Despicable Me - TV Tropes (2025)

Despicable Me - TV Tropes (1)

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Despicable Me is a CGI animated film series and Universal franchise that began with the 2010 film of the same name, produced by Illumination Entertainment and distributed by Universal.

The film series follows an ex-supervillain named Gru, his wife Lucy, his three adopted daughters (Margo, Edith, and Agnes), and a large army of Minions as they combat a variety of other supervillains throughout the decades. Since the first film it has become one of Universal's main properties, spawning plenty of films and spinoff material, including shorts and theme park attractions.

Feature Films <!—index—>

  • Despicable Me (July 9, 2010)
  • Despicable Me 2 (July 3, 2013)
  • Minions (July 10, 2015) — A Prequel feature film starring Gru's yellow, well, minions, in The '60s before they met him.
  • Despicable Me 3 (June 30, 2017)
  • Minions: The Rise of Gru (July 1, 2022) — Another prequel following Gru as a kid and his Minions in The '70s.
  • Despicable Me 4 (July 3, 2024)
  • Minions 3 (June 30, 2027)

Animated Shorts

<!—index—>

  • Home Makeover (2010)
  • Orientation Day (2010)
  • Banana (2010)
  • Puppy (2013)
  • Panic in the Mailroom (2013)
  • Training Wheels (2013)
  • Tree Lighting Ceremony (2014)
  • Binky Nelson Unpacified (2015)
  • Competition (2015)
  • Cro Minion (2015)
  • Mower Minions (2016)
  • The Secret Life of Kyle (2017)
  • Minion Moments (2017)
    • Drenched
    • Overkill
  • Yellow is the New Black (2018)
  • Santa's Little Helpers (2019)
  • Minion Scouts (2019)
  • Minions and Monsters (2021)
  • Post Modern Minion (2022)
  • Mooned (2023)
  • Midnight Mission (2024)
  • Game Over and Over (2024)
  • Benny's Birthday (2024)

<!—/index—>

Comic Books

  • Minions (2015)
    • Minions Viva Le Boss! (2018-2019)
    • Minions: Paella (2019)
    • Minions: Sports (2021)
    • Minions Mini Boss (2022)

Literature

  • Despicable Me: My Dad the Super Villain (2010)
  • Despicable Me: The Junior Novel (2010)
  • Despicable Me: The World's Greatest Villain (2010)
  • Sleepy Kittens (2010) — Despicable Me - TV Tropes (2)Defictionalization of the book Gru reads to the girls.

Theme Parks

  • Despicable Me: Minion Mayhem : A ride based on the film which opened in 2012 at the Orlando Universal Studios, followed by a duplicate being opened at the Hollywood park in 2014, then another duplicate being opened at the Japan park in 2017, and finally another Despicable Me - TV Tropes (3)duplicate being an opening day attraction at their Beijing park in 2021. And apparently yet another will open at their Singapore park in approximately 2024.
  • Illumination's Villain-Con: Minion Blast: A ride based largely on Minions and its follow up which opened at Universal Studios Florida in 2023, as part of a Minion Land retheming to the front of the park.

Video Games

  • Despicable Me: The Game (2010)
  • Despicable Me: Minion Mania (2010)
  • Minion Rush (2013)
  • Minions Paradise (2015)

<!—/index—>

This series provides examples of:

  • Bilingual Bonus: The minions' language is mostly nonsense, but includes a mish-mash of words borrowed from other languages. They call ice-cream "gelato" (Italian), say "kanpai!" ("cheers!" in Japanese) when toasting one another, and in several scenes where they give someone something, it sounds as if they say "para tú", which means "for you" in Portugese. There's also a scene near the beginning of the first movie (the one with the water cooler) where a minion says "espera" ("wait", in Portuguese and Spanish).
  • Central Theme: Family and The Power of Love
    • The first film is about parent-child relationships.
    • The second film is about romantic relationships.
    • The third film is about sibling relationships.
  • City with No Name: While the franchise introduces and goes to many other different places — Freedonia in the third movie, Mayflower in the fourth, and real life cities such as London, New York and San Francisco in the Minions films — the main setting where Gru and his family live is never given a name or a specific location, other than clearly being somewhere in America.
  • Color-Coded Characters: Both the heroes and the villains have their own color schemes to set them apart.
    • For the Grus:
      • Gru — Black/Grey.
      • Margo — Green.
      • Edith — Pink.
      • Agnes — Blue.
      • Dr. Nefario, Dru, and Robert — White.
      • Marlena — Purple.
      • Lucy — Turquoise.
      • Minions — Yellow.
      • Kyle — Black.
    • For the villains:
      • Vector — Orange.
      • El Macho and Scarlet Overkill — Red.
      • Balthazar Bratt — Purple.
      • Maxime Le Mal — Green.
  • Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Even ignoring Gru's fair treatment of the Minions prior to his Character Development, a good majority villain has shown to have genuine care for their relatives and/or sidekicks. Vector has his father, El Macho has his son and pet chicken, Scarlet Overkill has her husband, and Balthazar Bratt, gets along with his robot assistant. Even Maxime Le Mal, the most ruthless of the villains with a personal vendetta against Gru, has both a girlfriend and a cockroach army he treats well enough. So far, the only villains who don't share this trait are the Vicious Six, who have no qualms betraying their leader to make room for the "next generation".
  • Funny Background Event: A bit of a running gag with the Minions.
  • Hated Item Makeover: In the bonus short "Home Makeover", a social worker comes over to check if Gru's house is suitable for children. Since the house is full of weapons and rather intimidating-looking, the girls give it a makeover that results in it looking very cheerful and kiddie. When Gru comes home, he finds it so Sickeningly Sweet that he passes out.
  • House Inspection: In the short film "Home Makeover", a social worker is coming while Gru is away, so Gru's daughter must redecorate the house (with Minions' help) to make the supervillain-lair-looking house looks safe for children or else they will be sent back to their old Orphanage of Fear.
  • Impossibly-Compact Folding: Used at least once per film. All of them are physically impossible, but perfectly in conformity with the Rule of Funny.
    • Despicable Me: At Super Silly Fun Land, Gru pulls a small pistol out of his coat, which promptly unfolds into a gigantic plasma blaster that he uses to blow up the "Space Killer" game and win Agnes her stuffed unicorn.
    • Despicable Me 2: Lucy Wilde's teeny-tiny car suddenly sprouts massive sternplanes, rudders and engines — all obviously bigger than the entire volume of the vehicle — when it transforms into a submarine.
    • Despicable Me 3: the Villainmobile is capable of deploying a dozen huge missiles on extendable launch rails — and then reloading them for a second salvo.
    • Despicable Me 4: Principal Übelschlecht has long mechanical arms and monster truck wheels somehow built into her wheelchair.
  • Once per Episode:
    • Gru's daughters are put in danger or harassed by villains in every Despicable Me movie. In the first movie, they not only had to put up with Miss Hattie for God-knows-how-long, but are kidnapped by Vector, with Margo almost falling to her death for good measure. In the second movie, they are almost eaten by Minions mutated by PX-41. In the third movie, they are kidnapped again by Balthazar Bratt, and this time, they all almost fall to their deaths. In the fourth movie, they are almost interrogated by Übelschlecht on Gru's whereabouts. They don't even get a break in spinoffs, as they are under threat of being sent back to Miss Hattie's in the "Home Makeover" short, and they almost get crushed by the machinery gone haywire in Despicable Me: Minion Mayhem.
    • Also part of every film, the climax involves the Big Bad kidnapping people that are close to Gru. The first and third films had the girls being kidnapped by Vector and Bratt, respectively, the second film had El Macho kidnap Lucy, and the fourth one had Maxime kidnap Gru Jr. This also extends to the Minions films as the first movie has Scarlet capturing Stuart and Bob in order to blow them up and later threatening the entire Minions tribe, leaving Kevin to save them while the second movie has Gru himself being captured by the Vicious Six, forcing the Minions to go after him.
    • In each of main Despicable Me films, expect one minion to end up left behind and/or being the biggest butt of the joke.
  • Villain Opening Scene: All the movies begin showing the villain's heist, with the exception of the first Minions movie and 4 (where Gru goes to a Class Reunion to arrest the bad guy).

Steam rolling whatever I see...
...Huh, Despicable Me.

Despicable Me - TV Tropes (2025)
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