If you're a Despicable Me fan, you probably have a not-so-secret obsession with the Minions. These little yellow creatures wormed their way into viewers' hearts with their overalls, their playful gibberish-y language, and their odd fondness for bananas. Minions, the third movie in the Despicable Me franchise, is breaking box office records as well as receiving rave reviews from both critics and audiences. This film focuses on three main characters, but throughout the series, fans have been introduced to a whole lot more. However, we've never been explicitly told just how many Minions we've come into contact with. How many minions are there in total? Let's count 'em up.
The first movie featured seven particular minions with distinct names and appearances, but there were many, many more visible throughout the film. In a TrailerAddict interview for Despicable Me 2, director Pierre Coffin discussed the number of minions as it related to his voicework for them (he both directs and stars in the films). He described how he did an unofficial vocal test for the Minions, which producer Chris Meledandri listened to and promptly declared, "Well, you're going to be the voice of the Minions." Coffin accepted, but was unaware that he was going to portray "like, a hundred of them throughout the two movies."
So There's 100, Right?
So there's a hundred Minions, yes? Actually, not even close. Coffin is in fact credited with voicing 899 Minions. He explained how the enormity of the task grew with each film, telling FlickeringMyth, "When I voiced the first two movies it was okay. It was very small parts in the first one, then the second one was a little bit more but still okay. When I said yes to the third one, I didn't know I was gonna voice hundreds of Minions."
So, 1000?
So we know that Coffin provided vocal work for almost a thousand of these peculiar little creatures, but is that the total number of their species? Nope — it was actually revealed through the Despicable 2 marketing campaign that the total population of the Minions is much, much larger. The poster portrayed Gru standing over a giant hoard of of his yellow henchmen, and the studio asked fans to guess how many Minions were depicted.
So How Many Are There?!
The real answer? 10,400. That is a LOT of goggles.
Interestingly, though, it's been noted that there are only 48 possible distinct physical appearances of Minions. This is because there are a limited number of variations between hair, eyes, and height and build. This fact means that there are a lot of identical Minions running around the world, making it even harder to keep track of their exact number. But who can complain about that? The more Minions, the more yellow love to go around!
Images: Universal Studios (2); Giphy (2)
