How Many Minions Gru Has In The Despicable Me Movies

The release of Despicable Me 4 raises the question about the number of minions that serve Gru in the franchise. The mischievous, yellow monsters are a beloved part of the Despicable Me universe. The all-male minions in Despicable Me have a reputation as cute, banana-loving engineers. Their shared goal is to serve Gru, and they successfully help him by eliminating Despicable Me‘s villains. The amount of minions out there helping Gru, however, is debatable.

The amount of minions out there helping Gru, however, is debatable. Despite having their own Minions movies, the minions are still a massive part of the Despicable Me films as well. With that in mind, it’s veryeasy to lose count of them. Their corresponding outfits and just the fact that there’s so many really don’t help either.

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Despicable Me Detail Suggests A Very Different Minions Origin Than $1.1 Billion Movie Revealed

In light of Despicable Me 4, it’s easy to forget that the original film in the franchise suggested a very different origin story for the Minions.

There Could Be Over 10,000 Minions

A Source Confirmed A Minion Count Greater Than 10 Thousand

In 2013, the Despicable Me Facebook page provided clarification on Gru’s forces by finally confirming that Gru commands 10,400 minions.That makes sense, considering that there seems to be an unlimited number of minions running around at any given time in Despicable Me and Minions movies alike. Some minions, like Kevin, Bob, and Stuart, take more of a role in the foreground, but others more or less stay quiet. It is also difficult to recognize individual minions as, apart from a few differences like eye and hair count, they look almost identical.

Are There Actually Over 1.6 Trillion Minions?

Some Calculated A Lot More Minions

Even though Despicable Me‘s social media confirmed the 10,4000 minions count, not everyone is so convinced. A Redditor on a Reddit thread actually did the math and based their findings off the Despicable Me 2 poster that shows Gru standing in front of an army of minions. Their calculations suggest that there are 1,687,000,000,000 minions in total.

One can assume the height Gru is at is roughly 200km from the surface of the Earth (I made an overlay of this image on the Gru image, and it matched). Now, a rough estimate is that the poster has a 1/6th coverage of the entire circle that Gru can actually see, it brings his area seen to be 3.14*(r2). Radius can be calculated by the formula:

√(height above surface in cm)/6.752) = (Distance from horizon in km).

This brings r = 544 km.

Plugging it into the area formula, the visible area is 9.3*105 km2.

A minion’s height is roughly twice its diameter (using
this
as reference), which puts its diameter at roughly 80 cm, with each one occupying an area of 5,024 cm2.

The highest circle packing efficiency is approximately 90.7%, which puts the effective area covered to be 8.435*1015 cm2.

This brings the total amount of minions that would be present to cover such a large area to be 1.687*1012.

The full math is quite complicated. It is safe to say, though, that the Redditor used real-life logic and applied it to the Despicable Me characters in order to calculate how many minions there could be. That said, the number is clearly greater than what the Despicable Me account stated, hence why there’s still a reasonable amount of certainty surrounding this subject. It may not be cleared up until it’s directly addressed in one of the movies themselves.

Whether there are over 10,000 minions or trillions of minions, it is a safe bet that Gru has way more minions than he could possibly need. The minions are not just having adventures with Gru, as they have movies of their own as well. However many minions there are, they can safely continue to be enjoyed along with other characters in Despicable Me 4.

Despicable Me 4

The infamous (and kind-hearted) not-super villain Gru returns in Despicable Me 4, the fourth entry in the long-running movie series from Illumination Entertainment. The fourth film also sees the return of Gru’s wife, Lucy, portrayed again by Kristin Wiig, and introduces their son.

Director

Chris Renaud , Patrick Delage

Release Date

July 3, 2024

Studio(s)

Universal Pictures , Illumination Entertainment

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