Minions first appeared in Despicable Me in 2010 as the small yellow helpers of Gru, and their love of bananas quickly became one of their most recognisable traits. The word itself, spoken in their playful invented language, became a shorthand joke across memes, edits and short videos. Because the sound is short, cheerful and instantly understood even without context, creators keep reusing it for food clips, reaction edits and light-hearted parodies years after the films first made the characters famous.