Zootopia Exposed! (Part Two)

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Zootopia Analysis

2:27Pushkin.

Zootopia Analysis

2:27So I went to see Zootopia at 3.15 p.m. on a Friday afternoon. It was me, seven children, and their associated mothers or nannies, no fathers present. I was the only adult male in the theater. So not only was I there as a professional, but I have never been so demonstrative about the fact that I'm a professional.

2:58I took my notebook out of my backpack, and I was like, I'm not here to enjoy the film. Silence, children! This is a close reading.

3:09I sent my colleague Ben Nadaf Hafrey, a film buff and literary scholar, to see Disney's new blockbuster animated film, Zootopia 2. I told him it was urgent. First things first, did you enjoy the film? I did. I really did. I actually like Zootopia 1 better, but I think it's a good intellectual property. Yeah. Now, so you came in knowing that there was this controversy that exists around Zootopia 2,

3:44and why the particular plot choices that they pursued were pursued. Yeah. And so, and you came to, as I understand it, you came out of the theater with some really strong ideas about why this movie is the way it is. Is this correct? Yes, it is correct. Ben called me up a few days later. Zootopia 2 was now available online. He told me to pull it up.

4:14He wanted to show me something that he thought was a clue to unlocking the true meaning of the film. At 20 minutes and 10 seconds, when... Going to right now. The heroes of the Zootopia franchise are two cops, Judy Hopps, a rabbit, and her partner, Nick Wilde, a fox. In Zootopia 2, they launch an audacious investigation into the Lynxleys, the ruling animal family of the city of Zootopia, who live in a giant mansion called Lynxley Manor.

4:47Okay, so 20 minutes and 10 seconds. Okay. Just to set the scene, Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde, the heroes of the movie, are going to the Lynxley Manor because... Oh my goodness! It's the Zootennial. Oh my goodness!

5:05It's insane! You know what I'm going to say. You know what I'm going to say. My name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to Revisionist History, my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood.

Zootopia Mystery

5:19This is the second part of our investigation into the very curious mystery behind Zootopia, the Walt Disney Company's insanely successful and possibly soon-to-be two-time Oscar-winning movie franchise about a magical world inhabited entirely by animals. If you have not listened to part one of our exploration, you should do that before we go on. And for those who have, allow me to remind you of where we are in our story. Almost 20 years ago, a screenwriter named Gary Goldman says he went to Disney with an idea for a movie about an animal kingdom named Zootopia,

5:57where every animal was told they could be whatever they wanted to be. Gary Goldman sued and lost in a bitter seven-year legal battle, whereupon, late in 2025, Disney came out with a sequel called Zootopia 2. And what is Zootopia 2 about?

6:29A snake named Gary, whose family invented the technology behind Zootopia, the weather walls that make it possible for animals from all over the world to live together, and who had their patents stolen by a family of wealthy lynxes. Lynxes. Could the symbolism be clearer? Stolen by the literal embodiment of corporate fat cats. In this episode, we attempt to answer the most important question of all in this long, bizarre story. Who was behind this cinematic crime?

7:01What did they intend to say? And what could their motivation possibly have been?

7:09To start, to silence any doubts you may still have about the legitimacy of this enterprise, let me now share with you what my colleague Ben found at the 20-minute, 15-second point of the movie. It's a shot, a brief image, looking down at the mansion of the evil corporate fat cats from high in the sky. The camera is, like, high above Linksley Manor, and we see the fireworks going off, because it, and it is the Disney logo.

7:41It is the Magic Kingdom logo. Ben, every single night, for the last two and a half years, I have sat in my little study with one or two of my daughters, and we have seen that exact scene before we watch a Disney movie. And I missed it. I missed it. How did I miss it? It's right there. It's an unbelievable... It's right there. It is an unbelievable visual quotation. It is an exact visual quotation of how every Disney film starts, with the fireworks over the Magic Castle.

8:12So, just to be clear, what this image is suggesting is that Linksley Manor, the home of the fat cats who stole the IP from Gary to Snake, is essentially the Disney castle. Yes. The fat cats are in the Disney castle. The fat cats are in the Disney castle. Disney, famously the Fortune 500 company most consumed with protecting its association with everything wholesome and good, has done something completely out of character.

8:43They've made a movie, a huge movie, in which the home of evil cats who steal ideas from innocent reptiles is presented with exactly the same visual language as the iconic Disney castle. Well, wait, Malcolm. Maybe this is too much. Maybe, you know, they had a party. There's just the fireworks display, whatever. Like, you know, you could write this off if you were a true skeptic. But I would say, then, we should look at the frame at 26 minutes and 42 seconds.

9:15So, this is after...

9:1826.42. Okay. Hold on. So, yeah, set it up, set it up. Ben had me take a look at the moment where Gary DeSnake has finally gotten a hold of the evidence he needs to prove that snakes really invented Zootopia. The crucial bit of evidence in his case against the Lynxleys. You can hear the emotion in his voice. We aren't the bad guys. They are. And this journal holds the secret that will prove it.

9:52I have to prove it. Please. I was thinking to myself, as this happened, I was like, I had seen the fireworks display six minutes earlier, and I was like, wow, that really looked like the Disney logo. But if it were Disney, then surely there would be some other sign in here that were meant to read this as a parallel to the Magic Castle. And so, 26 minutes and 42 seconds, watch what happens when they race out of the ballroom and through the kitchen.

10:23Okay, I'm watching it right now. The snake goes through the kitchen. It's mayhem. They're racing for their lives. She follows them down a hallway, going through the kitchen. They take the hat off the chef. Do you know what that is? It's from Ratatouille, a famous Disney film. Oh, my God. It goes on. At one point, we see a weatherman. What's his name? Bob Tiger. Get it? Bob Iger is the CEO of the Walt Disney Company. In a movie about the weather in Zootopia, the person charged with telling everyone about the weather in Zootopia is the head of Walt Disney.

11:03Tomorrow's weather is, again, everything to announce... They brought Bob in to voice the character, of course. There's more. Later in the movie, Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde leave the castle and pass a weasel selling bootleg DVDs of Disney films. Surely this is gratuitously self-referential. Just listen. Anything you need, I got them. Sequels, prequels, requels. Who says the industry's going down the tube? So, I think the whole thing is just like, fuck you, Disney.

11:33And, okay, last thing, sorry. I will stop after this. No, don't stop. Don't stop.

11:40Coming up after the break, we invite some other critics to join the party.

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Lester Bush Jr Story

15:23Before we go on, it is important to establish a few things. First, there is a universe where the obsessive critic sees things in a script that do not exist. In the 1980 masterpiece, The Shining, the director Stanley Kubrick has the little boy Danny wearing a sweater decorated with a reference to the Apollo 11 moon landing. And there are people on the internet who see that sweater as freighted with significance. I'm quoting now from Reddit.

15:53In the movie The Shining, we see Danny is wearing a sweater which has Apollo 11 writing on it. It's due to the fact that Stanley Kubrick directed this movie, and he was also the guy who directed the fake moon landing. Maybe. Or maybe not. Sometimes a sweater is just a sweater. On the other hand, speaking of Kubrick, there's a whole sequence in Zootopia 2 that also seems to reference The Shining. The villainous Palbert Linksley grimaces and limps his way through a maze behind the castle

16:25in an exact visual quotation of the way Jack Nicholson famously grimaces and limps his way through a maze in The Actual Shining. That is not a coincidence. There are no coincidences in animated movies. They take years to make. Every single frame is drawn and plotted and executed according to a plan. My point is, if there's a Ratatouille moment, weasels selling bootlegged Disney DVDs, a weatherman named Bob Tiger,

16:55and fireworks exploding over the Linksley Manor in exactly the same way that fireworks explode over the Disney castle, the people who made Zootopia 2 did that for a reason.

17:08Okay, second thing. What was that reason? It's not a sly dig, an inside joke, some wink-wink. Whoever was behind Zootopia 2 clearly wanted to make a statement. Exhibit A, a pivotal scene at the one hour and twenty-nine minute mark. Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde have finally apprehended Poppert Linksley, scion of the evil Linksley family. Gary De Snake wraps his body around Poppert, immobilizing him.

17:39Poppert is angry, speaking his truth. And then Judy Hopps silences him. No one will believe you over us. We've always been better than you. And we always will be. Nothing you do matters. Well, it matters to him.

18:03Now that, I think, is the crucial part. Nothing you do matters. This film is not going to change anything. Disney owns Zootopia. But it matters to him. But it matters to him. Talking about Gary the Snake. You've just pointed me to a scene that is, in essence, the climax of the movie. That is the end of the film. The Links have finally been brought to justice. The fat cats are going to live in the magic kingdom. Fat cats are going to live in the magic kingdom. And our heroes, the bunny, Judy Hopps.

18:35And Judy says it does matter. And she looks at Gary the Snake and says, it matters to him. And this is, I mean, I can't believe I missed this. This is the screenwriter saying to Gary, Gary, I understand what you've been through. We took your idea. I can't give you, you're never going to get recognized in the court of law for being the originator of Zootopia. But we can at least give you this small moment of satisfaction that we understand what you went through.

19:06And we understand your contribution. That you are, you Gary the Snake and you invent, your family invented this. It's like, it's insane. It's crazy. It's very explicit. It tracks so perfectly. Ben and I talked about this moment with the filmmakers Britt Marling and Zalbut Manglage. On my instructions, Britt and Zal dropped everything and went immediately to Cezootopia 2. It's not like they made it subtle, as if someone in the writing team knew the score and wanted to do a wink to Gary.

19:40Like, hey, I know what went down. This is our internal apology. A quiet apology to you that only you would understand. They made it in a way that, like, any part of the audience, his family, the surrounding community that knows anything about it would know that this is what the movie is. Like, it's not quiet. It's public. It is not a Straussian reading of the controversy in the sense of, you know, the famous theories of Leo Strauss who argue that texts in conflicted times have hidden messages.

20:20And the goal of the scholar is to decode the hidden message, right? The person attacking the church in the 15th century would never do a real attack. Like, they would make it subtle below the—they would praise the church. But if you read Between the Lines, you would see this. There's no Straussian reading here available in Zalbutopia 2. It is what it is. Yeah, it's not between the lines. It's the lines themselves. It is literally the lines on the book. Yeah. Yeah, and it's not Iranian cinema which has to get through all the censorship.

20:55So that is an interesting thing about Disney. It shows you there's no one at the wheel. Like, they were able to get this through because there—no, the powers that be, the Lynxes did not know what was happening. He's right. Before any script is greenlit, it has to be reviewed by the studio's legal team. The last stop before the wheels start to turn. Is there anything in the script that is potentially problematic? Do we have the rights for everything that needs rights?

21:26Is this bit of dialogue or description defamatory? Is this character a little bit too close to a real-world character? On and on. Someone did this for the script for Zootopia 2. And for some mysterious reason, that person or maybe team of people said, It almost feels like the author of an anti-Disney film got an anti-Disney film past Disney legal in order to make a point about respecting creativity. It is a road map for true authorship.

22:01Yeah, I agree. It's an acknowledgment. It's only, I think, an apology if it's just directly to the person you harmed. But when you make something that's not between the lines but the line themselves, you're talking to the entire community. All of us involved in the forensic analysis of Zootopia 2 agreed. It's the perfect literary crime. The perfect crime reading of Zootopia is that there was a quiet insurrection in the creative ranks at Disney, where they felt that the Disney overlords had committed a kind of moral crime against this brilliant man, Gary Goldman.

22:39They contrived to come up with a secret form of revenge in the form of Zootopia 2. That was a crime in a sense that they were violating their implied contract with Disney. But it's a perfect crime because the movie's so good, they can never be convicted of any crime. They can't get punished. Right. So the way to get away with a crime in Hollywood is to make a work of art, a work of great commercial art. And that makes you completely above the law.

23:12It's genius. I think that there is a strong message being sent about Disney, and it revolves around authorship and a snake named Gary. And that's a lot of coincidences. And who is this genius who pulled off the perfect literary crime? After the break, our best guess at the culprit. Support for the show comes from Public.

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27:10Let me warn you. This is going to require what will seem in the moment like a massive digression. Like when there's a huge construction delay on the interstate, and Google Maps directs you down a side road, and then another side road, and then a farmer's lane in the middle of a cornfield. And you're like, wouldn't I have been better off just sitting in traffic for two hours? And the answer is, no, you wouldn't. The digression is a digression and not an alternate route, because the whole point of the digression is to get you back on the interstate.

27:44Patience, Grasshopper. Thank you. Well, thank you for doing this. I appreciate it. Well, I have no idea what direction we're heading, but let's get on our seatbelts and we'll go.

Jared Bush Connection

27:54All of this starts with a man named Lester Bush Jr. Not the fancy bushes of Texas and Connecticut and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The bushes of Iowa. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to speak with Lester Bush Jr. because he died in 2023. But I tracked down his best friend and longtime collaborator Greg Prince, who told me that his friend Lester was a physician who joined the CIA and rose to the position of the agency's medical director. Lester was also, crucially, a Mormon.

28:26He was in a family whose mother converted to Mormonism, and he and his younger brother were brought along at the same time. His father converted many years later. He became aware of the discriminatory policy of the church towards blacks. Was always uneasy about it. Never felt that it was quite right. Up until the late 70s, the Mormon church had a policy that said that black people

28:56could not serve as priests in the church, which is a big deal. Because the Mormon church has a model of lay priesthood. Priests come directly out of the congregation. And if you have a policy that says that black people can't be priests, you're effectively saying that black people cannot fully participate in the life of the church at all. It meant that the church, which was trying to become a worldwide movement, couldn't really expand beyond North America and Europe. And why did the Mormons have this policy?

29:28Because it was believed that it was part of the divine inspiration given to the prophet Joseph Smith when he founded the Mormon church in the early 19th century. Conventional wisdom all the way up to the top of the church was, well, this was a revelation that started with Joseph Smith, and we have never allowed blacks into our priesthood. But while he did his medical training, Lester began to dig into the Mormon church archives, spent years reading old manuscripts that no one had ever bothered to look at.

29:58What he found first was, no, that wasn't the case, because during the administration of Joseph Smith, the founder of the religion, there were well-documented cases of several black members being ordained to the priesthood. Lester's discovery was that the ban on African Americans was started by Joseph Smith's successor, Brigham Young. Lester wrote up his findings in an academic article in 1973 that rocked the Mormon world. Lester's article showed that this wasn't revelation.

30:31This wasn't etched in concrete doctrine. This was a policy, and it was a policy that began with Brigham Young, and it arose out of, would you believe it, that there was racism in the United States in the 1840s and 50s. And here, I will admit, we are in the middle of the cornfield. But trust me, the interstate awaits.

30:56Five years after Lester published his manuscript, The Mormon Church rescinds the ban on African Americans. And it's Lester's article that provides the justification for that decision. When you look at the history of the Mormon Church, which over the past half-century has exploded in size, particularly in the developed world, everything begins with Lester Bush's stubborn desire to get at the truth. But, and this is crucial, even though Lester Bush changes the course of Mormon history,

31:28is he recognized as a hero? No. Some of the leaders of the church fight tooth and nail to block publication of his famous essay. He has challenged a powerful institution, and powerful institutions do not take those kinds of challenges lightly. He paid a price for it. He was shunned by the church. Eventually, he just withdrew from activity in the church, as did his three children. His wife remains an active church member,

32:00but she has her eyes open.

32:04I thought that it was the cumulative pain that caused him to withdraw, but eventually we were talking about it, and he said, no, it wasn't that. He said, it was just that I saw that there was less and less room in the church for people who thought the way I did. Yeah. That, that's a sad statement to have to make, but there was merit in that. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Only at the end of his life did the church make amends. Lester was invited to give an honorary lecture in Salt Lake City,

32:38an acknowledgement of his contribution. So, here I am, feeling like Rip Van Winkle, and looking like something from a storage closet in a museum.

32:51So, it's an honor to speak to this symposium, and quite a surprise. Both be asked after so many years, and that the subject is still active. Afterwards, he had a private breakfast with an official high in the church, a man named Jeff, in the Mormon hierarchy, a so-called apostle. And then, as we walked out to the underground garage, Jeff put his arm around Lester's shoulder and said, Lester, I just want you to hear it from me, how much I appreciate what you have done for the church.

33:21So, we did have closure eventually.

33:28Lester Jr. was a moral warrior, a man who took on giants on behalf of truth. Oh, and by the way, who was Lester Bush Sr., his father? A CPA who was a spy in the Second World War and spent the 1940s setting up credit unions in the Deep South for African Americans who had been locked out of the financial system. Oh, and Lester Sr. had another son, Larry, Lester Jr.'s brother, who went to Brigham Young University and was kicked out for being gay,

33:59and then moved to San Francisco and became a gay activist. Can you imagine Thanksgiving dinner in the Bush household? Grandpa talks about taking on the Nazis and then Jim Crow, wandering the Deep South to bring outsiders back into the fold. Uncle Larry talks about being cast out of school for the simple fact of his sexuality. Dad talks about the pain he knew that African Americans felt on account of their exclusion and the fight he took up on their behalf, the price he paid. stories about the power

34:32of a personal redemptive gesture. Families have narratives, patterns of practice and behavior that define who they are. You spend your childhood listening to those stories, what do you become? Prince would spend every Sunday night with his friend Lester. Very good family man, had three kids, just as a sidelight. Wait for it. His second child and first son is the director of animation for Walt Disney Studios.

35:05Lester Bush's eldest son, Jared Bush, runs all of animation for the Walt Disney Company. And 10 guesses what script Jared Bush is most famous for writing. He's this guy who wrote Zootopia 2.

35:20And Zootopia, Moana, and Encanto. But here, this is a question I had though, because this is actually what led me into all of this. I watched Zootopia 2, and Zootopia 2 is a movie about how an excluded class of animals, the reptiles, had been kept out of the world of the animals. And the movie is all about bringing those, bringing the reptiles back into the fold, bringing the despised snakes back into the fold

35:52and honoring them as, and I'm wondering, is Zootopia, am I correct in reading Zootopia 2 as a kind of, Jared, is he continuing the family intellectual tradition here? I haven't talked to him about that, but I think you're onto something there. If you go back and look at Encanto, you see the same type of thing. There, number one, the focus is on extended families, which comes right out of his heritage.

36:24But the other is that the star in it wears glasses.

36:29And there had never been a star of an animated movie who wore glasses. And he said, in fact, when he was given the British equivalent of an Academy Award for it, he brought the young lady who had sent him the letter saying, why don't you have any animated movies with people wearing glasses? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, Jared has a very strong moral compass. Yeah, yeah. Because it does seem, I mean, it fascinates me

37:00that the father is the one who provides the intellectual foundation for bringing a group fully into the, an excluded group fully into the Mormon church. And then the son writes a movie that's all about bringing an excluded group fully into the animal kingdom. I think it's a brilliant storyline. I had not considered it. Go for it. But I did find something in a New York Times article that gave me some sense of how he thinks about these things.

37:31The piece came out before Zootopia 2, and in it, there was a moment which makes no sense unless you were the one sitting at the dinner table at the Bush family Thanksgiving. The reporter wrote, Mr. Bush's emotions sometimes run close to the surface. Mr. Bush started to tear up, for instance, while talking about the social justice subtext in Zootopia 2. I think that if Larry and Lester Jr. and Lester Sr. had gone to see Zootopia 2,

38:01they would have teared up as well.

38:05It was Gary Goldman who made the connection between Jared Bush and the greater Bush family legacy, or rather, his wife Judy, who he describes fondly as the internet's proctologist. She did the digging, unearthed the story of the remarkable bushes, and Gary says the revelations gave him peace. He feels he understood, finally, where Gary DeSneke came from. So Jared is representing the family honor here. Yes, that's my interpretation. The bushes, the bushes are standing up

38:36for the Goldman's. That's my interpretation. It makes me, it makes me feel very good, I have to tell you. I mean,

Conclusion and Reflection

38:43so this is a weird thing. I'm just telling you this story, and I feel I've been done wrong in a lot of ways, but I feel so close and connected and grateful in a certain way to Jared Bush, and in my imagination, he's a courageous person. Have you ever met Jared Bush? No. Well, I sent him a handwritten letter. Oh, you sent him a handwritten letter? Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, when did you send this letter? After I found out that Gary the Snake was a good guy? Did he respond?

39:14No, he can't, he can't, because Disney, they would go nuts. Right. Somewhere, somewhere Jared is listening.

39:24Jared, are you out there? On behalf of everyone who saw Zootopia 2, let me join the Goldman family chorus.

39:34Well done. Revisionist History is produced by Nina Bird Lawrence, Lucy Sullivan, and Ben Nadaf-Haffrey. Our editor is Karen Shikurji. Fact-checking by Sam Rusick. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. Engineering by Nina Bird Lawrence. Original music by Luis Guerra. Sound design and mastering by Marcelo de Oliveira. I'm Malcolm Glauber. We spend hours

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