"Minions never worked for Hitler": Director sets the record straight

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Director and voice actor Pierre Coffin had to debunk a persistent fan theory about the yellow characters. The Minions never worked for Hitler, he made clear once and for all in an extensive interview with the French publication Polygon.

The question resurfaced with the release of Minions & Monsters, in which the Minions show up in Hollywood in the 1920s. Since the previous film had shown them disappearing into a cave in 1812 after Napoleon, fans wondered where they had been during World War II. Coffin responded to this lightly, but at the same time made it clear that the Minions were not in the service of Adolf Hitler. According to Coffin, the group from the first Minions movie was simply stuck in that cave. The new movie does introduce various tribes of Minions, but even those, he said, would not have been involved in “Big History,” as he called it. With this, the filmmaker is finally trying to put to rest a strange story that has been circulating among fans of the franchise for years.

Fan theory debunked

The theory arose because, in the movies, the Minions consistently seek to serve the greatest villain of an era. This led to the uncomfortable question online of whether they would have worked under Hitler as well. Coffin apparently finds that question so predictable that he initially responded to it jokingly: “Shame on you,” he told interviewers who brought up the subject. Still, a clear answer eventually emerges: no, the well-known Minions were in their cave at the time, and according to Coffin, the other Minions were not part of those major historical events. This brings one of the strangest internet discussions surrounding the animated series to a close—for now.

New Movie

Minions & Monsters places the yellow creatures in 1920s Hollywood, where they accidentally unleash monsters while trying to make a monster movie. Amid the chaos, they team up with the green creature Goomi to save the world. The franchise thus remains true to its absurd humor, but Coffin has now drawn a line: not even the Minions are into fascism.

©Justin Lim via Unsplash