- "It's not about food, it's about keeping those ants in line!"
- —Hopper to the grasshoppers
Hopper is a feared grasshopper who is blind in one eye due to a scratch caused by a recent encounter with a bird. He leads his gang of grasshoppers, including his brother Molt and a restless, ruthless Thumper, who keep full control over the ants. When he is dissatisfied with the amount of offering the ants give him after a second chance, he takes over Ant Island and plots to kill the Queen. After hearing from Dot about Hopper's plot, Flik and the circus troupe return to the island and rescue the Queen with the help of the fake bird that they made earlier in the season. Hopper is initially terrified at the sight of the bird, due to a fear of birds, but soon discovers the bird is fake and attempts to finish Flik upon realizing that it was his idea. But Flik, upon voicing that ants are not meant to serve grasshoppers, causes the entire colony of ants to stand up to the grasshoppers and charge towards them, resulting in Hopper's gang to abandon him and flee, leaving Hopper to be seized by the ants and trapped in a circus cannon, right at the time when it starts to rain. Hopper then seizes the pandemonium to get Dim to shoot him out of the cannon towards Flik, during which he snatches the ant and flies away with him. The circus bugs chase after them to try to save Flik, but they only succeed in pulling off one of Hopper's antennae. Princess Atta then intervenes and swipes Flik away from him. Hopper catches up with Flik and corners him to a bird's nest. A bird then pops out but Hopper, believing her to be another of Flik's tricks, taunts the bird until she shrieks at him. Hopper, now realizing that this bird is the real one, tries to flee but is cornered and snatched up by the bird and taken to her nest, where the evil villian meets his death when the bird feeds him to her baby chicks.
Hopper is the first Pixar villian to die.