Fridge Horror / Zootopia

• Nighthowlers are now well known thanks to this case, and really, how many street drugs disappear when one distributor goes down? It's possible that before the end of the year the ZPD will be dealing with cases of criminals taking nighthowlers before hold-ups and robberies to make themselves more vicious or just for the high of losing all those rational thoughts. Humans do it in spades.
  • It depends if the Nighthowler essence actually makes you feel good. Nobody takes drugs solely to become savage; it may (sort of) happen with certain pharmaceuticals, but it's a collateral effect. In fact, "feral" citizens do not seem to be in an enjoyable state - they appear to be infuriated and scared, so it's probably not a pleasant experience at any stage.
  • It might be used in the same way as poison, in that case. Although it doesn't kill, it would cause the victim to go savage, possibly near loved ones, which would likely destroy the person, especially if they killed someone. It may also be used to help in robberies - kidnap some random person off the street, force them to take some Nighthowlers, unleash them into your target a few minutes before you go in during the confusion.
  • Given that simply eating the flowers only caused a bite rather than a full-blown murderous rage, turning the nighthowlers into the concentrated savage pellets may be too difficult for most to trouble themselves with, assuming the secret to making them even gets out to begin with.

• Nick Wilde mentions that he sold Mr. Big a rug that was made from the fur of a skunk's butt. In a setting where all mammals are sapient, the idea of a fur rug is very disturbing. (Can also be Fridge Humor. Nick's perfectly capable of talking a skunk into an unusual fur style or gathering up shed fur, but considering the skunk's anal glands — the source of the musk — are located in the same part of the body...)
  • Considering Nick's propensity for running scams back to back, this results in the hilarious/horrifying suggestion that Nick once ran an anal waxing scam and sold the results as rugs to various smaller species...
    • Is that why Nick was so comfortable at the nudist resort? That's horrifyingly hilarious!
  • Also, taking in consideration Mr. Big's status as a mob boss, it wouldn't be so strange for him to have a sentient species' fur as a rug. Maybe the scam was not actually the fur but the butt waxed hairs, and Nick prevented more Fridge Horror for the audience.
  • Or another theory. Similar to how people sign waivers to allow legal use of their bodies after they die (organ donation, scientific research, medical instruction), perhaps animals like that skunk do the same so that their pelts could be used as rugs.
    • People in many Asian cultures keep relatives’ ashes in a jar in their home as mark of respect. Maybe some species keep the pelt in their home as a way of keeping their loved ones’ memories alive.
  • A possible explanation for this is that animals here have to shave their fur before it overgrows and if they want, they can send it to be made into products.
  • Longer-haired animals from temperate habitats could sell off the fur they shed in the spring.

• As we see in the chase scene with Duke Weaselton, whenever an animal of a size class larger than than the residents of Little Rodentia is running haphazardly through their streets, it is pure chaos for the animals that live there.

• Ferals and discrimination:
  • During Doug's (the sheep who's responsible for turning the predators feral) phone call with Bellwether, he mentions that his next target is going to be a cheetah. Now while there are a lot of cheetahs in Zootopia, it's very possible that this cheetah could be Officer Clawhauser. Think of the public's horror if even the nicest predator who's seemingly harmless like Clawhauser turns feral, and he's also working on the police force. It would result in a severe case of discrimination at work between preys and predators, playing right into Bellwether's hooves.
  • The above is seemingly reinforced by the fact that Clawhauser is reassigned to the records room after the press conference, just for being a predator species. The police force is already getting hit by discrimination, despite everyone knowing how nice of a guy he is. Any one of the officers going feral would have had some huge ramifications.
  • Not only would Clawhauser going feral have huge ramifications for the police force, it would probably affect him greatly. If anyone, anyone at all, got hurt or killed while he was feral, it's very likely he'd have to live with the guilt for the rest of his life.

• Judy's parents at the beginning attempt to give her self-defense tools that are specifically marketed to be against foxes, including mace and tasers, and implied to be commonly and legally available. This despite her family growing up with Gideon and his family, and foxes being seen as sly conmen instead of aggressive. While their behavior could be a result from Gideon attacking Judy during her childhood, the fact there are self-defense brands against very specific species of predator is pretty scary and reflective how wide-spread the predator-prey fears are. Taken a bit more charitably, the items might be tailored for effectiveness based on size. To use real life tranquilizers as an example, what would put a lion out of commission would have little to no effect on a rhino or an elephant. A dosage that would disable a lion would likely risk killing a smaller animal like a rabbit.

• As noted on the the Nightmare Fuel page, one aspect of the climax becomes really disturbing if you think about it. Bellwether doses Nick with what she thinks is the Hate Plague, then calls the police and waits for them to arrive. Since she made the call she obviously can't leave the crime scene but that she intends to watch while Nick stalks, kills and possibly eats Judy with a triumphant look on her face is quite disturbing.
  • Even worse, the villain feels confident that she could frame them the same way she framed Lionheart. Meaning that she chose to get rid of them in such a opportunistic yet merciless way despite having other options.

• Depending on how long ago Zootopia was established (given its size possibly a long time ago), what sorts of strife have there been between predators and prey? In the Natural History Museum we see at least one display of ancient jackalopes warding off a panther with spears. Have the two families fought wars? How many have died in them?

• After the events of Zootopia, both the mayor and assistant mayor have been indicted on criminal charges and are imprisoned. The political offices of Zootopia are likely in turmoil, and the populace won't rest with news of this internal corruption since the recent upsurge in inter-species tensions.

• Judy's "Eureka!" Moment comes when her mother reveals her own brother, Judy's uncle, went nuts after eating a Night Howler plant and attacked her, leaving scars. We never found out if he recovered or what happened to him. It's possible her uncle continued to be a rabid, violent lunatic. Those who were hit with the concentrated extract didn't show any signs of recovering anytime soon and Judy's uncle ate the plant, which would enhance the effect. Of course, in the end, they found a cure for the madness, but in the meantime he probably had to be locked-up.
  • To be fair, the uncle ate one plant as a child, and who knows how many plants had to be used in the concentrate to create one pellet, that was a big bucket after all,
    • There is the question of which part of the plant has the highest concentration of the toxin. Either way, you are looking at the difference between using a plant that has Hate Plague inducing chemicals in small quantities vs. the refined and extracted chemical.
    • How many Bananas, oranges, lemons, etc. would it take to make one equivalent dose of a flavored extract used for cooking?
  • At least the fact that Mr. and Mrs. Hopps speak of the incident so casually suggests that Judy's uncle recovered without harming anyone else or suffering long-term effects.
  • Similarly, Judy's "Eureka!" Moment happens due to the fact that she temporarily quits her job due to her guilt over the press conference. If Judy hadn't gone back home when she did, and if Gideon and her parents didn't happen to have that particular conversation at that moment, then Bellwether likely would have gotten away with her scheme.

• What could Judy being the godmother and namesake to the child of a Mafia Princess mean for her career?
  • If she's careful? A lot. Since there's no protection for civilians in Little Rodentia aside from Mr. Big, the police could lighten up on his businesses in exchange for co-operation on criminal investigations and keeping civilians safe from other criminals a la a Thieves' Guild. Also, she could possibly get a recruitment drive for rodents into the ZPD specifically to handle crimes in Little Rodentia.
  • It's also possible that Mr. Big would have more incentive to go legit with his business operations, especially since he's now a happy grandfather, giving his little princess and grandchildren a comfortably wealthy life that won't cause them trouble in the long run. Fru Fru probably isn't part of the shadier side of the "family business" to begin with.

• In the end, the public finally learns that the true criminals who were responsible for making predators go savage are all sheep. How would this affects the majority of the sheep species as a whole? The gag at the end when the wolf police officer puts on the sheep disguise, pun aside, could also implies that sheep as a whole are now associated with crime and villainy. On the other hand, it could also indicate that criminals who previously went unnoticed because they're "harmless" prey animals might finally be getting their comeuppance.

• Imagine the horrified reaction Nick's mother must have had after her son came home losing hope that the world would never see him as anything other than his stereotype. Thoughts must have been racing in her head as to what happened to him.
  • It gets worse. How did those scouts get a muzzle that was just the right size for a young fox? Where was the adult in charge of the scout troop while they used it? These unanswered questions create the very real possibility that said adult was deliberately turning a blind eye to the bullying, and may even have put those kids up to it in the first place.

• A bit of a small one, but at one point Bellwether exclaims, "Oh, muttonchops!" Since she's a sheep, this could translate into "Oh, chopped-up bits of old people's backs!"
  • Let's say it meant "Oh, great big bushy sideburns!" and feel a little bit better.
  • It’s an expression. “Suck my dick” isn’t a rape threat, and “my mom will kill me if I get an F” isn’t really meant to be literal.

• Finnick answered Judy's knock on his van door with a baseball bat. It might seem like he was just being jerkishly violent, but given the attitude toward predators going around at the time and his relatively small size... (To say nothing of having ears that size and being inside a big metal box while someone's knocking on it...)

• The feral animals that Lionheart imprisoned are only wearing whatever clothes they were captured in, with some being completely naked. Even prisoners get the dignity of clothing. Given they're acting like Real Life animals, however, they likely wouldn't accept it — Manchas ditched his trousers during the chase, for example.

• Just where is Nick's mother? He only mentions her the one time, in the past, and she's never seen anywhere in the present day, not even at Nick's police graduation ceremony. He never says anything about a father. Nick also told Judy that he's been running cons since he was twelve. Was he raised by his mother alone then, and did she die when he was that age, leaving her bitter and isolated child to scrape for himself? If so, no wonder Nick took to hustling. ^note  Rich Moore confirmed on Twitter that she's still alive and living in the same apartment that she raised Nick in.

• A polar bear is seen in a news report, having gone savage in broad daylight and critically injured a caribou. According to the news anchor, that was the twenty-seventh incident of its kind. Nick and Judy escaped being mauled/eaten by the newly-savage Manchas due to their agility, quick thinking, and speed, but what about the other citizens of Zootopia that wouldn't have had access to these skills, such as children or the elderly, when faced with a savage predator?
  • Conversely, a bit of Fridge Logic shows that most of the predators didn't do much damage before being captured. This makes sense, given that most predatory behaviors are learned, and the average civilized animal of Zootopia has no reason to know how to catch prey with their bare paws.
    • Speaking of the injured caribou, it's never confirmed whether or not they survived the injuries...

• How did the reports of savagery be so effectively repressed knowledge until Judy found the Mayor's place, and why would Mayor Lionheart, someone with a cushy job, have a scar on his nose? What if that's because Bellwether's first attempt to remove him from the picture was a more direct approach and involved attempting to use a feral predator to assassinate him? Thus, Lionheart was able to keep things quiet because during the first incident, he and maybe a few bodyguards were the only ones on the scene?

• Doug wears a gas mask while he prepares the serum, meaning the fumes must be dangerous. Judy and Nick are hiding in the lab as he works with no such protection. Who knows how close they came to losing their sanity then and there...
  • Admittedly, he has more exposure to it than they do.
  • It could just be a precaution against accidental exposure. We see that this serum works very fast, possibly too fast to reliably put on protective gear if a vial of it were accidentally knocked over or something. He seems to have no problem opening the door for others not wearing masks, so ambient gas in the room under normal conditions probably isn't a major concern. Note that Doug is also wearing an isolation suit, as we know the serum works on skin contact too.
  • It's also further confirmation that the concentrate doesn't just affect predators.
  • Presumably, the preparation for the plan began a while before Judy arrived in Zootopia (the plan itself began two weeks before she arrived). If they didn't know just how potent Night Howlers could be, mild exposure could have resulted in their eyes becoming more "animal-like" when compared to say, Bellwether's. What if the airborne exposure they experienced over the course of, likely months, of refining the serum had begun subtly altering their physiology back to how it used to be in the past? Before Doug started wearing a mask. A little airborne exposure, like the kind Judy and Nick experienced, probably wouldn't be an issue, but constant exposure over a long period of time spent refining it?
  • Other than being an obvious and brutal visual pun, right down to the bright blue end product (as Cinema Sins puts it, 'Know what this is a reference to? Breaking 'Baaad.'^note I'm so sorry.), organic chemistry to get concentrated herbal extracts sometimes requires some brutal solvents. Once the solvents are removed in the multi-part distillation columns as shown, however, the PPE is not necessary.

• Judging by how the News crews surrounds Judy right after Nick scares her into taking out her repellent, it's possible they filmed him doing that and probably showed it in the news. If anything, this could imply that Nick had to go into hiding in order not to get arrested for seemingly attempting to assault/maul a police officer.
  • The fox repellent flags up several depressing truths about this world. One that this stuff is available, two that no one saw fit to comment on it, and three that even Nick is willing to just let it pass without comment until Judy reveals deeper prejudice. The world really is more rotten that most people care to admit.
  • IRL, pepper spray is calibrated for different needs. For example, a big bottle of riot control spray would have a different concentration from the little can you keep in your purse or pocket. And with such a high diversity of species, spray designed for, say, an elephant might kill or seriously injure anyone smaller. But the pink branding on the kit makes one think it's aimed at women, so it's more like regular pepper spray.

• Judy and Nick manage to get to safety from Manchas before backup arrives, but what if they hadn't and Nick and/or Judy had died at his feral paws? Let's count the effects:
  • Obviously, Judy and/or Nick would be dead, which is bad enough on its own. And if one of them survived, especially if it was Judy, they'd be stuck with Survivor Guilt. Additionally, Judy almost certainly would have gotten in trouble with the department for endangering a civilian. Not that Nick would be in a much better spot. He doesn't care all that much for Judy at that point, but given his reaction to her almost losing her job because of his wasting time, it's doubtful he'd take her getting killed following one of his leads very well.
  • When Manchas is in control of his actions, he seems like a pretty nice guy. Imagine how he'd react to knowing that he killed someone if he eventually got better.
  • Clawhauser was likely aware at the point of Judy's loud desperate greeting that he had missed the alarm for a while. Someone as scrupulous as Clawhauser would undoubtedly feel disproportionate guilt over the deaths for months, years, or even the rest of his life. "If only I'd noticed the call sooner, he/she/they'd still be alive...".
  Awwww! That little bunny's gonna get eaten alive.
  • Bogo probably wouldn't be all that happy, either. He may have been skeptical of Judy and looking for ways to set her up to fail, but getting her or some random civilian killed likely wasn't one of them.
  • With the resourceful team either dead or permanently split apart, if Lionheart was eventually discovered, it's entirely likely no one would be able to stop Bellwether.

• Gazelle was not only a pop star, but also apparently an activist of sorts - her back-up dancers are tigers - one truly terrifying way to spread the "anti-predator" hate and fear would be to infect one (or more) of her dancers, either during a concert or during her protest rally, and have the infected dancer kill Gazelle - on the concert stage or in the protest rally - in front of an audience - and let the hate/rage/terror breed more chaos.
  • And, as with Manchas and Clawhauser: if something like this happened, and then the tiger dancer in question was cured, imagine how horrified he would have been. It's made very clear from the protest scene and the dance concert at the end just how much the tigers adore and look up to Gazelle...
  • Someone followed through on this (as well as Clawhauser being targeted) in a rather Dark Fic on FanFiction.Net and it's about as tragic as you can imagine.
  • In fact several fanfic writers have used this idea or some form of it, to varying degrees of detail, tragedy, and fallout.

• Emmitt Otterton knew what the Night Howlers are and how they work. When he was shot, he probably knew what was happening to him. He felt himself losing his mind.

• Judy's investigation tactics:
  • Judy didn't precisely stick to the law during her investigation (illegal police entry at the limo rental place, the asylum, and Doug's train car, police brutality in knocking out Weaselton and threatening him with torture, and perhaps even illegal surveillance,) so, even as the ZPD's poster officer, if her actions ever see the light of day, she will be fired, or even jailed.
    • Of course, the train car and Weaselton's interrogation were when she was no longer attached to the force (despite Bellwether's little slip of calling her "Officer Hopps"), she had probable cause for both the limo service (fox climbing over the fence) and the asylum (wolves capturing other animals), and knocking out Weaselton definitely caused less property damage than chasing him through Little Rodentia had. (Those poor drivers...)
  • Imagine how betrayed Bogo would feel to learn that he had unwittingly supported an employee who was not only breaking procedure but also the law, especially considering that he had a hunch she was trouble but dismissed it after seeing those ill-gotten results. It might make it difficult for him to trust any of his employees ever again, even the ones who had already earned his trust.

• The desk calendar on Bellwether's desk displays a May date. When Judy is wrapping carrots in a newspaper at her family's stand, the date at the top is November. Unless Bellwether was so overworked by the Mayor that she didn't have a chance to update her calendar, the anti-predator crisis lasted for six months.
  • Closer inspection of the newspaper shows that it doesn't actually have a date on it. At the top of the paper is No. 27.0262 which at first glance could be mistaken for November.
  • It was confirmed by Rich Moore's Twitter◊ that after the disastrous press conference, three months have passed, for most of which Judy remained on the force until she finally gave up and left the city. He also mentions that it's been another three months since Bellwether changed her calendar due to her being overworked. This sets the movie sometime in August or September, meaning after three months, it really is November when she returns to the city!

• Duke Weaselton is a predator. He sold material for ammo to a group that was targeting predators and could easily have decided further down the line they didn't need him anymore.
  • It is pretty clear from his actions that he isn't the brightest weasel around.
  • Also, he was given An Offer You Can't Refuse - money. Maybe he didn't know what the Night Howlers do at all; he just stole the bulbs and sold them to Doug because he offered a fair sum.

• It's hard not to draw some (albeit comical) parallels between Nick petting Bellwether's wool and some kind of real life sexual harassment. Imagine if they were humans and he was getting excited about grabbing her butt. Heck, even if you go no farther than getting that excited about touching someone's hair, Judy's affronted reaction is — while hilarious — completely understandable.
  • It could also be seen simply as an allusion to insensitive people who ask (or not) if they could touch someone's afro, which is actually a well known phenomenon in some places.

• Imagine if Bellwether's plan had succeeded. Would that eventually lead to a "predator holocaust"?
  • Doubtful. Bellwether is savvy enough to know that it's more useful to have the predators around as a common enemy to unite against than to kill them all. Unless she gets Drunk with Power; then all bets are off.
  • There are plenty of ways that the worst case scenario can happen even if Bellwether doesn't want it to. For example, as years pass and paranoia continues to climb, a political rival could unseat Bellwether on the platform that she's too soft on "the predator threat". Even if Bellwether manages to stay in office, she's not going to live forever.

• What if the florist to uncover the plot involving Night Howlers wasn't an otter but a prey species? The villains couldn't have prey turn up savage or it would ruin their campaign, so Doug would have had to "silence" him the old-fashioned way (not with a serum pellet, but with a bullet or the like).
  • He's sharing a car with a Jaguar: hit the predator and let Manchas silence the witness.

• Mr. Otterton, a cute little otter florist who learns the terrible secret that someone is weaponizing a toxic flower takes this information and imminently tries to tell... the mafia? So either the police are so useless that Otterton thinks that this is a better way to warn people than going to the police or to the press, or he's realized that he has information on a potentially valuable combat drug, and immediately tried to tell Mr Big so he could get in on the action.
  • I'm going to presume it's a matter of trust and efficiency. He's longtime friends with Mr. Big, so it stands to reason that when he says he knows what's going on, Mr. Big will trust him and immediately take decisive action. Get Night Howler off the streets, get some of his guards on lookout, etc. Whereas the press and police, neither of whom have a relationship with him, would, at worst, laugh off his claim that a "harmless flower" is causing the problems, and, at best, could only either a)incite more panic (the press), or b)assign a small force to it (the police). After all, the ZPD can't drop everything else on the lead of some random otter florist.
  • Mr. Otterton most likely went to Mr. Big first, because mob bosses tend to get nervous when their associates go talk to the police. He was most likely going to explain the matter to Mr. Big and ask his permission to inform the ZPD, in order to avoid any unfortunate misunderstandings.
  • As a crime boss, Mr. Big likely has connections that would help him pinpoint where the flowers are going. While the same could be said for ZPD, the mafia showing an interest in your drug business is less likely to cause the dealer to go into hiding than the police would.
  • It may be that Mr Otterton is SPECIFICALLY going to go through both channels, because he realizes just how very dangerous Night Howlers are. Have Mr Big start working on things through the seedier side of the law in the short term (shaking down drug gangs, petty crooks, and the like, so that whoever is after the flowers loses access to their supply), and have the ZPD do their own procedural investigation to figure out the bigger picture (getting records, evidence, and figuring out who, how, and why).

• In one scene, Judy almost gets stepped on by a pedestrian rhino, causing Nick to joke "Be careful or it won't just be your dreams getting crushed." This makes you wonder just how many innocent small civilians have been crushed by accident by larger animals who weren't paying attention.
  • At least one fanfic ran with this and had a rhino assassin doing his jobs via trampling and being so reviled that the Tundratown mafia thinks that only scum with more money than morals hires him.

• Despite that these animals are stated to have evolved to a human-like state and that prey-eating is a thing of the past, it would seem that bunnies are still Explosive Breeders. Not only would said evolution even this tendency out over hundreds of generations, but the whole reason real lagomorphs have so many young so fast because they're at the bottom of a lot of food-chains; if you're a rabbit, you need to have lots of babies. Some will die of natural causes, some will be killed by hunters or killed and eaten by a bigger animal, and with luck, a couple will survive to have their own kits. With all of those threats now gone and the ludicrous breeding still going strong, what is keeping those populations in check?
  • Condoms? (Assuming that the animals have something to put the condom on, despite what we see at the "naturalist" club...)
  • Or other forms of contraception. One background poster even shows a bunny family with a lot of children, saying "It is about time you get fixed", implying that voluntary vasectomy is a practice in Zootopia.
  • Then there's the possibility that said population is still self-sustaining. As mentioned elsewhere on the page, a large family of rabbits provides more than enough manual labor to maintain a large farm, producing enough food for themselves and likely in surplus, given that a late scene has Judy selling carrots and Gideon entering a business partnership with Judy's parents, so it's not inconceivable that other animals with similar breeding rates could make similar arrangements. Besides, there's no indication that Zootopia is the only city in the animal world... if the population gets too large for them, there's always other places to live.
    • Until there aren't. Zootopia is, in all likelihood, set on a spheroid, earth-like planet. This is the kind of situation that starts wars and creates overpopulation, limited resources, and a very easy to manipulate population (especially via fear).
  • There's an alternative angle to consider here; in addition to being bunnies, don't forget that Judy's family is characterized as being two things. The first is old-fashioned, and the second is as being a farming family. Both are the kinds of family that tend to go for large numbers of kids. It's not unreasonable that Judy's nearly-three-hundred siblings are something that's considered fairly antiquated amongst modern bunnies and most don't have anywhere near that many offspring; Judy's family is so big mostly to keep up with operating a huge produce farm, and other bunnies in the area have much smaller and more manageable families.
    • There's actually a fanfic that ran with an interpretation much like this; Judy's home count is called the "Triburrows Region" because there's only three "burrows" — huge, traditionalistic farming families with hundreds of bunnies belonging to them — in that whole area. Judy just happens to come from one of those three families. Also, the constantly increasing population counter is explained in said fic as a gag set up by the town council as a way to mess with the heads of visitors; it just automatically counts up to a billion and then resets itself.
  • Another possibility, besides the "bunnies only breed like wild bunnies in the more old-fashioned rural families" theory above, is that Zootopians use selective abortion to decrease the number of embryos in a litter, so they have only a fairly small number of kids in total. Do take note that, during the scene of Judy riding the train after the disastrous PR scene, the bunny who drags her daughter closer from the tiger who just sat down only has one child with her, something you wouldn't expect if she had a full-fledged litter, which could be taken as proof for either of these two theories.
    • Fun Science Fact: Female rabbits have a natural capacity for birth control. No, really. If a doe's protein intake is not sufficient for her to produce healthy offspring, her womb re-absorbs the embryos. It's a survival trait to permit rabbits to get through periods of reduced food supply. If Bunnyburrow's population starts to outgrow their ability to produce food, a change in diet will help them fix the problem themselves.

• Nick has made $73000 tax-free every year since he was twelve, and is still implied to live under a bridge. What does he spend his money on? either A, he has some addiction that never appears on screen (possibly gambling, considering his hustler personality) or B, even more depressingly, as work of God confirms that Nick's mother is still alive, it's likely that she had some sort of medical emergency when Nick was twelve, and he's been paying her medical bills ever since: perhaps the reason she's not at his police graduation is she's too sick to walk, and has been for twenty years.
  • It could also be that he deliberately keeps living in a relatively poor manner for a variety of reasons. Perhaps he does it so that he doesn't ever forget who he was and where he came from, or, more pragmatically, he does so to avoid drawing unneeded and unwanted attention to himself. After all, if he started becoming too ostentatious, then people might start digging into the source of his revenue, and find out about his various tricks.
    • The pragmatic reason is more likely considering he doesn't report his gains to Zootopia's version of the IRS.
  • Alternatively, it's just a place he goes. After all, he's right next to where 'Wilde Times' from the 'tame collar' draft of the story was. It could be that's just a sentimental place for him, a place where he tried to start an above-ground business, but it didn't last. As to why his mother's not at graduation, another theory is that she's well enough to walk, but she isn't on speaking terms with her son for whatever reason.
  • Given that we saw what prejudiced children do in this world, it wouldn't be much of a stretch to think that prejudiced adults do things much more far-reaching, like housing discrimination, for example.
  • And, of course, there's the other option: Most of Nick Wilde's money goes to the basics. He needs multiple professional licenses for the pawpsicle scam alone, to say nothing of giving Finnick his cut, most likely with a little extra for the use of the van.
  • Is he afraid of prey animals vandalizing his home?

• A more subtle horror: when the elephant ice cream parlor cashier refuses service to Nick, he 1) does so specifically because Nick is a fox and 2) rudely asks whether there are "fox ice cream parlors" in the city. When Judy wants to do her part to fight racism, she has to invoke health regulations rather than anti-discrimination law. Since she knows the law backwards and forwards, it's telling she doesn't invoke it: Zootopia has racism but lacks anti-discrimination laws and could very well be de facto segregated beyond the artificially maintained biomes.
  • Jumbeaux is correct in citing his business's right to refuse service, since it's a private company. Anti-discrimination laws generally only apply to public services and certain aspects of employment and/or tenancy when only a single individual was involved. Judy would have to be able to demonstrate that Jumbeaux habitually refuses service to certain types of animals, and given that she only just started working, she wouldn't have that kind of information. Therefore, Judy using health regulations was an approach far more likely to withstand judicial scrutiny.
  • Also keep in mind that Zootopia ultimately will have differences from our world since it's inhabited by different species. It's possible that when the elephant asks whether there are fox ice cream parlors he wasn't intending to discriminate, it's just that Nick being there is kind of like a Christian being in a mosque requesting services and he comes off as rude because Nick has been refusing to leave and holding up the line, testing his patience. While there has been stereotyping, we've not seen much outright discrimination until the plan by Bellweather to frame predators going savage so anti-discrimination laws might have come off as odd as say, a law forbidding people from sticking their hands in boiling water.
  • It could be like how, for example, dogs can’t eat chocolate or coffee so dog ice cream parlors wouldn’t sell them. It may even be part of the health code.

• So apparently about three months (at least) pass between Mayor Lionheart's arrest, followed immediately with moving the savage predators from the asylum to the hospital, and the conspiracy finally being taken down and the savage predators cured. One little tidbit of horror here: Bellwether is mayor during this period, which means she has full control over the city's facilities. Including the hospital. For those savage predators to remain feral during those three months while being incarcerated in the hospital, what are the chances that instead of being cared for or treated, they are constantly being drugged with Nighthowlers? That also leads to one potential long-lasting disaster: Depending on the substance, chronic substance abuse may eventually lead to irreversible physiological change (including organ failure and brain damage). Had Bellwether remained mayor for longer, is it not possible that those savage predators might become incurably, permanently feral without hope of salvation?

• Just how long has Bellwether been stalking the Otterton family? She (and/or her henchrams, particularly Doug) very likely was aware that Emmit Otterton might have found out her plan with the Night Howlers, which is why she had the otter darted to prevent the info from leaking out. And when did she become aware of Lionheart's agenda of imprisoning the savages? Tied in with the darting incident above, it seems like she knows very well, if not exactly, what happened to Emmit once he became feral, which is probably why she's explicitly supportive of Mrs. Otterton's plight which ends up causing Judy to take the case and eventually find out about the Cliffside Asylum deal, all for Bellwether's benefit. Poor Mrs. Otterton and her children probably were not too far from joining Emmit...

• As mentioned in WMG page, here's a simple question: How many test subjects did Doug go through before finalizing his current version of the Nighthowler gun? And what happened to them?

• Mr. Big gets offended when he learns of the source of the rug Nick sold him, and cites that he buried his Grandmama in that rug. But mafiosos generally use rolls of carpet for disposing of *enemies*. So was there some internecine warfare in the Shrew family? And if so, is he only offended about burying Grandmama in a skunk-butt rug because she was a Worthy Opponent?
  • Unlikely. Mr. Big and Koslov seemed legitimately reverent towards her (with the latter doing a sign that in the real world would symbolize hoping she's doing well in heaven), and there's mention of them dining together with Nick.

• Sort of a Fridge Sadness as well, but in the aftermath of the press conference, I couldn't help but wonder about Gideon. It's implied that his attack on Judy was indirectly responsible for inspiring a small fear of predators in Judy. He even mentions the 'predator's instinct buried in DNA' idea. Years later, after what seems like not speaking to her for awhile, he's reformed, thinks she's moved on (and she has, at least consciously), but then she gives the 'reverting predators' speech. Did he ever look at the unrest and feel like it was his fault, for putting the words in her mouth, then backing them up? It would also put his apology in a bit of a new light, not just feeling sorry for hurting Judy, but also trying to clear his taxonomic order's name.

• Try to picture the mood of the Predatory population after the events of the film. After what can now be deducted as months of being treated with fear and suspicion by the majority Prey population, it is then revealed the whole situation was nothing more than an insidious conspiracy against their taxonic order by a member of said Prey majority. Not just any member, the Mayor herself. Try to imagine the sheer fury and sense of betrayal amongst the Predators, who have now come to the sobering realization that after generations of alleged peace, many of their Prey friends and neighbors not only still do not trust them, but some were actively conspiring against them. From now own, when they look at their Prey neighbor, the Prey milkman, the Prey cashier they deal with in their daily lives, how many of these Predators are secretly thinking, "Does this mammal hate me? Are they out to get me?"
  • In fact, how easy will it be for a Predator version of Bellwether to emerge amongst this sea of distrust and whip up the Predator population against the Prey in a reversal of the first film? Perhaps even forming their own Predator supremacy/separatist group? Bellwether's don't grow in a vacuum and the fear and outrage many predators are likely to feel is far more justified than those of the prey in the film. It wasn't as if both sides were at fault, where some predators were going savage and the Prey were (perhaps overly) reacting out of fear, it was an outright conspiracy against their community. Of course, that doesn't make the entire Prey population responsible, but that likely means little to the indignant Predators.
    • That a bunny and fox working together are what put a stop to it should help mitigate such feelings. And its not as if predators were a single community any more than the prey were a single community, the Zootopia society was more complicated than that (size differences especially being another thing that served to separate the various species and motivate prejudices on all sides). Indeed part of the villain's plan was to change this by uniting the many different prey communities into a simpler prey vs. predator system.

• Fru Fru is pretty non-chalant about the icing. Have she witnessed so many executions that she hardly cares about it anymore?

• One of the restaurants catering to Arctic animals is called "Blubber Chef". The other predator-friendly restaurants sell fish products, which can be inferred to be acceptable due to No Cartoon Fish. But blubber is exclusively obtained from marine mammals. So either it's a very grisly euphemism for blubber-flavored fish fat, or whales, seals and walruses are exempt from the "no preying on one another" rule.
  • Or only mammals that can naturally move on land were uplifted by the stimulus that created the world of Zootopia. This could explain where they get actual milk from without said milk being from the very sapient cows.
  • Or maybe "Blubber Chef" is bragging that they serve so much food you're gonna get super fat.
  • All else aside, "blubber" is originally from the Middle English word blober, meaning "a water bubble, foaming waves". So we might be arguing over a restaurant named after seafoam.
  • Or, it's not the food the chef cooks that contains blubber, but the chef himself.
  • Penguins have blubber...
    • Alternatively, who's to say that there isn't Fantastic Racism against cetaceans/pinnipeds in this setting, thus explaining why we never see them in the movie?
• And possibly the biggest Fridge Horror of them all given the setting: All we have to go off of besides characters' words that only mammals are sapient in this world are two cities in the same country. What if nations of sapient birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, and/or invertebrates actually exist or existed in this universe and the only reason we don't see them is because either A. Whatever country these two cities are in is so Fantastically Racist against them they either avoid or are not allowed in the country (and if they are, they're seen as food) or B. All sapient nonmammals were genocided off the face of the earth?
• Reading I Will Survive can give out a nasty vibe to the movie’s universe given the premise. Nick and Judy break up because of their own child potentially looking deformed so Judy wants to abort. Imagine how many Interspecies couples potentially have gone through the exact same scenario in canon. Especially with how heavy the movie’s themes are about Fantastic Racism....Ouch.
• It's treated as a joke, but unless bunnies are fixed (which a sharp eyed viewer can see ads for on a wall, and the newspaper Judy rolls up the carrots in) they breed like, well, rabbits. Judy in fact has 250 siblings that are alive. Except that the average litter of rabbits has a 10% rate of stillborn babies. So taken to the logical conclusion, somewhere on that farm are twenty-five tiny graves...
  • Alternatively, the Hopps family could have served their dead children to their predator acquaintances as meals, which adds a whole different level of Fridge Horror.
  • That's assuming pre- and neonatal care for lapines isn't a lot more advanced in Zootopia's 'verse than in ours.
• Consider this: Both Lionheart and Bellwether are in jail. There didn’t seem to be anyone left to take up the role as mayor, and judging by the looks of things, they’ll both be in there for the foreseeable future. What will happen to Zootopia now that the two people who could govern it are both in jail?
  • The rest of the administrative staff keep things running without drastic change until emergency elections are held? In Real Life, there have been many cases of entire governments either being dissolved or not doing their work for a few months and life going on. Here, the elected official and the person right below them have been impeached, and unless they're the only politicians in town, well, time for an election day episode.
• Various characters act like predation still exists in some form to some degree (e,g, when Nick notices the fox repellent and asks Judy if she fears he would eat her) which implies that even without the Night Howlers, it probably still occurs, just rarely. Even though society as a whole has mostly progressed past it, and the vast majority of predators easily and willingly eat only legally acceptable food sources like bugs, it would not be possible to eliminate it totally any more then it would be possible to totally eliminate murder in our world. If it was 100% a thing of the past that has somehow never occurred whatsoever in centuries, it would not be a source of tension in the film.
• During the feral predator crisis, it's possible that predator children were shunned and avoided by their prey peers at school, or that prey parents made an effort to keep their children away from predator parents and children. Imagine being a tiger cub whose best friend is a rabbit kit, only to have the door slammed in your face when you come to their house to play, or to be told at school, "My mommy says I can't hang out with you anymore."
• At one point in the film, Bellweather says: "Us little guys have to stick together". It hasnt gone over some viewers heads on how much smaller animals tend to get pushed around by larger ones (regardless of who is Predator or Prey or both in whatever situation). Sadly there is Truth in Television in terms of real world discrimination. A racist would feel more confident pushing around a diminitive guy like Kevin Hart or Aziz Ansari than they would a much larger man of the same background like lets say Dwayne Johnson or The Great Khali.

---