There are two competing schools of thought when it comes to the little yellow henchmen’s origins.
When the Minions banana’d their way to a spinoff film in 2015, the lore of their species went a little something like this: They had been around since the dawn of time and their collective goal was to serve the most despicable master they could find. This quest for an evil, but not too evil, boss put them at the forefront for some of the most historic moments throughout civilization. But — and this is crucial — they failed at their subordinate duties way too often. The Minions decimated the entire dinosaur population, crushed pharaohs to death with a faulty pyramid design, and even disintegrated Dracula into dust due to a mistimed birthday party. The only reason they missed the Nuremberg trials is that, conveniently, they screwed over Napoleon on the battlefield and were forced into a century-long period of ice-cave reclusion.
It’s an amusing origin story that’s an appropriate fit for children. But it’s actually a retcon to what was established, however subtly, in the previous two Despicable Me films. According to those, Gru had the Minions created by Dr. Nefario, his prodigious designer, gadgeteer, and right-hand man, in their laboratory to spawn a new breed of loyal (and cute) henchmen. Co-writers Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio came up with the idea, as it “made the most sense” from a character perspective. “They were devoted to him. You don’t see them anywhere else in the world except for in Gru’s lair,” Paul explains. “To us, that’s clearly what had happened. There was never even a discussion about it.” No one in Despicable Me explicitly says this is how the Minions were created, but the confirmation comes from a poster in the bedroom of Gru’s three daughters — it’s a blueprint of a Minion, separated into distinct parts and dimensions. “They’re all biologically engineered from the same strand of mutated DNA. They’re all family. It’s a version of cloning. They’re grown in a petri dish,” Paul continues. “It was an intentional decision not to show a Minion being created. It might be too disturbing. You don’t want to see how the sausage gets made or how the Minions get made.”
This creationist backstory helped shade Gru’s trajectory as a bad guy, which Paul likens to a bearded fellow in The Lord of the Rings. “It’s almost like Saruman who creates the orc army. It’s a classic villain thing to create your own army,” Paul says. “That’s what we were thinking. It makes sense that Gru would have these Minions. He didn’t put out a want ad. He’s not hiring people out in the world. These guys have never been in the outside world. They don’t belong there.” It also helped justify the idea that Dr. Nefario could construct a death-defying companion: “Can a Minion be killed and can anything kill it? The answer is no. They’re in a Looney Tunes world. They’re invincible. They cannot die.”
Minions was green-lit in between the first two Despicable Me films in 2012, with co-director and voice actor Pierre Coffin — who also co-created the creatures’ likeness — suggesting a narrative change. Paul recalls “raising a warning voice” to remind the creative team what was already committed to the screen. “My first reaction was, Wait, what? The Minions were made in a lab by Dr. Nefario, how can this be? But also in the back of my head was, Well, Pierre created the Minions as we know it. It’s his prerogative if he wants to come up with a different origin story for them. It’s creation versus evolution. For the purpose of the movie, it’s fun to show them throughout history. The entertainment value trumps the logic of whatever canon was set up.” The team further backed Coffin given the inconspicuous nature of the bedroom blueprint poster. “They said, ‘Well, it’s kind of subtle, and we don’t think anyone is going to care.’ And they were obviously right. It’s a lesson to learn,” Paul admits. “I got riled up, not in a big way, but I was like, ‘What are we doing, we’re going to destroy this!’ And they said, ‘Nope, nobody will care.’ And nobody did.”
On a personal level, Paul refuses to acknowledge the lore change. (It’s a very David Lynch versus Mark Frost situation.) He’s even rationalized the switch by conjuring up an original concept in his mind. “I feel like the Minions movies are Gru’s bedtime stories that he tells the Minions,” he explains. “For me, the Minions movies are implanted memories so they don’t have to face the fact that they were created in a lab and so they could feel they’ve had a grand and glorious beginning. But that’s not canon.” Another thing that isn’t canon, but came close to becoming such, was introducing female Minions. “Despicable Me 2 is all about romance. That’s when we started to talk about, ‘What if there’s a female Minion, and there’s only one so they’re all in love with her?’ But alas, it wasn’t to be,” Paul remembers. “There was also talk of a Minion egg to show a Minion hatching. Those fell by the wayside and got nixed. There was resistance to changing what the Minions were too much.”
But back to the ice cave of it all. Let’s say that the Minions weren’t forced into a century-long exile after their Napoleonic folly. (They accidentally shot Le Petit Caporal with a canon.) Who would they have aligned themselves with during the two World Wars? Would it have been a Hogan’s Heroes type situation? “The reason they were frozen was that nobody ever has to answer that question,” Paul says with a laugh. “You want to love these guys, so you don’t want them supporting the ultimate evil with the Axis powers. You want them to support delightful evil with Gru. He’s evil in a way that we wish we could be.” He ponders the timeline and adds, “Napoleon was far enough back in history where it’s like, We’re okay with them following Napoleon. We’re not really clear on the atrocities that Napoleon was a part of.”
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