It's Tough to Be a Bug! is a 3D movie attraction based on the Pixar film A Bug's Life created for the Disney Theme Parks.
The show is hosted by Flik, hoping to teach the audience how insects survive in the wild. Throughout the show he introduces different insects, who demonstrate their skills for the audience. The show is eventually interrupted by Hopper, and things take a turn for the terrifying.
It opened at Disney's Animal Kingdom in April 1998 and at Disney's California Adventure in February 2001. The California Adventure version later closed in March 2018, as the land that it was a part of, A Bug's Land, closed to make way for Avengers C.A.M.P.U.S., which opened in 2021. The Animal Kingdom version is planned to close as well, with a new 3D movie based on Zootopia taking over the Tree of Life Theater at an unknown date.
It's Tough to Be a Bug! contains examples of:
- Adapted Out: Flik and Hopper are the only characters from A Bug's Life to show up - no Atta, no Dot, no circus bugs, nobody else. This is because the attraction was developed at the same time as A Bug's Life and the only character designs that had been approved at the time were Flik and Hopper (in fact, the Animal Kingdom version opened BEFORE A Bug's Life was released).
- Big Damn Heroes: When Hopper is causing mass pandemonium in the theater, the day is saved by a chameleon.
- Calling a Rabbit a "Smeerp": The 3D glasses are called "Bug Eyes".
- Early-Bird Cameo: The entire attraction served as this for A Bug's Life, as it opened months before the movie came out. For reference the attraction was an opening day attraction at the Animal Kingdom in April of 1998 and A Bug's Life came out in November of that year meaning the attraction was out for seven full months before the movie.
- Shout-Out:
- The attraction's name is a reference to It's Tough to Be a Bird.
- The queue features posters for shows like A Cockroach Line, Beauty and the Bees, The Grass Menagerie, My Fair Ladybug, Little Shop of Hoppers, Antie, and Barefoot in the Bark.
- The name of the weevil is Weevil Kneevil, a reference to Eevel Knievel.
- Shown Their Work: The show demonstrates cartoony versions of actual "survival techniques" that bugs use, but the icing on the cake is that the scent pumped into the theater for the stinkbug scene, is actually what a real stinkbug smells like.
- This Means War!: Hopper declares war on humans for how they've treated bugs in the past.
