I've come to a realisation that there are 3 types of LEGO stories:
• Pure LEGO (e.g. The LEGO Movie) - the characters being LEGO is integral to the plot and worldbuilding; the characters acknowledge their claw hands, they frequently build with the bricks around them, etc.
• LEGO-esque (e.g. most LEGO video games) - being LEGO *sometimes* affects the plot, characters, etc, but it typically feels more like ordinary characters that sometimes happen to encounter LEGO bricks.
• Barely LEGO (e.g. Ninjago) - the characters looking like minifigures is the only LEGO aspect; in-universe they're humans with fingers and noses, and buildings and plants are realistic.
The biggest difference I've noticed between the three is the balance between humour and seriousness, especially regarding death:
• LEGO-esque media puts the most emphasis on comedy - the LEGO games in particular will often insert slapstick humour into serious or sad scenes to make them less serious. LEGO Lord of the Rings tones down Boromir's death by replacing some of the arrows with a broom and a banana, and Lurtz's death is completely replaced with slapstick.
• Pure LEGO media puts a lot of emphasis on comedy, but is more willing to have serious scenes. They will, however, frequently put humour within the serious scenes so they aren't *too* serious. Vitruvius' death in The LEGO Movie is mostly taken seriously, but he *does* make a comedic death sound, and then he comes back as a ghost on a string going 'wooOooOOOoo'.
• Barely LEGO media will always have lots of comedy, but they're also the most willing to have purely serious scenes with little to no humour in them. Egalt's death in Ninjago: Dragons Rising is taken completely seriously; there are zero jokes in the scene at all, and the scene lasts nearly 4 minutes within a 22 minute episode.
