This story is an experimental piece inspired the Red Hot Chili Pepper's song "Under the Bridge," the lyrics of which draw a parallel of sorts to Nick's situation before and during the film. I realize that elements of this song were inspired by vocalist Anthony Kiedis's drug addiction prior to the recording of Blood Sugar Sex Magik; however, he has also stated that it was just as much inspired by feelings of loneliness and despondency brought about by his struggle with dependency and withdrawal. In the case of this story, Nick's former struggles with society's bias against foxes and the limits he had to face as a result of his species' stereotypes would have brought about similar feelings of desolation and estrangement. When Judy entered his life, however, she gradually managed to liberate him from his skepticism and inhibition by showing him love and conviction he thought was obsolete for foxes such as him. For these reasons, I forge a connection between the song and Nick's circumstances. Have a listen or read the lyrics and see if my interpretation is viable.
Staring down at the dry, brittle dirt beneath the underpass of the all too familiar bridge, Nick was reminded why this was the last place in Zootopia he wanted to be. It was as lonely and arid as ever, yet it was the place he once would have felt most at home.
This bridge, for some time, had served as his solitary refuge from the cruel, unforgiving world he knew all too well. For nearly a decade, it had been a sanctuary all his own, a place he could come to think and resolve. And long before that had it been a meeting ground for him and various faces of the Zootopian underworld that put food on his table.
Suddenly, as if the notion were occurring to him for the first time, the red fox started, realizing that it had been 20 years since he had first visited this place. He was going to be turning 32 years old soon.
Twenty years, Nick chuckled, Man, I'm getting old.
Twenty years since he had nearly lost his home.
Twenty years since he had learned his first painful lesson of how he lived in a bigoted society where foxes were perceived as the lowest of the low, the scum of the earth – the very embodiment of what it meant to be a selfish, deceitful, unreliable predator.
Nick could still feel the sting of the muzzle as it dug into his skin, chafing it and all but cutting off his oxygen supply. He could still taste the salty tears as they ran down his face, matting his fur and burning where they seeped into the cuts and scrapes made by the muzzle. As he ran home that evening, all he could think of, his only consolation, was running through the door of his tiny flat, jumping into his mother's arms, and begging her to take the pain away.
And that's exactly what she did, albeit temporarily.
But somewhere in the mind of a young Nick Wilde, the fox kit knew that this is what life for his species was like, had always been like, and always will be like. Things were never going to change, especially not in the eyes of the prey majority. To them, foxes would always be leeching, traitorous insects that needed to be squashed before their population could gain any ground in society.
And if that's what they accused him of being, expected him to be – wanted him to be – then that's exactly what he would be. There was no point – no fathomable possibility – of him being anything else.
It started out small, and for all the right reasons, under that remote bridge tucked away in the shadows of an abandoned Savanna Central public park. Nick, merely 12 years old then – but perfectly capable of seeking out an opportunity to make a little money – had received a job offer from a street savvy panther of delivering a pair of snake leather boots (snake leather, granted any kind of leather, was and still is illegal to use or sell) to a fennec fox's pawn shop in Sahara Square. If he did the job right, the panther told him, the boy would receive enough of the profit to keep him and his mother in their apartment for another month.
It was nothing major, Nick had told himself, just a little run for another misunderstood predator who was willing to help him and his mother out. And though what he was doing happened to be illegal, at least it was for a just cause.
When the moment of truth came, he knew there could be no turning back. Unless, of course, he was willing to allow his home be taken away from him and his mother, forcing her and the young fox out onto the streets.
And he certainly wasn't willing to let that happen.
So Nick met the shady panther under the bridge and, despite the latter being reluctant to put his faith in a 12-year-old, received his instructions, which he carried out with adept haste and efficiency. It wasn't too hard, and the fact that the pawnbrokers son, a young fennec fox about Nick's age, was helping with the transfer made the red fox kit look more credible. And it made Nick feel better about the situation – if another fox his age was working in the shadows to help keep food on the table, then that meant he wasn't the only fox his age compromising his morals to sustain his household.
Maybe this is what foxes all throughout Zootopia had to do to survive in an urban jungle pit against them. If you couldn't man up to the challenge of stepping out of your comfort zone, then you fell to the bottom.
The principle of "survival of the fittest" hadn't perished at the end of the Savage Era, it had just taken on a new incarnation – they still lived in a cutthroat world that forced you to either adapt or be tread over and left behind.
And there wasn't an animal in Zootopia, neither predator nor prey, that wouldn't hesitate to stomp all over you. That was just the way things were.
Perhaps that was what drove him back under that bridge time after time over the next 9 years. The jobs didn't get much bigger – officiating a petty black market auction or selling another "priceless article you can't live without" to a gullible customer willing to shell out big bucks for anything labelled "limited edition." Nick still remembered the night he had dinner with a rising Tundratown crime boss and sold him "the softest wool rug ever made in the Meadowlands."
The secret was to cater to your audience – make even the most cut-rate items sound invaluable and sought-after, but keep the price fair enough that they didn't suspect you were swindling them. Once they wanted it bad enough and were convinced you were legitimate, you went in for the kill – told them they couldn't get it anywhere else. Then they were sure to buy, sometimes more than one of the same item.
Fake it 'til you make it, he had reminded himself repeatedly.
Though the jobs remained small and insignificant, Nick was soon making enough to not only keep him and his mother in their apartment, but ever-so-slightly improve their standard of living. By the time he turned 21, he had saved up enough money to buy his mother a comfortable loft in the Rainforest District, where she earned a comfortable living working as an assistant to a local woodcrafter, and move into his own apartment flat.
And all that time, he had his mother under the impression that he was the delivery boy for a small-time artisan working downtown.
Of course he felt guilty that he had basically lied to her since he was 12 (he still hadn't told her all the truth), but what choice did he have? They never could have gotten to where they were if he hadn't stepped up to be the man of the house. His father had never been around to take charge of the situation, so Nick did so himself.
But there was always that notion that he could have done something different, that he had been too desperate and acted on a foolish impulse. Ambition had him in its tight grasp, however, so he made a life of going back under that bridge again and again – not out of desire, but out of necessity to improve himself and his circumstances.
But what had started out as a necessity for improvement became a necessity for something different - isolation.
Even when he wasn't going under the bridge to get his next assignment, he would often visit just to be alone. To reflect on what he could have done differently, or to consider the possibilities of change and improvement the future held, then to face the reality that circumstances would never improve because of what he had been designated as at birth – a cunning, conniving fox.
Under that bridge, Nick Wilde made journeys of shame and self-reproach, of self-loathing and self-pity, of denial and acceptance of his situation…
Or he would retreat under the bridge because he was afraid – because deep down he was still just a scared little tod who was frightened by what the future had in store for him and wasn't ready to face it.
And the best part was – no could see through the façade he had fabricated as a shroud of false security. It was this veil that became the signature Nick Wilde smugness, the self-reliance and complacency that the red fox emanated with each step he took. In fact, he spent so long obscured and disguised by this cloak that even he began to believe in the new "Nick Wilde" persona.
Soon enough, it had become a habit to ignore his true thoughts and emotions and to defy his better judgement. Even in the face of burly, rugged predators who could have snapped him in two like a twig and swallowed him whole, Nick was sure to be standing there, unfazed, wearing that signature blasé smirk.
Nick Wilde would make sure they never saw that they got to him.
It came at a dear price, however – he began to see his mother less and less, mainly because he didn't want her to see what he had become, the level he had stooped to in his search for prosperity.
Under that bridge was the only place he could drop his act – he shed his layers until there was nothing left but a fox and the emotional burdens he was carrying, the ones he had hidden from everyone but his own reflection.
Burdens of fear, loneliness, dejection, guilt, anger at himself, anger at the world, and, heaviest of all his burdens, regret.
Regret that he had taken the panther's initial offer…
Regret that he had lied to his mother and let her slip away…
Regret that he had let things get this far and hadn't made his escape while he had the chance.
But it was too late… he had missed his chance. The only thing he could do now was fake a smirk and keep going.
Things didn't get easier, especially not after a police raid on a black market auction sent his contacts into hiding and left him without any backup or an outlet for income. Now, it was up to him to organize his own cons using whatever resources he could scrounge up. More alone than ever, it was hard to keep the bills paid, and he often went to bed hungry. Things got a little better when Nick managed to reconnect with Finnick, the fennec fox from Sahara Square who had been helping his father during the red fox's first underworld excursion. They were leading similar lives at the time and decided it would benefit them both if they joined forces and stuck together.
But instead of helping each other, they only fell faster into discontent together.
Soon enough, Finnick had joined his new partner under the bridge.
All Nick had been trying to do when he started was save his home and make life better for him and his mother, but instead he had made an overall regression…
If that wasn't enough, he had involuntarily dragged someone else down with him.
There was no point in trying to make any more improvements – one, all his attempts ended in nothing more than just enough money to get by with and sleep-depriving guilt; two, he had pushed away anything that had ever meant anything to him, particularly his mother; and three, at the end of a day, he still had the face, tail and whiskers of a common fox…
And that was all that Zootopia saw him as – would ever see him as.
At this point, he was perfectly fine with shrinking under that bridge and drowning in his own self-condemnation.
Then Judy Hopps came into his life…
Over the course of three days, she showed him that she not only trusted him, but saw something more to him that a sly smirk and a propensity for artifice.
Judy gave him back the reassurance he hadn't felt since his mother had held him in her arms the night the muzzle had been strapped to his face.
But best of all, Judy gave him hope…
Hope that things would get better if he had courage and faith…
Hope that he could set things right for the people he had wronged…
Hope that one day Zootopia would see him, his species, and every other predator as a valuable component of society.
Nick had been afraid to emerge at first, scared of the challenges and changes that awaited him on the other side…
He had panicked and run back under when he thought he had lost Judy's trust…
But when she came back and tried again, he realized that she still trusted him, so he knew he could trust in her too…
That's why he had followed her out and helped her solve her first big case…
And now that things were said and done, he was thankful he had come out from under the bridge.
One by one, mammals everywhere, predator and prey, were following him out, finally liberated from typecasting and bigotry.
And to think it all started with one little rabbit who had big dreams to join the ZPD and "make the world a better place."
She had done that… and so much more. She had brought the people of Zootopia, Nick at the forefront, out from under the bridges they had built with their own distorted paradigms.
As he began his descent from the bridge, Nick cast one last glance back at the bridge that had invited him in with the promise of progression, made him feel welcome for a moment, and then covered him up for nearly 20 years…
And turned the other cheek.
It had been almost a year since Nick Wilde had stopped living under his bridge…
And one thing was for certain – he never planned on going back.