10 Most Popular Ice Age Characters Ranked Worst To Best

The early 2000s saw the animation industry making a definite shift from hand-drawn cartoons to 3D modelling. While the "Toy Story" and "Shrek" series are rightly acknowledged as the vanguards of this trend, another major franchise from the time that tends to get overlooked is "Ice Age" and its various spin-offs and sequels. 

The first movie in the series was released in 2002, and it followed the adventures of an unlikely group composed of Manny the Mammoth, Sid the Sloth, and Diego the Saber-tooth tiger on a quest to reunite a human baby with its tribe. "Ice Age" was a big success, and it was followed quickly by an ever-expanding series of films and shorts all taking place in a time when humans did not rule the world. 

With each new "Ice Age" sequel, the original trio of Manny, Diego, and Sid met more new characters, some of whom came to become a permanent part of the core group. Friendships were forged, families were raised, and enemies defeated as Manny and Co. dealt with one new emergency threatening their world after another. Let us take a look at some of the most popular characters from the series based on their personal appeal to audiences.

After thinking himself the last of the mammoths for a long time, Manny was thrilled to meet Ellie, a fellow mammoth who lived life as a possum. Manny and Ellie got married and had a daughter whom they named Peaches. Naturally, given her lineage, Peaches became a focal point of the "Ice Age" stories in later sequels, and that was not always a good thing. 

It was unsurprising, given her young age, that Peaches often got saddled with the "bratty teenager" storylines in the series. This included Peaches being impatient with her parents and wanting more freedom, and ignoring her friend Louis, a molehog, in order to look cool in front of her mammoth peers. It does not help that Peaches often brings out the worst traits of Manny's personality as an over-protective dad. 

Despite her immature behavior, Peaches is ultimately a brave and kind-hearted creature who loves her family and friends, and follows their example in taking care of the people around her even at the risk of her own life. Despite her stormy childhood, Peaches ultimately becomes a mature adult in her own right and marries a fellow mammoth named Julian so they can start their own family.     

While Sid the Sloth is the most cheerful character in "Ice Age," his personal life before meeting Manny and Diego was actually quite tragic. It has been shown that Sid was considered such a nuisance by his sloth family that they simply abandoned him to fend for himself. To top it all off, Sid's family comes back to find him in "Ice Age: Continental Drift," only to dump Granny off on him before disappearing again.

Granny is Sid's grandmother, a wizened and shaky sloth who always looked two steps away from death's door. But, despite her frail appearance, Granny is a wily old thing, quick with a verbal beatdown as well as a physical one using her cane. Granny also claims to have a pet named Precious, who was thought to be a deceased animal, but instead turned out to be a very-much-alive whale. 

Granny's cantankerous nature can be hard to stand at times, and her willingness to saunter headfirst into danger often makes her a liability in high-stakes situations. Still, she eventually grew to become a valuable member of Sid and Manny's crew, and fans were happy to see her get a happily-ever-after when Granny chose to stay back in Geotopia as a young sloth. 

Later installments of the series got increasingly more fanciful, involving asteroids and time travel and sea pirates. But the original "Ice Age" was a relatively grounded tale of survival in the Paleolithic age. In fact, the movie began with a brutal scene in which a human woman named Nadia tries to escape a pack of saber-tooth tigers intent on eating Roshan, her baby.

With the last of her strength, Nadia manages to escape the tigers and entrusts her baby in the care of Manny the Mammoth. At first, Manny wants nothing to do with Roshan. But gradually the baby's sunny disposition and complete lack of fear in the face of wild animals wins Manny over. Roshan is also responsible for getting the grumpy Manny to go along with Sid and Diego as they embark on a mission to unite Roshan with his father. 

Throughout "Ice Age," it is Roshan's antics that bring a certain lightness to the story. Although Roshan only showed up in the first movie in the franchise, his impact was felt in the other installments of the "Ice Age" movies, since the bond Manny, Diego, and Sid formed while taking care of the baby endured for the rest of their lives.  

Every children's adventure story needs comic relief. Sid fulfilled that purpose in the main trio of the first "Ice Age." But as time passed, Sid became somewhat more mature, and that necessitated the introduction of even more wacky comedic characters. Enter Crash and Eddie, Ellie's possum brothers who first popped up in "Ice Age: The Meltdown."

With the world as they know it threatening to drown in a cataclysmic flood, Manny, Diego, and Sid join the other animals in a mass exodus to a place of safety. Along the way, they encounter Crash and Eddie, who had been raised to see their adoptive sister Ellie as a fellow possum. Despite their small size, Crash and Eddie soon prove they are not be taken lightly due to their acrobatics and energy.

While being there mainly to crack jokes and indulge in slapstick humor, Crash and Eddie do genuinely care about their family, which ultimately grows to include Manny and his friends. The duo can also be counted upon to keep things lively with their daring stunts, such as using trees as catapults or racing each other using logs. 

As the unofficial lead of the "Ice Age" franchise, Manny has a pretty heart-breaking origin story. He had a wife and children, but they were killed by human hunters. For a long time, Manny had no interest in finding a new family, and believed himself to be the last of the mammoths, doomed to travel the world alone before ending his species as an elderly widower. 

But all of that changes when Manny meets Ellie, a fellow mammoth who was raised by a family of possums and thought of herself as one of them. Ellie in many ways is the opposite of Manny. She is good-natured and easy to get along with, and soon makes friends with Sid and Diego. Once Manny manages to convince her of her mammoth biology, he and Ellie get married.

Their family, which eventually grows to include Peaches and her husband Julian, form the backbone of the later films in the "Ice Age" franchise. Ellie proves herself to be a more chilled-out parent than Manny, but is just as ready to fight to protect her family in the face of mortal danger. The love that Manny and Ellie share also inspires Sid and Diego to try to find their own soulmates, with decidedly mixed results. 

It's hard to think of a cooler animal than a saber-tooth tiger. Being that animal automatically makes Diego one of the coolest characters in "Ice Age." And he has a pretty great backstory as well. Diego started out in the first "Ice Age" film as a member of the pack of tigers looking to hunt down and eat the human baby Roshan, who was being protected by Manny and Sid.

Unwilling to face the mammoth directly, Diego is sent undercover to pretend to aid the baby and its guardians while secretly leading them into an ambush. Along the way, Diego experiences a change of heart. By the end of the movie he had grown to care for Roshan, Manny, and Sid like his own family. Diego betrays his pack and created a new one alongside the sloth and the mammoth.

Later movies saw Diego struggling with his wild, carnivorous nature and his desire to be a lone wolf, before ultimately realizing that the value brought to his life by his new family was more important than his instinct to break away. By the last few movies in the franchise, Diego firmly made his place as a big brother/uncle to the other members of the pack, and even found romance in the form of Shira, a female saber-tooth tiger with many of the same trust issues as Diego. 

In a lot of ways, "Ice Age" is the story of Manny the Mammoth, and the unlikely relationships he makes along his journey through life. Manny was one of the first main characters introduced at the start of "Ice Age," as a grumpy and anti-social animal. He is nursing the secret pain of losing his wife and children, and only wants to be left alone to lead a solitary existence.

With great reluctance, Manny assumes a position of leadership and helps Sid and Diego transport Roshan across the artic landscape back to his human tribe. Along the way, Manny's anti-social tendencies begin to thaw out, and by the end of the movie he finds a new group alongside Sid and Diego. Later, Manny goes on to start a new family with Ellie and his daughter Peaches. 

Manny's nature is not unlike Shrek or even Batman. Underneath his unfriendly exterior. there is real pain brought about by past trauma, all of which hides an ultimately kind-hearted soul who is willing to put his own life on the line to help others. Manny's greatest triumph across the "Ice Age" franchise is not defeating enemies like Soto the saber-tooth tiger or Captain Gutt, but opening his heart to love and allowing himself to become vulnerable again. 

Despite being a late entry into the franchise, Buck (Short for Buckminster) Wild the adventuresome weasel became a clear fan-favorite from his very first appearance in "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs." After a series of accidents, Sid found himself in an underground land populated by dinosaurs. His friends also arrived in the land to save him, not realizing they were in mortal danger of being eaten by the dinos.

Enter Buck, who swung into action with his incredible acrobatic skills and a knife made of a dinosaur's tooth. Using his expert knowledge of the land after years of being trapped underground, Buck is able to free Sid and his friends, and helps guide them back to the above-ground world. Despite having the opportunity to join them, Buck elects to stay back in the land of the dinosaurs, only leaving the realm on occasions of great danger, like when he had to warn Manny and the others about the incoming asteroid attack.

Half-crazed, brutally cheerful, and brave to the point of mad recklessness, Buck is like a cross between Indiana Jones, James Bond, and Captain Jack Sparrow. There is something endlessly fascinating about watching the little weasel outwit enemies much bigger than himself, and living a life of dangerous adventure not out of necessity but purely for kicks. It's wonder that the character got his own spinoff movie.

While the "Ice Age" series mostly places Manny at the center of its narrative, Sid the Sloth is often the chief instigator, the one who makes things happen. And that is because Sid approaches life with an innocence and enthusiasm that Manny and Diego are simply not capable of. It is this same enthusiasm through which Sid convinces Manny to help him deliver Roshan to his tribe in the first "Ice Age."

In later movies, it is Sid's love for others that often forces an exasperated Manny and Diego to get involved in dangerous matters. This includes the time Sid adopts what he thinks are abandoned eggs, only to have a dinosaur mom stomp in to take back her eggs. Despite Sid's clumsiness and general ineptitude, Manny and Diego are won over by his dogged determination to be friends with everyone, and come to love him like a brother.

If Manny is the brains of their group, and Diego the brawn, Sid is undoubtedly the heart. He is also responsible for a lot of the physical comedy that takes place across the franchise — everything about Sid, from his strange lisp to his waddling gait, is designed to provoke laughter. Despite being abandoned by his sloth family before meeting Manny and Diego, Sid proves you can have a second chance at happiness if you keep your mind and heart open to love.

While we've spoken about most of the main characters of "Ice Age," one that has not been mentioned so far is Scrat, the saber-toothed squirrel perennially on the edge of a full nervous breakdown. That is because, despite appearing in every "Ice Age" movie, Scrat rarely has much to do with the main plot or characters of the movies aside from occasionally kicking off a major event due to his ineptitude.

Scrat has little interest in whatever is going on with Manny, Side, Diego, or any other character in the franchise. The chief and only governing passion of Scrat's life is getting his hands on as many acorns as he can to keep them in storage. This simple desire is endlessly complicated by a breathtaking amount of bad luck that Scrat suffers from, like accidentally kicking off a giant flood or getting tossed into deep space.

Scrat's adventures often contradict the chronology of the rest of the events of "Ice Age," but that doesn't matter to fans who love watching the hysterical squirrel put himself through hell all in the name of an acorn. In some ways, Scrat is a throwback to classic cartoons of the past that relied more on physical comedy than dialogues to evoke laughter. Thanks to his popularity with fans, Scrat has come to be seen as the unofficial mascot of the entire "Ice Age" franchise.