@atatassault @simevidas emoji are stored as characters, and often as *combinations* of characters. For example, “black bird” combines “Bird” (itself an emoji), ‍”Zero Width Joiner” and “Black Large Square” to form a new emoji. (Think of ZWJ as an addition operator.)

Similarly, the family emoji just join different people together. This is also how skin color works. That way, they avoid having thousands more emoji characters.