Zootopia 2: Hidden Easter Eggs, New Characters Unveiled, and Secrets From Inside Disney Animation HQ

Disney swung open the doors to its Burbank Animation HQ, and we dove headfirst into Zootopia 2—fresh off a new trailer today—uncovering Easter eggs, new faces, and insider secrets from the sequel to the 2016 Oscar winner, racing into theaters November 26, 2025.

Disney dropped a fresh Zootopia 2 trailer today, then brought me to their Burbank Animation HQ to poke around the sequel in progress. The movie hits theaters November 26, 2025. I spent a day playing games, doodling animals, and grilling the filmmakers about how they plan to top the 2016 Oscar winner. Short version: bigger, nerdier, furrier.

A day inside Zootopia (for real)

They threw us straight into a Zootopia-themed escape room inside the ZPD Evidence Room. I learned two things: 1) Judy Hopps makes detective work look way too easy, and 2) I am not Judy Hopps. From there, it was sketch time with actual animal models - a rabbit and a porcupine - while artists talked through how the newcomers move and emote. We even spitballed sports gags for Gary De'Snake, the slippery new guy in town. Snake basketball? Harder than it sounds. It all wrapped in the recording booth, where I stepped into Nick Wilde's shoes and dubbed a scene opposite Nate Torrence live as Clawhauser. Yes, I tried to channel Jason Bateman. Yes, I have a new respect for voice actors.

The scale: 40,000 animals and counting

Director Jared Bush and co-director Byron Howard walked me through the sequel's sheer size. The endgame here is a city that feels truly alive, not just crowded. One late-film shot reportedly packs in 40,000 animals, each doing species-specific business. That is not a typo.

Howard also credits the cast chemistry for keeping all that scale from feeling sterile. Real-life couple Macaulay Culkin and Brenda Song play feuding siblings in the Lynxley family, and the team leaned into their dynamic. The way it was described to me: they would get the gist of a line, then be told to riff for 10 minutes. Predictably, they went to town.

New faces, familiar chaos

• Quinta Brunson is Dr. Fuzzby, a quokka therapist assigned to Judy and Nick. Cute, candid, and not afraid to drag them through their issues - the contrast is the joke.
• Patrick Warburton plays Mayor Brian Winddancer, a former actor turned politician. The movie even cuts to his shameless action sequel, The Neighsayer 2, a send-up of late-90s/early-2000s tough-guy cinema. At one point he tweaks his own line to: "You say justice is dead. I say NEIGHHH!" If you know Warburton from Disney's Kronk, you already get the vibe.
• Culkin and Song voice the Lynxleys, a bickering sibling duo whose banter benefitted from real-life couple energy and plenty of improv.
• Story artist David VanTuyle sneaks in a cameo as a walrus whose catchphrase is "Hey bub!" Consider that your audio Easter egg.

Building a bigger city (without losing the jokes)

Producer Yvett Merino was blunt about the challenge: Encanto focused on a town and a family; Moana sailed with a small crew; Zootopia is a whole city stuffed with wildly different species. Her fix was to run Story Jams - informal brainstorms where artists turned Marsh Market into a playground of tiny gags: what each animal snacks on, how different bodies handle an escalator, that sort of hyper-specific silliness that makes the world feel lived-in.

Animation upgrade: eyes, fur, and blink-and-you-miss-it stuff

Head of Animation Chad Sellers walked me through the tech glow-up since 2016. Fur systems are sharper, but the big leap is the eyes - more detail, more control, more emotion. The team also went deep on background behavior. Seals and sea lions were a favorite discovery, and their natural quirks get peppered into scenes for anyone paying attention to the edges of the frame.

Hunt the Easter eggs

Head of Story Carrie Liao flat-out told me to watch the signage. A lot of it winks at other Disney movies in ways you can miss if you blink. VanTuyle called some of these micro-details mind-blowing, which is both confident and, knowing this crew, probably accurate.

Music: familiar, but not a rerun

Oscar-winner Michael Giacchino is back on the podium, trying to thread a needle: give you enough of what you loved the first time without leaning on it as a crutch. He builds new themes for new characters and saves callbacks for when they actually matter. His philosophy on restraint is pretty simple:

"You don't want to tell the same joke twice."

He pointed to Star Wars as a masterclass in waiting for the moment: the Force theme during Luke's trench run pops because it has not been hammered into you nonstop. Expect Zootopia 2 to play a similar long game with its own melodic payoffs.

The takeaway

Walking out past my sketch of Gary De'Snake trying to dribble, the picture was clear: this sequel is bigger, flashier, and, yes, funnier, but the charm is still in the tiny, species-specific choices. If the first movie argued anyone can be anything, Zootopia 2 seems ready to prove everyone has a story worth telling - even a quokka therapist, a squabbling lynx family, and a horse mayor with a questionable action franchise on his resume.

Zootopia 2 opens November 26, 2025.