Shrek/Trivia

• Actor Allusion: Puss, played by Antonio Banderas, basically is Zorro as a cat - right down to the trademark letter-carved-on-a-tree.
  • In Shrek the Third, listen to the queen's Non Sequitur Thud after she head-butts the wall apart. Sound familiar? It's a bit of "A Spoonful of Sugar" and "My Favorite Things".
  • Eric Idle voicing a character from Arthurian legend, in the same film as John Cleese?
    • King Harold makes a excuse about his old "crusade wound" acting up. As Basil Fawlty, John Cleese made a similar claim about an old war wound.
      • Surely, 'twas only a flesh wound?
      • Did he perhaps take an arrow to the Ni?
  • Surely Mike Myers as a big guy with a Scottish accent counts; Shrek Forever After even has Fiona mistakenly calling him "Scott".
  • Shrek cracks a mirror by looking into it and smiling: the scene is virtually identical to the same one featured in Mike Myers' Austin Powers films.
  • Donkey's line "I had my mouth open and everything" actually came from part of his "Delirious" routine.
  • In the fourth movie, Donkey very poorly sings the final line of Whitney Houston's "Greatest Love Of All", a reference to Eddie Murphy's role as the incredibly untalented Randy Watson in Coming to America.
• Bilingual Bonus: "Shrek" is a phonetic rendering of the German (and Yiddish) word "schreck" (sometimes rendered "schröck"), which means "terror, horror, fear" -- a perfectly appropriate name for an ogre.
• Cash Cow Franchise
• Cross-Dressing Voices: Gingy is puppeteered and voiced by a woman in each musical production.
• Deleted Scene: Three, actually -- two are covered under What Could Have Been, and one was a Rollercoaster Mine sequence taking place right after Shrek rescues Fiona and unmasks himself.
  • One from film 1 has Fiona meeting a Gypsy woman named Bib Fortuna (a reference to the Star Wars character of the same name), who would eventually become the Fairy Godmother. In this version Fiona is always an ogre, and Bib Fortuna gives her a potion that would make her beautiful, but tells her that she will alternate between her human and ogress forms until she finds true love. After that, she is whisked away by her dragon guardian and returned to the tower.
  • Also That Other Wiki says that the filmmakers intended to show the "Happily Ever After"-Form of Dragon as a pink winged Mare in Shrek 2. They decided against it.
• Franchise Killer: DreamWorks had plans for five movies in the Shrek film series. Shrek was the first animated film to win the newly coined Academy Award for Best Animated Film in 2001, over Monsters, Inc. and Jimmy Neutron Boy Genius. Shrek 2 was nominated for the award and lost to The Incredibles, but it became not just the highest grossing film of 2004 but DreamWorks' most successful film thus far. Shrek the Third though, despite being more financially successful than Shrek 2, got mixed reviews from critics and was not considered for Best Animated Film of 2007. The lukewarm reception to Shrek the Third led DreamWorks to finish up the well under development Shrek Goes Fourth, which was retitled Shrek Forever After and became the de facto final movie, ending the series at four. Shrek Pleads the Fifth, the fifth movie, was canceled and turned into a prequel film about Puss in Boots.
• Hey, It's That Guy!: The resemblance of human Shrek to (dour Scottish) British politician Gordon Brown was widely noted by the British media.
• Hey, It's That Voice!: Averted -- regardless of who you think Gingy, Pinocchio, the Magic Mirror and even Big Bad Rumpelstiltskin sound like, they're all voiced by animators. In a positive case of Executive Meddling, the execs liked the animators' temporary voice tracks so much that they let them "act" in the movie.
  • And in the fourth film, Jon freakin' Hamm as Brogan.
  • One of the major selling points in the Mexican dub was the voice of famous comedian Eugenio Derbez as Donkey. While Humberto Velez was Farquadd.
  • Prince Charming as the fox in the first Narnia film.
  • Usually if Red Riding Hood has a voice, she's played by Tara Strong.
• The Other Marty: Chris Farley was attached to Shrek early in its development, but after his death (and many story changes) the role went to Mike Myers, who then performed an odd same-actor version of this trope, switching to a Scottish accent partway through and re-recording already-done lines.
• Throw It In:
  • The line "You're on your way to a smacked bottom" was improvised by Mike Myers after he got annoyed at one of the directors.
  • The scene where Princess Fiona burps was written after Cameron Diaz burped during a recording session after drinking Coca-Cola.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The film was originally going to be produced by Steven Spielberg, be hand-drawn, and star Bill Murray as Shrek and Steve Martin as Donkey.
  • The original script had Princess Fiona born an ogre to the late King and Queen of Duloc. They had her locked in the tower under the lie that she was "of such rare beauty" she was kidnapped. They died, and the kingdom was left under the rule of an ambitious regent (implied to be Farquaad). When she 'became of age' to ascend the throne she escaped the tower and encounters a witch named Bib Fortuna (a reference to the Star Wars character of the same name) - who has narrated the entire sequence through her tarot cards. She gave Fiona a potion which would make her beautiful; but Fortuna warns her the potion has a side effect - she will change between her human and ogress form until she finds her true love. Later she was whisked away by her dragon guardian and returned to the tower. This storyline was not adapted to keep the story simple, but is mentioned through the "witch" Fiona tells Donkey about.
  • The writers and artists considered numerous scenes of Farquaad and Shrek together (which would explain Shrek's short jokes to Fiona). One scene was storyboarded (also in the DVD) has Farquaad explaining Shrek his plan to transform Duloc into a modernized urban city complete with convenient stores, mini-malls and trailer homes. Farquaad tells Shrek he doesn't really own his swamp home, but will give him the deed and take away the Fairy Tale creatures if he rescues the princess.
  • Chris Farley was originally cast as Shrek and even recorded part of the dialogue - however, after he died, the role was given to Mike Myers.
    • Some who worked on the Chris Farley version of the film hold that his Shrek ultimately would have proven to be a more poignant character, as his version of the character would start out not realizing why so many people react to him with shock and revulsion. At least, he wouldn't realize until the painfully emotional climax of the film. By the time Myers was cast, this character arc had largely been dropped for a more conventional Jerk with a Heart of Gold arc.
    • The Farley version also had Janeane Garofalo as Princess Fiona.
  • Paul McCartney originally was in talks to voice Rumpelstiltskin, even going as far as having a musical number for him planned with a song written by McCartney himself.