Trivia / Despicable Me

• Acting for Two:
  • In the European Spanish version, actor and humorist Florentino Fernández voices Gru and Gru's mother.
  • Pierre Coffin as the minions Bob, Mark, Phil, Stuart and Tim.
• All-Star Cast: So much so that the teaser trailer devotes 10 seconds just for the roll call of names; including Steve Carell, Jason Segel, Miranda Cosgrove, Russell Brand, Kristen Wiig, Will Arnett, Julie Andrews and Danny McBride. Unique for an animated film with this depth of talent, however, just about all of the actors put on various accents to emphasize their characters as opposed to using their normal voices.
• Breakthrough Hit: While not groundbreaking in terms of story and animation, the film was able to establish 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.
• Celebrity Voice Actor: The Brazilian Portuguese dub has comedians, and at the time comedy duo, Leandro Hassum and Marcius Melhem as Gru and Vector respectively.
• Children Voicing Children:
  • Elsie Fisher as Agnes, and Dana Gaier as Edith.
  • The same goes in the Japanese dub with Agnes, as she was voiced by Mana Ashida, aka young Mako Mori.
• Completely Different Title:
  • Japanese -> 怪盗グルーの月泥棒 (Phantom Thief Gru's Moon Heist)
  • Polish -> "Jak Ukraść Księżyc" (How To Steal The Moon)
  • Vietnamese -> "Kẻ cắp mặt trăng" (The Moon Thief)
  • Spanish -> "Mi Villano Favorito" (My Favourite Villain)
  • French -> "Moi, Moche et Méchant" (Me, Ugly and Mean)
• Dawson Casting:
  • Steve Carell as young Gru.
  • 17-year-old Miranda Cosgrove as Margo (who Word of God later confirmed to be 12).
• Defictionalization:
  • The Sleepy Kittens book can now be found on Amazon. Doesn't come with the little brush though.
  • Stuffed unicorns like the one Agnes gets at the carnival can be found at Universal Studios, and various other amusement parks.
• Dueling Movies: With Megamind from (of course) Dreamworks, both being animated movies about a supervillain becoming good after bonding with a female character.
• Dyeing for Your Art: Despite it only being a voice role, Will Arnett gained some weight before playing Mr. Perkins, feeling it would make him better suited for voicing a larger, more heavy-set character than he usually portrays.
• Edited for Syndication: When the movie airs on television networks such as Discovery Family, Nickelodeon and 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 Establishing Character Moment and instead start the scene at Gru using the freeze ray at the coffee shop. They also skip a portion of the "Sleepy Kittens" story where Gru brushes the kitten puppets with the included hairbrush.
• Incidental Multilingual Wordplay: The scene with the cookie robots, which actually are boogie robots, is rendered very well in the Italian dubbing of the film. They have been renamed "Bisco robots", where "bisco" is short for "biscotto" (cookie), and then revealed as disco robots, a joke that works as well as, if not better than, the original English language pun.
• Missing Trailer Scene: The scene where the kid whose balloon Gru popped in the beginning 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.
  • Also, when Vector demonstrates his new Squid Launcher to his dad we see the squid landing on someone in the lobby below. In the actual movie, we only hear the guy’s reaction.
• No Export for You: Despite the franchise's popularity in Japan, the two video games were not released in Japan.
• The Other Darrin: Steve Carell still voices Gru in the video game, but Dr. Nefario and Vector are both voiced by JB Blanc and Jason Harris.
• Playing Against Type:
  • According to the DVD extras, Julie Andrews was chosen as Mrs. Gru specifically because, of all well-known actresses, she was the least suitable person to play an evil old woman — so choosing her to do so invoked the Rule of Funny. (She refused the part at first, but was persuaded.)
  • In the first film, Kristen Wiig voices the cruel, child-hating Miss Hattie, who contrasts severely with her more good natured and comedic characters. This stands out even more since in the sequels Wiig plays Lucy Wilde, who is much more in line with her usual typecast.
• Sleeper Hit: The first film was the first CGI animated film by Universal, and it was the second highest grossing animated film that year. Then the sequels came out and turned the series into a Cash-Cow Franchise.
• Viral Marketing: NBC is absolutely determined that you remember the title of this film. The judges of Last Comic Standing ended up going into mass Sarcasm Mode after the advertising department forced them to "audition" someone in a minion suit. ("Nice job, whores.") The NBC logo also shows up prominently near the start of the film - Gru stole the Jumbotron from Times Square.
• 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.
• What Could Have Been: Has its own Despicable page.
• Word of God:
  • The minions are genetically engineered corn kernels. The "genetically-engineered" part of that description, however, might have been retconned, judging by the backstory of Minions.
  • Gru's first name is Felonious and his birthday is September 28, 1960 (making him two years older than his voice actor, Steve Carell).
  • Margo, Edith, and Agnes aren't biologically related to each other. But they always hang out with each other and consider one another as sisters.
• Working Title: The film's original title was Evil Me, but was changes so as not to reflect then-president George W. Bush's controversial statement about Iran, which he called the "axis of evil."

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