The directors said that there are cross-species relationships in Zootopia but they just decided not to show any in this movie (probably so as not to prematurely set the audience's expectations about where Nick and Judy's relationship was heading).

I think that if they tried saying something about bigotry using Nick and Judy's (hypothetical) relationship it would be laying things on too thick. There's way too much bad fanfiction out there with politicized shipping and I don't think that Zootopia would benefit from that.

Also, Byron Howard said that their focus on Zootopia has always been to tell a good story and have good characters, and that the social commentary rose out of it naturally. If they decided to make Nick and Judy fall in love and then be victims for it, then they'd be moralizing too hard and it'd be very noticeable.

Slideshow? Are you kidding? They'll make a damn flipbook!