning that living in this world used to be... less than pleasant.
  • Bag of Holding:
    • Officer Hopps somehow pulls a set of handcuffs from her police utility belt which are bigger than she is to keep a savage jaguar from attacking Nick. The cuffs are big enough to fit around a lamppost and the chain between the cuffs is as long as Nick is tall.
    • Officer Hopps manifests a boot to lock Nick's stroller in place when he insists on being unhelpful with Judy's investigation. Apparently it comes from some extra-dimensional compartment of her utility belt or her meter maid cart because there's no sign of it in either location prior to it being employed.
  • Bait-and-Switch: On Judy's first day on the force, Chief Bogo enters the bullpen and announces he's got three items on the docket. He begins by saying they need to acknowledge the elephant in the room as his eyes scan the bullpen with a stern face. It seems he's about to acknowledge Judy, the first bunny officer on the force, but then he ominously calls out the actual elephant in the room, Officer Francine, who gasps... before he wishes her "Happy Birthday".
  • Bandage Wince: Judy groans in pain as Nick's performing first aid on her injured leg during the climax.
  • Barefoot Cartoon Animal: Almost the entire cast eschews shoes. Even characters who wear spats (such as the cops, including Judy, and Mr. Big) have their toes uncovered. Exceptions include Gazelle (who is The One Who Wears Shoes, though her strappy high-heels also show her hooves), and the nudists (who aren't the trope, as they aren't wearing anything else to begin with).
  • Bare Midriffs Are Feminine: Gazelle's outfit at her concert is a midriff-baring outfit that accentuates her feminine figure, based on what her voice actress, Shakira, usually wears during her performances.
  • Batman Gambit: An epic one pulled by Judy and Nick during the climax. With a badly injured leg, Judy can't run or fight. Although Nick is a likely target for the Night Howler serum, he refuses to leave her behind. While bandaging her leg, blueberries spill out, which they substitute for the single Nighthowler pellet as they are similar in size, color and shape. They bolt for the exit but end up knocked into a pit. As expected, Bellwether darts Nick and calls the police to report Judy being attacked by a savage fox. Nick and Judy carry on the "gone savage" act long enough to record Bellwether's evil gloating and buy time for the ZPD to show up. They then have enough evidence to arrest her and her minions, as well as a sample that is used to develop an antidote for those driven savage by the Night Howlers..
  • Bears Are Bad News:
    • Played with in-universe when Nick and Judy are awaiting the arrival of crime lord Mr. Big, and a series of progressively larger polar bears enter the office, culminating in the towering Koslov who carries Mr. Big, who turns out to be a shrew, in his paws.
    • Played straight later on when a polar bear from Tundratown is shown in a news report, having gone savage and mauled a caribou.
    • Initially played straight with the polar bear Drill Sergeant Nasty at the police academy as she is constantly haranguing Judy that's she's "dead, dead, dead". Becomes downplayed as she is shown smiling when Judy begins to excel at her training, indicating that while it's her job to be tough and demanding, she's not heartless.
  • Be as Unhelpful as Possible: Nick is intentionally unhelpful to Judy's investigation into the disappearance of Mr. Otterton. Later, when she blackmails him into helping her, he goes out of his way to waste Judy's time, like making their trip to the Zootopia DMV take all day instead of just a few hours.
  • Berate and Switch: Judy's surprise assessment of her situation when she moves into her apartment at Zootopia:
    Judy: Greasy walls. Rickety bed. Crazy neighbors. [Beat] I love it!
  • Big Applesauce: Zootopia's city center aesthetic takes a lot from New York, with subways, museums, police badges that resemble the NYPD, etc. The subway station beneath the Natural History resembles New York's 81st Street Station that has direct access to the NYC Natural History Museum.
  • Big "OMG!":
    • Nick gives one when he finds "The Velvety Pipes Of Jerry Vole" CD in Mister Big's car.
    • Zigzagged too, as Clawhauser says, "O-M-Goodness!" when he first sees Judy.
  • Big "SHUT UP!": When Judy is being reprimanded by Chief Bogo for behaving like a Cowboy Cop for "two dozen moldy onions", she begins to explain that they are in fact a crocus varietal leading to Bogo's reaction.
    Chief Bogo: Shut your tiny mouth now!
  • Bilingual Bonus: "Nangi", the name of the nudist Elephant yoga instructor, means "naked" in Hindi. Similarly, the name of Manchas, the jaguar chauffeur, means "spots" or "blots" in Spanish.
  • Black Bead Eyes: Some background characters, such as the lemmings, beavers and shrews (except for Fru Fru and Mr. Big) have these kind of eyes instead of the Cartoony Eyes featured on most of the major and minor characters.
  • Black Mesa Commute: A non-video game version. As Judy is riding the train to the city district, she passes over all the locations the film takes place in.
  • Black Site: Cliffside Asylum, where all the savage animals are kept.
  • Bland-Name Product:
    • The premiere is sponsored by Zoogle Photos (Google Photos).
    • In another scene if you pay close attention, one of the characters has a shopping bag from Targoat (Target), as they're coming out of Mousey's (Macy's).
    • One of Nick's and Finnick's scams involves selling Pawpsicles ("popsicle" being a Brand Name Takeover for ice pops).
    • The smartphones are iPhonies, where the logo is a carrot with a missing chunk. Judy's parents call her via "MuzzleTime" (standing in for FaceTime) and it uses the "PB&J" (standing in for AT&T) phone network. There are also iPad-style tablets labeled "iPaw".
    • Bobby Catmull, the little cougar doing sound FX during Judy's play at the beginning, rips out the final "da-da-da-daaaah" chord that ends the play on a "Catsio" electronic keyboard. Written in the same font!
    • Clawhauser is shown eating Lucky Chomps (Lucky Charms).
  • Blatant Lies:
    • Bogo saying that he's working on the missing mammal cases when it's obvious to both Clawhauser and the audience that he was actually playing with the Gazelle app.
    • Played with by Nick when he is delivering the red-colored popsicle sticks to a construction worker. When asked about the unusual color, Nick replies "that's red wood". The subtitles for that scene confirm that Nick did indeed "say it" with a space in the middle. So, while technically true as spoken, Nick the hustler, also knew how it would sound to the construction worker making this an interesting example of blatantly lying while telling the literal truth.
    • After an interminable period of time waiting at the DMV because Nick distracts Flash:
      Judy: You wasted the day on purpose!
      Nick: Madam, I have a fake badge. I would never impede your pretend investigation.
  • Bloodless Carnage:
    • In the climax, Judy trips over a very sharp mammoth tusk on a museum display while running at full speed, tearing a huge gash in her leg which renders her unable to walk, much less run. Despite the severity of this injury, however, it is not shown to bleed significantly.
    • Subverted with the scene in the back seat of the limo that Otterton was riding in to meet Mr. Big. When first presented it implied that an attack on Otterton had taken place and we are shown the aftermath with claw marks all over the place but no blood, suggesting the trope is being played straight. Then later it was revealed that the situation was not as it initially seemed, that Otterton upon going savage made the marks, and that no violent acts occurred in the back seat that would have left blood behind thus subverting the trope.
  • Blunt "Yes": Played for laughs.
    Judy: What is your problem? Does seeing me fail somehow make you feel better about your own sad, miserable life?
    Nick: It does. One-hundred percent.
  • Bookends: The climax is a real-life reenactment of the dramatic scene from the talent show in the beginning where a bloodthirsty predator stalks and attacks a helpless bunny. Judy even repeats her last lines word for word.
  • Both Sides Have a Point: The conflict in the first two acts between Judy and Bogo. On the one hand, Judy is right to feel underestimated, as she is assigned to a banal job after graduating valedictorian at the police academy. On the other, Bogo, who is in the middle of dealing with a city-wide, missing mammals crisis is right to be irritated with his brand-new employee's recklessness and unwillingness to follow instructions, and to discipline her accordingly.
  • Bowdlerise: A minor, voice acting-related, case of this happens in the Mexican Spanish dub: When Mr. Big accuses Nick of selling him a rug made from a skunk's butt, in the Mexican dub it was changed with Mr. Big accusing him of selling a rug made from a Smelly Skunknote  instead. It still sounds funny anyway due to how Mr. Big says that to Nick.
  • Brainwashed and Crazy: The predators "going savage" have been dosed with a chemical extracted from Night Howlers that makes them lose their sapience and increases their feral instincts so they will attack anyone in sight. Bellwether is specifically targeting predators in Zootopia to create fear and unrest in the populace and insure that only prey animals can be trusted to wield political power (especially her). She also uses it to silence anyone who could aid Judy's investigation such as Mr. Otterton and Mr. Manchas since savage animals can't talk.
  • Breaking the Fourth Wall: An in-universe example; young Judy directly addresses Gideon during the play.
  • Breaking the Glass Ceiling: Judy is the first bunny to become a police officer in Zootopia (a force normally comprising megafauna and/or predators). As a result, people initially don't take her seriously.
  • Break Them by Talking: Judy is given two over the course of the movie, first by Nick as he rips apart her dreams and plays on her insecurity by pointing out the "reality" of her situation, and then by Chief Bogo who chews her out for violating procedure and causing chaos by running off to be a Cowboy Cop for a relatively unimportant robbery. Judy, however, is a Determinator, so she presses onward.
  • Buddy Cop Show: The plot can be summarized as: an eager young officer out to prove herself and the two-bit con man she coerced into helping her gradually develop an odd friendship while investigating a missing persons case and eventually uncovering a huge conspiracy.
  • Bully Turned Buddy: Gideon Gray starts off as a bully to Judy and other kids, but as an adult, he becomes a friend and business partner to the family.
  • Bullying a Dragon: Judy tries to strong-arm Mr. Big into giving her information on Mr. Otterton despite the fact that she and Nick are in his house, surrounded by his Giant Mooks and the otherwise unflappable Nick is utterly terrified of him.
  • Call-Back:
    • Nick pretending to be savage and hunting Judy resembles the opening scene in the play, where a young Judy plays a primitive rabbit being preyed upon. Both end with same line "Blood! Blood! Blood! ...and Death". No ketchup this time, though.
    • During Judy's second meeting with Nick, after she realizes he's a hustler, he says that even though she came to Zootopia with big hopes and dreams, she is probably going to end up living in a box under a bridge somewhere. Near the end of the movie, where does Judy find Nick after they had been separated since the press conference? Hanging out under a bridge!
    • During Nick's flashback to his Junior Ranger Scout initiation he recites the following oath: "I — Nicholas Wilde — promise to be brave, loyal, helpful, and trustworthy!" This is exactly what he proves to be with Judy as their friendship progresses. He was finally able to fulfill his oath, it just took him some time to get there.
    • When the two are reviewing the traffic cameras to learn what happened to Manchas and see the wolves taking him away, Nick, a fox, makes a dismissive comment about the wolves' tendency to spontaneously howl, causing Judy to conclude that they are the "Night Howlers" that Manchas and Otterton mentioned earlier. Later, Gideon Gray, also a fox, makes an offhand comment that the flowers that turn animals savage are nicknamed "Night Howlers". This helps Judy to have another "Eureka!" Moment as she finally realizes what the Night Howlers really are.
    • An obscure examplenote : the final bit of Judy's Failure Montage at the Police Academy involves her falling into an oversized toilet, and immediately being called out as "dead" by her training instructor in the neighboring stall. Later in the film, when she and Nick are trapped inside a holding cell intended for an animal much larger than themselves, Nick's ranting about how the two of them are now "dead" gives Judy the idea to escape through the cell's toilet.
    • A twisted variation. When Judy records Nick's confession of tax evasion on her carrot pen, she says he can have it if he helps her with finding the missing Mr. Otterton. However she never mentions her 48-hour deadline. Nick, however, picks up enough context over the course of their investigation so that during Judy's tearful apology when he records her confession of being a "dumb bunny" he says he'll let her delete it... in forty-eight hours.
    • When Judy arrives in Zootopia for the first time, she listens to Gazelle's "Try Everything". The ending has Gazelle giving a concert while singing this song with most of the cast listening.
    • The film starts with A Minor Kidroduction of Judy participating in a play about the savage beginnings of their world and later has her defending her sheep friends from a fox bully. The final act has Judy fighting against a group of criminal sheep with her fox friend, with the climax taking place in a museum showing the savage beginnings of their world. In both cases, the predator turns out to be only acting, and Judy gives the same over-the-top response to being caught: "Blood, blood, blood! And... death!".
    • We have a scene of Nick as a young kit trying to join the Junior Ranger Scouts, an organization that requires its members to wear uniforms and take an oath to be Brave, Loyal, Helpful and Trustworthy. The first time we see young Nick in his uniform, he is with a significant female in his life (his mother) and gives her a genuine smile full of joy and pride. At the end of the movie, Nick is now an adult who has joined the ZPD, an organization that requires its members to wear uniforms and take an oath to uphold the qualities of Bravery, Integrity, and Trust. The first time we see adult Nick in his uniform, he is with a significant female in his life (Judy) and gives her a genuine smile full of joy and pride.
    • There are two ZPD bullpen scenes in the film, one near the beginning and another near the end. Each one ends with Bogo assigning Judy to parking duty. However, the second time, he's only kidding.
    • Independent of having heard Nick's advice on the subject, Lionheart pulls the 'Answer their question with your own question' trick smoothly in his final interview.
  • Canis Latinicus: The flowers Stu uses as a natural pesticide on his farm are from a fictional crocus varietal with the scientific name of Midnicampum holicithias. Only the first word is even an attempt at Latin, and translates very loosely as "between the fields". The second word is vaguely Greek, in which it translates just as roughly as "all shepherd". This is somewhat appropriate despite the linguistics since Stu plants them between his fields to keep the bugs off ("shepherding" the crops). Their common name of "Night Howler" presumably derives from how they make animals act, just as one of the real plants called "loco weed", Oxytropis campestris, has a name which translates as "sharp keel of the field".note 
  • Cardboard Box of Unemployment: Downplayed Trope as it doesn't involve anyone being fired, but as anti-predator sentiment hits a boiling point, Officer Benjamin Clawhauser is transferred away from front desk duty at the police station. Judy watches him packing his "I Heart Gazelle" coffee mug and snow globe into a box for the move.
    Officer Clawhauser: They thought it would be better if a predator — such as myself — wasn't the first face that you see when you walk into the ZPD. They're gonna move me to records. It's downstairs. It's by the boiler.
  • Cartoony Eyes: Most animal characters play it straight, but some background characters, such as the lemmings and the rams (such as Doug and his assistants) have realistic animal eyesnote . They certainly look very awkward among the characters with human-like eyes. Also, any predator that turns "savage" reverts to Animal Eyes.
  • Cassandra Truth: As Mayor Lionheart is being arrested by the ZPD, he tries to explain that he was only trying to protect the city and that not knowing why predators were going savage could destroy Zootopia. His warning is ignored and he is arrested for illegally imprisoning mammals. Later at the press conference when it's revealed that they don't know why only predators are going savage, Judy repeats the theory that it could be due to their biology. As a result, Zootopia erupts into prey vs. predator distrust that divides the city.
  • Casting Gag:
    • Tommy "Tiny" Lister, who stands 6'5" and weighs 300lb, is known for playing thugs and brutes (like Deebo), yet here plays a tiny, adorable fennec fox who pretends to be a baby. The directors admitted it's supposed to be ironic.
    • The French dub had Finnick voiced by Teddy Riner — a judoka who is the reigning France, Europe, World and Olympic champion in the heavyweight category, and stands at 6'8" and 290 lbs.
    • Kristen Bell was invited to voice Priscilla, Flash's co-worker at the DMV, because of the actress' well known love of sloths.
    • In the European Spanish dub, the sheep characters Woolter and Jesse, whose names are a Shout-Out to Breaking Bad, are voiced by Miguel Ayones and Alejandro Martínez, who respectively voiced Walter White and Jesse Pinkman in the same series. The German dub does the same with voice actors Joachim Tennstedt and Marcel Collé.
    • Maurice LaMarche plays Mister Big, a tiny rodent who's nonetheless a dangerous criminal.
    • The same goes with the same character in the Japanese dub, as Kazuhiro Yamaji previously dubbed another criminal boss, Tony Montana.
  • Casually Powerful Giant:
    • On her first day working for the Zootopia Police Department, rabbit Judy Hopps offers a fist bump to the officer sitting next to her, a rhino. She gets dragged across the floor, chair included, even though the rhino is pushing gently.
    • The trope is further played with when Judy is in Little Rodentia where she is effectively a 60' tall giant next to the inhabitants of the neighborhood.
  • Caught on Tape:
    • Judy blackmails Nick into working with her by recording his boasting about how much his schemes have made, then threatens to arrest him in for tax evasion since he hasn't declared any of this income unless he helps her.
    • Judy uses her phone to record the conversation between Mayor Lionheart and Dr. Madge Honey Badger about the savage animals, as evidence that he's the one responsible for their disappearance.
    • Judy's tearful apology to Nick is cut short by Nick using the recorder pen to play back the Arc Words "just a dumb bunny" she's just said. Right before they hug.
    • Judy uses her recorder pen to capture the villain's confession.
  • The Cavalry: Chief Bogo and the rest of the force, show up at the Natural History Museum to catch Bellwether red-handed and prevent her from escaping. In an ironic twist, it is the villain who called them, expecting Judy to have been killed in the meantime.
  • Chair Reveal: Mr. Big is introduced by having the massive polar bear Koslov enter the room, stands behind the desk and then open his large paws to reveal... the back of tiny chair. And then he turns it around, and we get our first view of the miniature mob boss.
  • Change the Uncomfortable Subject: After Nick opens up to Judy about a traumatic childhood event that shaped who he decided to be, Judy is moved to comfort him so he changes the subject to the traffic, which he then realizes is a lead on their case.
  • Character Development:
    • Thanks to Judy, Nick learns that he's a better person than he gives himself credit for and shouldn't let the stereotypes about his species stop him from realizing his full potential. As a result, he decides to give up his hustler ways and join the ZPD at the end.
    • Thanks to Nick, Judy learns that she's not free of implicit bias, and works to overcome this flaw and take responsibility for her mistakes. Her heartfelt apology helps earn Nick's forgiveness after their Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure. She also realizes that while Zootopia isn't as perfect as she initially thought, she decides she can still make it a better place, albeit much more realistically this time.
    • This happens off-screen to Gideon Grey who was a schoolyard bully that victimized prey species, leading young Judy to an Establishing Character Moment when she defies him. By the time he re-enters the film as an adult, he's become a Reformed Bully and apologizes to Judy, with an implication (through very specific language) that he's also been through therapy.
    • Gideon's re-entering the film as an adult also showcases some Character Development for Judy's parents. Early in the movie, they are extremely distrustful of foxes in general. But later on, inspired by Judy, they overcome their distrust of foxes, becoming Gideon's business partners and having a genuinely friendly and respectful working relationship with him.
  • Character Witness: Judy saves an innocent bystander in Little Rodentia from being crushed by a runaway donut. It didn't seem important at the time, but when she and Nick cross Mr. Big and are about to be "iced", that same bystander steps forward to return the favor -- and then some.
  • Chekhov's Armory: Judy's carrot pen recorder and the blueberries she brings from her hometown along with the handkerchief Nick uses to wrap the blueberries all pay off in a big way during the climax.
  • Chekhov's Boomerang: Judy's carrot-shaped pen/recorder. It's how she blackmails Nick into helping her. Then she uses it to trick Nick to climb over a fence so she can cite probable cause. It's then used by Nick to record Judy's teary-eyed confession that she's just a "dumb bunny". Finally used to record the confession of the Big Bad.
  • Chekhov's Gag: During her training at the police academy, when Judy falls into a large toilet to the admonishment of her drill instructor saying "you're dead, fluff butt" it seems to be just a funny joke. However, later when locked in cell with Nick who leans against a large toilet while complaining that they're now "dead" she recalls her earlier experience and uses the toilet to allow her and Nick to escape.
  • Chekhov's Gun: Many.
    • The stolen bulbs Judy recovered after catching Duke Weaselton in Little Rodentia. They turn out to be Night Howler bulbs.
    • Judy's parents calling her via "MuzzleTime," which will happen again at an awkward time.
    • The Night Howlers mentioned by Manchas. Judy believes them to be the wolves responsible for kidnapping Manchas and Otterton. She then learns after she returns home that they are a species of flowers which can cause savage behavior in all mammals.
    • Blueberries. Nick is shown to like them early on in the film as he takes a handful when he strolls past a street vendor while Judy is berating him for his dishonesty. Later, Nick helps himself to some of the blueberries grown by Judy's family and stores some in his handkerchief. The two of them then discover the Night Howler pellets used to cause the outbreaks of savage behavior closely resemble blueberries. This resemblance later becomes an important plot point.
    • In a darker sense, the fox-repellent spray Judy's parents give her. She never uses it in the film — but Nick notices she's wearing it and is hurt. He brings it up to her in their argument as proof that she really is, to some degree, prejudiced against foxes.
    • Nick's Scout uniform kerchief from his Junior Ranger Scout flashback. He uses it to carry the blueberries he finds in Judy's truck, and later to bandage her leg wound. The fact that he carried it in his pocket for at least twenty years reinforces the idea that at his heart Nick is an honest person behind his defensive cynicism.
    • In the photo of his last-known whereabouts, Emmitt Otterton is shown eating a pawpsicle that Nick sells. This leads Judy to notice Nick just leaving the scene giving her a potential lead witness in finding the missing Emmitt.
    • Judy's carrot recording pen, which she used to record Nick's admission of his annual earnings, ends up being used record Bellwether's admission of her plan to continue inciting anti-predator sentiments among the populace of Zootopia.
  • Chekhov's Gunman:
    • The shrew Judy saves from a flying donut later turns out to be Mr. Big's daughter Fru Fru, who in turn saves Judy and Nick from being iced and gets them on good terms with her father.
    • Also, Duke Weaselton, who's apparently a common thief when Judy first encounters him, but turns out to be a supplier of the Night Howlers for the antagonists, whom Judy and Nick had Mr. Big interrogate for the location of the Night Howlers laboratory.
    • Gideon Grey. At first he appears to be simply a one-shot antagonist bully that provides the conflict for Judy's Establishing Character Moment. He returns towards the end of the film as an adult who apologizes to Judy for his behavior years ago, which highlights the idea that people can change. Gideon not only becomes a Reformed Bully but he also gives Judy's parents an opportunity to overcome their own prejudice by becoming their business partner. In a plot-related note, he is inadvertently responsible for revealing the true nature of the night howlers.
    • When Judy first spots Nick, he's yelled at by an angry ram driving a truck. This ram is Doug, the chemist/sniper who targets predators with the Night Howler pellets. Bonus points for being a literal gunman. Doug also makes another appearance at the end of the film's second act, posing as a reporter during the press conference to ask Judy a loaded question about predators.
  • Chekhov's Skill:
    • Nick's not exaggerating very much when he boasts about knowing everyone in Zootopia; his knowledge proves critical several times in the movie.
    • Judy's acting from her play in the prologue, combined with the acting skill that Nick uses in his con jobs, ends up coming in handy setting up Bellwether's Engineered Public Confession.
    • Early on, when Judy is at the academy, during her boxing match with the rhino we see that she has an a aerial kick that hits with far more force than should even be possible from such a small animal. Later during the subway car chase she uses it to knock the ram assailant into the switch track lever to avoid an oncoming train.
    • Judy shows that she is well versed in plant husbandry and identifies the "moldy onions" as "a crocus varietal called midnicampum holicithias"; later when Gideon mentions that his family always just called them "night howlers" it gives Judy the clue needed to solve the case.
  • Chemically-Induced Insanity: The serum distilled from the Night Howler plant causes any mammal (predator or prey) exposed to it to go savage.
  • Chewing the Scenery: In-universe, Judy does it in the play at the beginning of the movie when she plays a meek prey mauled by a vicious predator. Then again at the end of the movie, after convincingly pretending to be killed by a "savage" Nick to get the confession from Bellwether, she jokingly does this again, as Nick points it out to her: "Now you're just milking it".
  • Children Are Innocent: Nick and Finnick exploit this trope for their scams.
  • Close-Call Haircut: A ram gets the fur shorn off his belly after just missing being crushed by a subway car.
  • Convenient Photograph: The last photo sighting of Emmit Otterton is one where he happens to be eating a popsicle, which Judy recognises as the kind sold by conman (confox?) Nick Wilde. Sure enough, when she looks closer, she sees that Nick is partially in the photo too, giving Judy her first lead.
  • Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are: Bellwether's "Come on out, Judy" in a very trembling and disturbing tone during the hide and seek at the museum.
  • Comically Missing the Point:
    • When Chief Bogo sarcastically congratulates Judy for stopping a criminal from stealing two dozen moldy onions, she corrects him by noting that those onions were actually a crocus varietal. Chief Bogo is less than amused by that.
    • Just before Nick starts his Break Them by Talking speech with Judy, he says he assumed she came from some metaphorical "carrot-choked Podunk". Judy irritably corrects him saying that "Podunk is in Deerbrooke County" and she comes from Bunnyburrow. Nick even rolls his eyes at her literal interpretation before he continues.
  • Comic-Book Adaptation: Disney released an adaptation of the movie while Dark Horse Comics released some prequel stories aimed at younger children.
  • Commonality Connection: Judy and Nick become much more sympathetic towards each other when they learn the extent to which both have been victims of discrimination due to their species.
  • Compliment Backfire:
    • Judy calls Nick "articulate" after the scene in the cafe (a word that can have decidedly racial connotations considering rabbits and foxes don't get along). He doesn't show it, but Nick's "It's rare that I find someone so non-patronizing" is clearly sarcastic, though Judy doesn't pick up on it.
    • When Clawhauser calls Judy "cute", she reacts like it was a racial slur, explaining that one bunny can call another that, but when a non-bunny says it it's bad.
  • Compromising Call: While Judy and Nick are sneaking around the facility housing the mammals that had "gone savage," Judy's parents try to call her on her phone (right as she was using it to record a conversation as evidence). The sound alerts the head doctor who calls security, forcing Judy and Nick to hightail it out of there.
  • The Conspiracy: Predators are going savage because a group of sheep headed by Bellwether is creating Chemically-Induced Insanity in innocent predators. The ultimate goal is to inflame tension against predators to such a high level that prey will unite against predators and ensure that Bellwether stays in power.
  • Conspiracy Thriller: What the movie ultimately turns out to be once Judy discovers what the Night Howlers actually are.
  • Contrived Coincidence:
    • In her second day of work, Judy chases after a thief weasel and saves a female shrew from being crushed by a giant donut. Both of them turn out to be relevant to the plot later as the weasel, Duke Weaselton, happens to be a supplier of the Night Howlers; and the female shrew, Fru Fru, happens to be the daughter of one of the city's notorious crime lords. Also, because it just so happens to be her wedding day, it provides a convenient reason for her to walk in on her father just as he's getting ready to ice Judy and Nick and save them from being killed, in return for Judy saving her life.
    • In the same vein, in Emmit Otterton's last known photo, he's eating one of Nick's pawpsicles, and upon further inspection, Nick himself is in the photo. If Judy hadn't met Nick and witnessed his hustle on her first day, this would be meaningless to her and she'd have absolutely no leads.
  • Convenience Store Gift Shopping: Bellwether winces as Lionheart refers to her as "Smellwether" but tries to put a positive spin on it for Judy and Nick by pointing out the nice mug he got her which she uses as a pencil holder, and it says World's Greatest Dad with the last word scrawled out in red marker, and "Assistant Mayor" written in the tiny space above it.
  • Convenient Cranny: When chased by Manchas, Nick and Judy are able to hide in a tree trunk which Manchas is unable to fit into.
  • Cool Car:
    • At the end, Judy and Nick get issued a state-of-the-art interceptor vehicle to track down drag racers.
    • Extends to every car in the film, as they were all designed by the legendary J Mays.
  • Cool Train:
    • The passenger train Judy Hopps rides to Zootopia at the beginning. It has three separate levels fitted for passengers of various sizes.
    • The speeding freight train that the runaway subway car avoids colliding with, complete with a rhino-like nose on the front of the locomotive.
  • Crazy-Prepared: Judy seems to have anticipated Nick's tax evasion, as she actually found his tax return and brought it with her to force him to cooperate with her investigation.
  • Creative Closing Credits: After the Dance Party Ending, the credits roll over colorful and stylized animal-themed backgrounds. In addition to music previously heard in the movie, the original composition "Suite from Zootopia" plays during the credits.
  • Credits Gag: Tommy Lister is credited as his nickname, Tiny Lister, which makes a lot of sense considering how short his character is.
  • Cry into Chest: Judy cries into Nick's chest when they reconcile after the Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure.
  • Cue the Falling Object: A two-phase example when the subway car that Judy and Nick tried to commandeer has crashed.
    • First Judy hopes that maybe some of the evidence survived. Cue the car exploding into a flaming mess including a burning propane tank flying away from the wreck that explodes behind them.
    • Next Judy dejectedly admits that it's all gone. Cue the car, fires dying down as a metal part comes off the wreck and falls down with a loud clang.
  • Cue the Flying Pigs: A downplayed example, when Judy tries to start the subway car containing the Night Howler lab:
    Nick: You're a conductor now? Listen, it would take a miracle to get this rustbucket going! [Judy manages to start the car] Well. Hallelujah.
  • Cultural Translation: Depending on region, the male news anchor of ZNN is either a moose named Peter Moosebridge who's in the USA, Canadian, and French versions; a koala in the Australian and New Zealand ones; a tanuki (named Michael Tanuyama) in the Japanese one; a panda in the Chinese one; or a jaguar in the Brazilian one, as you can see here. In the UK version he's still a moose, but renamed "Moosos Alexander" and voiced by BBC Radio 2 DJ Vassos Alexander.
  • Cynic–Idealist Duo: Nick and Judy. Thanks to the Fantastic Racism against foxes, Nick became a bitter and cynical Con Artist, whereas Judy starts out as a Wide-Eyed Idealist whose intention is to "make the world a better place". By the end of the film, they are shown to have started moving beyond this dynamic, as Nick is inspired by Judy's trust in him to grow beyond being a cynical "popsicle hustler" and join the ZPD as her partner. Judy grows beyond her blanket idealism and realizes "real life is a little more complicated than a slogan on a bumper sticker".
  • Cynicism Catalyst: Nick was deliberately bullied and muzzled by the other Junior Ranger Scouts as a kid, which causes him to become a sly, cynical, snarky con-fox as he grew up.
  • Dance Party Ending: The movie ends with Gazelle singing "Try Everything" in a concert attended by major and minor characters and many Zootopian citizens where everybody is dancing and having a good time (including prison inmates watching the concert from a TV screen; except Bellwether). A somewhat downplayed version in that having the concert makes logical sense in the context of the story and there are several notable characters that you'd expect to see that do not appear (such as Finnick, Gideon Grey, Manchas, Nangi, Bucky, Pronk).
  • Dark and Troubled Past: When Nick was a young fox, he tried to join the Junior Ranger Scouts, but on the night of his initiation, he was humiliated and muzzled while being called an untrustworthy fox. This trauma led him to embrace the stereotype society had about foxes and grow up to become a con artist.
  • Darkest Hour: A family-friendly example. Judy's careless remarks to the media about predators "reverting back to their savage ways" cause massive civil unrest in Zootopia — and damages her relationship with Nick. She responds by quitting the force.
  • Deadly Dust Storm: The Sahara Square obstacle course during Judy's police academy training simulates one.
  • Deadly Euphemism: "Icing" is Mr. Big's term for offing people by throwing them down a Trap Door into a pool of icy water.
  • Dead Man's Switch: A proper dead man's handle is shown when Judy and Nick commandeer the subway car. Judy initially turns it to get the train car moving and when Jesse is able to successfully drag her away, Nick has to step forward to continue putting pressure on the handle in order to keep the escape going.
  • Deconstruction: Although the main plot is a mystery, the movie also deconstructs the World of Funny Animals trope along the way. Habitats for animals of different sizes and climates, the need for civilized behavior against base instincts, and prejudices based on Animal Stereotypes are all essential aspects of the plot.
  • Defeat Means Respect: When Judy manages to complete the Impossible Task Chief Bogo used to set her up to fail she earns his respect. He gives her full credit for solving the investigation and finding the missing mammals. Later, when Judy is feeling guilty over the part she played in causing civil unrest between predator and prey, he informs her that the world has always been broken which why it needs good cops like her.
  • Department of Major Vexation: The Zootopia DMV is staffed by sloths. When Judy needs to run a license plate, it takes an eternity for Flash to type the plate number into the system. The Overly Long Gag becomes even more excruciating when Nick asks if Flash wants to hear a joke just as he is about to type in the final digit delaying the interaction further.
  • Department of Redundancy Department:
    • Judy calling Nick out for playing his confidence scam on her.
      Judy: I stood up for you, and you lied to me, you liar!
    • Duke Weaselton's description of Doug the ram:
      Weaselton: Doug is the opposite of friendly; he's unfriendly.
  • Destructive Savior: Downplayed. After Judy successfully catches Weaselton, Chief Bogo rips into her for causing more harm in Little Rodentia chasing him down than his crime apparently warranted.
    Chief Bogo: Abandoning your post. Inciting a scurry. Reckless endangerment of rodent lives. But, to be fair, you did stop a master criminal from stealing two dozen moldy onions.
  • Didn't Think This Through: Judy decides the best way to get Mr. Big's help finding Otterton is to threaten him. A mob boss. While she is in his office, surrounded by his bodyguards, with no backup, and no one knows where she is. She and Nick would have been iced without fanfare if not for Fru Fru's timely arrival.
    • Judy's phone rings while she and Nick are undercover at the cliffside asylum, which gives away their presence. That could have been avoided if Judy had thought to silence her ringer.
  • Dirty Cop: During the climax, the Big Bad is accompanied by ZPD officers who were in on the evil plan.
  • Discussed Trope: Benjamin Clawhauser is well aware of the fact that, as a fat doughnut-eating cop, he is a walking stereotype.
  • Does This Remind You of Anything?: There are a lot of layers to the characters, world and storytelling. It's easy to see even some of the same situations through a species/sexist/general stereotyping lens, and get different messages out of it. It's also never as cut and dry as "one group of animals corresponds to one real world group." Who is on which side of the fence is fluid throughout. Please keep in mind that in the documentary Imagining Zootopia, the creative team stated they wanted to explore the effect of bias on society and did not want to reflect any specific racial analogs in the film.
    • Among other things, a peace rally involving predator and prey activists happens after Judy tells the media that the reason why predators are going savage may be biologically related. One of the signs used by the activists says "Pred Pride".
    • The bias that Judy faces as the first bunny cop — being of small stature, lacking great physical strength compared to the other megafauna, and being assigned a safe but menial task like parking duty — reflects a lot of attitudes towards female police officers in the early 20th century when more and more jurisdictions started allowing women to serve.
    • People making implications that certain people are prone to violence because it's In the Blood.
    • Nick gleefully touching Bellwether's fluffy wool on the top of her head until Judy has to remind him that it's a very rude thing to do without her permission. If you're Afro-American and/or have curly hair, chances are you've been through this at least once.
    • Assistant-Mayor Bellwether says Mayor Lionheart probably only hired her to "get the Sheep vote."
    • During the peace rally, a pig in the crowd yells at a leopard activist to "Go back to the forest, predator!" while she retorts that she's from the savanna. "Go back to [X]" is a common slur against immigrants, and (when used inaccurately) can garner much the same response from the target.
    • Mayor Lionheart's "Mammal Inclusion Initiative," which helps certain animals get into schools and jobs they would traditionally be excluded from, sounds similar to many real-life Affirmative Action programs. If Chief Bogo's reaction to Judy is any indication, it even carries the same baggage.
    • Judy's assertion to Clawhauser that rabbits can call other rabbits "cute", but that it's quite rude for other animals to do so, is a nod to N-Word Privileges.
    • The flashback to Nick's childhood when he takes part in the Initiation Ceremony at his first Junior Ranger Scouts meeting where he's bullied and muzzled could be seen as a hazing ritual.
    • Upon leaving the ice cream shop with Nick and his "son", Judy compliments Nick as being a "real articulate fella". While this is partially justified in that her previous fox experiences were with Gideon, who demonstrated a poor grasp of language, it is also similar to the real-life occurrence of African-Americans or Latinos receiving the backhanded compliment of being called "well-spoken/articulate", as though they are expected to be anything but.
  • A Dog Named "Dog":
    • Shakira plays a gazelle named... Gazelle.
    • Chief Bogo is a Bilingual Bonus example; bogo comes from "mbogo", which is "cape buffalo" in Swahili.
    • The little jaguar at the talent show is named Jaguar according to Word of God (pronounced as in Spanish).
  • The Dog Was the Mastermind: The mastermind behind the conspiracy turns out to be a character who has appeared multiple times in the movie, always seeming amiable and inoffensive.
  • Donut Mess with a Cop: Officer Benjamin Clawhauser fits the stereotype of the donut-loving cop, and is quite aware of the fact.
  • Doomed Appointment: Otterton found out something about the Night Howlers and informed Mr. Big that he had something important to discuss. The latter sent his car but Otterton never arrived because of the ambush. Had Otterton told Mr. Big about his discovery over the phone, much of the plot could have been avoided.
  • Door Focus: A variant. When Judy leaves her apartment in Zootopia for the first time, the camera lingers on her Foxaway repellant she left behind on a table. Moments later the door reopens with Judy reaching for the can.
  • Door Judo: As Woolter does a full-on charge against the locked door of the subway car, Nick uses this against him so he goes charging into Jesse knocking him out the window and getting stuck there in his place.
  • Double Entendre: Judy's line when she's calculating Nick's owed taxes: "I am just a dumb bunny, but we're good at multiplying."
  • "Down Here!" Shot: Clawhauser hears someone say "Excuse Me", but sees no-one. Judy actually has to say "Down here" for him to peer over the reception desk to see her. He squees at the sight.
  • Drama-Preserving Handicap: In the climax, Judy and Nick are running through the Natural History museum fleeing from Bellwether and her ram minions. Normally they would have no trouble evading them, but Judy injures her leg, preventing them from easily escaping.
  • Dramatic Slip:
    • When Nick and Judy are being chased by a savage jaguar, Judy winds up slipping off the bridge and struggles to pull herself back up. This causes Nick to hesitate and miss escaping in the Sky Tram, despite Judy's insistence that he go.
    • During the climax, while Nick and Judy are trying to escape the museum with evidence against the Big Bad, Judy cuts her leg on a mammoth tusk lying on the ground and crashes to the floor. Nick immediately rushes back, picks her up, and carries her to a temporary hiding place so he can bandage up the wound. Judy then tells him to leave her behind and rush the case of evidence over to the ZPD, but he refuses to do so.
  • Dramatic Timpani: The kid foley artist in the opening School Play plays the timpani when Judy dies.
  • Dramedy: The topic of the story deals with bias and its effects. Everybody, Judy and Nick included, is a carrier (intentionally or not) and a victim of it. That being said, it has several hilarious and slapstick moments.
  • Drill Sergeant Nasty: The female polar bear drill sergeant from the police training academy is strict and no-nonsense.
  • Dub Species Change: Duke Weaselton is a marten in the Hungarian dub.
  • Ear Ache: Blink and you'll miss it, but one of the "You're dead!" moments in Judy's training montage has her ears getting slammed in a car door.
  • Earn Your Happy Ending: Judy and Nick are nearly killed several times, face prejudice from several animals, and have a pretty serious Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure. However, in the end they reconcile, solve the case, restore peace to Zootopia, and Nick joins the ZPD becoming Judy's partner, which further enhances their ability to get along.
  • Easily-Overheard Conversation: Played for laughs. Judy's two obnoxious next-door neighbors are able to listen in and comment on Judy's MuzzleTime talk with her parents.
  • Easter Egg: Depending on the region, the male news anchor that appears with the female snow leopard will either be a male moose, jaguar, koala, panda or raccoon dog and they can all be seen on the same movie poster.
  • Elephant in the Living Room: Played with. The writers were able to imply the trope is going to be played straight when Chief Bogo enters the bullpen and announces "First... we need to acknowledge the elephant in the room" as his eyes scan the bullpen with a stern face. However, because Zootopia is a World of Funny Animals, this is actually a Bait-and-Switch and the phrase becomes a Literal Metaphor as Chief Bogo congratulates Francine, an elephant officer on her birthday.
  • Engineered Public Confession:
    • Nick finds himself on the receiving end of one of these when Judy provokes him into smugly gloating about how much money he's earned over the course of his life. The smugness quickly evaporates when he realizes this means he's just confessed to Felony Tax Evasion in front of a police officer... who, as it turns out, was recording the whole thing.
      Judy: I think your $10 worth of popsicles can wait.
      Nick: Ha. I make 200 bucks a day, Fluff! 365 days a year, since I was 12. And time is money. Hop along.
    • Toward the end, anticipating Bellwether might shoot Nick with the Night Howler serum to turn him savage, Judy and Nick secretly replace the single Night Howler pellet with blueberries and plan to have Nick pretend to go savage and hunt down Judy to get Bellwether gloating over her plans while they record her confession.
  • Establishing Character Moment: Both the main characters get one, Judy's extended Minor Kidroduction and Nick's con at the ice cream parlor. What makes the latter more interesting is that it actually ends up being plot-relevant, since knowing of the scheme allows Judy to recognize both him and his Pawpsicle in the photo of Mr. Otterton.
  • Et Tu, Brute?: Judy at the press conference, repeats the theory from Dr. Honey Badger at Cliffside Asylum that predators may be "going savage" due to their biology and were "reverting to their primitive state" for some unknown reason. Nick in hearing this from the person he has opened up to about his traumatic childhood experience, feels personally betrayed and is deeply upset, leading to their Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure.
  • "Eureka!" Moment:
    • Nick gets the idea to check the jam cams after trying to Change the Uncomfortable Subject.
    • When Nick and Judy look at the traffic cam footage to find where Manchas was taken, the scene of the timber wolves howling leads her to conclude that Mr. Otterton's phrase "Night Howlers" was in reference to them.
    • When Judy is at her family's farm in Bunnyburrow, she finally learns what the Night Howlers really are, and learns that even prey mammals (like her Uncle Terry) can turn savage when exposed to them.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: Mr. Big might be a crime boss who's known for "icing" his enemies, but he also cares about his family and business associates.
  • Every Car Is a Pinto: The subway car full of vital evidence gets derailed and crashes, and everything in it is destroyed in a fiery explosion. Justified since an illegal chemical lab using multiple propane tanks for heat is bound to have No OSHA Compliance.
  • Evidence Dungeon: The train car/laboratory is packed with incriminating evidence — such as Night Howler cultivation beds, extraction facilities, and a map with the photos of all fourteen missing mammals.
  • Evil Gloating: Bellwether reveals her plan to Judy and Nick, which is to make prey fear predators and she stays in power and she'll dart every predator in Zootopia to make sure that both prey and predators never get along. Judy is able to secretly record her confession and plays it out loud.
    Bellwether: And I'll dart every predator in Zootopia to keep it that way.
  • Exact Eavesdropping: From their hiding spot at Cliffside Asylum , Nick and Judy are able to overhear and record Mayor Lionheart talking about his involvement in the scheme.
  • Exact Words:
    • Nick employs this in his pawpsicle hustle when he states the lumber made from the pawpsicle sticks is "red wood".
    • When Nick accompanies Judy to the DMV, he tells her that Flash is "the fastest guy in there"... it doesn't matter if he's referring to his physical ability or racing prowess because he's wanting to reassure her knowing full well that regardless of his speed relative to other sloths, it will be mind-numbingly slow against her hyper-anxious race against the clock.
  • Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: Nick when he realises who owns the Limo in Tundra Town:
    "Now, wait a minute: Polar bear fur, rat-pack music, fancy cup? I know whose car this is, we've gotta go!"
  • Explosive Breeder: The tendency of bunnies towards this trope is referenced a few times, such as Judy's 200+ siblings, the population counter for Bunnyburrow continually growing and when she tells Nick how bunnies are good at multiplying while she's calculating Nick's income from hustling.
  • Eye Scream: When Manchas, the black panther limo driver, first appears to Nick and Judy, his right eye is swollen shut with claw marks across it from an attack by a savage mammal. During the flashback of the attack, we see Manchas looking into the backseat which cuts to a savage animal launching toward the camera with claws, fangs and spittle on display ending with the fangs taking up the full screen. This then cuts to Manchas leaping from the limo with his paw over his right eye.

    Tropes F to K 
  • Facepalm:
    • Judy's mother does this gesture during the opening talent show when Judy is dying melodramatically on stage.
    • Bogo also does one after Bellwether texts the Mayor that Judy is taking the Otterton case.
    • Nick facepalms when Judy declares she is a cop to Mr. Big, despite his best efforts to convince her to keep her mouth shut.
  • Failed a Spot Check:
    • Judy doesn't appear to notice when she steps into the wet cement. Justified in that she is engaged in a heated discussion with Nick at the time.
    • Subverted in the case of Judy's fox repellent. Nick noticed that she was carrying that when they first met, but he just didn't comment on it until what happened at the press conference.
  • Failure Montage: The beginning has Judy trying to make it through a series of obstacle courses based on Zootopia's regions. She is buried in sand in the desert, falls off monkey bars in the rainforest, slips down an ice wall in the tundra, followed by several other failures before finally slipping into a toilet when she tries to use the bathroom. This is punctuated by the polar bear drill sergeant shouting that she's dead after each failure as each represents a death out in the field. Yes, even in the bathroom (as the polar bear is in the next stall over).
  • Fake-Out Opening: The first scene, which is revealed to be part of a talent show.
  • Famous for Being First: As a child, Judy Hopps tells her parents that she wants to grow up to be a police officer in Zootopia. When they tell her there are no bunny cops there, she remarks that she'll just have to be the first. As an adult, Judy makes this dream come true when she passes the ZPD's training academy as part of their "mammal inclusion initiative".
  • Fan Boy: Both Clawhauser and Chief Bogo are revealed to be big fans of Gazelle and are shown dancing together at her concert at the end of the film.
  • Fan Disservice: Downplayed due to Animals Lack Attributes, but a lot of what we see in the nudist resort falls under this. Most notably the brief shot of the pigs lounging in the mud pit, since they are noticeably fatter and less attractive than most of the pig background characters in the rest of the movie, and their pink hairless bodies make them somewhat resemble naked fat people.
  • Fantastic Flora: The Night Howlers' ability to induce savagery in any animal is central to the plot. The flowers are distilled into projectiles that create Chemically-Induced Insanity, which is used to target predators increasing tensions between prey and predator and allowing Bellwether to rise in power.
  • Fantastic Racism: The characters having to deal with prejudice, both others' prejudice about them and their own prejudices towards others, is a major recurring theme throughout the film. An unusually complex example, as discrimination in this world seems to run in multiple separate dimensions; in addition to the primary predators vs. prey issue, there is also the issue of small animals not being respected by larger ones, as well as species-specific stereotypes (e.g. foxes are all supposedly shifty and dishonest, rabbits are all supposedly carrot farmers, elephants all supposedly have a good memory, etc.).
    • Judy tries to fight against the stereotypes that say she can't be a cop, but still holds onto some herself. A big part of her Character Development is realizing that she has biases like everybody else, and works past them.
    • Nick has decided that if a sneaky fox is all anyone will see, then why bother being anything else?
    • Chief Bogo and the police system in general seem unwilling to take small animals seriously as officers, although they change their attitude after Judy's accomplishments eventually earn their respect.
    • The Fantastic Racism of this society is such that selling self-defense weapons targeted at specific species is not seen as unusual or discriminatory.
  • Fictional Counterpart:
    • Just in the teaser poster there's Preyda (Prada), Lululemmings (Lululemon), Bearberry (Burberry) and "Just Zoo It" ("Just Do It", for Nike). The official poster adds DNKY (DKNY) and Snarlbucks (Starbucks) to that.
    • One shot in Tundratown in the actual movie also has a Zuber advertisement.
    • One of the dining places in the background is Trader Doe's.
    • The lemmings leaving for lunch are exiting the "Lemming Brothers" building (Lehman Bros).
    • A sign for "Hoof Locker" is briefly seen when Nick is giving Judy his speech about how her future will be. It's maybe 1 foot tall by 3 wide, set into the facade of a building.
  • Filching Food for Fun: Right before delivering his "Reason You Suck" Speech to Judy, Nick casually nabs handful of blueberries from a fruit vendor he passes on the street. He immediately tosses one in his mouth to confuse an already annoyed Judy and puts the rest in his shirt pocket.
  • Film Noir: A Lighter and Softer version with a happy ending, but this is still a detective story in which a simple criminal investigation brings to light political corruption, cover-ups, and conspiracy. It even includes an examination of prejudice, stereotypes and profiling.
  • Fire-Forged Friends: At first Nick and Judy are working together because he's her only lead and she blackmails him into helping her. But after Judy saves Nick's life twice and he learns that her career is at stake if she doesn't solve the case, they start to become friends.
  • First Day from Hell: On her first day as a police officer, Judy is assigned to parking duty, gets tricked into buying a $15 popsicle by Nick, tries to arrest him only to get countered with a Breaking Speech pointing out that her dreams of being more than a meter maid are doomed to failure, accidentally steps in still-wet concrete, and during a phone call home, her parents are ecstatic about her meter maid assignment because it's the safest job on the force and it means "she's not a real cop!"
  • Five-Finger Discount:
    • Nick casually lifts a handful of blueberries from a street vendor as he and Judy walk past.
    • In the end credits, Weaselton is shown picking cash out of a bystander's hip pocket.
  • Five-Second Foreshadowing: In the Natural History Museum as Judy and Nick are revealing to Bellwether what they have discovered about Night Howlers, in the background is a diorama of a group of primitive bunnies standing upright and carrying spears holding a large wild cat (which is still in a quadrupedal stance) at bay up a tree. This is but seconds before Bellwether is discovered as the Big Bad and reveals her intention to get prey to fear predators and unite against them.
  • Flashback Echo: At the press conference, Nick hears Judy talk about predators reverting back to their savage ways while the TV screens behind her show pictures of the muzzled predators. This triggers in Nick a brief flashback of him as a Junior Ranger Scout wearing the muzzle that was forced on him.
  • Flashback-Montage Realization: Judy has two quick flashbacks when learning that the ram shot Otterton and Manchas with the Night Howler serum.
  • Flash Step:
    • Towards the end of the Little Rodentia scene, we see Fru Fru's point of view as the giant donut bounds towards her. Judy is nowhere to be seen. The next moment, Judy is next to Fru Fru, having caught the giant donut in the nick of time.
    • Judy puts a wheel lock on Nick's stroller while he is talking to her. Even Nick looks confused on how she did that.
    • At the limo service, Judy uses Fast Tunnelling to get on the other side of a fence while Nick is climbing it, again almost completely silently and without his noticing.
    • When Nick distracts Judy by saying "I'm not the liar, he is." In the time Judy looks to where Nick is pointing and back again, he has traveled to the end of the city block and Judy barely catches sight of him turning the corner.
  • Flintstone Theming: Zootopia is a World of Pun, and the puns all follow the animal theme.
  • Flung Clothing: When Judy begins her pursuit of Weaselton, she indicates her "transformation" from meter maid to police officer by tossing her hat to the side and ripping off her safety vest in a manner that is quite obviously an homage to Superman.
  • Foil: Judy looks like a By-the-Book Cop, but is willing to be a Cowboy Cop in pursuit of justice and defy her species role, while Nick is a conman who deliberately lives up to prejudices about foxes while following the law to the letter as closely as possible for his Pawpsicle scheme. Both faced prejudice, but while Judy became a determined optimist (who can also be manipulative), Nick became a manipulative cynic (who gradually becomes more of an optimist).
  • Follow in My Footsteps: While Judy aspires to become a police officer, her father tries to convince her to become a carrot farmer like him.
  • Fooled by the Sound: Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde have traced the whereabouts of chauffeur Manchas to the abandoned Cliffside Sanitarium. Or not so abandoned, as there are a dozen grey wolf guards surrounding it. To distract them, Judy imitates a wolf howl (impressive for a rabbit), which triggers the other wolves into a group howl. This lets Nick and Judy slip past them unnoticed.
  • The Foreign Subtitle: In Hungarian, the movie was released as Zootropolis – Állati nagy balhé, which is an untranslatable wordplay that can mean "The Great Fuss" or "The Animal Fuss".
  • Foreshadowing:
    • The very first scene in the movie foreshadows how the story will get resolved, with Judy getting mauled to "death" by a "savage" predator. The first time is when she was a child performing a play, the second time is when Nick pretends to be savage and attacks Judy while she tricks Bellwether into revealing her plan. Sharla the sheep's presence in the play and trouble with bullies in real life also foreshadows Bellwether being behind the Nighthowler attacks.
    • The play also foreshadows Judy's subconscious prejudice toward predators, as she talks about their "uncontrollable, biological urge to maim and maul".
    • When Judy is scolding Nick after she discovers his con, he takes a handful of blueberries from a street vendor as he walks by, foreshadowing his enjoyment of them later in the movie.
    • Before Judy departs for Zootopia, her parents bring up the biological nature of foxes as predators and the time Gideon Gray beat her up when she was nine as an example of their anti-fox views. Judy plays it off as him being a jerk who just happened to be a fox. However, her decision to carry the fox repellent around with her (even after initially leaving it on the table at her apartment) and her Profiling Nick the instant she first sees him makes it clear that her childhood trauma with Gideon has affected her and her views on foxes more than she realizes. Judy stating her belief that predators are biologically prone toward reverting to their "primitive savage ways" divides Zootopia and almost destroys her budding friendship with Nick.
    • During Judy's departure scene each of the predators her parents mention (bears, lions, wolves, weasels, foxes) are species which she encounters during the course of her investigation. (respectively: Mr. Big's polar bears, Mayor Lionheart, the wolves who guard Cliffside Asylum, Weaselton, and Nick).
    • Finnick, while laughing his head off after Judy manages to hustle Nick into helping her, jokes that Nick is a cop now, gives him the badge sticker, and tells Nick to "have fun working with the fuzz". Nick's Character Development inspires him to become the first fox officer on the ZPD force at the end of the film, officially becoming Judy's partner in the process.
    • Mr. Otterton, a florist, was reported by Manchas was noted to be extremely agitated and wanting to report to Mr. Big as he turned before naming whatever he wanted to say. It foreshadows Otterton figuring out that the Night Howlers are being used to turn predators into savages, and him specifically being turned to keep the lid on the conspiracy by Doug.
    • A blink-and-you'll-miss-it can be found in Bellwether's office. A sticky note with the telephone number of Doug, her lackey who's been making predators go savage.
    • Nick's flashback which shows just how nasty prey animals can be toward predators because of their prejudice, when coupled with how dismissive Lionheart is to Bellwether and how often she helps Judy with her case, makes who the mastermind is even more obvious in retrospect.
    • After Judy's press interview regarding the 14 missing predator animals she found — which was obviously bad and kicked off the predator/prey tensions that divided Zootopia — Bellwether tells her she did fine.
    • The fact the missing mammal who gets Judy involved in the case turns out to be a florist combined with the earlier florist robbery by Weaselton foreshadows the eventual cause of the animals going savage.
    • When Judy is parked in front of the about-to-be-robbed florist shop, sheep can be seen examining it off to the right. As Judy approaches, one is whispering to the other shielding his mouth as he glances warily at her.
    • Doug, who creates the Night Howler-based madness formula, and his lackeys, are all rams which are sheep, foreshadowing the identity of the Big Bad.
    • When Judy goes to work on her first day, several sheep officers are visible in the lobby of Precinct One. Foreshadowing the existence of ZPD sheep that are part of Bellwether's conspiracy.
    • When Judy attempts to arrest Nick for his pawpsicle hustle, she discovers that he has the necessary permits to operate legitimately. By running a scam that technically doesn't break any laws, it's the earliest sign that Nick does want to be an honest member of society but he is living up to fox stereotypes because he believes that's what society expects from him.
    • There are several details that cumulatively foreshadow that Nick and Judy are running a Batman Gambit against Bellwether during the climax and have swapped the Night Howler pellet with blueberries. Predators that go savage have their Cartoony Eyes revert to glowing Animal Eyes yet Nick's eyes remain his normal shape and color. In the flashback of Doug shooting Manchas we see that the Night Howler extract is immediately absorbed into the skin with no residue, but when the pellet hits Nick, a blue splatter is clearly visible. Finally, as Nick says "we'll think of something" he can be seen glancing over the blueberries he accidentally dropped and they are gone from the floor by the time they set up their decoy to escape.
    • The movie shows that whenever Judy is afraid her nose twitches. When Nick turns on her in the natural history museum, several close up shots show that her nose is not twitching, indicating that it's just an act.
    • When Nick and Judy are reviewing the Jam Cam footage, Nick sardonically bets that one of the kidnapper wolves will howl moments before one does and the other joins in. Later, at Cliffside Asylum, Judy distracts the wolves by inciting a howl, allowing them to slip in unnoticed.
    • It's subtle, but when Dr. Honey Badger suggests that the savage cases might be caused by predator biology, Judy seems to consider it while Nick looks offended. This foreshadows Nick becoming extremely upset at Judy for repeating the theory during the press conference and leads to their temporary Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure.
    • During the scene at the subway, Jesse (the ram wearing an eye patch) informs his boss what Judy and Nick are doing. This allows Bellwether and her dirty cops to head them off at the museum but it also causes Judy to wonder how she knew where to find them and realize she's the Big Bad.
    • Judy's training montage at the police academy includes scenarios that help her to survive events later in the movie. Developing a strong grip to avoid a "thousand foot fall" in the simulated rainforest district saves her from falling off the Skytram platform. Her experience with the over-sized toilet gives her the idea of how to escape from a locked cell.
    • In Nick's Break Them by Talking speech to Judy he says "Hey look at me, I'm gonna move to Zootopia where predators and prey live in harmony and sing 'Kumbaya'. Only to find, whoopsie, we don't all get along." Kumbaya is traditionally associated with the scouting movement, and its reference here foreshadows Nick's traumatic experience of being humiliated by the all-prey Junior Ranger Scout troop as a child because he was a predator and a fox.
    • In the same speech, Nick says "Soon enough those dreams die, [...] till finally she has no choice but to go back home with that cute fuzzy wuzzy little tail to become... you're from Bunnyburrow, is that what you said? So how about a carrot farmer?" Which foreshadows Judy's despair after dividing the city between predator and prey, leading her to resign, return to Bunnyburrow and work on her family's farm.
    • Early in the film, Clawhauser watches Judy walk off to the bullpen and says wistfully "That poor little bunny's going to get eaten alive." Later, during the press conference, when Nick calls out Judy for her biased remarks about predators, he asks if she thinks he'll go savage and eat her. During the climax as part of the duo's Batman Gambit, Nick pretends to go savage, hunt Judy and eat her.
    • While still posing as a father and his toddler, Nick hands Finnick the massive Jumbo Pop they've hustled, and Finnick lifts and carries it with ease (though he does need both hands). Unusually strong for a small child, but not a fully-grown adult.
    • Clawhauser wistfully says he's getting transferred to the boiler room so that the preys don't feel afraid seeing a predator being the first person they look at. Who used to work at the boiler room again? Mayor Bellwether.
  • Formula with a Twist: The movie is fundamentally a fairly standard buddy cop story, where the eager young rookie officer teams up with a con artist with a heart of gold to uncover a conspiracy. Where it differentiates itself is the World of Funny Animals setting played straight, complete with predjudices, stereotyping, and discrimination.
  • Four-Fingered Hands: Played straight with all mammal species that have claws or paws such as Nick or Judy. In addition, all cloven-hoofed species, like Bellwether or Bogo, are consistently shown with three — two "fingers" and a "thumb". A notable exception is elephants, who have their traditional "toed-feet" which lack an opposable thumb and rely instead on their flexible trunk, as well as horses and zebras that have a single hoof on each limb; how the latter can manipulate objects with their "hands" is never shown, as they only appear as background extras.
  • Frame-Up:
    • As Judy investigates the Otterton case, Bellwether assists her behind the scenes to allow Judy to expose Lionheart's illegal imprisonment of the savage mammals that Bellwether wants the public to be aware of in order to stir up anti-predator sentiment. Ultimately Judy discovers Lionheart's cover-up which gets him arrested and Bellwether is able to take over as Mayor. This trope is played with, as the target of the frame-up becomes involved for their own reasons and the framer was simply taking advantage of the legitimate evidence against them in order to rise to power.
    • A more direct frame-up is attempted against Nick, which is thankfully thwarted by Nick and Judy's own Batman Gambit.
  • Freeze-Frame Bonus:
    • Many, many jokes and sight-gags in the background, especially signage containing brand names, or Duke Weaselton's display of pirated DVDs.
    • On the Wrangled DVD cover, Rapunzel (who in this universe is a horse) is holding her hair in the same pose as the cover of Tangled. However, if you look closely, you'll see that 1) the hair she's holding is actually her tail, and 2) there's an extra length of hair strewn across the grass compared to the Tangled cover. That's the end of her mane.
    • As Judy comes out of the train station after first arriving at Zootopia, several Junior Ranger Scouts (of the sort Nick wanted to join) can be seen to her left.
    • The Pig getting her picture taken at the DMV is also the prison guard seen in the end credits.
    • Near Bellwether's desk is a sticky note that has Doug's phone number on it, tying her to him.
    • One of the photos of the missing animals present on Doug's map of his recent hits is apparently Zootopian Sad Keanu Reevesnote .
    • When Nick gives Judy his filled-out application form, one question asks if he's been arrested or charged in the past. You can see he initially checked "Yes", but then scribbled it out and boldly checks "No" instead.note 
    • The rabbit mannequin used in the Natural History Museum is a saber-toothed Jackalope.
    • When Judy is selecting music on her portable player, you can see that some of the songs on it include "Let it Goat", "Part of Your Wool", "Can You Feel the Fluff Tonight", and "Ara-bunny Nights".
    • Judy's neighbors, Bucky and Pronk, appear to be hanging out together at the Mystic Springs Oasis.
    • During the Little Rodentia chase scene, there is an advertisement for Thigmo taxi services. Thigmotaxis is a behavior in mice where they cling to solid objects, which one of the mice is understandably demonstrating when Weaselton starts knocking over houses.
    • When Judy goes back to Bunnyburrow, you can see a copy of the Bunnyburrow Beacon with an assortment of small-town news articles, including one on the Population: X, and Counting sign getting a new coat of paint, an article about the annual Carrot Days Festival (and an advertisement for same), and Otto Hopps (Judy's grandfather, who's also seen in a few deleted scenes) celebrating his 101st birthday.
    • Towards the end of the movie, when the three officers are assigned to undercover, Snarlov, the polar bear officer, simply puts on a baseball cap as his "disguise". It's also the same baseball cap worn by Judy's father, Stu, throughout the film: a light green cap with a dark green front and a carrot label on the front.
    • According to Bellwether's office phone, her number is 818-555-0118. "818" is the area code of Los Angeles where Disney's Tujunga "campus" is located and where the majority of the movie was animated.
  • Friend on the Force:
    • Nick knows Flash at the DMV which helps him and Judy to cut the line since they are short on time to solve the Otterton case.
    • Since Judy is not yet registered with ZPD, she asks Bellwether to help her get access to the jam cams.
  • Frozen Dinner of Loneliness: After a disappointing first day at Zootopia, Judy comes home to her lonely apartment - a far cry from her cozy family home surrounded by siblings - and serves herself a TV dinner for one. The package promised a dish of plump carrots; all she got was one shriveled-up specimen.
  • Full-Body Disguise: Officer Wolfard's undercover costume transforms him into a literal wolf in sheep's clothing.
  • Funny Background Event:
    • During the chase scene in Little Rodentia, amidst the general panic of the rodent population, you can spot: a mouse evidently having a very bad day who is trudging along with its head down and dragging on the ground; several mice repeatedly banging their heads on the ground; various rodents flailing about on the ground trying to get up; and a pair of mice running directly toward each other on a collision course, until one of them decides to hop over the other entirely.
    • During Judy's graduation, we see Stu and Bonnie in the audience surrounded by many of Judy's siblings who are showing support for their sister by jumping up and down, clapping and cheering. When Mayor Lionheart assigns Judy to Precinct 1 at City Center, Cotton, Judy's favorite niece, who is standing to the left of Bonnie breaks into a joyous little shimmy dance with her tongue sticking out before resuming her excited clapping, an event that is both funny and adorable taking the cuteness up to 11.
    • During the credits when it shows off the voice actor who played Yax, you can see a pig in the audience behind him cough and try to wave the air due to his stench.
    • During Judy's first bullpen, when Chief Bogo is talking about new recruits, you can see Fangmeyer, in the back row over Judy's chair, giving a big yawn. In the following shots he appears to be snoozing, only perking up once Bogo gets to making the assignments. In addition, after Bogo remarks that he should introduce the new recruits but won't because he just doesn't care, the bullpen laughs and Wolfard can be seen chuckling with his tongue hanging out. As the laughter dies down, he pulls his tongue back in his mouth, complete with an audible slurping sound.
    • When Nick gives his What the Hell, Hero? speech to Chief Bogo and says they have 10 hours left, Judy can be seen thinking over his calculations, then frowns, indicating she finds his conclusion incorrect, but then dismisses it with a subtle shake of her head.
  • Furry Female Mane:
    • Gazelle, Mr. Big's daughternote , and the pig prison guard who is getting her picture taken in the DMV seem to be the only characters who have hair beyond what's natural for their species (Yax's dreadlocks, Bellwether's curls and Lionheart's mane are all typical characteristics of a yak, sheep and lion, respectively).
    • Gender Flipped with Gideon Grey. He's a fox with medium length middle-parted hair.
  • Furry Reminder:
    • The wolf being walked into the station telling an officer that someone "bared his teeth at him first".
    • The wolf guards howling like... well, wolves, when Judy starts howling out of sight as a distraction.
    • Some of the behaviors shown by the patrons of the "naturalist" club, such as a jaguar licking its leg, the bears scratching their backs on trees, and the pigs having a mud-bath, are based on the actual behavior of these species.
    • Little Rodentia has some rodent terrarium aesthetics, like one mouse using a hamster wheel as a training pad, a "rodent drinker" with water hanging in the apartment, and the plastic tubes connecting the houses.
    • After Nick and Judy reconcile and hug, Nick complains that Judy is standing on his tail.
    • The animals going "savage" is a subversion; the people of Zootopia begin to believe that the predators' savage biological nature is re-asserting itself when in reality it is mind-altering chemicals extracted from Night Howlers being targeted at predators as part of a conspiracy.
    • During the train chase, Bellwether's ram minions try to get to Judy and Nick by charging and smashing their horned heads through the windows. Later, while chasing them through the museum, one catches up to them and rams them into the pit.
  • Gasp!: Subverted when Judy shows Yax her photo of Mr. Otterton. Yax appears to be gasping in astonishment, but he was just preparing to sneeze.
  • Gilligan Cut: Weaselton insists that nothing Judy and Nick can do will make him talk. Cut to Mr. Big's henchmen about to ice him... and all of a sudden, Weaselton is only too happy to talk.
  • Glasses Pull:
    • Nick is wearing a pair of Wayfarer-like sunglasses when Judy finds him under the bridge, which he pulls off while walking away before she begins her apology.
    • Nick takes to wearing mirrored shades at the end of the movie. He pulls them off when he recognizes the street racer they were tailing.
      Nick: Flash, Flash, Hundred-Yard Dash!
  • Glowing Eyes of Doom: All the savage predators show these tapetum lucidum. It's a major clue that Nick is only pretending to be infected after being shot by Bellwether when he doesn't have them.
  • Gosh Dang It to Heck!:
    • Played for Laughs with Officer Clawhauser, who exclaims "O-M-Goodness!" when he first meets Judy.
    • When discussing the missing mammals, Chief Bogo exclaims that "City Hall is right up my tail to find them".
    • Judy after hearing why Nick was on Mr. Big's bad side, exclaims "Oh, sweet cheese and crackers..." Justified by her upbringing, as people with a background like hers tend to be more likely to use minced oaths.
  • Grey-and-Gray Morality: Zootopia isn't as unified as it appears on the surface; almost everybody is shown to hold some kind of prejudice and/or stereotype. Everybody is a victim of bias, and everybody is a carrier of it, even if they don't realize it until they get called out. However, there are light and dark ends of the spectrum. Those on the lighter side, like Judy, Nick, or Gideon, who try to move past their biases, acknowledge and apologize for their mistakes are the ones who help Zootopia truly become better. Those, like Bellwether and the others involved in the anti-predator conspiracy who don't care who gets hurt/killed in their campaign, are definitely on the darker end.
  • The Grovel: Judy has one after badly hurting Nick's feelings with her press conference comments. She says she doesn't expect him to forgive her, but it's clear through her genuine emotional breakdown that she desperately wants him to... and he does.
  • The Guards Must Be Crazy: The wolves guarding Cliffside Asylum are vulnerable to howling, which Judy takes advantage of when trying to get past them.
  • Guile Hero: Nick and Judy both get through problems primarily by being smart and fast-thinkers. Nick is the more clever one, having grown up on the streets as a con artist, but Judy is no slouch herself (and makes up the difference with her police training).
  • Gut Punch: As Predator/Prey tension continues to escalate in Zootopia, Clawhauser is moved to the Records department in the basement when the higher-ups decide that they don't want mammals to see a predator face when they first come into ZPD headquarters. The shock at seeing such a sweet and harmless mammal treated like that becomes another reason why Judy feels that she's broken the city and resigns from the ZPD. Fortunately, Clawhauser returns to his original post after Bellwether is arrested and peace returns to the city.
  • HA HA HA—No: Pretty much done verbatim when Judy tracks down Nick on her second day.
    Judy: Hi! Hello! It's me again!
    Nick: Hey, it's Officer Toot-Toot!
    Judy: Ha-ha-ho, no. Actually, it's Officer Hopps...
  • Hair-Raising Hare: Not shown, but referenced in the movie. After Bonnie's brother Terry accidentally ate a Night Howler flower, he turned savage and bit her, leaving a "sizable divot" in her arm.
  • Handshake Substitute: Judy's attempt of a fist bump with the rhino at her first roll call.
  • Hand Signals:
    • When Nick and Judy are preparing to sneak past the timber wolf guards, Nick makes a series of convoluted hand signals that don't mean anything to Judy (or the audience) leaving her with a confused look on her face.
    • In the museum, the villain uses hand signs to direct one of the mooks toward Judy and Nick's apparent hiding place.
  • Hanging by the Fingers: When chased by Manchas, Judy slides off a wet bridge and ends up hanging onto the edge with one paw.
  • Hard Truth Aesop: The movie shows that most everyone has their own personal biases (up to and including the main characters themselves) and some of those biases, realized or not, can be destructive as they lead to prejudice, stereotyping and profiling. While harsh and not really a thing people want to admit, it's how bias — more often than not — works in the real world. However, the blow is softened in the sense that it shows that anybody can overcome their biases if one becomes aware of them and actively works to move past them.
  • Hard-Work Montage: Montage of Judy issuing her 200 tickets on her first day of parking duty.
  • Head Desk: The DMV sloth scene has Judy punctuating her frustration by banging her head against Flash's desk when she realizes to her horror that the sloth is going to slooooowly share a joke with his fellow sloth.
  • Head Swap: The "Dancing With Gazelle" app allows anyone to put their head on the body of Gazelle's tiger dancer.
  • Heartfelt Apology: When Nick is hurt by Judy for saying that predators may be regressing to their primitive, savage ways, she tearfully admits that she was wrong to say that, and calls herself "ignorant, irresponsible, and small-minded".
  • He Knows Too Much: While never explicitly stated, a few targets of the Night Howler pellets strongly come off as this:
    • Otterton was on his way to discuss "something important" with Mr. Big, presumably the Night Howlers that Manchas heard him yelling about.
    • Manchas was a witness to Otterton's disappearance and has just started talking to Judy and Nick about it.
    • Nick and Judy are determined to deliver evidence to the ZPD revealing Bellwether's plot, so she darts Nick in the hopes of simultaneously silencing Nick, getting Nick to kill Judy, and providing more fuel for the growing anti-predator fear. It would have succeeded if Judy and Nick didn't have their Batman Gambit planned out.
  • Hello, [Insert Name Here]: The "your face photoshopped into dancing with Gazelle" app does this, Mad Libs Dialogue included. "Wow! You're one hot dancer, Benjamin... Claw...hauser!"
  • "Hell, Yes!" Moment: Judy and Nick's smug smiles when they reveal to Bellwether how they faked Nick's attack and recorded her confession. "It's called a hustle, sweetheart."
  • Help, I'm Stuck!: Both Jesse and Woolter get stuck in the window of the speeding car train.
  • Heroic BSoD: After Judy's disastrous press conference, she returns home to Bunnyburrow and wallows in depression and regret. The only thing that snaps her out of it is when she receives some new information that will allow her to fix the problem.
  • Hiding the Handicap: Zig-zagged. More a case of ignoring the handicap. Two members of the Zootopia creative team reported in a presentation at the 2017 D23 convention that they found the elephant's skilled use of their trunk to be so fascinating that they left the evolved elephants in Zootopia without opposable thumbs and had them relying entirely on their flexible trunk. Throughout the movie, elephants are shown interacting in society as normal, even becoming police officers, despite the fact that their entire species is limited to being one-handed in a society that is set-up to favor two-handed mammals with opposable thumbs.note 
  • High-Five Left Hanging: Officer Judy Hopps, at her first day in the Zootopia Police Department, attempts to fist-bump Officer McHorn. The rhino police officer first rolls his eyes, seemingly rejecting the gesture, then changes his mind but his fist-bump just ends up pushing Judy away.
  • High-Pressure Blood: In a play at the movie's opening, Judy tosses a red streamer for the effect of gushing blood. Then she follows it up by emptying an entire squeeze-bottle of ketchup.
  • High-Speed Train Reroute: Judy sees the subway car with the nighthowler lab being on the same track as an inbound locomotive that bears a resemblance to a charging rhino. Judy promptly kicks one mook leaning out the broken windshield into a shunting switch that rerails her car onto a disused line that ends at the history museum.
  • Hiss Before Fleeing: During the flashback sequence of Mr. Otterton disappearance, he hisses at Manchas just before running away.
  • Hit Stop: During Judy's training at the Police Academy, the scene where she pushes a rhino's fist into his own face is shown in slow-motion, with drool and teeth protector comically flying.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard:
    • Bellwether's plan is to have a savage Nick kill Judy, allowing her to further inflame anti-predator sentiment. As such she calls the ZPD to come witness the death of Judy, but she does so before Nick actually kills her. When it's revealed they are carrying out a Batman Gambit, Bellwether has no time to adjust her plans and is caught red-handed by the ZPD.
    • Bellwether interferes with Chief Bogo's attempt to fire Judy in order to allow her to solve the Otterton case. However, Bellwether doesn't realize that, after Judy accidentally sparked off tension between predators and prey during her press conference, her determination to set things right would eventually expose Bellwether's conspiracy.
  • Hollywood Law:
    • Judy could have been charged with being an accessory to the attempted murder of Duke Weaselton due to Mr. Big's interrogation method, assuming Weaselton would dare to report the incident.
    • Judy sees that she is parked at an expired meter, and writes herself a ticket, even though parking enforcement officers are generally immune from parking tickets while on duty. Given that Judy is familiar with Zootopia's laws, she's doing it more out of integrity (with the generous help of Rule of Funny).
    • A zig-zagged example occurs when Judy uses a tax evasion arrest to blackmail Nick into helping her. It is unclear whether this is an actual threat or an elaborate bluff on Judy's part. If the former, then this trope applies, as tax evasion would be a federal crime normally falling under the jurisdiction of the Zootopian equivalent of the F.B.I. and city-level officers usually don't investigate or enforce revenue-related offenses.
  • Hope Spot: After managing to gather enough evidence, Judy and Nick cut through the museum to deliver it to the ZPD. It seems like everything's going to be a straight shot from there... but suddenly, the Big Bad shows up and Judy and Nick realize that they have to survive one more deadly confrontation before the case comes to a close for good.
  • Humanlike Animal Aging: Nick Wilde is thirty-two years old, and Judy is in her twenties. Foxes and rabbits in real life live much shorter than that. However, this is most likely due to the fact that all animals have evolved.
  • Humanlike Foot Anatomy: Animals who normally walk on their toes (such as carnivores and ungulates) are redesigned this way, so that their bipedal walk looks more natural. When a jaguar goes feral, however, his feet revert to digitigrade.
  • Humanlike Hand Anatomy: Heavily downplayed as they still look roughly like hooves/paws. Pawed animals have Four-Fingered Hands, while hoofed ones have only three fingers. The exceptions are elephants who use their trunks and horses/zebras that appear to only have a single hoof at the end of each limb.note  This does make for a strange moment when Nick holds up all eight digits to announce Judy has ten hours left, however.
  • Humble Pie: After Bellwether is arrested at the museum, and her plans are thwarted to have the prey majority of Zootopia unite against predators, she is forced to watch Gazelle's concert while sulking as her predator inmates enjoy the performance.
  • Hurricane of Puns: It probably would be easier to list what isn't a pun in the movie, but some of the best ones include:
    • From the soundtrack album, as scored by Pungeon Master Michael Giacchino: "Grey's Uh-Mad at Me," "Ticket to Write", "Work Slowly and Carry a Big Shtick", "Case of the Manchas" and "Three-Toe Bandito".
    • Duke Weaselton and Judy also rapid-fire at each other as she chases him through Little Rodentia. Most notable being him exclaiming "Catch me if you can, flatfoot!" as the flat-footed police rabbit runs after him, "Have a donut, copper!" as he kicks a giant donut at her, and finally Judy triumphantly stating, "I popped the weasel!" after she caught him.
    • A number of the various brands that we see in promotional materials and in the movie itself are animal pun versions of real-world brands. See Bland-Name Product for specific examples.
    • Likewise, the groups and album names on Judy's MP3 player on the train are also animal puns on real-world acts.
    • The rodent office workers are employed at Lemming Brothers.
    • A movie theater in Zootopia advertises showtimes for a movie called Star Trunk. It can be seen when Judy is handing out parking tickets on her second day.
    • While laughing at his partner's misfortune, Finnick congratulates Nick by saying "Have fun working with the fuzz." "Fuzz" as in "police", or as in a fuzzy bunny?
    • The bootleg films Duke Weaselton sells all have titles that are puns on recent or upcoming Disney movies, from Wrangled to Meowna.
  • I Always Wanted to Say That: Once Judy gets the subway car going, she allows Nick one "victory toot-toot".
    Nick: [pulls the subway horn] Well, I can cross that off the bucket list.
  • I'm Not a Hero, I'm...: When Judy is offered the opportunity to become the public face of the ZPD, her growing My God, What Have I Done? observations of the civil unrest that resulted from her press conference leads her to respond with:
    Judy: I'm not a hero. I came to make the world a better place, but I think I broke it.
  • Implausible Deniability: Clawhauser walks in on Bogo playing with the Gazelle app. Bogo tries to hide this and even outright denies that it was Gazelle Clawhauser just heard. This is not even remotely convincing because the app's audio is playing loudly the entire time. Eventually he tries to change the subject by saying he was working on the missing mammal cases.
  • Impossible Task: When Bellwether makes it impractical for him to straight-up fire her, Chief Bogo tries to get rid of Judy by giving her 48 hours to solve the Otterton case or resign if she fails. When he tries to have Judy turn in her badge after a scene she called backup for with no evidence, Nick straight-up tells him that he deliberately set her up to fail by giving her no resources and an incredibly short time frame to solve a case that the entire police force hadn't solved in weeks (as well as the fact that she still has some of that time left). She still manages to find Otterton as well as the other 14 missing mammals.
  • Improbable Aiming Skills: Doug tags Otterton through the window of a moving vehicle, at night. He hits Manchas, a black-furred Jaguar, through a window into a dark room also at night. He is later completely unconcerned about an assignment to shoot a cheetah, the fastest land mammal in the world.
  • Inexplicable Cornered Escape: Happens twice:
    • Nick and Judy are trapped in a cell at Cliffside and the mooks are about to open the door and find them. Judy asks Nick if he can swim and he affirms. Cut to the door swinging open and the mooks entering. When they come to the cell Judy and Nick were hiding in, they only see the toilet flushing.
    • Later, when Judy and Nick break into Doug's train car and find the toxic flowers, the camera abruptly pans over to the door and we see Doug entering. He walks straight to the spot where Judy and Nick were standing a second ago, but they are gone. Then the camera pans below the table where we see our heroes hiding.
  • Initiation Ceremony: Played with. When Nick arrives at his first Junior Ranger Scout meeting he is asked if he's "Ready for initiation?" The lights go out and after Nick recites the oath his trustworthiness is challenged because he's a fox. They knock him to the ground and muzzle him causing Nick to flee from the building barely holding back tears. It's unclear if the other scouts intended this to be a humiliating hazing ritual that Nick could have passed if he had not fled or if they were dead set against him joining their all-prey troop and made up the "Initiation" as an opportunity to drive him away.
  • Ink-Suit Actor:
    • Gazelle is essentially Shakira as a gazelle. Both of them are pop stars, have blonde curly hair, broad hips, and wear similar outfits. One inversion, though: Gazelle is one of the few characters in the film to wear shoes, while Shakira usually performs barefoot (though this also sort of fits; most people wear shoes, but Shakira does not, and Gazelle does wear shoes, while most others in Zootopia do not).
      Shakira: A lot of the details are mine: the eye color, the eyelashes, the hair, including the clothes. That skirt is very "me". I felt she needed more hips... and I asked them for more and they did it!
      (From People Magazine) "The one thing they took as a suggestion was that she was a little too skinny for me," she said. "So I asked them to give her a little — to give her bigger hips. And I said to the director, 'Come on, guys, give her some meat!' And they did."
    • Canadian news anchor Peter Mansbridge has a small role in the North American release as a moose news anchor, Peter Moosebridge.
  • Innocently Insensitive:
    • Judy compliments Nick on being so "articulate"; he responds by telling her that it's rare that he finds someone so non-patronizing.
    • While Judy certainly makes an effort to be open-minded, her comments about predators being naturally predisposed to violence causes predator/prey tensions in Zootopia to rise to the surface causing civil unrest and a temporary Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure with Nick.
    • Judy scolds Nick for pawing all over Dawn Bellwether's fluffy wool without her permission. He's thrilled to get the chance to touch it and doesn't realize what he's doing is rude at best and as prejudiced as following any other stereotype.
    • A fairly mild instance occurs between Judy and Clawhauser early on. He gushes over how cute she is and clearly means no harm by it, but Judy replies that it's very condescending for a non-rabbit to call a rabbit cute.
    • A non-prejudice example happens when Judy's parents are ecstatic that she's a meter maid, because it's the safest job on the force, when Judy herself is thoroughly disappointed by the position.
  • Insignia Rip-Off Ritual: Nick tears the "Junior ZPD Officer" sticker off his shirt and throws it to the ground after his fallout with Judy.
  • In Spite of a Nail: The basic premise is that even though human beings never existed and sapient anthropomorphic mammals evolved instead, civilization and modern society emerged in almost exactly the same way as it would have with humans.
  • Instantly Proven Wrong:
    • Officer Clawhauser has just walked in on Chief Bogo using a Gazelle app, whose music is still playing.
      Clawhauser: Is that Gazelle?
      Bogo: NO!
      Bogo's phone: I'm Gazelle, and you are one hot dancer.
    • Bellwether tells Nick and Judy that she feels well appreciated by her boss Mayor Lionheart. Then the intercom beeps and we hear Lionheart shouting "Smell-wether!" in a commanding voice. Bellwether plays it down by saying it was a "fun little name he likes to use".
  • Insult Backfire: Judy tries to make Nick feel guilty about his efforts to hinder her investigation but fails miserably.
    Judy: Does seeing me fail somehow make you feel better about your own sad, miserable life?
    Nick: It does. One hundred percent.
  • Insult of Endearment: Nick Wilde gives Judy the nickname "Carrots", with the intention to remind her she's only meant to be a carrot farmer. After they become friends, it becomes a casual pet name between them. "Dumb bunny" and "sly fox" also crop up between them (and are eventually inverted into "sly bunny" and "dumb fox.").
  • Intelligent Gerbil: The animals in Little Rodentia show a lot of traits of their real-life counterparts. From using a network of convoluted tubes as bridges between buildings, to exercising by running around in big wheels, to drinking from water tubes.
  • Interface Spoiler:
    • A rare non-video-game example. On the DVD/Blu-ray, in the scene where young Nick joins the Junior Ranger Scouts, the first line of dialogue from the other scouts is attributed in the subtitles to "Mean Animal Kid" — something the audience (and Nick) don't find out until several lines later.
    • Also, Nick's statement to the construction foreman that "it's red wood" is subtitled with the space included — technically correct, but giving away the punchline of Nick's explanation a couple of minutes later.
  • Interspecies Friendship: One develops between Judy the rabbit and Nick the fox, something that neither of them ever thought was possible.
  • Intimidating Revenue Service: Zootopia seems to have one of these, as seen in Nick's terrified reaction when she arrests him for Felony Tax Evasion. It instantly breaks through his cocky demeanor.
  • I Owe You My Life: Variation. When Mr. Big learns Judy is the one who saved his daughter Fru Fru, he acknowledges the debt he owes Judy and decides to pay it forward by sparing her and Nick and assisting with their investigation. He later helps interrogate Weaselton and is smiling approvingly when Fru Fru announces her decision to name her unborn daughter after Judy.
  • Ironic Echo:
    • The phrase "It's called a hustle, sweetheart" recurs throughout the film. First Nick says it to Judy, then Judy says it to Nick, and finally they both say it to Bellwether after they revealed that they record her confession.
    • A fun example: right before her press conference, Judy admits to nerves because she's never done one. Nick advises her to listen to the question, answer it with a question of her own, and then answer the question she asked rather than the one asked by the reporter. At the end of the film, Judy playfully spins it in response to a quip from Nick.
      Nick: You know you love me.
      Judy: Do I know that? Yes, yes I do.
    • More than once Nick calls Judy a "dumb bunny" and she calls him a "sly fox". At the end it's reversed when they become partners.
      Nick: Sly bunny.
      Judy: Dumb fox.
  • Ironic Name:
    • The eponymous city's name is a play on "Utopia," a theoretical paradise where everything and everyone works in perfect harmony. As Judy comes to realize, Zootopia is not as perfect as she initially believes.
    • Flash the sloth, who is very slow. (However, it is suggested he is the fastest sloth.) Subverted when he turns out to be a street racer.
    • Mr. Big who is a tiny shrew.
    • The train Judy takes from Bunnyburrow to Zootopia is identified as the Zootopia Express yet once it enters the city it takes a very circuitous route through Sahara Square, Tundra Town, the Canal District, the Rainforest District, and Downtown before finally terminating at Savanna Central Station.
  • Irony:
    • Judy having to partner up with a fox, the kind of animal that indirectly helped her not to give up on her dreams. It's even more ironic considering her family mainly detested foxes in general.
    • Clawhauser is a big fan of Gazelle even though gazelles are the natural prey of cheetahs in the wild.
    • At the end of the film, Judy and Nick pull over a speeding street racer. The driver is Flash Slothmore.
  • It Was Here, I Swear!: Happens when Judy brings her fellow ZPD officers to the savage jaguar she'd cuffed to a post.
  • It Works Better with Bullets: The Night Howler serum is blue and is encased in a small spherical pellet delivered by an air gun. The pellet happens to be the same size as a blueberry, which Nick and Judy conveniently exploit in the climax by swapping the serum pellet with blueberries before Bellwether gets a hold of the gun.
  • I Will Only Slow You Down: After Nick bandages up Judy's leg, she tells him to get the case to the ZPD:
    Nick: I'm not going to leave you behind, that's not happening!
    Judy: I can't walk!
    Nick: Just— we'll think of something!
  • Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: Downplayed. Weaselton has information and he won't talk. What do Judy and Nick do? Gilligan Cut to Mr. Big ready to "ice him" just as he was going to do to them earlier in the film. Weaselton talks soon after.
  • Jaw Drop:
    • After young Judy concludes her "bloody" death scene with the line "...and death" complete with one more long squirt of ketchup, we turn to face the audience. Stu is shown lowering his video camera with this type of shocked look on his face.
    • After Mr. Big learns that Judy saved Fru Fru's life and decides to pay her kindness forward, Judy leans in to receive a double-cheek kiss from Mr. Big and Nick can be seen having this reaction in the background.
  • Jerkass Has a Point:
    • Chief Bogo initially does not have much respect for Judy but when he chews her out for abandoning her post to chase after a thief, and continuing the chase through the highly fragile mouse district, he's correct that her actions were unacceptably reckless. His short-lived attempt to fire her for insubordination is likewise justified, as she had just undermined his authority in front of the victim's wife by agreeing to take on the case without his approval.
    • Mayor Lionheart was keeping the savage mammals imprisoned and hidden in order to prevent a panic while he attempted to cure them. He has a point regarding the public reaction as predator/prey tensions flare up, leading to civil unrest as soon as "only predators are going savage" becomes public knowledge.
  • Joke of the Butt: Occurs when we learn why Mr. Big is so mad at Nick.
    Nick: I may have sold him a very expensive wool rug that was made from the fur of a skunk... 's butt.
  • Jumped at the Call: Judy comes to life when being called on by the shopkeeper to pursue Weaselton. Also her eagerness to take on the Otterton case, to Chief Bogo's dislike.
  • Jump Scare:
    • Emmitt Otterton does this in Manchas' flashback of his turning feral.
    • When Nick and Judy are at Cliffside Asylum and examining huge claw marks on the floor in front of a cell door, a feral tiger suddenly appears at the door, scaring Nick.
  • Justice by Other Legal Means: When Judy is unable to arrest Nick for his pawpsicle hustle because he has all the necessary permits, Judy takes an alternate approach and says she will arrest Nick for felony tax evasion (due to unreported income) if he doesn't assist her in the Otterton case.
  • Just in Time:
    • Judy saves Fru Fru from being crushed by the huge doughnut mere inches from her head.
    • A savage jaguar is seconds away from finishing off Nick when Judy cuffs him to a post.
    • The clump of vines Nick and Judy initially land in collapses and they end up falling from great height, but are saved by a second clump of vines just a few feet from the ground.
  • Karma Houdini:
    • Duke Weaselton is a supplier of Night Howlers for the villains, but he's only arrested by the ZPD for robbing the florist and is out on the streets when Nick and Judy next encounter him. In addition, he appears in the Dance Party Ending credits, which shows that he survives his encounter with Mr. Big, even though his actions nearly caused the death of his daughter.
    • Mr. Big himself is a major crime boss who's implied to have iced mammals in the past, but he gets treated as an ally of the protagonists and never suffers any consequences for his actions.
  • Kidnapped for Experimentation: When predators started going savage, Lionheart ordered that they be captured before anyone knew about it and locked up in Cliffside Asylum, where they would both be kept from hurting anyone and be used as a clue as to what is causing predators to go savage.
  • Kids Are Cruel: When they were young, both Judy and Nick were victims of violent bullying where their dreams were ridiculed because of their species. Judy was told she would never be more than a "stupid carrot-farming dumb bunny" and Nick was told that a fox would never be trusted without a muzzle. While each reacted in completely different ways, it was the main factor in shaping their adult world-views and the trauma still affects them even 15-20 years later.
  • Killed to Uphold the Masquerade:
    • Figuratively with Emmitt Otterton and Manchas. Doug darted them, making them unable to communicate intelligibly, before either of them could say much about the Night Howlers.
    • Played straighter during the climax: Bellwether attempts to do this to both Nick and Judy. She traps both of them in a pit and shoots Nick with the Night Howlers pellet expecting Judy to be killed and savage Nick unable to reveal anything. It would have worked if the duo hadn't planned out a few things in advance.
  • Kind Restraints: Mayor Lionheart was keeping the savage mammals imprisoned and hidden in order to prevent a panic while he attempted to cure them, also protecting the public from these dangerous savage mammals.
  • Knight of Cerebus: The "savage" predators and the mad sheep behind them tend to considerably skew the tone away from comedy.

    Tropes L to P 
  • Laser-Guided Karma:
  • Lecture as Exposition: Judy's narration in the play at the talent show at the beginning fills the audience in on the history of Zootopia.
  • Left the Background Music On: Judy can't find a radio station that isn't playing a song with depressing lyrics, and apparently shuts off the radio; but then a few minutes later the noisy neighbors yell at her to cut it out with the depressing music, which we thought was just soundtrack.
  • Leitmotif: There are three major melodic themes that appear throughout the movie.note  There are also several minor themes which appear as well.
    • The first major theme is a jazzy, funky piece that plays when the characters (usually Nick) are being crafty or clever. It's first heard when Nick is carrying out his Jumbo Pop hustle and later heard when he gives a Break Them by Talking speech to Judy. It can also be heard when Nick gets the idea to use traffic cameras to look for Manchas and when Nick and Judy fool Bellwether into recording her confession to being the perpetrator of the Nighthowler scheme.
    • The second major theme is a lighter, more hopeful piece that plays when dreams or idealism is involved (mostly around Judy). It first appears when Judy is at the academy and starts to excel at her training, other times are when Judy receives her badge (naturally), after Judy has happily bought a Jumbo pop for Finnick but before she sees them carrying out their hustle, and when Judy gives Nick the ZPD application.
    • The third major theme is a slow, melancholy piece that plays when dreams have been shaken or broken. It is used as the "depressing music" that plays on Judy's radio after her first day of work.note  It also plays after Judy was beat up by Gideon as a child, when Nick tells Judy of his childhood encounter with the Junior Ranger Scouts and when Judy resigns from the ZPD. This theme has a Triumphant Reprise that plays when broken dreams are given a second chance. It appears when Judy is returning to Zootopia after her "Eureka!" Moment, and when Nick is awarded his badge by Judy.
    • A minor theme is a lively little riff that plays when the characters are in "investigation" mode. It can be heard when Judy first spots Nick as he enters the ice cream shop, while she's reviewing the case file with Clawhauser, and after Nick has climbed the fence in Tundratown, to name a few.
    • Another minor theme is a discordant piano piece that plays when Night Howlers/Craziness are involved. It sounds like someone randomly banging their hands on the keyboard to reflect the crazed state of mind caused by the Night Howlers. It can be heard when Nick and Judy are climbing through the window of the subway car and discover the Night Howler laboratory. It also appears when they are searching the limo in Tundra Town and discover that that back of the car is covered in claw marks. Finally, in a use that is equal parts Foreshadowing, Spoiler, and Rewatch Bonus, the theme plays when they are in Bellwether's office as she says "I think Mayor Lionheart just wanted the sheep vote. But he did give me that nice mug. Feels good to be appreciated." A subtle and creepy reveal that Bellwether is involved with the Nighthowlers and a likely reflection of her state of mind.
  • Lip Lock: The film was retitled Zootropolis for its UK release - the actors re-recorded lines with the city's alternative name, but the characters' mouth movements remain the same.
  • Lingering Social Tensions: Predators and prey have learned to co-exist in the same society, but many prey are quite untrusting towards predators due to certain stereotypes. That is why Judy wants to help bridge the gap between predators and prey even further to prevent this racism. Things go downhill when it's revealed that predators are going savage, which divides the gap between predator and prey even further. Eventually, though, the predators are found innocent, as the only reason they were going savage was due to it being at the hands of a Politically Incorrect Villain who happens to be prey. Even though there is still tension between the two animal groups when everything is said and done, the prey are still struggling to accept predators. However, they are on the right track for making it work.
  • Literal Metaphor:
    • Mr. Big threatens to "ice" Judy and Nick, which involves dropping them in freezing water. Interestingly it retains the euphemistic meaning as well as the literal meaning, as being submerged in freezing cold water for any length of time would be lethal to most animals.
    • Chief Bogo mentions that they need to address the "elephant in the room". He then turns to an elephant officer and wishes her happy birthday.
    • At Gazelle's peace rally, a pig shouts "Go back to the forest, predator!" to a pro-predator leopard, making them literally a "racist pig."
    • In the ZPD bullpen, the police officers are getting instructions from Chief Bogo, a literal bull.
  • Little "No": After Manchas' disappearance, Bogo demands that Judy hand over her badge, saying that she has failed to solved the case. Judy is just about to do it when Nick suddenly pipes up with a calm, but firm "no." He then chews Bogo out for setting her up to fail and points out that they still have ten hours left, so they're going to go solve the case.
  • Lives in a Van: Finnick appears to live in the van he and Nick use for their scams, given that Judy finds him in there parked in an alley and he answers her knocking by waving a baseball bat.
  • A Lizard Named "Liz": Many (if not most) characters have names like this.
    • Lionheart, Moosebridge, Otterton and Weaselton are all characters with their species directly in their names.
    • Judy Hopps and her parents are rabbits, known for their hopping.
    • Chief Bogo's name comes from M'bogo, Swahili for cape buffalo.
    • "Manchas" is Spanish for "spots".
    • "Bellwether" is an expression for a sheep leading a flock.
    • And there's Finnick the fennec fox and Yax the yak.
  • Lonely Piano Piece: Plays on the radio when Judy is making dinner alone at her apartment after her first disappointing day at work.
  • Look Behind You: Nick pulls this on Judy after she confronts him about tricking her into supporting one of his cons.
    Judy: I stood up for you, and you lied to me, you liar!
    Nick: It's called a hustle, sweetheart. And I'm not a liar, he is. [points, walks away when Judy turns to look]
  • Loophole Abuse:
    • After Judy witnesses Nick and Finnick delivering pawpsicle sticks as lumber to a construction site she claims he is guilty of false advertising when he called them "redwood", Nick points out that he said the lumber was "'red wood' with a space in the middle, wood that is red". (It's even rendered in the DVD subtitles that way!)
    • When Judy doesn't have a warrant to enter the parking lot Otterton's limo is stored in, she tosses her pen recorder on the other side of the fence, tricking Nick into climbing the fence to retrieve it. Judy uses Nick's trespassing as "probable cause" to enter the parking lot.
  • Lost in Translation:
    • The joke with Chief Bogo referencing Frozen by telling Judy that "life isn't some cartoon musical [...] so let it go!" is hard and even impossible to replicate in several languages due to the different translations of said song. A couple versions manage to avert this: In both French Canadian and European French versions, where "Let it go" was localized to «Libérée, délivrée» (released, set free), Chief Bogo essentially says that singing and dancing will neither release her, nor set her free from her problem. In the Brazilian version, Bogo actually refers to the song by its title: "Life is not like a cartoon show where you sing a song and your beautiful dreams magically come true, like Let It Go." Oddly, the localized version of the song is called Livre Estou (I Am Free).
    • The "red wood" pun doesn't work in Portuguese, so in the Brazilian dub Nick explains the lumber's color as "it's from a cherry tree". Because the Jumbo-pop was cherry-flavored. Similarly, in one of the Spanish versions, he says the lumber is colored because "it's from Colorado" (the word "colorado" means "colored" in Spanish). The French version uses instead "it's from Baton Rouge" — "baton rouge" meaning red stick in French. In the Castilian Spanish dub they managed to keep the pun. In that dub, Nick says that the lumber is "palorrosa" (Brazilian rose wood; another type of luxurious timber). They even kept the trick of Nick saying that his intended utterance was two words! ("palorrosa" vs. "palo rosa". The first means "rosewood", the second a "pink stick").
  • Low Clearance: In two scenes.
    • Parodied with Weaselton. On his Outside Ride on a train in Little Rodentia he passes several convoluted pedestrian bridges, which forces him to do impossible limbo figures in order to not crash into them.
    • Judy ducks Just in Time to avoid crashing into a set of traffic lights during her traintop ride in the subway tunnel.
  • Low Count Gag: Judy Hopps has had a miserable first day on the police force, and microwaves herself a prepackaged dinner of carrots. The box image shows three sizable, succulent carrots but when she pulls back the foil, it reveals only a single carrot. To add yet another misery to her First Day from Hell experience, we see that she has severely over-cooked her dinner, transforming the one carrot into a shriveled, dried-out, unappetizing mess which she discards uneaten.
  • Lower Half Reveal: The receptionist at the Naturist club is sitting behind a desk when he first appears, so neither Judy nor the audience notices that he's completely naked until he steps out to let the protagonists in.
  • Lucky Rabbit's Foot: While Judy is shown to be very skilled, competent and dedicated, she also benefits tremendously from the association between rabbits and luck during the film in the form of fortuitous events and favorable coincidences. Even overlooking obvious examples like Bellwether being at the ZPD to prevent Judy from being fired or Yax's photographic memory recalling the license plate, Judy is shown to have an incredible stockpile of luck to draw from.
    • On Judy's first day, she happens to be at the right spot to hear a truck that almost hit Nick honk its horn causing her to notice him leading to them connecting in the ice cream shop. Bonus points in that the truck driver turns out to be Doug.
    • On Judy's second day, her parking duty route happens to park her right in front of the florist that was going to be robbed by Weaselton. Bonus points in that there are two sheep standing to the side of the florist shop as Judy returns to her parking duty vehicle. One is clearly covering their muzzle with their hoof as they speak to the other while glancing over at Judy, foreshadowing Bellwether's sheep conspiracy.
    • In the "last known sighting" photo, not only is Emmitt Otterton shown to be a pawpsicle patron but Nick happens to be caught in the photo as well.
    • Despite Otterton being missing for 10 days, the limo he was in when he went savage had not been swept clean of evidence and his wallet was still lying on the floor.
    • Not only was Judy fortunate enough to have saved the life of Mr. Big's daughter, but the timing of Fru Fru's father/daughter dance caused her to appear at the exact right moment to save Judy and Nick from being iced.
    • During the Manchas chase when knocked off the platform into their Vine Swing, there happens to be a vine clump handy for Judy to shoot for. Even when that clump fails to support their weight, they manage to plummet into yet another vine clump that stops their fall mere feet from the ground.
    • The Traffic Cams were able to perfectly capture the route the timber wolves took to Cliffside Asylum.
    • At Cliffside Asylum, the plumbing is old enough to not have any sewer treatment and dumps straight into the river allowing Nick and Judy to escape via Toilet Teleportation.
    • The Hopps Family Farm truck that Judy uses to return to Zootopia just happens to have a punnet of blueberries in it.
    • In a city the size of Zootopia, Judy is able to locate Finnick's van rather quickly once she returns.
    • When trying to escape with the subway car there just happens to be a switch track between their car and the oncoming train with enough time to reach it before a head-on collision.
  • Luxurious Liquor: Nick Wilde discovers a minibar left in disarray while snooping around inside a limousine. The monogram on the drinking glass is "B," which causes Nick to deduce that the limo belongs to crime lord Mister Big.
  • Lyrical Dissonance: "Try Everything" is a bouncy, energetic song about getting up after you've been knocked down, with a lot of emphasis on the knocked down part. "I wanna try even though I could fail" is a very... blunt way to say that you're determined.
  • Mad Libs Dialogue: Gazelle's app. "Wow! You're one hot dancer, [Benjamin] [Claw][hauser]!"
  • Magic Countdown: Attempts to map Judy's 48 hour time limit to events in-universe demonstrate that the realism of the countdown is subverted for the sake of the plot and drama. Judy is given 48 hours to find Mr. Otterton. However:
    • She pursues Duke Weaselton into Little Rodentia around 9:00am (as seen by the clocks on main gate she and Duke squeeze through), and captures him shortly afterwards, she brings him back to the station, talks to Chief Bogo, and after their conversation, he gives her the 48 hours. The clock starts now.
    • After leaving the "naturalist" club, she says they have 36 hours left. Supposedly it has been 12 hours, but is still broad daylight. (Even if it's summer and Zootopia is located at a high latitude resulting in very long days, the shadows in that scene imply that the sun is directly overhead and not low on the horizon).
    • After the encounter with Manchas, Nick says they have 10 hours left but watching the reaction on Judy's face when he says this strongly suggests he is making this figure up. If it's accurate then it has been 1 day and 2 hours since leaving the "naturalist" club, but Nick and Judy's Sky Tram ride reveals sunrise over Zootopia, when 2 hours before, it should have been broad daylight.
    • Later, when Nick and Judy meet with Bellwether to review the traffic cams, her desk phone says its 16:01 (or 4pm) in the afternoon, then when Nick and Judy get to Cliffside Asylum and find all the missing mammals, Judy receives her ill-timed phone call from her parents and her smartphone says its 8:39pm, which implies more than 10 hours have passed since the encounter with Manchas, and yet Bogo still acts as if Judy solved her case within the given time. Most likely he is impressed that Judy not only found Mr. Otterton but all the missing mammals so he doesn't care that it took more than 48 hours.
  • Malaproper: Yax calls the "Mystic Spring Oasis" a "naturalist" club; a naturalist is an expert or student of natural history. The club members are nudists, which would make them naturists.
  • The Many Deaths of You: Parodied during the training sequence when Judy "dies" repeatedly on the obstacle course (and the bathroom). "You're dead! You're dead! You're dead!"
  • Market-Based Title:
    • The film is released in the United Kingdom and several other European languages such as Italian, Hungarian and Swedish as Zootropolis. This may explain why.
    • It's known as Zootopienote  in French and Zoomania in German.
    • In Polish, it's titled as Zwierzogródnote 
    • In Russian, the title became Zveropolisnote 
  • Massive Numbered Siblings: According to Judy's mother, Judy has 275 brothers and sisters.
  • Match Cut: Several.
    • Judy's face at the ZPD academy graduation fades into the bunny-face facade at the train station.
    • Nick's tail in the Otterton case file photo fades into his "real" tail as he walks down a street.
    • Judy's aghast expression when seeing that Clawhauser is being moved to records fades to her smiling picture on a ZPD poster in the following scene. Doubles as Ad Dissonance.
  • Maybe Ever After: The L-word is thrown in at the tail end (Nick says "You know you love me." Judy says yes, yes she does.), and is quickly buried by a sloth gag. It's intentionally left ambiguous whether this is meant in a romantic sense or not.
  • Meaningful Name:
    • Mr. Big's daughter, Fru Fru, is named for the word 'froufrou', which means "showy or frilly ornamentation".
    • A 'bellwether' is "someone or something that leads others or shows what will happen in the future". The term is derived from the practice of placing a bell around the neck of the lead sheep in a flock to be able to hear where the sheep are when they're out of sight (though in that case, the lead sheep was a castrated ram, not a ewe). Given that Deputy Mayor Bellwether is the ringleader behind the plot to sow discord in Zootopia, this turns out to be even more meaningful in hindsight. She even wears a small bell necklace as part of her business outfit.
  • Medal of Dishonor: Happens when Mayor Bellwether and Chief Bogo want to make Judy the "public face of the ZPD" in light of the growing predator/prey tension causing fear throughout the city. Unfortunately, Judy has already been having a series of My God, What Have I Done? moments in seeing the consequences of her comments from the press conference, which leads to her turning in her badge and resigning because she feels she broke the city.
  • Media Scrum: When Nick storms off after the press conference, Judy tries to follow him, but cannot because she is intercepted by a frenzied mob of reporters swarming around her shoving microphones in her face.
  • Menacing Museum: The climax takes place in the Zootopia Natural History Museum, which is currently closed for renovation. As such, there is limited lighting, missing safety rails, exposed scaffolding, and exhibits in partial disassembly lying on the floor. All of which contribute to its creepy, threatening atmosphere.
  • Mickey Mousing: Nick and Judy are watching a soundless security camera feed of wolves capturing Manchas with a Net Gun, and a Scare Chord sounds when it is fired.
  • Military Salute: Judy gives one to Nick after she presents him with his officer's badge at the graduation ceremony.
  • Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot:
    • Cases of seemingly unrelated mammals' disappearances; a discovery of a strange phenomenon that apparently turns predator mammals feral; a conspiracy plot by the Assistant Mayor to cause an all-out war between prey and predators.
    • Weaselton's theft of the "two dozen moldy onions" foreshadows the reveal of the source of the animals going savage.
  • A Minor Kidroduction: The first few scenes are set 15 years before the rest, when Judy was 9.
  • Mistaken Nationality: A variant when a leopard protester is told to "Go back to the forest, predator!", but replies that she's from the savannah.
  • Mocking Music: After her first day on the job, which ended with her being hustled by Nick, Judy tries to lift her spirits by playing the radio but keeps coming in on song lyrics that further depress her, including "Everybody Hurts", "All by Myself", "You can't do nothing right, babe" and "I'm a loser".
  • Moral Disambiguation: The film starts out with Fantastic Racism between predator and prey being widespread among all the characters, but as the story progresses, the heroes learn to overcome their prejudices, while the villains aim to escalate racial tensions for their own purposes.
  • Morality Kitchen Sink: Bellwether is undoubtedly the villain of the movie because they let their prejudice consume them and use it to deliberately hurt others. However, because the creative team focused on the various ways that bias manifests in society, many of the protagonists including the main duo are often Politically Incorrect Heros, even if it's done unconsciously.
  • Moral Myopia: The movie strongly hints that the "Predators Are Mean" stereotype has worked itself into various parts of the modern predator/prey relations via their subtle bias, and that perception spelled out more clearly through Bellwether. The myopia part? The "Herbivores Are Friendly" implication is merely yet another stereotype. Anyone without a romanticized view of nature will know that herbivores are often just as aggressive if not more so than carnivores depending on the scenario. In fact, it is shown throughout the movie that there are plenty of "predators" who are friendly and "prey" who are mean, making these stereotypes meaningless.
  • Motive Rant: When Bellwether reveals herself as the Big Bad she goes on a doozy of one. Exploited by Nick and Judy, who start recording it and subtly egg her on to probe for all the incriminating details.
  • Moving the Goalposts: After Judy calls in ZPD reinforcements only to find that Manchas has disappeared, Chief Bogo attempts to use this situation to force her to turn in her badge then and there even though making a mistake was not a failure condition of their deal. However, Nick cuts in, reminding Bogo that he gave her 48 hours to find Mr. Otterton, and they still have ten hours left to fulfill the deal.
  • Musical Pastiche: To accompany the whole Godfather reference with Mr. Big, there's a short Nino Rota-like theme playing when he's introduced.
  • Must Make Amends: After Judy says things at the press conference that causes submerged predator/prey tensions to rise to the surface and leads to massive civil unrest, she feels terrible, having essentially done the opposite of what she intended to do by becoming a police officer. When she finds a way to possibly undo the damage, she immediately puts every fiber of her being towards setting things right.
  • My God, What Have I Done?:
    • After Judy says at a press conference that predators were apparently "reverting back to their primitive, savage ways", submerged predator/prey tensions rise to the surface causing civil unrest, and Nick is left feeling hurt and betrayed leading to their Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure. Judy becomes distraught that she failed at her dream of making the world a better place by causing it to be more divided.
      Judy: I came here to make the world a better place, but I think I broke it ... a good cop is supposed to serve and protect. Help the city. Not tear it apart. I don't deserve this badge.
    • When Chief Bogo demands that Judy surrender her badge, Nick is seen looking surprised and guilty as he sees the consequences of his wasting Judy's time. This leads him to give Chief Bogo a What the Hell, Hero? speech where he reminds him that they still have ten hours left and still have a case to solve.
    • Judy's tearful apology to Nick also contains elements of this trope, as it shows that Judy realises she hurt Nick's feelings, which led to their Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure.
  • My Species Doth Protest Too Much: One of the major messages of the film is an anti-prejudice Aesop. Accordingly, there are characters that subvert their species stereotype to deliver an Aesop about stereotyping. We have a forgetful elephant, an overweight cheetah, and of course a strong, brave rabbit cop and a trustworthy fox.
  • Mythology Gag:
    • To Frozen:
      • Duke Weaselton is a reference back to the joke in Frozen of mispronouncing the name of the Duke of Weselton. (When Judy confronts Weaselton while he is selling his "officially licensed" DVDs, Judy mispronounces his name as "Weselton" and he corrects her, thus echoing and inverting the joke.) They even share the same voice actor, Disney Animation regular Alan Tudyk.
      • When Judy confronts Chief Bogo about sidelining her, he bluntly tells her that "life isn't some cartoon musical" and to "let it go."
      • Flash's girlfriend Priscilla is voiced by Kristen Bell, a.k.a. Anna from Frozen, with sloths being one of Bell's favorite animals.
    • To The Jungle Book:
      • Bears are enjoying themselves in the "Naturalists" Club as they scratch their backs against palm trees... just like Baloo.
      • Manchas, the black panther chauffeur, bears a striking resemblance to Bagheera and the first three savage animals encountered in Cliffside are specifically a tiger, a bear and Manchas.
    • At the climax, the deer mannequin is recognizably Bambi.
    • The florist shop that Weaselton steals from is called "Flora and Fauna", which are the names of two of the Fairies from Sleeping Beauty.
    • The owner of the elephant ice cream shop, Jerry Jumbeaux Jr., is a nod to Dumbo who was initially named "Jumbo Jr" after his father until his big ears were revealed and the other elephants cruelly nicknamed him "Dumbo".
  • "Not So Different" Remark: During the climax, Bellwether tries to get Judy to come out of hiding by pointing out how they are both on the same side and share similarities like being underestimated and underappreciated due to both being small prey species.
  • N-Word Privileges: Downplayed. Judy claims only other rabbits are allowed to call a rabbit "cute," while the term used by other species can be considered insensitive. This is treated more as a stereotype than an outright slur, with Judy wanting to be judged on her actions and not dismissed due to being adorable, which is revealed to be a very real problem in Zootopia.
  • Naked People Are Funny: The main source of humor at the Mystic Springs Oasis Club is that it's a nudist club in a setting where animals are, normally, fully clothed. Although Animals Lack Attributes is thankfully in full play, Judy reacts to their nudity as if the attributes were still there, and the shots are clearly intended so the audience can easily imagine them there.
  • National Animal Stereotypes:
    • The male news anchor of ZNN in many international versions of the film is an animal stereotypically associated with that country: a moose named Peter Moosebridge in the USA, Canadian, and French versions; a koala in the Australian and New Zealandese ones; a Tanuki in the Japanese one; a panda in the Chinese one; and a jaguar in the Brazilian one.
    • A number of characters have names, accents and stereotypical professions that recall their species' country of origin. Chief Bogo is a cape buffalo with an African-sounding name and a South African accent (besides being an animal version of a Scary Black Man), Nangi the elephant yoga instructor is Indian, Manchas the jaguar limo driver is Latin American, and Koslov the polar bear mafioso is supposed to be Russian (although he doesn't speak in the movie nor is his name mentioned). The first three even have Bilingual Bonus names ("cape buffalo" in Swahili, "naked" in Hindi and "spots" in Spanish, respectively).
  • Nerves of Steel: Judy is shown to keep her wits about her under incredible stress.
    • While Manchas is attacking, she keeps her cool, dodges every blow, barks orders at Nick to keep him safe, and calls in to dispatch. When she slides off the Skytram platform, she keeps focused and is able to hang on with one paw. She then pulls herself up in time to cuff Manchas to a lamppost, saving Nick's life. Finally, when the two of them are knocked off the platform, she has the presence of mind to instantly grab a vine and Nick's paw as he flies past her, saving them both.
    • In her childhood confrontation with Gideon Grey: despite being scared, beaten to the ground and having her face slashed, she still manages to snag the tickets out of his pocket without him noticing.
  • Net Gun: Manchas is captured by Lionheart's wolf mercenaries using a net gun when they find him on the Sky Tram loading area.
  • Newscaster Cameo: CBC's Peter Mansbridge voices the ZNN anchor Peter Moosebridge.
  • Next Stall Shenanigans: During the "You're Dead" montage of Judy's police training, she enters a bathroom stall sized for mega-fauna. Unfortunately, when she tries to jump onto the rim, she misses and ends up falling into the bowl. Major Friedkin, her Drill Sergeant Nasty instructor, happens to be in the next stall and proclaims it another fatality.
    Major Friedkin: Filthy Toilet! You're dead, Fluff Butt!
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Judy's comments about predators at the press conference not only causes a Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure with Nick, but escalates growing unrest between Predators and Prey that divides the city.
  • Nice Job Fixing It, Villain:
    • Bellwether assists Judy in her investigation so that Lionheart's illegal imprisonment of mammals will be exposed leading to his arrest and Bellwether being able to take over as Mayor, but she underestimates Judy's drive and determination, which leads her to figure out Bellwether's plan and stop her.
    • Bellwether traps Nick and Judy in a pit in the Natural History Museum and shoots Nick with the Night Howler serum, expecting him to go savage thus killing Judy, eliminating Nick as a witness and further inflaming predator tension. Having already called the ZPD to report the incident leaves Bellwether no opportunity to respond once Nick and Judy reveal their Batman Gambit, leading to her capture.
  • Nice Mean And In Between: The three most prominent officers at the ZPD (before Nick joined the force): Clawhauser is very friendly, excitable and doesn't have a mean bone in his body, Bogo is the tough, stern, strict and no-nonsense chief and Judy is usually level-headed and calm but has also shown to have somewhat of an assertive and confident side.
  • Nobody Poops: Actually averted in a Disney film: the early Failure Montage shows Judy in the academy restroom preparing to use the facilities, with the polar bear instructor already using the adjacent stall.
  • No Cartoon Fish: It is implied that fish are used as food (and thus, presumably, that they never developed anthropomorphic traits). This implication is mainly in the form of background elements such as stores in Tundra Town with names like "Fishtown Market" or "Clark Halibuts".
  • No-Harm Requirement: Mayor Lionheart has a cadre of timber wolves as Elite Mooks that capture and contain the predators that have been going savage without harming them in order to transport them to Cliffside Asylum where they can be contained in an attempt find a cure.
  • The Noisy Straw: Officer Clawhauser makes a sustained slurping noise while drinking the last drops of his bottled "Cub Soda". While initially annoying to Judy, it actually inspires her to use the bottle's base to magnify significant details in the last sighting photo of Emmett Otterton.
  • Non-Answer: Before Judy takes the podium at a press conference, Nick coaches her not to answer the reporters' questions directly, but rather to respond with another question and answer that instead. She starts off using that gambit successfully to avoid questions, but then she starts giving more straightforward answers that reveal her subconscious prejudice toward predators.
  • No One Gets Left Behind:
    • During the savage jaguar attack, when Judy slips off the bridge, Nick hesitates boarding the Sky Tram without her in spite of her telling him to just go and the Sky Tram pulls away.
    • At the climax, after Judy injures her leg when she and Nick are trying to escape the Big Bad, she tells Nick to get the evidence case to the ZPD and leave her behind. Nick straight-up refuses and vows that they'll think of something else.
  • No OSHA Compliance:
    • The buildings in Little Rodentia don't appear to have proper foundations, allowing even a relatively modest-sized weasel running on the rooftops to make them fall like dominoes.
    • The skycar station in the Rainforest District has extremely insufficient railings, and what little they do have are rickety enough to break off from tiniest force.
    • In the Natural History Museum scene where the climax takes place, the pit there has no safety railing around it and a sharp tusk is left exposed on the floor, which Judy trips over, resulting in a Drama-Preserving Handicap. In both cases it is justified because the museum is closed for renovations at the time.
    • The waste water pipes of Cliffside Asylum empty from the toilets into the river below without any apparent treatment along the way. Otherwise Nick and Judy could not have used it to escape.
  • No Sympathy: When the elephant selling ice cream refuses service to Nick and his "son" and tells them to Get Out!, the female elephant behind Nick nudges him with her foot and coldly says, "You're holding up the line."
  • Not Even Bothering with an Excuse: Chief Bogo is a dedicated police chief who is supportive of his department but clearly does not care for social pleasantries.
    Chief Bogo: There are some new recruits with us I should introduce. But I'm not going to because... I don't care.
  • Not So Above It All:
    • Contrary to his gruff no-nonsense exterior, Chief Bogo makes himself one of Gazelle's backup dancers using her popular app.
    • A massive part of Judy's character development is her realizing that like everybody else she has her own hidden prejudices against other species and is susceptible to the same trap of ignorance and small-mindedness. She admits this to Nick during her tearful apology, which is one of the reasons why Nick forgives her.
  • Nude-Colored Clothes: In the talent show at the beginning, they needed to portray that primitive animals didn't wear clothes, but since this world has a nudity taboo, a children's play couldn't portray that simply by having the actors remove their clothes. To get around this, Judy wears a gray, skintight rabbit costume without a face mask, which for an anthropomorphic rabbit with grey fur functions as this trope. Jaguar is wearing a skintight tiger costume, which also doubles as a case of In-Universe Special Effects Failure since the striped costume obviously doesn't match with his actual spotted fur.
  • Oblivious Mockery: When Clawhauser sees how small and unhelpful the case file is for Mr. Otterton, he laughs and jokingly tells Judy that he hopes she didn't stake her career on solving it. Little does he know that in the previous scene, Judy has done exactly that.
  • Obviously Not Fine: After resigning from the ZPD, Judy returns to Bunnyburrow to work at her parent's vegetable stand. She serves customers in a perfunctory manner. She looks downtrodden, lethargic and sits there with slumped shoulders while staring at newspaper headline "Growing Unrest Divides City". Despite all this, when her parents ask how she is doing, Judy insists that she's fine, even as Bonnie points out that she's not fine as her ears are droopy.
  • Oh, Crap!:
    • Judy has a small one near the start of the film when Gideon attacks her.
    • Several occur during the chase scene with Duke Weaselton in Little Rodentia. Weaselton has one on the top of the train when he sees the Low Clearance tubes coming at him, then again when Judy grabs him. Fru Fru has one when the giant donut looks like it's about to land on her. Then Weaselton has one right before Judy captures him with the same donut.
    • Judy has one when she sees how little information is in Otterton's case file compounded by Clawhauser's revelation that she's not in the system yet and therefore has no official resources available to her.
    • Nick has one when Judy arrests him for Felony Tax Evasion. It continues as she calculates the amount of his undeclared income and then shows that she recorded his boasting on how long he's been making money. It concludes as she reveals that she has hustled him into helping her.
    • Nick has one when he realizes that the limo he and Judy are searching belongs to Mr. Big, who is not happy with him.
    • Judy and Nick when they see Manchas going savage.
    • Judy and Nick in the Cliffside Asylum when Judy's phone rings and blows their cover. Lionheart has one too as he realises someone else is there.
    • Chief Bogo has one when he gets caught playing the Gazelle app.
    • During the flashback scene in Doug's lab, we see Mr. Otterton with this expression after he gets hit with the Night Howler pellet. He likely knows what it is and what's going to happen given he is a florist and was on his way to talk to Mr. Big about something important.
    • Judy and Nick both have one when after they hijack the subway car they hear Jesse and Woolter break in and try to attack them. Nick gets a second one after he locks the door and realizes that Woolter is rearing back to ram the door's window.
    • Judy and Nick have one after they realise Bellwether is the Big Bad. They get another right after when they see on of Bellwether's thugs blocking the exit.
    • Bellwether also gets one after her Motive Rant and confession has been likewise recorded and the police are standing right behind her as it's being played.
    • In the last scene of the movie before the credits, Flash has this kind of expression when he gets caught for street racing, which slowly changes into an ingratiating grin when he recognizes Nick.
  • "Oh, Crap!" Smile: Nick when he opens the taxi cab's door to find Raymond and Kevin waiting in front.
  • Once More, with Clarity: When Judy overhears one of the Big Bad's Mooks talking about how easily he hit his victims, the audience is treated to Reveal Shots showing more detail about they were shot; the latter is a quintessential example of the trope, since it shows something the audience was deliberately kept from seeing the first time, Manchas getting shot through the window, previously blocked by the closed door).
  • Once More, with Volume!: Nick's response to Chief Bogo when he tries to take Judy's badge.
    Nick: Ah, no.
    Bogo: What did you say, fox?
    Nick: Sorry, what I said was nooo!
  • One Dose Fits All: Blueberry-sized capsules of Night Howler serum equally affect animals ranging in size from an otter to polar bears.
  • The One Who Wears Shoes: Gazelle, the sultry singer voiced by Shakira, wears strappy heels (that still leave her hooves visible) despite every other character being a Barefoot Cartoon Animal.
  • One-Word Title: Zootopia.
  • Only One Name: Pop star Gazelle (overlapping with A Dog Named "Dog"), voiced by the similarly one-named Shakira.
  • O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
    • Nick is normally calm and unflappable. But Mr. Big utterly terrifies him.
    • Through most of the movie, Clawhauser is a cheerful, energetic chatterbox, so when he is shown trying not to cry and speaking quietly and briefly after being moved to records, Judy realizes just how badly she messed up.
    • Nick only calls Judy by a variety of nicknames for a majority of the film with two notable exceptions. The first is when he stands up to Bogo after he demands Judy's badge. Nick calls him out for giving her only 48 hours to find Mr. Otterton with no resources and then reminds him that they still have ten hours left to solve the case. Nick then walks off to an arriving Skytram gondola and, with full politeness and respect, opens the door for her saying "Officer Hopps". The second is during their escape from Cliffside Asylum. He emerges from landing in the river first and when she doesn't surface immediately, calls out with growing panic... "Carrots", "Hopps", "Judy!!"
  • Our Werebeasts Are Different: The savage animals are evocative of this, especially in the scene where Judy and Nick watch Manchas going savage. However, since all the characters are already animals, there is no transformation but the victims lose their sapience reverting to a four-legged stance and feral behavior.
  • Out-Gambitted: Bellwether intends for an injured Judy to be killed by Nick once he's been darted by a Night Howler pellet, eliminating them as witnesses and creating more anti-predator sentiment, while she remains to gloat and watch the gruesome death. It massively backfires when it turns out they set up a Batman Gambit where they replaced the single Nighthowler pellet with blueberries and Nick pretended to be savage while they recorded Bellwether's gloating and stalled for time to allow the ZPD to arrive (which she called and were right across the plaza) catching her red-handed with a recorded confession and leading to her arrest.
  • Overdrawn at the Blood Bank: Within the context of her childhood play, the gushing of copious amounts of blood is clearly the effect Judy is intending using the materials available to her as young kit (i.e. red ribbons and ketchup). Judging by the generally shocked faces reacting to her overblown death scene, she has managed to play the trope straight. However, to the movie audience watching the scene, it comes across as more Played for Laughs.
  • Overly Long Gag: Nick and Judy try to get details off a license plate number, but the employees at the DMV are all sloths and do everything slowly. Cue a long sequence as "Flash" laboriously exchanges greetings with Nick and slowly inputs the plate number into his computer as a frustrated Judy tries to hurry him along. Then Nick decides to mess with Judy by telling Flash a joke, extending the sequence by another 30 seconds.note 
    Judy: Hurry! We've got to beat the rush hour and— [crickets chirping] it's NIGHT?!?!
  • Overly Narrow Superlative: A Freeze-Frame Bonus reveals that the Pig Hero 6 DVD is advertised as "the best animated film on this DVD."
  • Paper-Thin Disguise: In the roll call at the end, three of the cops are assigned to an undercover mission. While one of them has a disturbingly realistic disguise as a sheep, the other two, while still wearing their police uniforms, simply put on a cap and mustache respectively, which doesn't help to cover their identities at all.
  • Parental Bonus:
    • Judy's very risqué joke while calculating the amount of back taxes that Nick owes flew over many viewers' heads!
      Judy: I mean, I'm just a dumb bunny, but we are good at multiplying!
    • When Judy meets Gideon as an adult he immediately apologizes with a speech about how he had "a lot of self-doubt and it manifested itself in the form of unchecked rage and aggression." His uncharacteristic clinical language clearly indicates that he went to therapy. Confirmed by Word of God. invoked
    • The Shout-Out to The Godfather can be seen as this, as one would certainly hope that any children in the audience would not have seen that film.
    • Doug and his abandoned train car where he makes powerful blue drugs, with two assistants named Woolter and Jesse, is an obvious reference to Breaking Bad and doubles as a Stealth Pun when you realize that you could call it Breaking Baa.
    • In the Brazilian dub, they made shout-outs to The Elite Squad (Chief Bogo saying "pede pra sair" when telling Judy to quit).
  • Parents as People: While Judy's parents love her very much and try to be supportive of her dream, they just can't help trying to talk her out it. They're naturally worried about her moving to a big city littered with predators, especially foxes, her father tries to get her to take an entire anti-fox kit, and would rather see her become a carrot farmer than a cop. Her influence rubs off on them later in the film, when they go into business with Gideon Grey, something they never would have done before, had Judy not encouraged them to look past their prejudices against foxes.
    Stu Hopps: It's okay to have dreams. Just as long as you don't believe in them too much.
  • Patchwork Map: The titular city has several extremely climate-controlled suburbs — a snowed-over polar zone is sandwiched between an extremely dry and windy desert and a wet equatorial jungle. It's justified in that the city's infrastructure works to transfer atmospheric conditions from one area to another, creating extremes in both. For example, the air conditioners that freeze Tundra Town produce a lot of heat exhaust, which heats the adjacent Sahara Square.
  • Paying It Forward: Mister Big references this almost verbatim upon learning that Officer Hopps saved his daughter from being crushed by a giant doughnut. "I will take your kindness, and pay it forward." Rather than sending Judy and Nick to an icy tomb, Mister Big invites them to be his guests at his daughter's wedding reception, wherein he provides further clues in the Otterton case.
  • Pedal-to-the-Metal Shot: Judy has quite a lead-foot in the movie.
    • The trope is subverted when right after she defiantly decides to write 200 tickets before noon, she suits up, buckles into her three-wheeled joke-mobile, turns the key and slams down the accelerator... only to move forward at a snail's pace.
    • After she has her "Eureka!" Moment in Bunnyburrow, she hastily yells for the keys to the family truck followed by a two-shot sequence of Judy turning the key and then flooring it in order to rush back to the city.
    • At the end of the movie, a street racer zooms by her police cruiser, and she immediately floors it to pursue them.
  • Percussive Maintenance: In the scene where Judy is trying to start the subway car, the car starts, begins to shut down only for Judy to bang on the console to restart it.
  • Perp Sweating: In the flashback to little Nick's Ranger Scout initiation, his peers shut the room lights off and shine a bright flashlight right in his face as part of their intimidation tactics to force Nick out of their circle.
  • Personal Horror: Judy's self-esteem takes a big hit when her own unconscious prejudices cause her to inadvertently start a panic against predators and betray Nick's trust, leading to their Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure. Her guilt over what happens is so strong that she resigns from the ZPD for a while because she feels she betrayed her own ideals.
  • The Place: The movie is titled after the city where most of the film is set.
  • Playing Up the Stereotype: The movie begins with a scene of a vicious tiger stalking an innocent bunny, which is revealed to be part of a school play about how predators and prey no longer have to fit those stereotypes. The jaguar who played the tiger reveals himself to actually be an intelligent prospective actuary, and Judy Hopps the bunny reveals that she wants to become a police officer. This setup comes back in the climax of the film: after seemingly getting hit with the Night Howlers, Nick "reverts" to his predator instincts and attacks Judy, only for Nick to reveal that he's totally lucid — it was just a setup to catch Bellwether in the act.
  • Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure: Judy and Nick have started to become close friends, with Judy even asking him to join the ZPD and become her official partner. Unfortunately, during the press conference, Judy makes statements about predators "reverting back to their savage ways", which hurts Nick because it reminds him of the bullying and discrimination he suffered as a child from prey animals for being a predator. Then Nick points out that Judy has been wearing fox repellent the whole time she's been around him. Finally, when Nick confronts Judy asking whether she's afraid of him, his size, relative position and aggressive posture reminds her of when Gideon Grey attacked her, causing her to instinctively reach for her fox repellent. All this makes Nick feel that after all they've been through, she's still a little prejudiced and doesn't fully trust him, and he walks away in anger and disappointment.
  • Plummet Perspective: When Judy drops her radio shortly after contacting Clawhauser for backup during her and Nick's escape from a savage Manchas, the camera briefly pans to the radio falling down a huge drop, emphasizing the dangers of the terrain.
  • Police Are Useless: The story manages to play with this trope in an interesting way. At the start of the movie, there's a recent on-going case regarding fourteen missing mammals that Mayor Lionheart is riding Chief Bogo and the ZPD to solve, to no avail... at least, until Judy Hopps gets on the case taking on one of the low priority missing mammals, and ultimately cracks it open. This situation was being purposefully created on two fronts, neither of which was the police department's fault. The first front is that Lionheart was aware that the missing mammals have gone savage and hired wolf mercenaries to capture and imprison them in order to safely contain the mammals, prevent public panic, and attempt to find a cure. The second front is the actual nefarious plot, involving a conspiracy being run by Bellwether using Chemically-Induced Insanity to intentionally turn predators savage in order to inflame anti-predator sentiment causing prey animals to unite against them, and elevate Bellwether to power who we learn is also subtly assisting Judy's investigation. In essence, Lionheart and Bellwether are working behind the scenes against each other without the other's knowledge and the ZPD is being kept out of the loop and caught in the middle.
  • Politically Incorrect Hero: Played With. One of the themes of the movie is showing that almost everyone harbors a degree of bias, stereotyping, or prejudice in them. During the course of the movie most of the major characters (for example: Judy, Nick, Lionheart, Chief Bogo, Stu, Bonnie, young Gideon, Yax) demonstrate some aspect of bias, stereotyping, or prejudice in their actions or words. However, they also are well-rounded characters and their bias is not a major defining feature.
  • Poor Communication Kills:
    • In the missing mammals case, communication was deliberately poor. Mayor Lionheart knew that citizens were "going crazy" but not why, and was providing medical resources to determine a cause; when he learned that only predators were going savage he felt making this public knowledge would generate a panic. So for the public good, as well as a desire to protect his own career, he ran a covert operation and kept the police completely in the dark.
    • Judy's comments about predators "reverting to their savage ways" causes predator/prey tensions in Zootopia to rise to the surface, which divides the city. Word of God confirmed that Doug was present at the press conference and asked the leading question "So, predators are the only ones going savage?" indicating that Bellwether intended to use the event to further her anti-predator plans and Judy's comments played into her plans even better than she could have hoped.
  • Population: X, and Counting: Bunnyburrow has a population indicator. It's ticking upward like mad.
  • The Power of Acting: The duo's climactic Batman Gambit required Nick to pull off a convincing performance of succumbing to the Night Howler serum and hunting Judy so she could secretly record all of Bellwether's gloating.
  • Prejudice Aesop: The movie shows a setting where most everyone harbors a degree of bias within them and some of those biases can be destructive as they lead to prejudice, stereotyping and profiling. Instead of focusing on just a single prejudice throughout the movie, we actually see many different biases at play at different times. The main prejudice that's exploited by the Big Bad is that predators have innate biological impulses that can cause them to revert to their "primitive, savage ways." However, we also see prejudice reflected in the belief that bunnies can't be cops, foxes are sly and untrustworthy, all elephants never forget, or any aggressive predator seems savage to a small rabbit. This is how bias works in the real world. However, the blow is softened as the movie also shows that you can overcome bias if you actively work on becoming aware of it and moving past it. This idea is expressed in Judy's graduation speech.
    Judy: When I was a kid, I thought Zootopia was this perfect place, where everyone got along and anyone could be anything. Turns out, real life is a little bit more complicated than a slogan on a bumper sticker. Real life is messy. We all have limitations, we all make mistakes, which means — hey, glass half full! — we all have a lot in common. And the more we try to understand one another, the more exceptional each of us will be.
  • Premiseville: "Zootopia" pretty much describes the city's character.
  • Pretend to Be Brainwashed: In the climax, Nick is shot with what appears to be a Night Howler pellet and goes feral, ripping a stuffed deer to shreds and stalking Judy through a museum exhibit before chomping down on her throat. It turns out both he and Judy are pretending, and the Night Howler pellet is actually fake.
  • Profiling: Judy first encounters Nick because she sees him walk into a store and follows him under the assumption that as a fox, he is up to no good. She silently chastises herself for this behavior when it appears that all he wants to do is buy his "son" a Jumbo-pop. Her focus on Nick leads her to ignore a sheep whose behavior is objectively a lot more suspicious.
  • Pronouncing My Name for You: Duke Weaselton insists that his name is pronounced "Weasel-ton" when Judy pronounces it "Wessel-ton".
  • Pulling Your Child Away: After 14 missing predators are discovered having gone uncontrollably savage, the prey population of Zootopia becomes terrified of their predator neighbors for fear they'll snap and start mauling whoever's nearby. On the subway, a mother rabbit pulls her kit away from a male adult tiger sitting next to them on the same bench, minding his own business. Notably, the kit isn't bothered by the huge tiger sitting right next to them at first, and only starts to look fearful when her mother pulls her away.
  • Pun-Based Title: The title of the movie (and the name of the eponymous city) is a pun on "zoo" (or "zoology") and "Utopia".
  • Punctuated! For! Emphasis!:
    • Chief Bogo on the intercom when Ms. Otterton is announced and Clawhauser doesn't immediately accept his first answer: Not! (punches button) Now! (punches button)
    • When Chief Bogo is reprimanding Judy for abandoning her post to pursue Duke Weaselton, he tells her "Life isn't some cartoon musical where you sing a little song and all your insipid dreams magically come true. So let.. it.. go." (also a very overt and self-deprecating stab at Frozen!)

    Tropes R to Z 
  • Race Against the Clock: Chief Bogo fires Judy for taking on the Otterton case without his permission. Upon discovering Bellwether texting Lionheart about this, he's forced to rescind Judy's termination and allows her to investigate, but under the condition that if she doesn't solve the case in 48 hours, she will resign.
  • Race-Name Basis: Occasionally used by multiple characters, typically in a derogatory way. Before he warms up to Judy, Nick calls her "Rabbit" a few times, as do Duke Weaselton and one of the mammals she ticketed while on parking duty. Also, a ram shouts "watch where you're going, Fox!" after nearly running over Nick with a van, and the disrespectful ice cream vendor Jerry Jumbeaux Jr. refers to Nick only as "Fox".
  • Reality Is Unrealistic: In some states, you only need the consent of one (not all) of the parties to record a conversation without a warrant, meaning it's perfectly legal to record a conversation in which you yourself are a party. Assuming Zootopia is such a state, Judy would have had Nick and the Big Bad dead to rights, no Hollywood Law required.
  • "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Chief Bogo demands that Judy turn in her badge after calling for backup due to a "jaguar gone savage", only to find no sign of the jaguar. Nick then steps forward and calls Bogo out on his promise to give Judy a chance to solve the investigation:
    Nick: No! She will not be giving you that badge. Look, you gave her a...a...a clown vest, and a three-wheel joke-mobile, and two days to solve a case you guys haven't cracked in two weeks? Yeah, no wonder she needed to get help from a fox. None of you guys were gonna help her, were you? [Bogo starts to respond but Nick cuts him off] Here's the thing, chief. You gave her the 48 hours, so technically we still have... 10 left, to find our Mr. Otterton. And that's exactly what we're gonna do. So, if you'll excuse us, we have a very big lead to follow and a case to crack. Good day.
  • Reassigned to Antarctica: When anti-predator sentiment in the city gets too high, Clawhauser is reassigned to the records department, because the powers that be don't want a predator to be the first face someone sees when walking into the station. He returns to the front desk by the end of the film.
  • Rebuff the Amateur: When Judy is pursuing Duke Weaselton, Officer McHorn yells "leave it to the real cops" at her. Judy is a professional police officer, but an inexperienced one who is on parking duty when the crime happens.
  • Recurring Extra: The rhino wearing a T-shirt with a ram's skull with horns on it appears multiple times throughout the movie. He's seen right behind Judy as the train doors open at Zootopia's Savanna Central station; he's waiting in line at the DMV as Nick and Judy arrive to run the plate number; and he's the rhino that almost steps on her when she emerges from the wooden fence (he's only seen from the side and back but is wearing the same clothes).
  • Red Herring: While investigating the missing mammals, Judy comes to believe that Mr. Otterton's ranting about "Night Howlers" refers to the wolf mercenaries that abduct the predators that go savage. The truth isn't revealed until much later, when Gideon casually mentions that Night Howler is a common name for a plant that will make anything go savage.
  • Reestablishing Character Moment: In the beginning of the movie, featuring Judy Hopps as a child, it's shown that she had a bully named Gideon Grey, who ridiculed and even attacked her because of her interest in becoming a police officer. Later in the movie, Judy and Gideon encounter each other again as adults, and Gideon sincerely apologizes for how he acted when he was a kid, showing that he's now a friendly pastry chef who even does business with Judy's parents.
  • Reflexive Response: Judy takes advantage of the wolves guarding Cliffside Asylum being vulnerable to howling. Once she starts howling, the wolves cannot resist joining in, allowing Judy and Nick to sneak past them.
  • Rewatch Bonus:
    • The school play at the beginning of the movie called for Judy to be attacked by a feral tiger. The role is played by an anthropomorphic jaguar student. His stage costume shows his normal head with jaguar spots while wearing a tiger costume complete with stripes.
    • Once you know who's actually behind it all and why, certain early events that seemed innocent on first viewing take on a more sinister cast. The way Bellwether happens by at just the right time to force Chief Bogo into putting Judy on the Otterton case no longer seems quite so coincidental in retrospect — and her excusing herself from her office as Judy and Nick look through the traffic cameras no longer seems unintentional.
    • At the beginning of the movie, Judy chases down a thief, who has stolen bulbs from a florist. Why would a thief steal bulbs from a florist? Later, Judy identifies them as Night Howler bulbs (though she uses the scientific name for them) when talking to Chief Bogo about the crime, then we learn that Otterton is a florist, laying a firm foundation for a flower to be an important part of the case.
    • When Judy tracks down Nick to question him about Mr. Otterton, it's apparent how Judy goads Nick into talking about his pawpsicle scheme with "I think your $10 worth of popsicles can wait." complete with a stress on the paltry figure of ten dollars. Then the scene shifts to Nick, in sharp focus in the background, boasting about his high earnings while Judy is shown in the foreground, in soft focus, holding her pen directly at him, calmly recording his confession.
    • It is more apparent when Nick/Judy are able to come up with their Batman Gambit. As Nick says "we'll think of something" he is looking down at the blueberries spilled on the floor and his face clearly shows an idea forming before being interrupted by Bellwether, who then proceeds to gloat for a while giving them time to set up their plan.
    • Doubles as a Freeze-Frame Bonus, there's a very brief shot of Nick and Judy reacting to Dr. Honey Badger when she says it's possible that the savage incidents might have something to do with the predators' biology. If you pay close attention to their faces, you can see that Judy starts listening intently like she thinks that makes a lot of sense and explains everything, while Nick looks shocked and offended that such a thing would be suggested. This very subtly foreshadows how Nick becomes terribly upset when Judy repeats that possibility at the press conference.
    • As the subway car that Nick and Judy have commandeered tips over from taking the curve too fast, a brief cut inside the car shows Nick falling to the side and a split second later, the briefcase holding the evidence falls right into Nick's stomach giving him the opportunity to save it from the crash. Watching the remainder of the crash scene shows how the animators cleverly position Nick to shield the briefcase from the audience's view until the final reveal.
    • In the museum scene, after Nick is shot with a fake Nighthowler pellet (actually a blueberry), Judy seems to be afraid of him, but observant viewers will notice that her nose is not twitching, normally a clear tell she is afraid, and Nick's eyes look normal, unlike the slitted or fully dilated pupils seen on the other savage predators, both signs that they are acting.
    • When Nick is confronting Judy about her comments during the press conference, he asks if she's afraid of him — her nose twitches in the same manner as her childhood confrontation with Gideon, giving a subtle hint that the answer is "Yes".
    • When Nick is giving his What the Hell, Hero? speech to Chief Bogo, he says that they have 10 hours left. If you watch Judy's face when he says this, she is visibly concentrating, then frowns, indicating that she finds this statement incorrect, but then dismisses it with a subtle shake of her head.
  • Rewind, Replay, Repeat: Nick uses the carrot pen recorder to play back Judy sobbing "I really am just a dumb bunny!" multiple times to rib her before he assures her she is forgiven.
  • Rhetorical Question Blunder: Judy walks into one after Nick wasted their day at the DMV by being a troll.
    Judy: What is your problem? Does seeing me fail make you feel better about your own sad, miserable life?
    Nick: It does. One hundred percent.
  • Right Behind Me: When Judy and Nick succeed in their Batman Gambit to get Bellwether's confession, she tries to bolt only for her to realize that the ZPD officers are blocking off all means of escape for her.
  • Right for the Wrong Reasons:
    • When Judy first sees Nick, she's immediately suspicious of him just because he's a fox and appears to moving towards the ice cream shop in a shifty manner. It turns out he later uses the Jumbo pop he obtains to create smaller pawpsicles that skirt the edge of legal and proper food preparation (in order to increase his profits). However, at the time Judy follows Nick into the shop, she is profiling him without probable cause and his conduct in the shop is the model of polite and lawful behavior.
    • Judy and Nick come to the conclusion that if the wolves took Manchas they must have taken Otterton too, under the belief that the wolves are the "Night Howlers" that Manchas was trying to warn them about, due to their tendency to constantly howl. They end up being right about the wolves having Otterton, as well as all the other missing mammals, but the wolves are not the "Night Howlers". Night Howlers are actually a type of flower that turns animals that touch it savage.
  • Rousing Speech: Judy gives a speech the new police cadets about how Zootopia isn't perfect but they can help move it closer to being so, as well as a summation of the movie's stance on bias and co-existence.
  • R-Rated Opening: Subverted. The first scene involves a feral tiger preying on a bunny and then jumping onto them, but it cuts to show it's just a theater play with kids acting the aforementioned scene, though this is still played with with young Judy pulling red serpentine out of her costume and squirting a bottle of ketchup to make fake blood.
  • Rule of Funny: Many of the song or movie titles make little sense except as references to titles of other things (i.e. "Let it Goat"? "Floatzen?"). But they get a pass because they're funny.
  • Rules Lawyer:
    • Judy knows the laws of Zootopia backwards and forwards and uses that very often to work her way around obstacles, such as blackmailing the owner of an ice cream parlor with a health code violation, Nick with felony tax evasion, and working her way into a locked vehicle compound citing probable cause because Nick goes in there without permission to grab her pen and she simply follows him inside.
    • Nick pulls this on Bogo when he orders Judy to surrender her badge, by pointing out that Bogo gave her 48 hours to solve it, and she still has ten hours remaining.
  • Runaway Train: Done with an old subway car which is commandeered by Nick and Judy. While speeding down the track toward an oncoming freight train, they are able to successfully reroute the subway car to avoid colliding head-on, but their excessive speed causes the car to tip over on a curve and derail, ultimately exploding when it reaches the end of the line.
  • Running Gag: Nick's advice at the press conference to answer any question asked with a question, then respond to that question rather than the reporter's question. This gag returns at the end of the film.
    Nick: You know you love me.
    Judy: Do I know that? Yes, yes I do.
  • Running on All Fours: Animals in this world normally walk on two legs, but will occasionally shift to four legs when stealth or extra dexterity is called for, such as when Judy and Nick sneak into Banyon Street Station. They can also be seen doing this reflexively when startled. When an animal goes savage they are shown to revert to four-legged movement at all times.
  • Run or Die: Judy and Nick run for their lives after Manchas turns savage on them.
  • Sapient Eat Sapient: It is established that the animals don't actually eat each other... any more. However, though they have made peace, there is still a great deal of species tension between those that used to be predators and those that used to be prey.
  • Say My Name:
    • After Judy rolls Weaselton into the precinct lobby, Bogo appears at the third-floor balcony and angrily yells "Hopps!" over the railing before gesturing her to his office.
    • Judy screams "Clawhauser!" once he finally acknowledges her radio call and then begins reporting their situation and location.
  • Scare Quotes: Nick's pawpsicle stand is labeled "organic", complete with scare quotes.
  • Scene of Wonder: On the train ride into Zootopia, Judy Hopps gazes in wonder at the myriad different environments that comprise the city's twelve districts. First there's Sahara Square, the towering oasis amid shifting sands; then comes Tundra Town, the wintry wonderland; next comes the Rainforest District, absolutely alive in vegetation and greenery. Last comes the metropolis proper, whereupon Judy debarks to do a 360-degree eyeful of the magnificent architecture that's the polar opposite of her sleepy, bucolic Bunnyburrows.
  • Scenery Porn: The train from the Burrows to Zootopia takes the scenic route, and for good reason. It is a newcomer's view of the wonder that is a metropolitan city of many different climates and regions.
  • Scream Discretion Shot: When Gideon extends his claws and swipes them at Judy during the A Minor Kidroduction, the scene cuts to the three kids hiding behind the tree recoiling in absolute horror while Judy's scream is heard. The next shot shows Judy clutching her cheek in pain and then reveals three claw marks across her cheek.
  • School Play: The talent show in the opening scene that Judy stars in.
  • Scout-Out: The Junior Ranger Scouts.
  • Screen Shake:
    • A minor one when the ZPD bullpen is celebrating Francine's birthday. Used to show that the police (except for Judy) are all large animals.
    • Happens twice as the train Judy is on speeds through the various Zootopia regions. While in Sahara Square and Tundra Town, the camera is positioned facing the oncoming train, both times revealing a screen shake as it speeds past.
    • Happens when Nick and Judy first enter Banyon station, just as they spy Doug's laboratory subway car, a short passenger train passes in front of it causing a shake.
  • Self-Deprecation: When Bogo first pulls Judy into his office, he berates her for her Wide-Eyed Idealism, uttering this line:
    Chief Bogo: Life isn't some cartoon musical where you sing a little song and your insipid dreams magically come true. So let it go.
  • Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Lampshaded by Gideon Grey when Stu warns the kids to stay away from the flowers:
    Stu Hopps: Hey kids, don't run through that midnicampum holicithias.
    Gideon Grey: Well, now there's a $4 word, Mr. H.; my family always just called them night howlers.
  • Shell Backpack: Dharma Armadillo, Judy's landlady at the Grand Pangolin Arms, notably wears shell-exposing clothes. This also applies to the porcupine extra seen later on during Nick's Break Them by Talking speech, who has visible quills despite being fully-dressed.
  • Sherlock Scan: Nick delivers a particularly brutal one to Judy where he assesses her as a "naive little hick with good grades and big ideas" and that, as a meter maid, she's fallen short of her dream to be a big city cop. He then predicts that her dreams will die and she'll return home to be a carrot farmer. It turns out his assessment is rather accurate, but his prediction ends up being Right for the Wrong Reasons. After a period of My God, What Have I Done? reflection, she does quit the force and return to Bunnyburrow but it's because her own actions and unconscious prejudice cause her to feel that she failed at her dream to make the world a better place. Although he doesn't mention it until later, he also noticed that she was carrying fox repellent.
  • Ship Tease: Nick to Judy "You know you love me." Judy to Nick "Do I know that? Yes, yes I do."
  • Shoe Phone: Judy's carrot-shaped novelty pen is also a voice recorder.
  • Shown Their Work:
    • It's mentioned that prey are 90% of the population of Zootopia, with predators making up the remaining 10%. In ecology, this is called the Rule of Ten: for every predatory animal, there must be ten times as many prey animals to sustain them.
    • With the Zootopia Express, the animators actually managed to show the subtle rocking and swaying that trains do when moving at higher speeds. This is especially noteworthy as most animated films lack this, as do most live-action films.
    • Al Capone was arrested for tax evasion, and criminals often go to great lengths to make sure that they can launder their earnings to prevent that from happening to them, something Nick forgot to do.
    • Nick doesn't wear Cool Shades just because they look good on him. Foxes are nocturnal creatures and being in direct sunlight would be uncomfortable for him. Jumbeaux calls attention to this when he wonders why Nick is "skulking around during daylight hours" and Nick lists "good night vision" under special abilities when he fills out the ZPD employment application.
    • Bogo is shown wearing glasses at the police station. Cape Buffalo in real life are known to have poor eyesight. This was specifically mentioned in a Q&A with the directors.
    • The black panther Manchas is only ever referred to as a jaguar. This makes sense as black panther is a term for both jaguars and leopards with black coats, and being such a broad term, it probably wouldn't fly in a city of anthropomorphized animals. Also, unlike just about every other depiction of a black panther in animation, his spots can still be distinctly seen in some shots.
    • When rabbits are attacked, they scream loudly, one of the few times they ever vocalize. Judy does a fairly close approximation when Nick pretends to kill her, before she starts hamming it up.
    • Judy and her family do not have protective soft pads on their paws or feet. This is because rabbits are one of the few pawed vertebrates to lack them in real life.
    • Overlapping with Insistent Terminology, the audience may wonder why Judy is only called a "rabbit" a few times, generally opting instead for "bunny". This is because, as mentioned in supplementary materials, Judy is not a rabbit — she's a hare. This means she lives above ground (not in a burrow), she's larger than a rabbit would be, and she was born with a full fur coat, ready to go.
    • When Judy and Nick are being chased by Manchas, she calls in a "10-91, Jaguar gone savage". A 10-91 is police code for an incident involving an animal. In the case of Manchas, it would be a 10-91V, for "Vicious".
    • Mr. Otterton's case file spells the accurate scientific name of his species as Lontra canadensis, which is the North American River Otter.
    • Nick nearly gets caught sneaking by a guard shack because the wolves guarding the facility catch his scent on the wind, a subtle joke about how foxes have musk glands. Also, the film notes that Nick eats fruit, which is possible for foxes as they're omnivores and actually love blueberries, apples and plums.
    • The eyes of the savage predators take on real-life tapetum lucidum.
    • The ruthless mob boss, Mr. Big, being cast as an arctic shrew was an intentional choice by the directors beyond being just a Expecting Someone Taller gag. The arctic shrew is one of the most vicious mammalian predators in the world, consuming 3x their body weight daily, and will include eating other shrews to achieve it.
    • Related to that, shortly after the wedding of Fru Fru, she can be seen heavily pregnant despite the very short period of time between the events. Arctic shrews have one of the shortest gestation periods in the animal kingdom - as low as 13 days. Makes plenty of sense for her to be that pregnant.
    • When Nick and Judy are riding the Sky Tram, one can hear the distinctive pinging noise of a steel cable under tension.
    • When Mrs. Otterton hugs her no-longer-savage husband at the end, Emmet's head is nearly twice the size of hers. Mustelids such as weasels, ferrets and otters have some of the greatest size differences between males and females of all small mammals.
    • Clawhauser easily getting tired out isn't due to him just being out of shape. While they are the fastest land animals, cheetahs have poor stamina and can only maintain their top speed for a short period of time before needing to rest.
  • Show Within a Show: The play at the beginning is put on by Judy and her friends.
  • Sinister Subway: Where else would a villain set up their secret lab than a derelict subway car at an abandoned subway station?
  • Sinister Switchblade: When Gideon Gray extends his claws with Audible Sharpness in his initial confrontation with Judy, it's the point when the audience realizes that things are getting dangerous for our heroine. It's an interesting variation because the trope is implied by Gideon's movements and the sound effect. In reality, fox claws don't actually retract (they are visible in the scenes prior to the attack), plus they are used for digging and aren't sharp enough to make type of cuts we see on Judy's cheek.
  • Sliding Scale of Anthropomorphism: Plays heavily with multiple levels of the scale. Originally the animals of this world were just that: mere animals. Then, some of the animals evolved to develop sapience, bipedal locomotion, opposable thumbs, and a vocal mechanism, ending up as Funny Animals with very human-like lifestyles and society but still drawing much more heavily on their animalistic traits than is usually seen with this trope. Civilized Animal is implied to have existed as a transitional period because the emergence of sapience did not appear to happen all at once, and the traditional food chain was still in place, but was being up-ended with the development of intelligent tactics and weapons (there is a diorama in the natural history museum showing a group of sapient rabbits dressed like cavemen holding spears surrounding a large predator that was still savage). The legacy of this history has left tension between the former predators and prey. This, in turn, bubbles over into social unrest when the public finds out about unexplained cases of predators "going savage" dropping back to the bottom of the scale as savage animals, and fears that this could spontaneously happen to any predator.
  • Small Role, Big Impact:
    • The Ottertons; Emmitt went missing and his wife went to the police station begging for somebody to find him. Mr. Otterton's last known sighting was him buying a pawpsicle from Nick's stand. This got Judy and Nick involved in the main plot of the film.
    • The prejudiced elephant vendor in the ice cream shop. He only shows up for one scene, but he's part of the reason why Judy and Nick interact in the first place. (After Judy fell for the father and son bit, she feels guilty about initially profiling Nick and is about to sneak out of the ice cream shop. Then the vendor refuses to sell, and her Bully Hunter instincts kick in).
    • Doug. Although he has only a few minutes of screen time, he is responsible for making the Night Howler serum and shooting predators with it. His impact becomes bigger when it was revealed that he was at the press conference posing as a reporter who asks the leading question "So, predators are the only ones going savage?" to escalate the tension between predator and prey. Finally, had he not almost hit Nick with his truck at the very beginning, Judy would not have looked over and seen a shady fox enter the ice cream shop and decide to follow him.
  • Smash to Black: The scene cuts to black when Judy ends the chase with Duke Weaselton by dropping a huge donut on him.
  • Snark-to-Snark Combat:
    • Nick and Judy engage in back-and-forth snarking at various points throughout the movie. Despite not being as snarky as Nick by default, Judy holds her own quite well.
    • In a brief example, in the last scene at the precinct, Bogo makes an openly dismissive comment about Nick, which he responds to with sarcastic praise.
      Nick: You should have your own line of inspirational greeting cards, sir!
  • Soft Water: Judy and Nick fall off a cliff into water at one point, and emerge completely unharmed. Notably, Judy takes a good cliff-diving posture before hitting the water; Nick, not so much. They do have a greater surface area to volume ratio than humans, but still...
  • Solar Punk: Zootopia (the city) fits this aesthetic. Though it lacks the perfect utopian aspect commonly associated with it, being instead a real city with real social issues like prejudice, stereotyping and political corruption.
  • Source Music:
    • The soundtrack as Judy rides the train into the city, Gazelle/Shakira's "Try Everything", is what Judy herself is listening to in her earphones. During the Dance Party Ending, again, it's the music at the concert everyone is attending.
    • After her depressing first day at work, Judy turns on the radio to cheer herself up, with no success. A somber instrumental accompanies her subsequent funk, until her neighbors yell to "turn that depressing music off!"
  • Spanner in the Works: Nick and Judy unravel Bellwether's Evil Plan just when everything is coming together for her.
  • Species Subversives:
    • The main characters Judy and Nick are deliberately trying to not fit the stereotypes of their species: Judy wants to be a brave rabbit and Nick wants to be seen as honorable and kind.
    • Cheetahs are typically lean and fast, while Clawhauser is a chubby cheetah who can't catch up with Mrs. Otterton when she outruns him.
    • Bellwether subverts Sweet Sheep, as she appears to be a meek yet helpful secretary, but she turns out to be Evil All Along; she's the one behind the civilians in Zootopia turning feral.
    • When Judy tries to get information on the whereabouts of Mr. Otterton from a nudist place, the owner points to an elephant who was his yoga teacher. He constantly remarks on the elephant's excellent memory, except that she has zero memory of Otterton... not even the most basic information.
  • Species Surname: Mrs. Otterton, Duke Weaselton, Mayor Lionheart, to name a few.
  • Spit Take: An elephant customer at the ice cream shop spits out his ice cream when hearing about the snot and mucus in the food.
  • Spoiler Title: Two tracks on the soundtrack album have one: "A Bunny Can Go Savage", which gives away a plot point, and "Ewe Fell for It", whose Pun Based Titles might reveal the Big Bad to savvy fans.
  • Stating the Simple Solution: Nick and Judy find a subway car full of vital evidence. Nick suggests taking a small briefcase containing relevant evidence and leaving before the bad guys realize they're there. Unfortunately Judy impulsively wants all of the evidence delivered to the police. So she hijacks the train car. And crashes it, destroying all of the evidence. Fortunately for her, Nick still has the briefcase on him.
  • Stealth Pun:
    • The pig that shouted at a leopard to go back to the forest? He's a racist pig.
    • The Mayor of Zootopia is a lion, while the Assistant Mayor is a miniature sheep. In other words, the leaders of Zootopia are the Lion and the Lamb.
    • When Bellwether is surrounded by the police (which she herself called to the scene) after being Out-Gambitted by Nick and Judy, she looks awfully sheepish.
    • At the end of the movie, one of the officers guarding Bellwether is a pig. The word "pig" is also a derogatory word for a police officer.
  • The Stinger: During the end credits, there is a cutaway scene to the prison where the Big Bad is grudgingly watching the heroes celebrate on TV.
  • Stock Animal Diet: Bunnies in this movie appear to have an appetite for carrots and often work as carrot farmers.note 
  • Stolen MacGuffin Reveal:
    • After being attacked by Gideon, Judy reveals that she managed to steal the tickets back, which is especially impressive, considering that he was holding her against the ground at the time.
    • Nick saves the briefcase from the exploding subway car and holds it up triumphantly.
  • Stop Hitting Yourself: As part of her training at the police academy, Judy fights a rhinoceros in a boxing match. She's obviously too small to knock him out, so what does she do? Bounce off the ropes at the edge of the boxing ring and kick the rhino's arm into his own face, causing him to knock himself out.
  • Stopped Dead in Their Tracks: Nick walks away from Judy after she comes to find him to reveal her discovery and theory about predators being targeted to turn 'savage'. He stops back-turned as she sincerely apologises for what she has said about predators. She breaks down in tears and calls herself a "dumb bunny". With this Nick breaks the tension, turning around and they reconcile.
  • String Theory: The ZPD bullpen on Judy's first day of work has a map of Zootopia overlaid with photos of the 14 missing mammals complete with strings tying them to their last known location.
  • Stripper/Cop Confusion: Implied by Mr. Big, when he sees Judy in what is clearly a police uniform and asks if she's "some kind of performer" hanging around with Nick.
  • Stylistic Suck: The children's play at the beginning looks like it was, well, put on by children. What did you expect?
  • Sunglasses at Night: During the ZPD bust at Cliffside, Nick can be seen sporting a snazzy pair of aviators. Aside from the undeniable Rule of Cool, it's Justified due to him having night vision and the place being filled with police lights.
  • Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
    • Judy leaping at the chance to catch a real criminal gets her in serious trouble with Chief Bogo, since she left her post and caused mass panic, endangering herself and the lives of the citizens of Little Rodentia in the process of arresting the suspect.
    • When Judy volunteers to take on the Otterton case in front of Mrs. Otterton without first seeking Chief Bogo's approval, she is summarily fired for insubordination. Only the Assistant Mayor's timely arrival saves her job.
    • Despite becoming friends with Nick, Judy still has some prejudice against predators and foxes, which kinda bites her in the tail during the press conference. In real life, deeply ingrained prejudice doesn't just go away overnight, even if you're actively trying to treat people fairly.
    • During the subway car fight, Judy sees that they are heading toward an oncoming train but also notices a switch track lever just ahead of them. She insists that Nick speed up and manages to knock off the last sheep onto the lever, which allows them to avoid colliding with the train. However, their car promptly derails because it was going way too fast over a too-sharp turn.
    • While it turns out that Mayor Lionheart has nothing to do with the Big Bad's plot and his motivations were understandable, he still ends up in jail for withholding information from the police and falsely imprisoning the affected predators.
    • On her first day at work, when assigned to parking duty, Judy resolves to prove she can excel at any task by writing 200 parking tickets before noon. To this end, she is extremely strict in parking enforcement, often handing out the ticket the very second that the meter expires. Not surprisingly, after just one day of this she is hated by everyone.
    • Chief Bogo doesn't care that Judy was the best of her class. Having good grades is not the same as real-world experience.
  • Survival Mantra: On her second day of parking duty, Judy is worn down by receiving steady verbal abuse from those she has ticketed. She returns to her three-wheeled jokemobile and bangs her head against the steering wheel, reminding herself desperately, "I am a real cop, I am real cop, I am a real cop..."
  • Switching P.O.V.: Almost the entire film is shown following Judy's point of view. However, during the climax, for a few moments it shifts to Bellwether's perspective. Storywise this is done to shield the audience from the Batman Gambit Nick and Judy have set up so the audience gets the same sense of surprise as Bellwether when she discovers she's been hustled.
  • Symbolic Blood:
    • In the play at the beginning, Judy really hams it up while "dying" from Jaguar's "attack", at first tossing out one really, really long red streamer onto the ground before her then falling on her back and squirting ketchup all over herself to simulate copious amounts of High-Pressure Blood.
    • During the climax, the handkerchief Nick uses as a makeshift bandage for Judy's wounded leg is dyed red.
  • Talking Is a Free Action: During the climax when "savage" Nick is charging after limping Judy, the hunt suddenly stops so that Bellwether can finish her Motive Rant. Once she is done, Nick continues to go after Judy. The trope turns out to have been invoked by Nick and Judy as they wanted to get a public confession out of Bellwether and delay her to allow the ZPD to arrive.
  • Taxonomic Term Confusion: Judy claims that all the animals that have gone savage "belong to the predator family". Carnivora, the taxon where most predatory mammals belong, is an order, not a family.
  • Tempting Fate:
    • Thinking they're getting the subway car free and clear from the rams, Nick gives the subway horn a "victory toot-toot". Cue the rams trying to take back the subway car.
    • After the subway car ends its course by crashing against the wall, Judy says "Okay, maybe some of the evidence survived", upon which the gas bottles onboard explode, completely destroying the car.
  • That Liar Lies: Judy, after discovering Nick's Pawpsicle scheme, confronts him saying, "...you lied to me, you liar!"
  • Then Let Me Be Evil: A non-villainous example: this is basically what Nick's backstory is. He initially wanted to be a good, honorable member of the Junior Ranger Scouts, but after he's been ostracized for being a predator and a fox, with everyone having a preconceived notion that all foxes are sneaky and cannot be trusted, he decided that he can't really fight it, and might as well make the most of it with it in order to survive.
  • Time-Compression Montage: After the disastrous press conference we see a ZNN news report, a Gazelle peace rally, Judy watching a rabbit pull her child away from a tiger on the subway, Mrs. Otterton mourning over her savage husband, culminating in Judy's meeting with Bellwether. Word of God confirms that this montage covers three months of time.
  • Time Skip: At the end of the film, we hear Judy in voice-over as we see her walking through Savannah Central, entering ZPD headquarters to see Clawhauser returning to the front desk. We then segue to the police academy, graduation stage to reveal that the voice-over is Judy's graduation speech and she awards Nick his badge, which afterwards cuts to Nick's first bullpen at the ZPD. This time skip covers Nick's training at the police academy, and Word of God confirms this to be about 9 months. Between this and the three months between the press conference and the apology under the bridge it means that, by the end of the film, Nick and Judy have known each other for at least a year.
  • Toilet Teleportation: This is the means by which Judy and Nick escape from Cliffside Asylum once they get accidentally locked in a cell. Word of God has confirmed that they were able to do this because the cell was sized for an elephant, allowing the much smaller animals to fit down its toilet.
  • Token Minority: Judy is one for the police force, in-universe, even getting announced at a press conference by the mayor. She is, however, well aware of their intentions and refuses to accept the label. Judy herself even mentions it.
    Judy: Sir, I'm not just some token bunny!
  • Tom the Dark Lord: One of the menacing and intimidating polar bears that Nick and Judy encounter outside of Mr. Big's Limousine bears the terrifying name of Kevin: his equally menacing bear colleague does his evil under the name of Raymond.
  • Too Dumb to Live: Although Judy's cleverness and resourcefulness are some of her strongest assets, she gets cocky when Mr. Big mistakes her for a performer in a police costume and she responds by revealing herself as an actual officer and threatening Mr. Big in his own study while surrounded by his polar bear goons, which causes him to decide to ice her and Nick. It's subverted in that they are saved from death when Fru Fru arrives just in time tell her father that Judy saved her life, leading him to spare her and Nick.
  • Trademark Favorite Food:
    • Clawhauser generally has a Sweet Tooth, but he particularly likes donuts.
    • Nick likes blueberries, especially from the Hopps family farm. They become a Chekhov's Gun in the third act.
  • Training from Hell: Judy's police training includes some quite painful tasks, such as climbing an ice wall and falling into freezing water, or getting hot sand blown in her face to simulate a desert storm.
  • Training Montage: Judy goes through tough training at the Zootopia police academy, which even includes a boxing match against a rhino.
  • Train-Station Goodbye: Parodied. When Judy leaves Bunnyburrow for Zootopia she has a heartwarming moment with her family at the train station. Although clearly not "lovers", Judy's favorite niece, Cotton fulfills other aspects of the trope saying "Bye Judy, I love you... Bye...Bye" as the train doors shut and running alongside the train as it pulls away with Judy pressed against the train window looking at her and her family.
  • Trauma Conga Line:
    • Judy encounters this during her first day. She's relegated to parking duty, is given a Break Them by Talking speech from Nick, gets her feet stuck in cement leaving her unable to refute being called a "dumb bunny", arrives at her apartment where her radio only plays depressing songs, microwaves a dinner that turns out to be a single tiny dehydrated carrot, and her loud neighbors, who overheard her conversation with her parents, point out that her misery may have only begun.
    • Judy has one after her press conference. Her remarks about predators reverting to their savage ways hurts Nick leading to their Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure. Then she sees the civil unrest her words have stirred up among the citizens of Zootopia. Finally Judy finds that Mayor Bellwether and Chief Bogo want to use her as the "public face of the ZPD" even though she feels like she's broken the city and can't fix any of it. This leads to a Heroic BSoD where she turns in her badge and resigns.
  • Turn in Your Badge: A variant. After her press conference comments throw the city into a panic, she decides to quit the ZPD. However, after getting a "Eureka!" Moment, she goes on to solve the case as a civilian with Nick's help and is later reinstated with the ZPD. Differs from a straight example in that she quits willingly rather than being fired.
  • Unanthropomorphic Transformation: The animals that have "gone savage" revert to a quadrupedal stance.
  • Unflattering ID Photo: During the "They're all sloths?" montage at the DMV, a pig is shown waiting to get her picture taken. She starts out with a nice smile, but as time passes with no photo flash, her eyes keep glancing toward the sloth in growing confusion until she finally turns her head to see what's happening just as the camera clicks. Downplayed in that the unflattering photo is implied but never shown.
  • Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Judy and Nick's Batman Gambit during the climax. A very successful plan, of which the audience knew nothing about besides Nick desperately saying "We'll think of something!" until after the plan had already succeeded.
  • Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Lionheart's mistreatment of Bellwether was a contributing factor in her anti-predator conspiracy.
  • Unwitting Pawn: Judy is one to Bellwether for most of the movie until discovering that she's the Big Bad.
  • Used to Be a Sweet Kid:
    • Nick went from being an idealistic child who wanted to be Junior Ranger Scout to a shifty and untrustworthy fox con artist when he grows up.
    • Inverted with Gideon Grey who went from a vicious school bully in the introduction to a kind and successful pastry chef in the third act.
  • Vanity License Plate: The street racer tearing up Savannah Central drives a sports car with a license plate that reads "FST NML".
  • Vegetarian Carnivore: Averted in an interesting way. It's clearly established that the traditional food chain is no longer in place because eating other sapient mammals is considered morally unacceptable, but it still seems to be implied that obligate carnivores still need animal protein, and are simply getting it from alternative sources. It's been confirmed that there is a fast-food restaurant called Bug Burger that makes their food out of insects, and several fish markets can be seen in an establishing shot of Tundratown during Judy's train ride.
  • Vertigo Effect: This visual effect occurs when the door opens for Judy to the backyard of the "naturalist" club.
  • Vine Swing: Nick and Judy swing on a vine in the Rainforest District after they fall off a platform when trying to escape from a crazed predator.
  • Visual Pun:
    • At the end of the movie, Officer Wolfard disguises himself as a ram, making him literally A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing.
    • In some parts of the world, a black and white striped pedestrian cross-walk is known as a "zebra crossing". In Zootopia, those cross-walks actually mimic a zebra's striped pattern.
    • While running from the subway car, Jesse throws himself to the side at the last moment to avoid getting hit, which results in his belly fur being shorn off. You could say his escape was a close shave.
  • Vocal Dissonance: Finnick is small enough to pass for a toddler, yet he has one of the deepest voices in the cast, second only to Chief Bogo.
  • Was It Really Worth It?: When Judy is being reprimanded by Chief Bogo for behaving like a Cowboy Cop as he sarcastically charges her with:
    Chief Bogo: Abandoning your post, inciting a scurry, reckless endangerment of rodents. But, to be fair, you did stop a master criminal from stealing two dozen moldy onions.
  • Weak, but Skilled: Judy succeeds despite not being as strong as her megafauna coworkers by capitalizing on her intelligence, guile, and agility and well as learning to use their size and strength to her advantage.
  • We Can Rule Together: During the climax, Bellwether offers Judy a chance to join the anti-predator conspiracy, pointing out how they are underestimated and underappreciated due to them being small prey mammals, and that working together, they have the power to unite prey against predators and be unstoppable. When Judy refuses, Bellwether darts Nick with a Night Howler pellet so he would kill Judy.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist: The mayor, who kept the missing predators imprisoned in order to try and cure them and prevent a panic. He even lampshades in his interview from jail at the end that his actions were a "classic doing-the-wrong-thing-for-the-right-reason kind of a deal".
  • Wham Line:
    • During the scene with Mr. Big, Judy talks with him about Mr. Otterton's disappearance. Then we get this exchange...
      Mr. Big: Mr. Otterton had something important he wanted to discuss. That's why I sent that car to pick him up. But he never arrived.
      Judy: Because he was attacked.
      Mr. Big: No. He attacked.
    • At the farm:
      Gideon: Now there's a four-dollar word, Mr. H. My family always just called 'em Night Howlers!
    • At the museum, Judy asks, "How did you know where to find us?", which causes her and Nick to realize Bellwether is the Big Bad as the only way she could have known their location is if the rams informed her where they were heading.
    • Right when Judy is bit by a seemingly savage Nick by Bellwether, she suddenly delivers this line...
  • Wham Shot: When Nick looks in the back of the limousine and sees the claw marks, the audience can see his face shift from snarky to serious. It marks the moment both he and the audience realize that something is going on beyond a simple missing mammal case.
  • Weak Boss, Strong Underlings:
    • Dawn Bellwether is a tiny, non-threatening sheep who happens to be Big Bad of the story and establishes an anti-predator conspiracy. She employs a number of large rams as her goons.
    • Mr. Big, a tiny Arctic shrew who happens to be a mob boss who employs a gang of polar bears. Subverted in that the size difference makes Mr. Big appear weak but the directors have said they intentionally chose him to be an Arctic shrew because they are the most vicious predators for their size in the world. They need to eat three times their body weight daily and have no qualms about eating other Arctic shrews to achieve this.
  • Wet Cement Gag: Rookie officer Judy Hopps ends up standing in fresh concrete as Nick Wilde concludes his Break Them by Talking speech to her. Ironically, she stood on that spot to refute Nick's claims and protest that she's thoroughly competent as a police officer. Once Nick points out that Officer Hopps is standing in newly poured sidewalk concrete, Judy has no further rebuttal.
  • What Are Records?: When Nick and Judy are snooping around in a car for evidence, Nick Wilde finds some music CDs in the glove compartment, to which he questions "Who listens to CDs anymore anyway?"
  • What Happened to the Mouse?:
    • Finnick. We are never told what happens to him after the climax where Nick is now a cop and can no longer be his hustling partner and he doesn't appear in the Dance Party Ending. It's implied Finnick may still be running the pawpsicle hustle in some manner, because Nick is seen eating one when he's in the ZPD cruiser with Judy.
    • Doug, Jesse and Woolter appear to get away scot-free.
  • What the Hell, Hero?:
  • White Collar Worker: Flash Slothmore works at the Department of Mammal Vehicles, an agency in charge of vehicle registration and driver licensing. The film's protagonists go there to learn a vital clue for their investigation — who was the owner of the vehicle a disappeared person was last seen. Flash is the sloth from who they get the information, albeit frustratingly slowly since he is a sloth. He and his (sloth) co-workers are a parody of real-life white-collar workers.
  • With Due Respect: Judy uses this line before announcing to quit her job in front of Chief Bogo and Bellwether.
  • With This Herring: Judy is given no leads and no resources to solve the Otterton case in just 48 hours. Nick even calls Chief Bogo out on this:
    Nick: You give her a clown vest and a three-wheeled joke-mobile and two days to solve a case you guys haven't cracked in two weeks?
  • World of Funny Animals: Probably one of the most in-depth Deconstructions of the concept to date, exploring many of the physical logistics of how such a society would work and how inevitable issues such as prejudice, stereotyping, corruption, etc. would manifest in such a world.
  • World of Mammals: The writers and directors focused the city of Zootopia exclusively on mammals to make the distinction between predator and prey as clear as possible. Since humans never existed in this world, most mammals that exist because of human domestication (i.e. dogs or house cats) were also omitted, though the film does feature domestic pigs and sheep instead of wild boar and mouflon. In addition, they also did not feature primates, because they were too human-like.note  invoked
  • World of Pun: The teaser poster shows that Zootopia is full of animal-related puns.
  • Would Hit a Girl: A lot of the male characters Judy meets throughout the movie have no qualms about physically hurting her. It's justified as she's a police officer and most of them are criminals:
    • Gideon Grey beat Judy up and clawed her left cheek when she was nine years old. That fueled her parents' overt anti-fox biases (seen during the Train-Station Goodbye), as well as Judy's subconscious anti-fox biases.
    • After she threatens Mr. Big, he orders her and Nick to be iced, at least until his daughter walks in and recognizes Judy as the one who saved her life in Little Rodentia the previous day.
    • Mr. Big's polar bear guards have no problem with physically manhandling Judy on the same level as Nick; one of them even picks her up by the back of her shirt when she and Nick are sentenced to being iced.
    • As Jesse and Woolter are attempting to recapture the subway car that Nick and Judy commandeered, Jesse has smashed through a window and roughly grabbed Judy by the arm pulling her towards him just as Woolter, a victim of Door Judo, knocks both Jesse and Judy out the window. Only her quick reflexes allow her to grab a hold of Woolter's horns preventing her from falling under the train.
  • Wunza Plot: She's a bold rabbit police officer who wants to prove herself. He's a cunning fox Con Artist. Together, they fight crime.
  • You Are a Credit to Your Race:
    • When Nick gets upset by Judy's comments about predators during a press conference, Judy assures him that doesn't mean she has anything against him because "You're not like them." Wrong thing to tell her friend.
    • In an example from their first meeting, Judy calls Nick "an articulate fella," to which he responds that it's rare he meets someone so non-patronizing. She misses his sarcasm.
  • You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Nicks notes that he has settled with being a shifty, untrustworthy fox, upon which Judy replies that he is much more than that.
  • You Called Me "X"; It Must Be Serious: Hopps and Wilde have just taken a long, harrowing fall into deep water. When Nick surfaces and can't find her, he calls for her with increasing urgency going from his mildly derisive nickname for her:
    Nick: Carrots? ...Hopps?! Judy?!
  • You, Get Me Coffee: On Judy's first day, Chief Bogo reports that the missing mammals case has top priority and assigns officers in the bullpen to investigate different areas of Zootopia. When he finally gets to Judy, she's assigned parking duty. When she protests that she's not a "token bunny", he responds "well then writing a hundred tickets should be easy".
  • You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: When Judy refuses to join the anti-predator conspiracy, Bellwether realizes that she can't manipulate Judy anymore and shoots Nick with a Night Howler pellet so he will go savage and kill her.
  • You Remind Me of X: Nick admits to Judy that she and her current situation reminds him heavily of when he was an innocent kit with dreams of his own, but his hopes were crushed when prey animals shunned him because of his species stereotype.
  • Your Approval Fills Me with Shame:
    • When her parents discover that she's been relegated to parking patrol, their absolute joy that she's just a meter maid really irritates her.
    • After her disastrous press conference, Judy experiences a montage of events showing the city's increasing distrust towards predators. When the Mayor and the ZPD want her to be "the public face of the ZPD" she feels that she's broken the city, which leads her to quit the force and return to Bunnyburrow.
  • Your Favorite: When Clawhauser gets reinstated as the front desk officer, a rhino and a hippo police officer welcome him back with two huge boxes of donuts, much to his delight.
  • Zeppelins from Another World: A somewhat stretched example of this trope is that a small, red, cargo bearing airship can be seen in the Canal District when Judy rides the train into Zootopia at the beginning of the film. While it's inconclusive to say that all air travel in Zootopia has been supplanted by airships, given there are helicopters present when Lionheart is arrested, it does show that they are connected to the special circumstances of this world by being used to deliver cargo within the highly vertical Rainforest and Canal districts.note 

    Tropes Related to Trailers 
  • Advertised Extra: Many of the minor characters, such as Finnick, Yax, Gazelle, and even some background characters who hardly get any lines, can be seen throughout the film's advertisements, hanging around Nick and Judy on posters or videos used to promote the movie.
  • Advertising by Association: Advertisements for the movie mentions "from the creators of Frozen and Big Hero 6". An interesting example of the trope as none of the writers, directors, or producers for Zootopia were on the primary creative teams for either of these films and oddly most of the trailers overlook the successful Disney films the directors of Zootopia were directly responsible for like Tangled and Wreck-It Ralph.
  • American Kirby Is Hardcore: Inverted. The US trailers focus more on comedy, while the Japanese trailer is more serious and focuses on the action and drama, which is quite typical for Japanese trailers of Disney films.
  • Amusing Injuries: In the teaser, Nick trips Judy because they're "natural enemies", not realizing she's a cop. After Nick tries to escape, she shoots him with an elephant tranquilizer gun that results in him face-planting on the ground from what looks like the ceiling.
  • By the Lights of Their Eyes: In the US Teaser Trailer, Nick claps and the light goes out, leaving only Judy's eyes visible and blinking.
  • Camera Abuse: "Selfie Is Everything" has Nick walk into the camera and bump his head because he's looking at his phone.
  • Dictionary Opening: The teaser trailer employs some aspects of the trope. It has the word "anthropomorphic" appear in large Courier typeface, which Nick then pushes away while the narrator defines it as "a big, fancy word that means they walk around on two feet, they do not go to work nude..." as key words from the dialogue appear on screen in the same type face. However, the definition never appears in its entirety as an actual dictionary entry.
  • Distracted by the Sexy: In a Serbian promotional ad, Nick and Judy are walking down the street past a Storefront Television Display when Gazelle appears on the TVs. Nick becomes transfixed on her as she's Shaking the Rump, forcing an annoyed Judy to drag him away.
  • Faster Than They Look: Although Clawhauser is quite portly, in the very first trailer he is shown effortlessly jogging and keeping pace with a male gazelle who is bounding across the screen.
  • Hand-or-Object Underwear: When the teaser's voice-over mentions that the anthropomorphic animals are wearing clothes, even though Animals Lack Attributes, naked Nick immediately hides his privates with his bushy tail.
  • Instant Sedation: When Judy shoots Nick with her tranquilizer gun, he immediately drops. Then a wildebeest eats the dart (as the green fluff on it looks like grass), takes a few steps and then face-plants.
  • Never Trust a Trailer: Despite the incredible financial and critical success Zootopia turned out to be, the initial advertising campaign leading up to the movie's release is a testament to a marketing department that was clearly unsure of how to present it. It didn't help that it was released in the U.S. in March, a time of year that studios traditionally release movies they don't always have confidence in. This resulted in a higher degree of odd decisions for the trailers:
    • The teaser trailer feels the need to explain what "anthropomorphic" means even though it is from Disney, a studio that already has many anthropomorphic films in its canon. It gives a lot of screen time to Nick making him appear to be the protagonist, doesn't make it particularly clear that the bunny is actually female, and contains the groan-worthy "be-fur" pun. Also Judy's tranquilizer gun and Nick's phone shown in the trailer never appear in the film.
    • Early ads show Gazelle as a play on Adele while in the film, it turns out she's actually Shakira.
    • The second US trailer makes you think that the other police officers are laughing at Judy because of her assignment to parking duty. While not particularly supportive, her colleagues are never shown to be dismissive either — and during the assignment scene, Judy is in fact the last cop in the room.
    • Subsequent trailers greatly overplayed the Sloth/DMV scene. Because the essence of the joke is the extreme slowness of the sloths, having so much exposure in the trailers caused the scene when it appeared in the movie to go from painfully amusing to downright excruciating.
    • European trailers have a version that is set to the music of "Fireball" by Pitbull, which made it seem like the story is about con-fox Nick and has so much overdubbing that the dialogue that appears in the trailer often has nothing to do with the scene being shown.
    • Earlier trailers say "from the creators of Frozen and Big Hero 6" even though the creative team of writers, directors and producers for Zootopia were not the primary creators of these films and overlooked that the directors were responsible for earlier, successful Disney offerings like Tangled and Wreck-It Ralph.
    • Ultimately the trailers focused on the lighter World of Funny Animals or Buddy Cop Show aspects of the film and gave no indication that it also dealt with heavier themes like profiling, prejudice, the dangers of stereotypes, or political corruption. This caught most critics off-guard and led to many surprised but highly favorable reviews.
  • Open-Fly Gag: On the teaser trailer, Nick is introduced naked, as a voice-over explains the concept of the movie. When the narrator talks about animals being fully clothed, clothes appear on Nick, who then turns around to zip up.
  • Photo-Booth Montage: The teaser/trailer "Selfie Is Everything" has no photo booth, but it's close enough: Nick is trying to take a series of selfies, only to have Judy repeatedly mess him up.
  • Too Dumb to Live: At the end of the US Teaser Trailer, a wildebeest eats the Tranquilizer Dart that Judy shot Nick with and before she can warn the wildebeest, he face-plants.
  • Trailers Always Spoil: The DVD release trailer plainly and clearly shows Nick as a ZPD officer, which doesn't happen until the end of the film.
  • Tranquillizer Dart: In the US Teaser Trailer Judy darts Nick after he trips her and tries to escape. This heavily invokes Artistic License – Medicine since it's specifically identified as an "air-powered elephant tranquillizer", which would have been unquestionably fatal when used on an 80-lb fox.
  • White Void Room: The teasers lack any background, putting the focus entirely on the characters.


Alternative Title(s): Zootropolis

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Welcome to Zootopia

The teaser trailer for Zootopia.

How well does it match the trope?

4.31 (13 votes)

Example of:

Main / WorldOfFunnyAnimals

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