Zootopia 2 Revealed: 8 Wild Secrets — Gary the Snake, Cartoony Chaos, and a Buff Horse Mayor

Disney’s Zootopia 2 is taking shape at Walt Disney Animation Studios, and a recent studio preview revealed eight concrete facts about the sequel — from how the idea began to the animation tricks that made the new characters work. Read on for the confirmed details the filmmakers shared, plus a few technical notes straight from the artists.

Zootopia 2 started with a small doodle
Zootopia 2’s most important new character was ridiculously hard to animate
Gary is sometimes two or three Garys
Pushing the “cartoony” element in Zootopia 2
Why Zootopia 2’s new baddies are lynxes
Zootopia 2 will explain a lot more about how the city functions
The new Mayor went through a lot of iterations
The animators stuck a Ratatouille reference into the movie

Zootopia 2 started with a small doodle

The sequel’s central idea — a snake named Gary who’s somehow inside Zootopia — began from a quick sketch. Co-director Byron Howard explained that the drawing came during the team’s work on Encanto: “It wasn’t long after the first Zootopia wrapped up and the three of us jumped onto Encanto that Jared did a little sketch that said ‘Zootopia 2,’ and the 2 was a snake,” Howard said. “That was key at the very beginning.”

As a result, the filmmakers expanded the world-building that the first movie only hinted at, notably how reptiles fit into Zootopia’s history and why the original film excluded them.

Zootopia 2’s most important new character was ridiculously hard to animate

Gary De’Snake is a hybrid snake intentionally built from several real species, and the team kept many authentic snake traits. However, those same traits caused technical headaches. Head of animation Chad Sellers said, “You might not know this, but ropes are one of the hardest things to animate in CG — and Gary’s basically just a big rope with a face.”

Sellers described the detailed work: “If you think about a chain of joints, you have to manipulate every joint, and it overlaps, and it’s so long. And to get that right is surprisingly difficult. You just have to babysit that thing. With Gary, we had to babysit each [vertebra in his body] when he slithers or when he’s moving along the ground. It’s a fun challenge, but it’s complex.”

Also, because snakes lack eyelids, the team created a visual solution called “lid brows” to give Gary expressive, cartoony facial movement while remaining true to snake anatomy.

Gary is sometimes two or three Garys

To keep Gary’s scales and proportions consistent while changing his length for specific shots, the animation team used a daisy-chained rigging approach. As Sellers explained, “When you build a character rig, you have to set the character size. What we did was build it comparatively to the size of Nick and Judy. For him to do the things he needed to do, we had to be able to adjust his length without stretching him, which would only stretch out his scales. We wanted to make sure we were true to all the material of what Gary is, [so we] found the solution of stitching them all together, and it worked great.”

Therefore, in scenes where Gary wraps around people or objects you might spot a brief blur of extra heads along his body — a practical fix that preserves scale detail and avoids distracting texture deformation.

Pushing the “cartoony” element in Zootopia 2

The directors said the sequel leans more into cartoony comedy, and that choice influenced pacing, music, and character design. “Comedy is really difficult,” Bush said. So when we say to Michael Giacchino, ‘Make the music dumber,’ or when a story artist or animator is working on something and it gets more cartoony, it’s fun to be able to flex.

Howard added that slapstick and old-school cartoony moments exist alongside grounded, emotional acting: “Jared and I love slapstick humor,” Howard said. “We love old-school cartoony fun. But we also know the animators and designers we work with are all world-class, so we can ask them to do something super-cartoony, and then they pivot on a dime and do something that breaks your heart. There’s acting in both of these movies that is just so incredible and so moving and so grounded, and the fact that we can have all of it in one movie is terrific. I think that’s why people like the first Zootopia — you have that panorama of experience.”

Why Zootopia 2’s new baddies are lynxes

The film introduces the Lynxley family — Milton Lynxley (David Strathairn), Cattrick (Macaulay Culkin), Kitty (Brenda Song), and Pawbert (Andy Samberg) — who act as powerful opposites to Judy and Nick. The choice is research-driven: the filmmakers asked what animal best opposes reptiles, and then considered natural behaviors and diet. “Reptiles need warmth — what is an animal associated with the opposite of that? So having a cold-weather animal made a lot of sense.” Bush said.

Additionally, Bush pointed to an intentional predator-prey contrast: “Lynxes are really interesting because they have one primary food source — that is, rabbits. It was very intentional,” Bush said. “Lynxes are felines and foxes are canines, so we have this balance there. So literally for everything we’re doing, we’re very, very specific on why we’re making these choices and how that’s going to ripple through.”

Zootopia 2 will explain a lot more about how the city functions

The sequel digs deeper into how Zootopia actually works. For example, the movie explains more about the “weather walls,” the dividers between biomes that were hinted at in the first film. “We allude to [them] in the first film, but you don’t really understand how they work exactly,” Howard said. “You figure out there’s a huge history behind those things. A lot of the movie hangs around the creation of those weather walls. And that’s us leaning into How would Zootopia actually work? That’s our grounding.”

Moreover, the team tackled practical city problems such as diet and food supply. Howard described research-driven solutions: “If animals really built this city, what would they have to deal with? Certain animals are obligate carnivores, like wolves and jackals, that can only exist [by eating animal] protein. So the problem was left to us in the first film, What do these guys eat?” The film shows items like “bug burgers” — insect-based foods positioned as a high-protein option — and the filmmakers used humor while discussing those choices. “In our research, we found that bugs and fish don’t have a soul,” Bush joked. “So it was easy for them to eat these animals. That’s official — you can look that up. That’s on the interwebs.”

The new Mayor went through a lot of iterations

Mayor Winddancer (Patrick Warburton) is the sequel’s new leader — a muscular ex-action-star horse turned politician. The team tried several options before settling on Winddancer, including a gruff elephant, a buff kangaroo concept, and an over-tall giraffe gag that couldn’t reach microphones. “We used to have a different mayor of the city — it was this giant, very gruff elephant, but it felt like something we’d seen before,” Bush said.

When an artist named Ami Thompson proposed the horse-as-former-actor idea, Bush and Howard accepted it right away. You can read about Ami Thompson on her fandom page.

The animators stuck a Ratatouille reference into the movie

Animators added a visual joke that nods to Pixar’s Ratatouille. Jared Bush credited the artists with pitching small ideas that sometimes appear on-screen: “We have so many artists that bring their own ideas in,” he said. “Sometimes it’s not in the blueprint of the script, but those things are being put on the screen. Sometimes, someone just has a really funny idea for a joke and that goes into the movie.”

There are also larger film homages, such as a return for Mr. Big (Maurice LaMarche), who remains visually and audibly modeled after Marlon Brando in The Godfather. Bush said these references are a way to honor filmmakers they admire without distracting from the story.