This article is about the creatures. For the upcoming 2015 film, see Minions (film).
The Minions are small, yellow, cylindrical, creatures who have one or two eyes.
Jerry, Kevin, Stuart, Dave, and Carl having an ice cream party from Despicable Me 2
They are impulsive creatures with little self-control, but with a wide-eyed wonder and odd innocence that endears them to viewers and makes them relatable. They can be pesky when they are doing weird interactions with other people, animals, or objects. Minions have standard English names (see below).
Unlike most other criminal masterminds and their usual doctrine of abusing their henchmen, Gru gets along famously with his minions. He genuinely seems to like them and even shows appreciation for their hard work and support. He even seems to know each of them by name.
Appearance
A rambunctious bunch of simple-minded homunculi, Minions are a similar size and shape, but have unique features to tell them apart, such as height, number of eyes, roundness or secondary features such as hair, eye/pupil size or clothing.
Minions wear metal goggles accommodating their number of eyes, blue overalls with Gru's emblem on the front, and small black gloves.
Minions possess few additional physiological characteristics; with a crack and a shake, they can double as glow sticks for activities in the dark, such as going through ventilation ducts. They additionally can survive without air, as one is seen in outer space without oxygen in Despicable Me.
Though there are several hundred minions, there are only about forty-eight possible combinations of height and build (short and chubby, medium, tall and thin), hair (tall buzz-cut, short buzz-cut, sprout, combed, spread out, bald), and eyes (one, two). One-eyed minions are always almost all small, although a tall one-eyed minion appears in a promotional artwork. Tall Minions are all with Sprout-Cut Hair.
Personality
They are fiercely loyal to Gru and Dr. Nefario and extremely eager to please, willingly helping with any evil plans, but at the same time they are friendly and fun-loving. Despite being relatively simple-minded, they are capable of building weapons, operating those weapons, using computers, and even driving.
They express themselves through actions, not words: their "language" is fairly basic, they speak in a strange jabber combined with various human languages - evident in some (roughly) English words such as "Banana", "Bapples" (basically "Apple" with "B"), "Potato", as well as Spanish-sounding words like "para tú" (roughly "for you") and "la boda" (means "marriage"), French (poulet tikka masala, et pis c'est tout), Russian words such as "да" (Da"), and Korean words such as "Hana(하나), Dul(둘), Sae (From Set [셋]" means One, Two, Three), and many other languages. Hence, their language is incomprehensible to most humans, though they do understand English. It is also possible to isolate elements of Japanese from their speech patterns.
Minions love bananas and apples (or "bapples", as they call them), and the mere sight of one of these fruits can result in complete chaos. They also enjoy fine arts and find anything having to do with buttocks extremely funny. There are few things these little guys do not find funny. They also love spitting, frog legs, bunnies, and building things. They love trying new things and presumably they also love potatoes (they mention potatoes on occassion.) They dislike being unsure of themselves, and when Gru leaves questions unanswered. Their sense of humor is somewhat childish, if not silly, laughing from the sound of bubbles in a water filter, scanning their own butt in a copy machine and when mentioned words such as "botton".
Minions also enjoy playing, especially with Agnes, Edith, and Margo, as seen in the toilet paper fight scene.
Notable Minions
List of notable Minions can be found here.
Quotes
"Poppadom?" — Stuart when disguising as a girl.
"Gelato!" — Minions (means ice cream).
"Kanpai!" — Kevin (means cheers).
"Pwede na?" — Minions (means "can we start").
"Papoy?" — When Minions are talking about toy.
"WHAAAT?" — Jerry.
"Para tu" — Phil when giving Agnes a toy.
"BEE-DO! BEE-DO!" — Carl mimicking fire truck siren.
"Ka ga" — A Minion when excited to join a beach party.
"Bottom" — Tom and Stuart making fun of Silas Ramsbottom's name.
Appearances in Other Media
- Minions are the stars of the mobile game Minion Rush.
- A minion makes a cameo in another Illumination Entertainment movie, The Lorax.
- Various minions make appearances during the Illumination Entertainment logo for their movies.
Gallery
- Main article: Minions/Gallery
Trivia
- Minions are the official mascots for Illumination Entertainment.
- Minions' quotes are now one of the popular internet memes.
- The models of the Minions are redesigned in the second film.
- They are known as the scene-stealer of the films.
- Eric Guillon, the art director of the Despicable Me movie series, is the creator of the minions.
- In the first film, Minions have slightly crooked teeth while in the second film, they have aligned teeth.
- Minions may be based off the servbot from Megaman Legends as they both are Minions/Servants to an evil character and they both have the same color scheme.
- The Minions have personalities that are similar to the Raving Rabbids from the Rabbids video game series.
- Minions have only three fingers.
- In the first film, there were really only seven well know main and notable minions that names are mentioned by Gru and has a big part which are: Dave, Stuart, Kevin, Jerry, Tim, Mark and Phil.
- Their existence as artificial beings is noted by the final schematics in the little girls' room. Minions are possibly made from humans by the Minionizer, a ray gun that turns humans into Minions, as seen in Despicable Me: Minion Mayhem at Universal Studios.
- This is generally considered as non-canon (or just something Gru invented for the express purpose of the ride).
- One of the short films suggests they are made from a single strand of mutated DNA.
- According to Pierre Coffin, there are over 899 minions.
- In the theatrical poster of the second film, it shows that there are at least 10,400 minions.