Oh, so you're a troper? Name every trope.
Miscellaneous/Franchise-wide
- The minions. Somehow, they've mutated from a Mascot Mook to the symbol of "Facebook wine moms" everywhere.
- Hella Gay ExplanationCommonly on Reddit and Discord, images of Gru have been used to call other users "hella gay" depending on their positions in posts. Many variations have spawned, examples including "Ultra Gru", "Infinite Gay", and Cuphead's "Triple Gay" meme.
- Gru saying "gorls".
ExplanationGru's accent make the way he says "girls" sound like "gorls". This made its way into many memes, especially those that switch an instance of the lyric "girl" in a song with "gorl", which are accompanied by an image of the musician(s) or music video where Gru's face is photoshopped on them. - NoExplanationA very exploitable image of a distorted close-up of Gru's face.◊
- Gru holding a gun◊ExplanationA photoshopped image of Gru pointing a gun (taken from the cover of True Crime: Streets of LA, hand and all) directly in front of him in Monika's Space Room from Doki Doki Literature Club!. It's used to highlight examples of Disproportionate Retribution, and is typically captioned with "Things are about to get GRUesome". This uses the same image of Gru as the above meme, but less distorted and deep-fried.
- Gru is 14 feet tall. ExplanationTumblr user drkinfession made a post calling Gru "the most powerful being in the universe", talking about how he is able to dodge missiles inhumanly fast in the first movie and break a shark's spine by punching it. Most notably, the post mentions that if the Minions are 3.5 feet tall, and Gru is as tall as four Minions, then he is actually 14 feet tall. The original post became a copypasta, and a lot of fans like pretending Gru is canonically fourteen feet tall.
Main series
Despicable Me
- IT'S SO FLUFFY!ExplanationOne of Gru's first genuine acts as an adoptive father is winning Agnes, his youngest daughter, a large unicorn stuffed animal at a carnival. She yells this line after she gets it.
- There's also "HE'S SO FLUFFY I'M GONNA DIE!". Both lines tend to be used in response to fluffy things that people find cute.
- Gru's presentationExplanation Gru presents a slideshow to Mr. Perkins in an attempt to get funding for his scheme, with the girls messing with the third part by replacing it with a crude drawing of Gru on the toilet. ("I fly to the moon, I shrink the moon, I grab the moon, I sit on the toilet- wait, what?)". This has been snowcloned to hell and back, most commonly having someone do a double-take at a blatantly idiotic third step of their plan or the plan having a disastrously undignified outcome.
- "I will stuff you ALL in the crust!" Explanation In the same scene as Gru's presentation, the girls pester him to order pizza for dinner, specifically one with cheese stuffed in the crust. He is so fed up with them that he yells this at them and two Minions who walked in at the same time.
- "CURSE YOU TINY TOILET!" Explanation Victor says this after shrinking his own toilet and it squirts water at him.
- "Does this count as annoying?" Explanation Agnes patting her cheeks when asking Gru if it's annoying when he told the girls not to do anything annoying. This scene became popular, particularly due to a viral edit where Agnes' cheek patting is synced to Martin Garrix's "Animals".
- "WHAAAAAAAAT?" ExplanationThe Big "WHAT?!" that one of the Minions says is a popular sound effect that has been associated with them.
- "Liiiightbulb!" ExplanationGru says this whenever he gets an idea.
- "Knocked oooooveeeeer!" Explanation Gru says this when he blows up the concession stand at the theme park due to the employee's attitude over Agnes not getting her unicorn plush. Multiple edits of this scene exist on YouTube.
- "In terms of money, we have no money."◊ExplanationAn exploitable image of Gru describing his financial troubles to the Minions. While it's often used to describe financial woes, people have taken to replacing "money" with just about anything else.
- "Do you want to explode?" ExplanationAsked by Dr. Nefario to Edith when she nearly drinks from a potion bottle with no clear indication what's in it.
- VectorFlightSuit.jpg◊ / "You just got Vectored." ExplanationThe image is used to describe acts of Disproportionate Retribution.
- OH YEAH!ExplanationVector's catchphrase. Vector himself is such a Fountain of Memes that this phrase can be expected to follow in the wake of any mention of him.
- "Oh, poop"ExplanationVector's defeat in the first movie, In March 2019 edits of him have been used for a green screen effect.
- "Wow! This is garbage. You actually like this?" ExplanationTaken from the scene where Gru delivers his opinion on the story he reads to the girls. It's seen use as a reaction image for all manners of Take That!.
- I'm having a bad, bad day, it's about time that I get my way ExplanationThe Despicable Me theme song became a popular meme after a video of Chara manipulating Frisk to sing the song from "Story of Undertale" was uploaded, often snowcloned by replacing Chara and Frisk with another characters.
Despicable Me 2
- "Bah bah bah, ba-na-na-na! Bah bah bah, ba-na-na-na!" ExplanationThe first teaser trailer for Despicable Me 2 featured the Minions singing a silly song about potatoes and bananas set to the tune of The Beach Boys' "Barbara Ann". It managed to become one of the most popular things related to the Minions despite only being in a teaser trailer.
- The minions' imitation of a fire engine's siren: "BEE-DO BEE-DO BEE-DO....." ExplanationLike the "Banana" song, the Minions' siren imitation has become popular and heavily associated with them, though to a lesser extent.
- The 24-hour music video of "Happy" spawned many covers from people around the world where they sing and dance along with the song. Its title is "Pharrell Williams – Happy – We Are From [name of the city]"
- Gru whispering, "El macho..." has become a form of praise on Spanish-speaking parts of the Internet. There also has been a joke about fans of El Macho being called "machistas", which is actually the Spanish word for "male chauvinist."
- The song "Just a Cloud Away" randomly blew up on TikTok in 2022, following the footsteps of "Hello Hello", "How Bad Can I Be", and "Big and Chunky".
- "Who plans a kid, legit, pop that pussay like I need..." Explanation In the wake of the Gentleminions meme, many people on platforms like TikTok and YouTube Shorts began to use the Minions cover of I Swear as a sound. Some people thought the lyrics prior to the Minions saying "underwear" sounded like...something a bit risqué for a kids movie. It got popular enough to the point where music platforms like Spotify and Apple Music proclaimed these as the official lyrics for a short while.
- guys i have bad news ExplanationAn image macro editing the movie's poster to say this at the top, with the "bad news" at the bottom either being something very trivial or something that was already known for a long time.
Despicable Me 3
- Not long after "Just a Cloud Away" from the previous installment came and went, a nightcore remix of "Hug Me" suddenly got popular on TikTok. This was followed by the original, unaltered song becoming popular.
Despicable Me 4
- GRU FUCKS Explaination As soon as Gru Jr. was revealed in the trailer, many on social media have come to the conclusion that Gru canonically had sex with Lucy, with some jokingly lamenting how a fictional character can get laid but not them.
- Gru vs Megamind Explaination Since Will Ferrell is going to be the villain of this sequel and his movie, Megamind came out the same year as the first Despicable Me (which many have argued contributed to Megamind's status as an Acclaimed Flop), the connections weren’t lost on people.
- AI is secretly the Minions ExplainationA Super Bowl commercial for the film takes a potshot at AI by showing Minions making AI-generated images and posting them on the internet for their own amusement.
Spin-offs
Minions
- "What were the Minions doing during [insert horrific historical event]?"ExplanationA key part of the Minions' backstory is that they are naturally inclined to serve the most villainous master possible, and at one point they're shown at the command of Napoléon Bonaparte. A number of viewers online, especially the Minions' detractors, ran with the idea, depicting the Minions as helping various historical despots and participating in various atrocities. Because the Minions stuck with Gru since 1968, other jokes posit that Gru must be worse than every dictator, despot, and criminal who came to prominence since then.
- Khmer Rouge Minions / "What were the Minions doing between 1975 and 1979?" ExplanationSince Pol Pot memes blew up in popularity around the release of Minions: The Rise of Gru, people started adding two and two together, making memes specifically about the Minions serving the Khmer Rouge.
Minions: The Rise of Gru
- Upon the movie's theatrical release, many young adults began attending showings while dressed in full suits (as a largely ironic expression of appreciation for the film), referring to themselves as "Gentleminions". While Universal seems to appreciate the memes, most movie theaters don’t, with some banning people wearing suits due to those involved in the meme having mosh pits and throwing bananas at the screen ala The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
