Which character has the most minifigures?

Question: what counts as a "variation"? Occasionally I notice that a recurring character's difference in the database is superficial, like one version wearing a clip and one not. For example, I think Batman in 6858 is a fairly standard Batman for that era, except he's wearing a jetpack instead of a softgoods cape.

I have an even better question: which minifigures have the most appearances in sets in themes other than their main theme? For example Dimensions, ...

interesting stuff but i just wanted to point out Kai's name is misspelled in the fragment
"The red ninja Kia takes second place..."

Where is Duke Detain? ... I'm surprised he didn't make it into the list

Interesting to see that Iron man has appeared in 35 sets, in 32 different versions! Thanks for the research, very interesting and fun to see!

Wow, my bet was really on R2-D2! The list explains what's wrong with Batman in TLBM.
Also, where's JANG?

There were four variations of Batman during the 2005-8 run: Gray suit/black cape, black suit/black cape, gray suit/blue cape and the dark gray Nolan version. Surprising that Harry Potter isn't higher, but I guess that's due to there being quite a few repeats of the standard school uniform. Even more surprising that Johnny Thunder didn't make the second list! Is that because he's called Jones in some sets?

@Huw

How long did the queries take, and what software are you using for the backend database?

I’m surprised Iron Man is quite low down on both lists. Always seemed fairly ubiquitous in Marvel sets with a different armour each time

Johnny Thunder was soo close!

Next time he'll get 'em.

What about the most recurring variant of a single figure? I.E. sw0028 appears in 14 sets.

This is why Ninjago figures are amazing for building armies! Each new suit can be a different rank/proffesion!

Wow. I admit, I don't follow the Friends line, but I didn't expect it to be so high up on the list. I suppose it has been going on for a while and only has a handful of characters, much like Ninjago, so it's not too surprising.

Pedantic questions - Is Unikitty a minifigure? Friends are called Mini-dolls are they not? :)

Doesn't Hermione score an extra one for the cat-head variant?

From Star Wars, it's the Han Solo one that surprises me. Apart from his Hoth Parka, he never changes his outfit! Even Lando wears that same outfit when he pilots the Falcon, which is really, really, really weird (thanks, Family Guy).

Looking over the Emmets, there are several where it is the same figure just with different bricks attached to him. Are these really different minifigures? They're not normally distinguished by holding different tools. I suppose the presence of a neck bracket attachment point is different, but whether or not he has a 1x1 trans-red round plate in the back of his leg? Not sure that counts as a distinct minifig.

Even before clicking on the article I knew that Batman would be No 1 hands down.

All those Batman variants and still no Beyond suit...

I spot checked for accuracy - your missing the nano figure in ironman armory for example.

I am sure other inconsistency exist
Anyone else spot check for accuracy?

@chuckschwa said:
"I wonder if the most OWNED minifigures by Brickset users lines up with this data"

Agree. Now would be interesting to know what is the most owned minifigure based on the brickset database. Wouldn't be too surprised though.

@CCC said:
" @Joefish said:
"From Star Wars, it's the Han Solo one that surprises me. Apart from his Hoth Parka, he never changes his outfit! Even Lando wears that same outfit when he pilots the Falcon, which is really, really, really weird (thanks, Family Guy).

Looking over the Emmets, there are several where it is the same figure just with different bricks attached to him. Are these really different minifigures? They're not normally distinguished by holding different tools. I suppose the presence of a neck bracket attachment point is different, but whether or not he has a 1x1 trans-red round plate in the back of his leg? Not sure that counts as a distinct minifig."

Han Solo does have different outfits if you watch the movies. He gets dressed as a stormtrooper, he has an overcoat on Hoth, he has just a white shirt before going into the freezing chamber. And in the younger days in Solo, he wears a range of outfits too.

As to Emmett, the minifigures are defined exactly as bricklink defines them as that is where they are imported from, and every part up to the point of including hand-held items is included in the definition. So if a stud is added to the back of a leg as a tracking device, then it is formally a different minifigure.
"

Even Han's standard clothing has differences- ANH has a black vest and blue pants as well as the ESB has a blue jacket and brown pants, ROTJ has a vest and brown pants, TFA has a brown jacket and black pants, and Solo has a brown jacket, blue pants and a black shirt. Still essentially the same type of clothing, but with some distinctive changes!

@lordofdragonss said:
"This is why Ninjago figures are amazing for building armies! Each new suit can be a different rank/proffesion!"

Agreed, while I don't have a lot of Ninjago myself, Nexo Knights functions similarly if you have multiple of the same darkblue/white/red/green knight etc, they can be a specific faction due to their emblem + color after you swap heads.

Ninjago does have more varied suits tho beyond just armor/knights.

I have all the Iron Man minifigs except for the Duplo one (I'll get it eventually) and the really expensive SDCC exclusive. Also, I only go with the ones that have the same helmet, torso, and leg printing. For example, SH612, SH649, and SH673 all have the same helmet, torso, and leg printing so I didn't feel the need to get a copy of each, especially since the difference between SH612 and SH673 are 2 trans-blue round 1x1 bricks.

I think it was the “most variants” question that came up in a comment section, and the “most sets” question that was in a quiz, and both times I knew it was Batman without even having to pause to think, much less look anything up. If he hadn’t been before, TLBM pretty much did the trick.

However, the Batman theme launched in 2006, not 2005. DC Superheroes launched a year before Marvel Suoerheroes because there were two minifigs that were given out at SDCC, and then again at NYCC (this time alongside Superman).

@Phoenixio:
They’re rare, but they do happen. Even if you pointedly exclude CMF waves and polybags that are just one minifig, or a microscale vehicle, the original Batman theme has a giant Ultimate Collector’s Batmobile (no minifigs) and a third year set with Robin as the only hero. DCS has at least a couple polybags that pair one minifig with a small model. TLBM has a few sets that feature Batgirl and/or Robin without Batman.

@ShadoWind:
Depending on how you define a “theme”, Batman has appeared in the original Batman theme, DC Suoerheroes (now just DC), TLBM (_not_ part of DCS, even though Bricklink lumps them in there), Dimensions, CMF, had an entire Bricktober box set to himself, made a token appearance in at least one TLM set, and a few TLM2 sets. If any other character can beat that, I’d be impressed.

Not surprised by Friends as there are only 5 main characters who between them appear in every set, compared to say the dozens of Star Wars characters.

I figured Spiderman would top Marvel rather than Iron Man!
Missing Indiana Jones, but they only made 18 sets.

Is Unikitty a character or a similar pile of different coloured/stickered bricks?

It would be interested to see sets with (minifig) animal in it!

Han Solo being in so many sets is surprising to me. Even more surprising is Stormtroopers have only come in 40 different sets.

Leia doesn't get credit for Boushh. Or did she get credit for that and one of the others is considered a duplicate?

Minidoll invasion.

"Clone Trooper" includes all sorts of troopers; ARF, Scout, Airborne...
I'm sure if you add all the Storm-, Sand-, Scout-, Snow- etc troopers they would make the top 10.

I won a contest on reddit for having the most of any one minifig. The thread is gone but it was Batman by a wide margin. https://i.imgur.com/PFCAHDe.jpg

Emmet was my 2, but i had a much better display for him. https://i.redd.it/z41vntw8apo41.jpg

Something I've always wondered, which is tangentially related to this:

Is Chris Pratt the person with the most LEGO minifigures in his image?

Emmet, Rex Dangervest, Owen Grady, Star-Lord... I'm sure there are some others I've missed :-)

Don’t think a generic character sucg as a clone trooper should count. Every clone is technically a different character despite them al being clones

@J0rgen:
I've actually got a fifth variation from the original Batman theme, but it's really bizarre. In early 2006, possibly before the Batman theme had even been announced, I did a display at a small show called Brick Bash. The next display over from me was a guy who was making Detroit in nanoscale. He had a bin full of the original grey Batman from 2006, but instead of having a cape, they all had pin backs glued to their backs so you could wear them. That was my first official Batman minifig. See, it turns out he actually worked for some division of The LEGO Company, and had acquired these pin-backed Batmen to hand out at shows.

@CCC:
Batman got really messy in 2012, as they changed the cowl design used in those sets.

@Joefish:
From the OT, Han has his standard "Smuggler Outfit" with dark-blue pants in Ep4, as well as his Stormtrooper disguise, and the medal ceremony (his basic Ep4 outfit plus the medal). In Ep5, he has brown pants with a jacket, the full parka, brown pants with no jacket or vest, and then he's frozen in carbonite. In Ep6 he repeats the carbonite and brown pants/white shirt looks, then brown pants w/ vest for the briefing, throws on a camo trench coat for the infiltration, and then he's back to the vest.

But that's not where the quantity comes from. It's reissuing these minifigs with different prints and different hairstyles that does it. There's probably at least one outfit that has half a dozen variants on that list.

@JasterMereel42:
The rare Ironman with the helmet just painted on a minifig head is from NYTF, not SDCC. They handed out those two minifigs to showroom attendees.

@ambr:
Spiderman appears in a lot of sets, but Ironman has a ton of different armor suits, and they've tried to reproduce as many as possible. The only reason he's 32/35 is that early on in the MCU he didn't burn through his outfits several times per movie, so they had more sets to put him in than outfit variations to work with. For a little bit, Batman kinda went the same way, having a unique outfit for every set he appeared in, but that didn't last nearly as long for him. Imagine how many variants he'd have if that had been the case for the entire run!

@Cyno01:
That's all it took to win? Between the CMF S1 Robot and the Toy Story 3 Claw Alien, I've got about 100 of one and 70 of the other (just can't remember which is which). I'm only missing a few official Batman variants, but have loads of extras. I've also got a ton of modified or custom Batmen. My collection of unique Robins could probably give you a run for your money.

And all of that is nothing. There are Space and Castle army-builders who could probably dwarf my count on any single character. The craziest I think I've ever seen in person (way beyond the guy who had a few dozen of the original Killer Croc as a platoon of lizardmen) is a guy did a display based on The 300 at Brickworld Chicago one year. I'm pretty sure he actually had 300 CMF S2 Spartans, all locked up in a clear display case (so he still had all those Spartans at the end of the show, which I guarantee would not have been the case if it had just been sitting on a table).

@CapnRex101 said:
" @milflinn said:
"I spot checked for accuracy - your missing the nano figure in ironman armory for example.

I am sure other inconsistency exist
Anyone else spot check for accuracy?"

Examples like this enter a grey area. That nanofigure technically represents a model of an Iron Man armour, rather than an actual character, so should not necessarily be tagged as 'Iron Man'."

prehaps you could remove confusion and add it, or remove tge clear headed definately not tony stark versions, i think people prefer to error on side of inclusion in instances like this...

ymmv but you can have a poll to find out...

ps thanks for having database, dont wanna come off as sounding ungrateful trying to do mutially benefitial outcomes for all users

Well clearly you agree with Obiwan in that Darth Vader betrayed and killed Anakin. However, if we are to clump all the clones together, shouldn’t Jango and Boba (as well as the upcoming Bad Batch) also be included in the count? As for storm troopers, are Empire and First Order combined or are they separate?

It’s interesting to see so many different Leia minifigures have been made considering she is fairly hard to get if you don’t want to spend $100 or more. Of course her exclusion from the number of sets list and the inclusion of R2 and Chewie on that list confirm that there are many more of their minifigures, only they remain consistent.

I think that these differences could lead to more interesting analysis being performed based on percentages. Like which minifigures have the most variations per set appearances. I think it would also be interesting to see these lists for popular themes. Obviously Lord of the Rings doesn’t stand a chance of appearing on these lists because there are so few sets, but it would be cool to see this sort of analysis done just on those sets.

Interesting. Ron appears in more sets than Hermoine apparently. At least their variations only have a difference of one. As far as I know they are putting an equal amount of Rons and Hermoines in sets since the reboot in 2018.

If you'd count Darth Vader and Anakin Skywalker as the same character then they have one more variation than Luke Skywalker.

Articles like these are very interesting.

How does the existence of a CMF line affect a character's abundance? Ninjago, DC, Harry Potter, and the LEGO and LEGO Batman movies have all had one. Would the list be more or less the same, but with Friends and Star Wars ahead of the CMF-ed characters?

@TeddytheSpoon:
Batman still wins. He picked up five variants from TLBM1, two more from TLBM2, and one from DCS. That leaves him four in the lead. If you also exclude Bricktober 4-pack, he’d be tied with Stephanie. In terms of total sets, he’d fare a lot better, since that would only count as four or nine sets, depending on whether you count every minifig in a CMF wave as being individual sets, or if each wave counts as one set (Bricktober only counts against him once, though).

And just think, in the numbers of Batman figures, it includes the Tooth Fairy Batman, the Mermaid Batman, the Cave Batman, and the Disco Batman...

[shudder] I have the Fairy Batman.

@CaptainVictoria:
At this point, I have (at last count) north of 370 unique stock, modified, and custom Batman-related minifigs, about half of which come from TLBM (putting most of the TLBM Bat-villains in Arkham jumpsuits _really_ boosted that number). At some longer shows, I’ll put a sign on the layout telling kids to look for 37 Crazy Batsuits, which strictly consist of outfits that were seen in the movie or trailers (because a few got cut). Most come from the Batsuit rack in the Batcave, some are from when Bruce is trying in tuxedos, and then the few oddball ones are the robe he wears while eating lobster, the Speedo he doesn’t wear when not swimming with a dolphin (that’s one that got cut), the fancy police uniform (from Barbara’s presentation), and the “vacation” lineup late in the end credits. Fairy Batman usually ends up doing a ballet pose, but hanging onto the antenna of a skyscraper about 7-8’ off the ground. The only normalish one is Desert Batman that came in 76056. I didn’t really have any other use for that one, I have no idea what it’s based on, and it’s one of the existing Batman minifigs that I actually spotted in the Batcave scenes.

Of the ones I’ve managed to collect or create from TLBM, the weirdest ones are generally official minifigs. For non-TLBM, I think the weirdest is probably HARDAC Batman from B:TAS. But the weirdest related minifigs in general are probably the person-sized robin that gets Robin’s “powers” a la The Fly in Teen Titans Go!, and snake-clowns.

@PurpleDave said:
" @CaptainVictoria:
At this point, I have (at last count) north of 370 unique stock, modified, and custom Batman-related minifigs, about half of which come from TLBM (putting most of the TLBM Bat-villains in Arkham jumpsuits _really_ boosted that number). At some longer shows, I’ll put a sign on the layout telling kids to look for 37 Crazy Batsuits, which strictly consist of outfits that were seen in the movie or trailers (because a few got cut). Most come from the Batsuit rack in the Batcave, some are from when Bruce is trying in tuxedos, and then the few oddball ones are the robe he wears while eating lobster, the Speedo he doesn’t wear when not swimming with a dolphin (that’s one that got cut), the fancy police uniform (from Barbara’s presentation), and the “vacation” lineup late in the end credits. Fairy Batman usually ends up doing a ballet pose, but hanging onto the antenna of a skyscraper about 7-8’ off the ground. The only normalish one is Desert Batman that came in 76056. I didn’t really have any other use for that one, I have no idea what it’s based on, and it’s one of the existing Batman minifigs that I actually spotted in the Batcave scenes.

Of the ones I’ve managed to collect or create from TLBM, the weirdest ones are generally official minifigs. For non-TLBM, I think the weirdest is probably HARDAC Batman from B:TAS. But the weirdest related minifigs in general are probably the person-sized robin that gets Robin’s “powers” a la The Fly in Teen Titans Go!, and snake-clowns."

You have snake clowns!?!? I’m terrified and impressed.

@Cooliocdawg:
Yes. Yes, I do. But they're minifigs and look nothing like the brick-built snake-clowns that you see in the movie (I think they show up in the end credits?). They basically just combine S10 Medusa head & tail with clown torsos and clown-appropriate hair. I might have picked different parts in some cases, but I was working with what I actually had on hand.

Anyways, you should see what I did with Winnie the Pooh...

@PurpleDave said:
" @Cooliocdawg:
Yes. Yes, I do. But they're minifigs and look nothing like the brick-built snake-clowns that you see in the movie (I think they show up in the end credits?). They basically just combine S10 Medusa head & tail with clown torsos and clown-appropriate hair. I might have picked different parts in some cases, but I was working with what I actually had on hand.

Anyways, you should see what I did with Winnie the Pooh..."

Nice! That’s really cool. Also I have no desire to see the Winnie The Pooh. I can only imagine.

I love articles like this! You can get news and reviews at many sites, but only BrickSet has content like this!

@Cooliocdawg:
You sure? Because I showed off pics at the local LEGO Store, and four out of five employees agree that it’s hilarious. The fifth backed away quickly and said something about having nightmares, because apparently he’s got a mildly severe phobia of...um...other characters who like red balloons. But perhaps Pooh was wrong when he said, “Nobody can be uncheered with a balloon.”

What about total number of minifigs including multiples in a set? Clone troopers come out to 148 total by my count

@HBBGDFJMOUQUDUY:
There’s a Bricktober 4-pack with four Batmen (not just empty costumes), a polybag with two Batmen, and every major Batcave set includes both a Batman and a Bruce Wayne, so that’s 135 sets plus eight extra minifigs, for 143. Then I have no idea if CMF counts as one set per wave or per packet, but TLBM1 has five Batmen and TLBM2 has two Batman, so if it counts per wave and not packet, that’s another five, which ties him up at 148. Clearly the Flash has nothing on Batman, if he can keep up with an army of clones all by himself...