Ted 2 is a 2015 comedy film directed, co-written and co-produced by Seth MacFarlane, and is a sequel to the 2012 hit film Ted. Like the last film, it stars MacFarlane as the voice of Ted and Mark Wahlberg as his best friend John. Also joining the cast is Amanda Seyfried as a fresh-faced attorney.
In this film, Ted married his girlfriend Tammi-Lynn and they try to adopt a baby together. But it turns out that, being a teddy bear and therefore property, Ted is denied access and tries to fight for his civil rights.
The film is followed up by a prequel series set before the events of the original movie. McFarlane returned as writer, director, executive producer, and the voice of Ted. The show airs on Peacock.
Tropes contained in this film include:
- As Himself: Tom Brady, Sam Jones again, Liam Neeson as a customer buying Trix cereal, and Jay Leno cruising a bar's men's room. Bonus points for David Hasselhoff in the unrated edition.
- Ascended Extra: Tammi-Lynn was only a minor character in the first film. She becomes a major secondary character in the sequel, marrying Ted at the start of the movie. Their desire to have a baby is what sets the main plot in motion once the adoption process puts Ted on the government's radar.
- Ascended Fridge Horror: The first film's "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue implied that Donny got away scot-free because no one could take the crime of "kidnapping a teddy bear" seriously, making some viewers wonder whether Ted is considered by the government to be a piece of property with no rights. This sequel makes a plot point out of that very issue - and out of the fact that Donny is still a free man, and could try kidnapping Ted again with very little legal repercussions.
- Babies Make Everything Better: Ted and Tammi-Lynn decide to have a baby for this reason, which eventually stirs up the legal trouble that makes up the plot.
- Become a Real Boy: The main conflict of the plot. Or rather "become legally recognized as a real boy."
- Black Comedy Rape: J Leno attempts to sexually harass John in a bar bathroom, and the exchange is played for comedy.
- Book Dumb: Ted and John have no idea who F. Scott Fitzgerald is, nor any of the literature Sam mentions to them.Sam: I have a college degree. My pop culture references are Hamlet, Achilles and Dorian Gray. Ever heard of any of them?
Ted: No, but I'm pretty sure Mr. T could kick their ass! - Book Ends: The film begins and ends with the same event: Ted and Tami Lynn's marriage.
- Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: Ted and John's suggestions at the improv club - "9/11", then "Robin Williams", then "Robin Williams on 9/11".
- Brick Joke: Sam says she will let Ted drive her car for 20 minutes. After Ted causes the car to go airborne and crash into the wall of a barn, Ted's response is: "Well Sam, it's been 20 minutes. You want to take over?"
- Busby Berkeley Number: The opening titles sequence.
- Call-Back: Tons in the unrated version.
- Church of Saint Genericus: The outside of a church is shown which appears to be a Catholic Gothic-style structure, but when the inside is shown (during a wedding), all stained glass windows have generic symbols, there are no Christian symbols, and the "priest" is wearing generic robe-like vestment with no markings.
- Covered in Gunge: In a much more disgusting case than most, a mishap at the sperm bank, beginning with a dropped sample container courtesy of Ted, then John slipping on the resulting mess while trying to scoop it up, and finally crashing onto a shelf stacked with countless filled cups, bringing both John and the whole shelf down, ends with him getting slathered head to toe in semen. When a nurse walks onto the sight and notes it isn't a loss because they're just rejected sickle cell samples, Ted quips that John's covered in "rejected black guy sperm." note
- Cringe Comedy: Even more than in the first, subjecting people to bodily fluids, cookies in the butt, and lots of embarrassment.
- Cultural Translation: In order to appeal to a younger audience in Japan, where the first film was quite popular and Ted's more boorish antics were ignored in favor of the character's inherent cuteness, a bowdlerized PG12 edit was created of this film for the Japanese market.
- Disney Creatures of the Farce: Samantha sings while playing the guitar, prompting several animals to approach the place. It starts out straight enough, but this being a MacFarlane movie, a fish jumps out of the water to the ground, and situationally odd wildlife such as a monkey, a lobster and a penguin show up.
- Disney Death: John falls into a coma after a big-screen TV falls on him and supposedly dies, but it's actually just a prank to get back at Ted for pretending to "come back" retarded at the end of the first movie.
- The Dog Bites Back: Patrick Warburton's character and his new boyfriend go to ComicCon to beat up nerds and fanboys. Eventually they had enough and beat the crap out of them.
- Dude, Not Funny!: In-Universe examples.
- Ted decides to call on the powers of Beetlejuice to help them out with the court case. John is less than thrilled when Ted keeps on calling on Beetlejuice's name three times.
John: Hey, you are messing with powers you do not understand, alright! Cut the shit!- When John appears to die and they are called into his room to say their last goodbyes, he pranks them by thinking he was dead when he was actually alive. Ted, Samantha, and Tammi-Lynn call him out on this, but they get over it rather quickly.
- Ted, John, and Samantha go to an improv club and constantly yell out inherently offensive suggestions for the actors (such as 9/11), much to the actors' dismay.
- Epic Fail: When Sam lets Ted drive her car for 20 minutes. He swerves between lanes, texts while driving, and then tosses his drink onto an oncoming car, causing it to swerve out of control and crash. Then to top it off, after burning himself with his cigarette when he tries to toss it out of the window, Ted swerves to the left, narrowly avoiding several cars, before swerving to the right to avoid a head on collision, goes down a hill and when the car reaches the end of hill it goes airborne and crashes into the wall of a barn.
- Everyone Has Standards: Ted may be a Mr. Vice Guy, but he finds the porn collection Johnny had saved on his computer to be so ridiculously large that it's more off-putting than hot, and he considers it a surefire sign that Johnny needs romance in his life again.
- Fallen-on-Hard-Times Job: After getting unceremoniously fired from his job as a cashier, in a throwaway line, Ted says he's done things that he's not proud of for money; in a cutaway, we see him dressed as a prostitute offering oral sex.
- Fan Disservice: The X-ray of Tammi-Lynn's reproductive system and what years of drug abuse has done to it.
- Foreshadowing: Ted and John mocking Law and Order foreshadows the courtroom drama element of the movie.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: During the melee at the ComicCon, one can see someone dressing like Peter Griffin and the Giant Chicken duking it out.
- Funny Background Event: While Samantha gets Meighan to consider Ted's case over the phone, Ted and John fight over the last bottle of beer in the background.
- Happy Ending Override: The end of the first film stated that John and Lori married and Ted became store manager. By the beginning of this film, it's confirmed that John and Lori have been divorced for six months and Ted is a cashier again and loses his job due to his lack of legal rights.
- Improv Comedy Is Inane: Ted and John love to go to improv comedy clubs, but only to heckle the comedians by asking them to act out situations that are obscenely unfunny, such as 9/11 and Bill Cosby.
- Insistent Terminology: Despite their marriage being annulled, Ted refuses to refer to Tammi-Lynn as anything but his wife.
- The Internet Is for Porn: And you're never more than two clicks away from black cocks.
- Law Procedural: The plot of the movie is Ted going to court in order to be legally acknowledged as a person.
- Misplaced Retribution: Sam Jones tries to beat up John at Comic-Con for his car window getting smashed with a rock, which was really Ted's fault.
- Nasty to the Waitress: When Ted, John and Sam are at a diner, they notice a customer establish himself as an unpleasant human by being rude to a waitress over the delay in bringing his coffee, and retaliate by throwing a Cookie Crisp into his glutes.
- Periphery Demographic: Invoked and lampshaded for Trix cereal.
- Police Code for Everything: Someone attempting to steal Tom Brady's sperm has happened so often that it's now on the Boston police radio as a 3-17.
- Polite Villains, Rude Heroes: Shep Wild, the enemy attorney in the courtroom scenes, is calm and professional, just doing his job without any apparent malice. The heroes mock him personally, with even Samantha getting in a dig at his haircut.
- Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: Samantha is completely oblivious about pop culture icons like Samuel L. Jackson, Rocky, Star Wars and Star Trek. On the other hand, John and Ted is completely ignorant of higher culture icons like F. Scott Fitzgerald or even World War I.
- Porn Stash: Ted is quite shocked by not only what John has in his collection, but how it's organized!
- Questionable Casting: An in-universe example is John's horrified reaction to Jonah Hill being cast as Superman.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Patrick Meighan gives a gentle but firm one to Ted when declining to take his case, saying that he could have done a lot of good for the world had he used his status as Animate Inanimate Object to act as a role model for society, but instead chose to be an alcoholic and a drug abuser.
- Running Gag:
- Shipper on Deck: Ted teases John and Samantha about them being a couple, wanting them to get together.
- Shout-Out:
- The sperm bank scene is a complete reference to what happened to Peter in Family Guy.
- There's a blink-and-miss-it moment where there's a fight between someone dressing like Peter from fighting the Giant Chicken, a Running Gag in Family Guy.
- The entire law library scene is more or less a satire of 80s montages, complete with homages to The Breakfast Club to the tune of a Revenge of the Nerds soundtrack song (specifically the song during the Hard-Work Montage that was also parodied in Family Guy when the guys fix up the "Drunken Clam" after a Karaoke night).
- Upon seeing the marijuana farm, John, Ted and Samantha re-enact the scene in Jurassic Park when the characters first see the dinosaurs, while quoting other movies, like Contact.
- Ted's chosen last name is Clubberlang.
- At a comic book convention, Patrick Warburton's character appears dressed in a blue Tick costume, in a nod to his role as the titular character in the 2001 live-action The Tick (2001).
- His new boyfriend Michael Dorn is dressed as a Klingon, specifically Worf.
- When Donny tries to avoid getting caught, he disguises himself as Raphael, in a costume that resembles that of the 1990 film. And then we're shown Jim Henson-esque costumes of the other three turtles, and another Raph costume.
- Ted repeatedly accuses Samantha of having eyes like Gollum from The Lord of the Rings. She runs into someone in a Gollum mask at Comic-Con and is horrified.
- At Comic Con, the top gets ripped off of a triple-breasted woman.
- The scene where Ted and Tammi-Lynn are having a very heated argument while she cooks him a steak is very similar to a scene in Raging Bull.
- When John and Ted try to steal Tom Brady's sperm, Ted wears a raincoat and hat that make him look like Paddington Bear.
- Ted’s quest for personhood is a Whole-Plot Reference to the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “The Measure of a Man.”
- Take That!:
- Ted calls John out on readying his penis at the sperm bank in public, asking him, "Where do you think you are? Red Lobster?"
- In the Fox News coverage of Ted's trial, all the pundits just say "We agree on everything all the time".
- There's also this:
Ted: You're covered in rejected black guy sperm! You're like a Kardashian!- Ted and John repeatedly joke that Sam's alma mater, Arizona State, is just a party college.
- A very subtle one which may have just been an odd coincidence (probably not considering the writer). The Police Code for trying to steal Tom Brady's sperm is a three-seventeen. 317 is the area code for Indianapolis, home of the Colts who have been rivals to the Patriots for over a decade. It was also an Indianapolis reporter who uncovered the whole "deflategate" scandal which is briefly mentioned when John is talking to Tom Brady.
- Tuckerization: Patrick Meighan is named for a writer and producer on Family Guy.
- Wham Line:John: No, I’m fine. I was…I was just thinking about Lori.
Ted: Oh, Johnny. Come on. Man, it’s been six months since you guys got divorced. - What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Discussed, and acts as the driving force of the plot.
- With Lyrics: Ted makes up words to the Law & Order theme. "Let's go make some laws..." [music playing main character singing]
