History Trivia / DespicableMe1

** French -> "Moi, Moche et Méchant" (Me, Ugly and Mean)

* {{Woolseyism}}:
** In the original, Gru asks for a dart gun--the supremely old Dr. Nefario mishears and instead makes a ''fart'' gun. In French, the misunderstanding is upheld when Gru asks for "une darte roquette" ("a rocket dart") and receives "une darte qui pête" (lit. "a dart that farts").
** Since it doesn't make sense for Miss Hattie not to speak Spanish in the Spanish dub, she instead uses a thesaurus to find out how exactly Gru insulted her instead of a Spanish dictionary.

* DyeingForYourArt: Creator/WillArnett gained weight for the role of Mr. Perkins, because since he was playing a large, heavy-set man, he thought it would improve his voicework.

* DuelingMovies: With ''WesternAnimation/{{Megamind}}'' from (of course) [[Creator/DreamWorksAnimation Dreamworks]].

** In the original, Gru asks for a dart gun--the supremely old Dr. Nefario mishears and instead makes a ''fart'' gun. In French, the misunderstanding is upheld when Gru asks for "une darte roquette" ("a rocket dart") and recieves "une darte qui pête" (lit. "a dart that farts").

* EditedForSyndication: When the movie airs on television networks such as Creator/DiscoveryFamily, ''Creator/{{Nickelodeon}}'' and Creator/{{Freeform}}, the scene where the girls play a carnival game to win Agnes her unicorn is shortened, skipping the entire first attempt and going right to the part where Agnes hits the spaceship but doesn't knock it down. Additionally, they skip the balloon animal part of Gru's EstablishingCharacterMoment and instead start the scene at Gru using the freeze ray at the coffee shop.

* WhatCouldHaveBeen: [[WhatCouldHaveBeen/DespicableMe Has its own Dispicable page]].

* WhatCouldHaveBeen: Behold, [[https://i.pinimg.com/originals/3f/07/11/3f07116a86bdae84f532b30f3a216e63.jpg concept art for the Minions]]. Among the various concepts for them, the Minions were considered as short, big-nosed men in overalls, robots, and lumpy mutant-looking creatures before settling on something resembling their current design.
** Despicable Me has its orgins in 2008. At the time, it was originally titled ''Evil Me''. This [[https://www.cartoonbrew.com/feature-film/humble-roots-mega-hit-franchise-despicable-153709.html article]] features a pitch bible to Universal and Illumination that is drawn by Sergio Pablos. The early drafts are similar to the final film except for a few different things:
*** Gru had a more ObviouslyEvil design with a Literature/{{Dracula}}-esque appearance.
*** The girls had younger designs, looking more like three-year-olds.
*** There was going to be superheroes and Gru would've been the traditional villain.
*** Before Mr. Perkins was created, Gru would've made a deal with the entire goverment to steal the moon.
*** There was no Dr. Nefario.
*** And last but not least, the Minions were going to be mythology and monster villains such as Frankenstein's Monster and Medusa, and originally they were going to be the minions of Gru.
** The feature commentary reveals a few as well:
*** Kyle was originally the name of Gru's [[TheIgor Igor-like]] human assistant, while his "dog" was named "Kragul". The dog also was able to speak at one point in development.
*** The opening scene was originally Gru making breakfast with all of the implements of evil in his kitchen.
*** The minions' trip to the store was originally much longer, with them doing things like foiling a robbery, winning some money, and buying a car. The crew also played around with the idea of said minions coming back from their trip to save the day in the end, or not reappear at all until the credits.
*** Early on, Vector's shark belonged to Gru and was a shark-rhino hybrid.
*** The crew briefly talked about making Vector's base turn into a giant robot in the climax.

* BreakthroughHit: While not groundbreaking in terms of story and animation, the film was able to establish Creator/{{Universal}} as a new and capable player in the animation world. Something that would be solidified with the success of its sequels and spinoffs a few years later.

* CashCowFranchise: The film series has become this for Creator/IlluminationEntertainment, becoming its most profitable work. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_films#Highest-grossing_franchises_and_film_series As of 2020]], it is the ''highest grossing animated film franchise of all time.'' [[note]]Technically, many of the other listed franchises had animated installments; notably, ''Film/TheLordOfTheRings'' and ''Franchise/{{Transformers}}'' both had animated movies made before their more well-known live action installments, while ''Franchise/{{Batman}}'' had both a [[WesternAnimation/BatmanMaskOfThePhantasm theatrical entry in an animated series]] and [[WesternAnimation/TheLEGOBatmanMovie a LEGO adaptation in 2018]], not to mention various direct-to-video animated films. At the same time, they usually only make up a very minor portion of the overall take, compared to ''Despicable Me'', which is entirely animation.[[/note]] On top of that, the Minions are pretty much everywhere in one way or another. Their faces are up there with [[WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants SpongeBob]] and WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons in terms of "cartoon characters we can slap onto a yellow product".

* ReferencedBy: In the ''Series/TheGoodPlace'' episode "What We Owe to Each Other", Michael wins a stuffed minion from a claw machine. He calls it an ugly yellow toddler, but thinks it's one of the most beautiful things he's ever seen.

* TheWikiRule: [[http://despicableme.wikia.com/wiki/Despicable_Me_Wiki Here]] is the wikia for the movie franchise.

* MissingTrailerScene: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvXMWcUhKMY#t=1m37s The scene where the kid whose balloon Gru popped]] in the beginning of the [[WesternAnimation/DespicableMe first film]] comes back to exact revenge on him, with his friends to back him up, and the limp balloon still on his face... yeah, that wasn't in the finished film.