Minions (Despicable Me)

Minions are fictional yellow creatures that appear in the Despicable Me franchise, which started with Despicable Me (2010), and are characterized by their unique language and childlike behavior. They are also the official mascots of Illumination, a division of Universal Pictures. Following Comcast's purchase of NBCUniversal, they have been described as being a corporate icon for Universal and Comcast, on par with Disney's Mickey Mouse.

Characteristics
The Minions are small, yellow henchmen, shaped like pill capsules. They are depicted as being roughly one-third to one-half the height of humans. They have one or two eyes, and their irises are almost always brown (except for Bob, who has one green and one brown eye). They have no discernable noses but seem capable of smelling, as they are shown smelling fruit and are affected by the Fart Gun. They are also shown without ears but can hear and respond to sounds. Most minions appear either bald or with a few wispy strands of black hair on their heads. Since their coming to America in the late 1960s, their clothing consists of blue overalls emblazoned with Gru's logo, black rubber gloves, shoes, and goggles. They mostly speak incomprehensible gibberish, which is partly derived from other languages, including Bahasa Indonesia, French, English, Italian, Spanish, and Hindi. Although seemingly nonsensical, the English-sounding dialogue is dubbed differently for every country, in order to make the sounds somewhat recognizable. They have common English-language names, such as Kevin, Stuart and Bob (the lead trio in Minions) and Mel (the leader of the Minions in Despicable Me 3).

Minions, the 2015 animated feature film, shows that they have existed since the beginning of life on Earth. Minions are biologically wired to seek out and serve the most terrible of villains, when they have no "boss" to serve they become depressed and listless. In the 2010 short film "Banana", the Minions are revealed to have an almost uncontrollable craving for fruit, especially bananas.

Notable minions
Mentioned in the films and other media in the Despicable Me franchise are Stuart, Kevin, Bob, Dave, Jerry, Carl, Bryce Wong, Tom, Phil, Tim, Jorge, Paul, Donnie, Mark, Lance, Ken, Mike, John, Steve, Norbert, Tony, Chris, Eric, Henry, Larry, Josh, Darwin, Bryan, Charlie, Barry, Mandi, Eli, Izzy, Mel (for Despicable Me 3), and Peter.

Legacy
Since the release of the Despicable Me films, the Minions' popularity has been rising. The Minions have been regularly featured in cross-promotions for other Comcast/NBCUniversal properties, including Universal theme parks, NBC primetime TV series and an Xfinity remote control.

"Minion versions" of the Simpson family appear at the end of The Simpsons episode "Treehouse of Horror XXV", which aired on October 19, 2014.

In 2015, the village of Minions, Cornwall in the United Kingdom built a road sign paid for by Universal Studios featuring Minions. In October of that year, they removed it due to safety concerns that resulted from people stopping their cars to take photos although villagers have campaigned to get the sign put back up in another location.

On April Fool's Day 2016, Google created a button on its Gmail service that sent a "mic drop" along with a GIF image of a Minion. However, the feature received backlash in which many people complained about accidentally sending the image during job searches which resulted in some people being dropped from job consideration or being fired. Google removed the feature not long after, citing those reasons as well as a bug that caused the image to be sent after hitting the regular send button.

The Minions appeared in an advertisement for the Cinemark theater chain, in which several Minions try to change a lamp while another Minion mocks them. The mocking Minion drops the replacement lamp during one of his laughing fits so the others stick him in the socket so that his eye can serve as the lamp. The ad promoted the chain's claim that they had the brightest 3D projection system of any theater chain. At first, the clip played before showings of Despicable Me 2, but Cinemark uses the ad freely before any 3D movie.