LEGO

""Only the best is good enough.""

- The LEGO Group's original motto

""Just imagine.""

- The LEGO Group's motto in the late 1990s and early 2000s

The LEGO Group, founded in 1932 in Denmark, is world famous for its connecting plastic bricks. The company's name comes from the Danish phrase "leg godt", which translates into English as "play well". While not an influence on the name, the fact that "LEGO" can also mean "I build" in Latin has been embraced by The LEGO Group. The product is legally identified as LEGO bricks, not "LEGOs", and the fandom will be unfailingly quick to remind you of that fact. Experts on children have called them the ideal toy - they're easy to use, are infinitely expandable and foster creativity. And by infinitely expandable, they mean infinitely expandable - even the earliest bricks made in the 1960s, when they first started their construction toy business, are 100% compatible with bricks manufactured today.

Over the decades, in addition to selling basic boxes of bricks, LEGO has produced a vast array of "themes", collections of related playsets devoted to a general setting and concept (and occasionally, an overarching story), exploring a diverse range of time periods, places, jobs, characters, genres and even styles of building. See LEGO Themes for an index of trope pages for these themes.

Since 1997, LEGO has given the licence to make video games based on various themes to innumerable game developers, and as such there is a very sizable array of LEGO-based games. These include:
 * LEGO Adaptation Games
 * LEGO Island
 * Lego Racers
 * LEGO Rock Raiders
 * Lego Universe

The LEGO Group has also released a feature-length DVD movie, LEGO the Adventures of Clutch Powers.

The LEGO Group started a ninja-themed Ninjago set in 2011. Cartoon Network greenlit a 13-episode TV series based on the set, aired in late 2011.

Phil Lord and Chris Miller (the 21 Jump Street movie, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs) will pen and direct the first live-action/animated theatrical LEGO movie due out in 2014. And Universal picked up the rights to produce the first movie based on "Hero Factory", the franchise that replaced Bionicle.

To say it's popular is an understatement. Now if only one could afford those high, high prices...

LEGO is the Trope Namer for:

 * Built With Lego
 * Lego Body Parts
 * Lego Genetics

Appearances in fiction:
"Lois: They're the same, Peter.
 * In a recent Myth Busters "viral" episode (read: they got all their ideas from highly-watched YouTube videos), they tested the plausibility of a LEGO ball the size and rough shape of the boulder seen Raiders of the Lost Ark. Didn't work, because they could not easily transport the thing, getting all the bricks was nearly impossible, they only needed a fifth of the legos mentioned by the myth, and broke up when it rolled. They way it bounced in the video they watched was no way near plausable for how the real ball acted.
 * One of the minor Mons in the Digimon franchise is ToyAgumon. I think you can guess the toy from which it appears to be made. It also has a few Palette Swaps. Similarly, there's Omekamon, a Digimon resembling a LEGO minifigure who's drawn on himself to try cosplaying as Omegamon.
 * In Time Bandits, at least part of Evil's Fortress of Ultimate Darkness is clearly shown to be made up of giant LEGO blocks. This is one of many times that Kevin's toys appear in his adventure through time.
 * Blocken from Shaman King is a disfigured man who hides his appearance in a suit that looks like a LEGO figure and manipulates LEGO-looking blocks (which are really the spiritual energy of many rats) into various deadly shapes.
 * The bonus stages in the obscure Amiga puzzle-platformer P.P. Hammer and his Pneumatic Weapon are made of LEGO-like blocks.
 * When LEGO sculptor Nathan Sawaya appeared on The Colbert Report, he presented Stephen a lifesize LEGO Colbert. LEGO is also a popular medium for entries in the perennial Stephen Colbert Video Challenges.
 * The "free to play" MMORPG Maple Story has Ludibrium, a world made of plastic bricks and whose residents have that vaguely LEGO/Duplo/whatever-esque look.
 * The demolition derby scene in the third Futurama movie had some LEGO participants. Much as you'd imagine, their vehicle fell apart when it was destroyed.
 * Corner Gas had one episode with Hank building a model of Dog River out of LEGO, and a Dream Sequence with a LEGO Corner Gas.
 * The first question Sophie's World, a mystery novel about philosophy, asks is: Why are the LEGO bricks the best toy in the world?
 * They are infinitely expandable, stimulate creativity and are virtually indestructible.
 * Except some of the more recent socket-joint bricks you get in ranges like Bionicle and LEGO Exo Force, which seem to snap if you actually attempt to use them to build more than one thing.
 * The seventh, eighth and ninth levels of the Tom and Jerry game for Super NES is a Toy Time world where the foreground is made entirely of LEGO bricks.
 * The children's book Adventures in LEGOLAND is about a kid who visits a LEGO-themed theme park which comes to life at night and saves the day. Lucky kid.
 * In the episode To the Lighthouse of The Sarah Connor Chronicles, John Henry is seen building a mountain out of LEGO. It's also a moment of Did Not Do the Research, as he talks about Solek on Voya Nui, when it's supposed to be Karda Nui, and the Toa protecting the Mask of Life, when they were actually trying to claim it before the Makuta do. Since John Henry is a robot with Internet access (and in fact commented that there are no ducklings on Voya Nui in that episode), it/he should know better.
 * The Viridian City Gym in Pokémon Gold and Silver looks like its walls were made of giant LEGO bricks. Sadly, the remakes HeartGold and SoulSilver don't keep this.
 * Eve Online features a building material and loot item called "Construction Bricks", with an icon resembling LEGO pieces in a small pile.
 * Block Town, the first world in Pac-Mania, is made up of LEGO blocks.
 * In the Family Guy episode "The Tan Aquatic with Steve Zissou", Man Child Peter envies a kid's LEGO collection: "You got LEGOs, aw sweet. Lois only buys me Mega Blocks."

Peter: You know what, Lois? They are not the same. And the sooner you get that through your thick skull, the sooner we can get this marriage back on track."


 * In the old Amiga Populous game, one world your worshippers could conquer was made of LEGO. (Others included a lava world, and France.)
 * Recently (well, 2010, anyway), Kingdom of Loathing added a 'Familiar' made of, and able to spit out, 'Bricko' blocks.
 * Which could then be assembled into clothes, weapons, and other creatures you could fight.
 * In Kira Is Justice, Near seems to like LEGO bricks.
 * The Servbots from Megaman Legends resemble LEGO Minifigs.
 * The Yu-Gi-Oh Trading Card Game has a card called Blockman which seems to be made from LEGO bricks. See for yourself.
 * The Simpsons has a fictional theme park called Blockoland being a parody of LEGOLAND.
 * Some parts of Zoetopia in Monster Tale seem to be made of LEGO blocks. Justified in that the area also features lots of other toys, such as jacks, dominoes, and wind-up windmills, and Zoe generally follows a toys theme in her presentation.
 * In a Norwegian family series, based on the Danish Olsen Banden, the protagonists build a LEGO robot to climb a set of stairs and open a lock.
 * In a recent colourspread, the Strawhats are building a small castle out of bricks that can easily be identified as LEGO.
 * A pair of minifigures actually serve as the flight attendants of the backpack Barbie and Ken arrive in in Toy Story short "Hawaiian Vacation."
 * A Black Comedy sketch from Robot Chicken wrings plenty of Nightmare Fuel from the Perpetual Smiler expression typical of LEGO minifigures.
 * Super Mario Land 2 is made of N&B Blocks, Nintendo's own long-forgotten knockoff brand of LEGO, made back when they were a toy company.