Headscratchers / Despicable Me 2

• Did the Omniscient Council of Vagueness that employ Lucy and recruit Gru exist in the first movie? If so, where the hell were they when all that nonsense was going on?
  • My guess is that without people like Gru on their side, they really are that incompetent.
• What exactly would El Macho have accomplished faking his own death?
  • Could've been any number of reasons. He may have been burnt out from villainy and wanted to live a normal life for a while, or maybe he wanted to lay low while he thought of a really big plan.
  • It can be inferred from the movie that El Macho wanted to retire as a legend originally; so he faked his own cool death. After Gru stole the moon successfully, El Macho seems to have gotten inspired to try one real BIG plan. Notice how when Gru is describing El Macho's supposed death, he narrates it awe-inspired and like it's shrouded in myth.
  • He did say to Gru that he is going to make a spectacular "return to evil", which indicates he did indeed retire from villainy and either Gru's moon theft or whatever caused him to "drown his sorrows with guacamole" resulted in him becoming a villain again
• How did El Macho managed to contain the Evil Minions? They have been shown to be able to eat everything - ranging from a truck to an exploding bomb - and yet cannot chew through their cage bars?
  • My guess is that they didn't eat through the bars because he told them not to. Whatever he does to make the minions loyal to him pretty clearly works.
• Why did Lucy not recognize the minions when they appeared at the cupcake shop, when she ran into them when she picked up Gru the first time?
  • Maybe she thought they were someone else's minions.
• Where did Eduardo's Mexican flag tattoo go?
  • It was presumably a fake tattoo as part of his disguise. Note how El Macho didn't have it in the flashbacks, either.
• So, Lucy's on her way to Australia, starts randomly hallucinating Gru, and decides that... she loves him. Was I the only one going "what"?
  • Manic Pixie Dream Girl Cloud Cuckoo Lander. She does not operate on the same logic as sane people; trying to make sense of her thought processes and patterns is futile.
  • It is an incredibly common romantic device—all it means is that she was thinking about him a lot. To the point of parody. The whole scene could have been from her perspective, as I sincerely doubt the people on the plane would have been so happy about her opening the emergency door.
  • So then why did she kiss Gru on the cheek after rescuing him from the horrible blind date with Shannon? To cheer him up?
• What happened to Avery? Despite the (at least, according to Gru) gender-ambiguous name, I'm pretty sure the fact that Margo was texting a boy was a plant to show that she had a possible romantic interest. And then, he just disappears, she sees Antonio, falls head over heels, and he's never heard from again? Why introduce him at all if he's not important?
  • It sets up Gru's Papa Bear instincts, but yeah, it was sloppy storytelling.
  • It could have been a girl, or a male friend she's not romantically interested in.
• When Gruzinkerbell fell over, his dress flared upwards, and the kids got a good luck at what was underneath. First of all...ew. Secondly—shouldn't they have realized that he was, in fact, male, and therefore not a fairy princess?
  • The shot immediately afterwards as Gruzinkerbell starts to sit up shows that the dress frills were covering any "unmentionables".
    • Plus, he was clearly wearing bloomers under the frilly dress.
• Why did Gru have a fairy princess dress, wings and a blonde wig? The dress was clearly fitted to him.
  • He could ask Dr. Nefario and minions make one instantly. Or obtain one.
• Maybe it's just Rule of Funny, but why would Dr. Nefario spray the contaminated El Macho with the fart gun when he knows that the potion turns its victims into bulletproof, basically indestructable rage monsters? How did he know that El Macho would be so easily felled? And if all it took was a disgusting smell—why didn't they just envelop the entire place in it, rather than rely on jelly-guns, which require aim?
  • Presumably because Gru wanted his minions back to normal.
  • This bugged me until I realized that it's very likely the serum DIDN'T make them indestructible, just rage monsters. This accounts for why the taser worked on El Macho, too. He picked the minions to use as his army instead of something simpler (like any number of easily-accessible animals) because he knew that basically nothing can really damage a minion.
• Antonio just disappears for the fight scene. Didn't he realize, due to the general noise and chaos, that his home was being attacked? What was he doing?
  • Probably taking cover. If you were a supervillain with a family and children, wouldn't you have some sort of "hide until Daddy/Mommy sorts this out" plan in place?
• It's very touching an all that Dr. Nefario decides to forsake his new job and chance at evil for the sake of his family, but honestly, what did he think was going to happen when Gru refused El Macho? And he must have known Gru would refuse — his pursuit of the "honest business" was what drove Dr. Nefarious away.
  • On the same note—aren't minions just as part of his family as anyone? And yet, he has no qualms subjecting them to terrible experiments that turn them into crazy rage-monsters?
    • To be fair, he was rather kind to them, providing them with a paradise island and free ice cream when he incarcerated them. And there's no real evidence that they suffered.
    • The twitching and screaming didn't seem like suffering to you?
  • He hasn't had the best judgment in the movies(Like returning the girls to the orphanage in the first movie) and seems to believe Gru would be happier as a supervillain than as a legitimate businessman, he was expecting Gru would accept (look at the confusion on his face when Gru flees). To his credit, he had the antidote readily available, meaning that he actually knew what he was doing with the minions, who are near indestructibles on their own.
  • Well, he probably didn't think that transforming the minions counts as hurting them, especially since it makes them more powerful. Getting eaten, on the other hand, is indisputably harm.
  • As shown in the prequel Minions, the minions need to serve an evil master. He may have thought he was helping them, ensuring their survival.
• Lucy is very proficient in martial arts—proficient enough to even invent her own moves. How did an overweight, aging man like El Macho manage to get her tied up to a shark and dynamite without any visible scratches and/or taser marks? (And yes, she gave her lipstick taser to Gru, but come on. She must have had other weapons.)
  • Presumably El Macho had his legendary strength to subdue her. But then that begs another question — why was El Macho so quick to take the super-serum anyway? It's not as if Gru was showing any signs that he could stop him at that time, yet El Macho goes for the last resort right off the bat. It would've been more plausible if El Macho fought Gru, but Gru somehow got the upper hand, forcing El Macho to take the serum out of desperation.
    • Rule of Cool?
    • El Macho has been out of the game for a couple of decades, in that time he's clearly put on weight and isn't as young as he used to be (not that he's lost all his legendary strength, its just diminished), meanwhile Gru's only very recently retired, and is still clearly on form. As such El Macho being weary about his first fight years, against a man whose still at his peak isn't to unreasonable. Its clear from there scene in El Macho's lair that, he admires Gru and knows about his work, as such he's probably well aware what he can do (did punch out a shark after all).
  • As was pointed out on the Awesome page, Lucy getting captured was a conscious choice because had she fought back, innocent civilians might have gotten hurt.
• After Gru tasers El Macho, he poses and says "Lipstick taserrr!" in the same manner as Lucy when she tasered him earlier in the movie. Lucy says "Aw, he copied me." How did Gru know how to copy what Lucy did if he was tasered at the time she was doing it?
  • He heard her say it when he was being tasered?
  • Because Tasers don't knock you unconscious - they temporarily kill your muscle control.
• Where was Gru's mom throughout the film? Even though she made a silent appearance at the end, why were her whereabouts never explained?
  • It wasn't explained because it wasn't important. Why waste time on a character that doesn't have a major role in the story?
• What about the Evil Minion that popped up at the end? Did they miss one of the Minions while they were shooting them with the antidote?
  • A better question: How would an Evil Minion stay unnoticed until then? While regular minions may be competent at stealth, the evil ones seem too berserk to bother with it. Especially for enough time to let Gru and Lucy have 147 dates plus a wedding.
  • There is a scene where Gru, Stuart and Dave climb to the top of a tower and the Evil Minions climb up after them. Gru grabs one of the Evil Minions that lunged at him, opens a window and throws him inside the tower. Therefore, to answer your question, it is a possibility that that particular Minion did not receive the antidote and stayed that way.
• Why did El Macho and Nefario kidnap the minions at all to use the serum on them? Why not just buy a ton of dogs and inject them instead?
  • Probably because Gru had already put a lot of work into the minions, giving them biological advantages. Alternately, they couldn't use animals because animals aren't smart enough to follow orders.
• Where were Lucy's parents at the end of the film? They did not seem to be seen at Lucy and Gru's wedding.
  • Do we know her parents are still alive? Her being an orphan would fit with her being a permanent AVL agent, as well as helping to explain her Cloud Cuckoo Lander tendencies.
    • It could also serve as something to make her and the girls form a quicker bond.
    • Lucy's parents were killed by a villain when she was a kid.
• Why was Gru and Lucy having such a hard time kissing during the wedding? After 147 dates, wouldn't they have figured out the details?
  • Nerves?
  • Their huge noses got in the way.
  • I think what they're asking is why their noses got in the way. After going on 147 dates together, shouldn't they have figured out a way passed that issue already?
  • I saw a video some time back of a couple who didn't even have their first kiss until the day of their wedding. It was clumsy and awkward because neither of them knew what they were doing. Perhaps something similar happened between Gru and Lucy?
• "Physical fitness is very important to Shannon," she says, as she's about to tuck into a huge plate of carbs and red meat. Does she have the metabolism of a small rodent?
  • In case you haven't noticed, she isn't the sharpest tool in the shed. Also, Hypocritical Humour.
• El Macho's fake death was truly a glorious one, but how was nobody in the past suspicious that he willingly went into a volcano just to "die" when being "killed" in battle with a hero or other villain would be more believable?
• How did El Macho not know of Gru's Heel–Face Turn (I doubt he would've thought they would rule the world together if he did), especially with Dr. Nefario working with him at the time?

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