An animated Spin-Off Babies series, Madagascar: A Little Wild is the third animated Spin-Off series based on the Madagascar films (following The Penguins of Madagascar; centered on the Penguins, and All Hail King Julien; centered on the lemurs), this time focusing on the franchise's main quartet — Alex, Marty, Gloria & Melman — in their child years.
The series is produced by DreamWorks Animation Television. It was distributed simultaneously on both Hulu and Peacock, on September 7th, 2020 and concluded on June 30, 2022.
Tropes include:
- Alternate Continuity: The series is described by the showrunners
as this. It's essentially its own alternate timeline very much inspired by the movies, but doing its own thing. - Animal Talk: Like all other incarnations, the animals and humans do not communicate with one another.
- Apathetic Citizens: The main characters sneak out of the zoo and wander around the city on a regular basis, but nobody really pays them much mind, often walking right past them without even bothering to look down.
- Art Evolution: Similar to All Hail King Julien , the animation looks much closer to that of the movies.
- Continuity Cameo: In the Series Finale, the Penguins make an appearance on TV, as their younger selves shown in Penguins of Madagascar.
- Continuity Snarl: The first film makes it look like the Zoosters have never left the zoo before and have always lived in their own personal enclosures. Here, they sneak out to city regularly and all live together in a shared nursery habitat. Justified, as the show is not canon to the films.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: "Whatever Floats Your Float" is about the animals putting on an "animal pride parade," but when Odee arrives nobody can figure out which species they are. They try to fit them as either a giraffe or a zebra, but they reveal they're an okapi, and explains, "It doesn’t matter what we are as long as we’re proud of who we are." It's clearly a metaphor for trying to fit nonbinary people into a gender binary, emphasized by the fact Odee does actually use they/them pronouns.
- Expy: Chimpanzee siblings Pickles and Dave are this for the original movies' chimp duo Mason and Phil. Where Phil was simply mute and preferred to use sign language to communicate, Dave is actually deaf and uses sign language with vocalizations, and his sister also uses sign language when she speaks for his benefit.
- Lovable Coward: Melman is still a nice guy even if he tends to be rather cautious and scared a lot.
- Non-Human Non-Binary: Odee is a non-binary okapi.
- Once an Episode: The zoosters have to pay some tribute to Pickles and Dave as a toll to use the underground tunnels (or ziplines) they maintain.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: The zoosters generally disguise themselves when they are out in the city with whatever they can find, but generally all that consists of is donning a hat of some form. The only reason this seems to be effective is because in general nobody is really bothering to pay enough attention to notice they aren't human.
- Running Gag: An elderly couple often appears to catch the animals only for them to turn out to be talking about something else entirely.
- Secret Underground Passage: How the zoosters are able to get out of the zoo on a regular basis.
- Spinoff Babies: The show focuses on the Zoo Crew as children.
