Built with LEGO

aka: Everythings Built With LEGO

Even for God, that would take nearly a week.

If there's one commercial children's toy that is far more iconic than others, it would be LEGO. They may go by different brands, but building blocks are pretty much always associated with the name LEGO. They're easy to use. They let our imaginations run rampant. They let us act out horrific acts of violence without consequences (besides breaking them, but the base parts are pretty damn indestructible, sans the ones smaller than one-fourth of a cubic centimeter). And there's also something just plain cool about seeing iconic characters in the LEGO-man look. Not to mention how adorable little LEGO stormtroopers are.

Therefore many people have started using LEGO as the literal building blocks of their medium so that everything gets built of LEGO. This ranges from webcomics with LEGO being photographed rather than drawings, through LEGO stop motion to people design video game worlds specifically to mimic the appearance of LEGO. They are taking the fun, characterful and innocent character of LEGO and building it right into their works.

The positive light LEGO blocks have been getting recently seems to indicate that LEGO may very well be the heir to the penguin throne. One of its clear advantages is its accessibility to amateurs- all you need is a bucket of LEGO blocks (although that may need a bucket of cash) and imagination to create full sets and characters.

Also, don't step on them while barefoot. It hurts like hell.

Not to be confused with LEGO Genetics. For examples of LEGO just popping up in fiction, see LEGO.

Compare Gem-Encrusted (everything's covered with jewelry).

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Examples:

Advertising

• One ad for the Honda Element featured the car being built from the ground up using LEGO. (Well, Mega Bloks technically, but the effect is the same.)
• In February 2014, an adbreak on ITV featured Lego versions of existing ads for the British Heart Foundation, BT Broadband, and Premier Inn, as well as an exclusive Confused.com advert, concluding with the trailer for The LEGO Movie.

Comics

• During September and October 2013 Marvel Comics did variant covers for a lot of their major comics at the time. The variants were done in LEGO and were made to coincide with the release of the LEGO Marvel Super Heroes video game.
• DC Comics did the same thing in November 2014, to coincide with the release of the third LEGO Batman game.

Films — Animated

• The LEGO Movie, The LEGO Batman Movie,The LEGO Ninjago Movie, and The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part, natch. Even water, smoke, explosions, and some of the motion blur effects are made of (CGI) LEGO! Everything in the films is built using a program based on Lego's internal set maker, which means that everything in the movie would actually be buildable with real LEGO. And of course, important vehicles and other assorted objects have 100% accurate toys as a result of this, such as the Lego Batmobile in The LEGO Batman Movie. The only subversions are the artifacts coming from the real world in the original movie. It also goes without saying that the live-action Lego models are built using real LEGO as well.
• Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse: The Spot briefly hops over to a LEGO dimension with its own Spider-Man. It's loosely implied to be the same world as The LEGO Movie, given the involvement of Phil Lord & Chris Miller in both projects, as well as certain aesthetic elements that line up between the two (CG animation meant to look like stop-motion, the characters making their own sound effects, etc.), although the given designation is Earth-13122, which is the LEGO Marvel Super Heroes universe.

Films — Live-Action

• Although it's easy to miss if you're not paying attention, in the movie Time Bandits, Evil's castle is made of giant LEGO blocks.
• Some parts of Electro's new cure in Spider-Man: No Way Home are built with Legos.
• The Monty Python and the Holy Grail DVD has an extra on it where you can watch the Camelot musical sequence redone with LEGO minifigs. It's quite adorable, and hilarious.
• Now You See Me shows this when the cops arrive at the Four Horsemen's apartment. Some of the models for show venues are made of LEGO.

Literature

• Sophie's World calls LEGO "the most ingenious toy in the world," due to its ability to nigh-endlessly be built into something, destroyed, and then built again into something else much like the Greek philosopher Democritus thought with his version of atoms.
• In I Knocked Up Satan's Daughter, Jonathan has lived with a mild obsession with legos for most of his life. He built a house out of legos, made all of his furniture out of them, even a lego girlfriend. He is even so good he can build a full-sized tyrannosaur out of legos in mere minutes. When Lici enchants the legos, anything he builds out of them becomes real (animals, motorbikes, etc).

Live-Action TV

• To promote The LEGO Batman Movie, the Arrowverse shows had LEGO versions of their Vanity Plates. And the Berlanti Productions vanity plate had Batman in place of the normal kid with the voice saying "Batman, move your head".
• The Corner Gas episode Block Party featured Hank building a Lego version of the town. The episode included a fantasy segment with characters as mini figures.
• James May (of Top Gear fame) wrote and presented a series in Autumn/Winter 2009 called Toy Stories, in which he makes the toys of his youth full-sized and awesome, to get today's kids involved in old-style entertainment. Among other things, this included making a full-sized, fully functional two-story house — including toilet, shower and (uncomfortable) bed — almost entirely out of LEGO. Sadly, it was on borrowed land in a vineyard, no buyer stepped forward and it was demolished. The bricks were on loan from LEGO and were returned, with the intent of putting them to use in a yearly charity build. Its name liveth forevermore.
• An episode of Ultimate Cake Off had the teams building cakes for LEGOLAND California's 10th anniversary (in their usual Cooking Duel way, of course).
• Mythbusters tested the veracity of a viral video in which some guys built an eight-foot diameter ball out of LEGO and successfully rolled it down a street in San Francisco. The myth was Busted; the LEGO ball collapsed halfway down the hill. So that means it must've been glued together or the same sequence was repeated in the video.
  • Also it couldn't have just been glued together for the video as the Mythbusters had to clear out the LEGO Group's North American supply and also borrow some from a private collector to have enough bricks to finish the build. Completely impossible for most people to have the required number of LEGO bricks for that video to be real.
    • The narration of the episode hypothesized that all they built was a hollow shell with the inside being made of something much lighter (possibly polystyrene).
• Some scenes in Home Movie: The Princess Bride are recreated in stop-motion LEGO, mostly scenes from the original film that really can't be replicated with live actors in a home movie style. Some shots of the boat that Vizzini uses to kidnap Buttercup are in LEGO, as is their climb up the Cliffs of Insanity, and part of the ending, where the four leads ride out of the castle on the Prince's horses.

Magazines

• New Scientist ran a competition for readers to create a LEGO sculpture that reflected "science technology or nature". You can see the winning fetus, runner up virus and moon landing, and a couple of cool entries that were sadly disqualified here.

Music

• The White Stripes' video for "Fell in Love with a Girl."
• This fan video for "He's Turned Emo" by The Lancashire Hotpots.
• The alternate video for Ed Sheeran's song "Lego House".

Tabletop Games

• Brik Wars, although it doesn't mention LEGO itself due to copyright issues.
• Mobile Frame Zero is a nerd trifecta. Tiny Giant Robots, LEGO, and a tabletop war game. Frames are built entirely with LEGO or similar parts, and can get quite complex (and expensive). A 5cm tall model may contain upwards of 80 individual pieces.

Toys

Video Games

• A slew of LEGO-themed video games have been released over the years:
  • Most recently as tie-ins with other franchises, like LEGO Star Wars, LEGO Indiana Jones, or even LEGO Batman and LEGO Harry Potter. Even stranger, these games are actually fun. It may be worth pointing out that The LEGO Group produces tie-in building sets for all these franchises — the video games are an extension of the license.
  • LEGO Universe, a short-lived MMORPG set in the LEGO world. The trailer alone is a Moment of Awesome.
  • LEGO BATTLES is also The Game to Play as a Knight, a Evil Wizard, a Pirate, a Ninja, Space Man, and an Alien.
  • And now there's LEGO Rock Band, where you can demolish buildings using The Power of Rock. With the added bonus of playing as LEGO Iggy Pop, LEGO David Bowie, and LEGO Queen.
  • Before the bombardment of licensed games, there were many other games based off of LEGO's own ideas. Examples include games like LEGO Racers and its sequel, where the player could build their own cars to race with (sorta), and the LEGO Island trilogy.
    • Some games didn't quite do this: Rock Raiders involved building, yes, but the world and creatures living in it were not plastic. LEGO Stunt Rally had no actual building of LEGO models at all.
    • Taken to an extreme with the LEGO Creator series and LEGO Digital Designer, where you basically create your own world.
  • LEGO Dimensions, a Massive Multiplayer Crossover featuring LEGO versions of DC Comics, The Lord of the Rings, and Doctor Who, among many others interacting with The LEGO Movie and LEGO toy settings like Ninjago and Legends of Chima.
  • The second expansion for Forza Horizon 4 is called LEGO Speed Champions and features a world and cars built out of LEGO.
• Blockland is made entirely from bricks of all sizes, shapes and colors. City or mountain, cave or subway, it's all brick. And in the alpha version of the game, it used to actually just be LEGO, but then copyright happened and now it's BLOCKO.
• Voxelstein. The entire game is made out of LEGO-like voxels that are completely destructible. This means that you can shank your way through walls if you have enough patience.
• Minecraft is more like it's made out of DUPLOs. The entire map is built out of large blocks that you can mine and craft into more blocks.
  • And now Mojang is working with the LEGO group to make Minecraft-themed LEGO sets.
  • And now LEGO itself has its own customizable Wide-Open Sandbox, LEGO Worlds.
• Roblox is a free (well... sorta) MMO Wide-Open Sandbox where almost every single bit of content is user-made, there is almost unlimited customizability, and uses bricks, meshes, and GUIs (Guided User Interface). It also features the scripting language of Lua, which can be used to create almost anything within the user's scripting capability.
• While not actual LEGO, the "dot" graphics in 3D Dot Game Heroes certainly give off this effect.
• Kingdom Hearts: Gummy Blocks and the ships made from them were more or less this.
• The boss stages in the Super Mario All-Stars version of Super Mario Bros. 2 all appear to be made from red, green, and blue blocks resembling LEGO bricks. They're actually made out of N&B Blocks, a toy Nintendo produced in the 60s to compete with LEGO. These blocks also appear in Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins, in the final level of the toy-themed Mario Zone, and the interior of Viridian Gym in Pokémon Gold and Silver also appears to be made from them.
• Kingdom of Loathing presents: the BRICKO™ Brand Funucational Construction System Core Unit! You can build weapons, armor, even giant chickens out of them!
• MapleStory: The world Ludibrium looks like it was built with Mega Blocks, and all of its mobs are some variety of toy monster.
• The Super Nintendo Inspector Gadget game inexplicably has Gadget teleported to a room made of giant Lego blocks for the bonus levels.
• In South Park: The Fractured but Whole, one of the environmental hazards are rivers of "lava", which are just red LEGO bricks dumped on the ground. Since the kids refuse to break Kayfabe, it's as dangerous as actual lava and the New Kid will burn to death if they attempt to cross it. Later on Professor Chaos reveals his evil plan to flood the town in lava, revealing dump trucks filled with LEGO bricks.

Webcomics

• Irregular Webcomic!
  • Some of the parallel plotlines subvert this to some extent by using tabletop RPG miniatures for some characters (most often in the plotlines that are supposed to be ongoing roleplay campaigns, although recent events blur that line quite nicely).
  • David Morgan-Mar remains one of only a few people on Earth to have built a Lego figure of Cthulhu.
    • Maybe... maybe not...
    • Replacing the head of the first Makuta toy with an octopus and giving him wings makes a passable Cthulhu.
• Brick Comic Network is Exactly What It Says on the Tin for the authors (and fans) of comics made with LEGO bricks. The comics of active members include:
  • Legostar Galactica
  • Reasonably Clever's Brick House webcomic
  • Tranquility Base
  • Genuine Draft
  • Brickworld Saga
  • Glomshire Knights
  • Ye Olde Lego-Time Theatre
  • Block Tales
  • Bricks of the Dead
  • Cafe Gruesome
  • The aforementioned Irregular Webcomic!
  • Other webcomics related to the project:
    • LEGO Space: The Comic
    • Majestic 7
    • The Brick Side
    • Adventures of the S-Team
    • Tabletown Online
    • Harry Potter Comics (which sets itself apart with heavy alteration of facial expressions)
    • Legoville
• The Brick Testament consists of LEGO illustrations of Bible stories.
• At least four strips in The Princess Planet were made with LEGO bricks.
• Jenny Everywhere and the Golden Key
• Fabuland Housewives is Desperate Housewives WITH ANTHROPOMORPHIC LEGO ANIMAL CHARACTERS!
• Weesh had one strip where Tate wished for his house to be made of the titular blocks. It wasn't exactly the most interesting wish he's ever made.
• Casey and Andy has at least one guest strip (done by Irregular Webcomic!) done with LEGO minifigures.
• The Munchkin Man uses screenshots of LEGO Digital Designer models
• Transformers Kre-O is actually built with Kre-Os, but it's the same principle.
• This LEGO space comic by Kdog https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Lego_Space/4988400/
• One piece of Prequel merch is an unofficial LEGO set made mostly of real LEGO pieces (the cat ears and tail are custom, and some of the pieces have custom screen printing).

Web Original

• At least one YouTube user has posted LEGO re-creations of classic game shows.
  • And another YouTube user has posted LEGO animations of Eddie Izzard jokes!
• This trope has definitely gone retroactive. Classic 1964s Flanders and Swann song re-enacted in LEGO, anyone?
• LEGO Rammstein
• The Boleg Bros' films constitute a Lego Adaptation Distillation of The Apprentice (UK).
• Grand Theft Auto: LEGO City
• Two especially bizarre and outright disturbing examples are a LEGO World Trade Centre and a LEGO death camp.
  • George W. Bush demands to see 9/11 done with LEGO.
• The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny!
  • Sweeney Todd!
    • Defying Gravity!
  • Bohemian Rhapsody!
• LEGO cakes, including edible ones, anyone?
• "Knights of the Round Table" from Monty Python and the Holy Grail in Lego!
• Some LEGO fans have even made their own handgun models.
  • BrickGun models feature working slides, banana slammas, and slide locks, removable magazines and one model even shoots rubber bands!
  • And there is the Mossberg 590◊.
• Now there's even a full fledged working printer!
  • And another guy made a 3d Printer.
• Google built its first server racks out of Lego.
• The Nightly News at Nine
• Lego Quest
• Lego version of Felix Baumgartners 125,000 ft "Space Jump."
• Stuart Ashen once created a LEGO set based on his room using the LEGO website's since-defunct "Design by Me" service. He also reviewed a few Shoddy Knockoff Product versions called "Best-Lock".
• Waterstones booksellers presents LEGOLit.
• This Flickr gallery gives us Lego Discworld.
• Epic Rap Battles of History: The third battle of Season 4, Zeus vs. Thor, was done entirely with Lego (bar some of the backgrounding)
  • Later on, the finale of Season 6, Harry Potter vs. Luke Skywalker was done in a similar manner, however unlike last time where they mostly used generic parts and figures, they take advantage of both series having expansive and dedicated LEGO sets to recreate scenes from both movies and show off over 63 different named characters as cameos.
• A promo for Series 22 on Top Gear's YouTube channel has LEGO versions of the presenters preparing for the show. Jeremy seeks out the Stig, James can't find his hair, and Richard brings new meaning to the idea of stepping on a LEGO brick.
• The Brick Commander website revolves around the re-creation of various Cool Starships and Humongous Mecha in LEGO. The site's main focuses are BattleTech and the various Star Wars and Star Trek films and shows. Notable for their designs being both 100% accurate to LEGO design theory (if it exists on the site it can be built in real LEGO) and fully articulated, in the case of the 'Mechs.
• Most early videos by pantsahat were made entirely using LEGO, but around late 2019, he began using increasing amounts of non-LEGO such as action figures and paper-craft. LEGO still makes up the majority of the video scenery, though.
• SolarBalls: Most of the episode “LEGO Planets! (feat. @Bricksane)” is made with lego.

Western Animation

• Robot Chicken occasionally has LEGO-based sketches. One involves an attempt to build a pyramid, and another makes fun of the licensed lines with "LEGO Babel."
• In 1980, LEGO commissioned the "LEGO Sports Champions" which included topics like Gymnastics and F1 Racing.
• Subverted in the LOGO channel's Rick & Steve: The Happiest Gay Couple in All the World. While the original pilot episode used LEGO, the rest of the series had to use Play Mobil because LEGO objected to the creators using their product on the show (which may look like a kiddie show that would air on Nick Jr. or PBS, but really isn't).
• Blockoland from The Simpsons, which appears at the start of the season 12 episode "Hungry, Hungry Homer". Interestingly enough, an actual LEGOLAND appears in another episode which mentioned Mr. Burns dumping toxic waste there.
  • "Brick Like Me", in which Homer finds himself in a LEGO version of Springfield created when he goes into a coma after being hit by a giant LEGO statue at a builders' convention.
  • The Couch Gag for the episode "Midnight Towboy" had the Simpsons (and their living room) constructed out of LEGO blocks.
• One of Ben's new aliens in Omniverse, Blox, is made of Lego. Unfortunately, this means he's Made of Plasticine, so whatever he tries to turn into is flimsy and breaks under the slightest force.
• The Zig & Sharko episode, "Silly Builders" has Zig using LEGO (never identified by name) to get to Marina.
• LEGO original properties that have been made into Western animation are BIONICLE, Ninjago, and Legends of Chima. Ironically, all three pretty quickly moved away from the LEGO theming aside from the minifigures (or buildable action figures in Bionicle's case), with even the places, vehicles, and creatures with sets looking more like real objects than toys built of LEGO.
• To a lesser extent, Mixels. The spin-off app games play for the LEGO nature of the series heavier than the show, with animations of the characters breaking into LEGO bricks for loading screens.
• The LEGO Star Wars franchise has been animated in LEGO Star Wars: The Yoda Chronicles .
• Unikitty! plays for an interesting variant. Being a spin-off of the previously mentioned The LEGO Movie, the characters are blocky brick-designed, but in 2D animation. It's to the point that one of the characters, Richard, is just a floating 1x3 LEGO brick.

Real Life

• Legoland, theme parks featuring extensive LEGO sculptures and displays. Anything that isn't built out of LEGO bricks (such as rides) uses a LEGO design motif.
• There is LEGO CANDY.
  • On a similar note, Lego has also been selling Lego ice-cube trays. The ice-cubes, once frozen, are the same size and shape as a typical Lego minifig. And just as adorable.
• However, subverted in some places where LEGO products aren't made with the iconic bricks. The LEGO Technic line uses construction based on things like pins, axles, and ball-joints instead, and their "constraction" figure lines ("construction" + "action") like BIONICLE and Hero Factory started out as a spin-off of Technic. Lego Znap was an attempt to compete with K'nex (failed), and Lego Galidor was an entry into the action figure market (failed horribly).
  • Also strangely averted with fast-food tie-ins. Many LEGO Happy Meal toys these days are your standard throwaways, with no interactivity with the LEGO system. LEGO Club Magazine editor (and BIONICLE's "Real Daddy") Greg Farshtey has mentioned that fast-food chains have started to shy away from building toys because they want no assembly required.
• The Lego-Brucke (Lego Bridge) in Wuppertal, Germany is a concrete bridge that was repainted to look like it was made out of giant Lego bricks. The Lego Group was consulted and formally approved of the project to do so.
• Say hello to EverBlock, a jumbo-sized LEGO-esque building block system designed for real-world prefab construction.
• Nathan Sawaya is an artist from New York City who has chosen Lego blocks as his preferred medium.
• The first Google server's case was partially built out of Lego bricks. Back then, it was their storage system for what would eventually become the Google search engine.

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Waldorf: I used to build things with LEGO bricks.
Statler: Really? Were you able to make an artistic profession out of it?
Waldorf: No, sorry to say, my art career went all to pieces!
Both: Do-ho-ho-ho-hoh!

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