20 Mind-Blowing Facts About The Minions
9. Gru's Name Is A Russian Acronym
As an oddball last name, "Gru" has several meanings. It sounds like "grew," of course, and Gru does grow a lot over the course of the Despicable films. It also sounds like "grue," a monster that dwells in the dark, especially familiar to players of Zork.
But GRU also stands for Glavnoye razvedyvatel'noye upravleniye, which translates from Russian to the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. Most Americans have heard of the KGB and some its successor, the SVR, but the GRU is a much larger foreign intelligence agency, the real-life version of James Bond's SMERSH. If you were looking to reference a real-life League of Evil, there are few better candidates than Vladimir Putin's enforcer.