Did You Know? - Thirty Fun Facts About the "Shrek" Franchise

Hellooooooooooooo, all you animation fanatics out there! Welcome to the first edition of a series that I like to call Did You Know?. Inspired a little by the Nostalgia Critic's "What You Never Knew" series, this series will allow me to share with you some interesting tidbits, behind-the-scenes information, and fun facts about an animated movie or TV series. Because I like sharing new information with people.

And for the first edition of Did You Know?, I thought it'd be a good idea to dive into what was at one point one of DreamWorks' most popular franchises - Shrek.

As I've said before, when the very first Shrek film was released in 2001, people loved it. It won an Academy Award, it got critical acclaim, it made mucho moolah at the box office, it was a smash hit. And then in 2004, Shrek 2 was released, and everybody loved THAT movie too. Many consider it to be even better than the first one. And then Shrek the Third came out in 2007. I don't know what went wrong with Shrek the Third, but very few people liked it, and people started to become bored with the franchise. Shrek Forever After was unceremoniously released in 2010 as a way to cap off the franchise (there was originally going to be a fifth film, but... well, just read this article), then the year after that they released a spinoff film starring fan favorite character Puss in Boots, and since then the franchise has basically become a punchline. In recent years, the films (at least the first two ones) have regained a bit of popularity as memes have begun to spawn on the internet, and in 2016 it was announced that a FIFTH movie was in production, initially planned for a 2019 release. I'm writing this article in 2020, and we still haven't gotten said fifth film, but it's still in development, along with a sequel to the aforementioned Puss in Boots movie.

Soooooooooo... Shrek. What are some things that you may or may not have known about the franchise? Well, you probably already know that Chris Farley was originally cast as the voice of Shrek, and that there was a Broadway musical based on the first film. You probably already know that the film is Jeffery Katzenberg's middle finger towards Disney, complete with Lord Farquaad being designed to resemble Michael Eisner. Heck, you probably already know that it was based on a book. But did you know THESE things?

1) When Steven Spielberg bought the rights to the book back in 1991, he pitched the film as a hand-drawn production at his animation company, Amblin Entertainment. His original choices for the roles of Shrek and Donkey were Bill Murray and Steve Martin respectively.

2) They also briefly considered making the film a live action/CGI hybrid.

3) Mike Myers originally recorded Shrek's dialogue in an American accent. Then he got the idea to give Shrek a Scottish accent and asked if he could re-record the dialogue.

Concept art of Shrek and Donkey.

4) Before Mike Myers got the part, Nicholas Cage was offered the role of Shrek. He turned it down because he didn't want to play an ugly green ogre.

5) Janeane Garofalo was originally supposed to voice Fiona, but she was replaced by Cameron Diaz.

6) A few members of the film's development team actually took mud showers like Shrek does at the beginning of the first film in order to study the movement of mud. The film's art director, Douglas Rogers, also visited a magnolia plantation in South Carolina for research (and wound up getting chased out by an alligator).

7) Chris Farley's version of Shrek was a tad different than Mike Myers' version. For one thing, he had hair. And let me tell you, seeing Shrek with hair was really jarring when I first saw this concept art.

More concept art of Shrek and Donkey. Note the mop of brown hair on
Shrek's head.

But on top of that, he was also going to be a teenaged ogre who didn't want to go into the family business of scaring people. He wanted to become a knight and help people.
8) In addition to Shrek, Mike Myers also voices one of the Three Blind Mice.

9) Which fairy tale character is Donkey supposed to represent? Some online have theorized that he might be one of the boy's from Pinocchio who made the mistake of going to Pleasure Island. Others have suggested that maybe he's the donkey from the Town Musicians of Bremen.

10) Shrek takes the Mickey (no pun intended) out of Disney so much that DreamWorks was worried they might get sued. To avoid any potential lawsuits, they screened the movie for both their lawyers and Disney's. They managed to avoid getting sued, but some Radio Disney affiliates refused to let DreamWorks buy airtime to promote the film.

There's actually a pretty funny picture in the book Shrek: The Art of the Quest
that I wanted to put here. It's a sketch of Shrek dressed as Mickey Mouse
cheerfully saying, "I'm branded!"

But I couldn't find that picture online, so have this billboard instead.

11) In the original script, Fiona was BORN an ogre to the King and Queen of Duloc, hence them locking her in a tower. She was to escape and encounter a witch who gave her a potion that turns her into a human during the day but turns her back into an ogre when the sun sets. Then she would've been whisked away back to her tower by the Dragon. In the movie, it's never explained just WHY, exactly, Fiona changes back and forth between an ogre and a human (I subscribe to the theory that the Fairy Godmother did it).

12) Donkey was inspired by a real donkey in the Barron Park neighborhood of Palo Alto, California. His name is Perry.

13) A deleted scene has Shrek, Fiona, and Donkey taking a trip through the Seven Dwarfs' Mine, which featured references to Disney Parks attractions Pirates of the Caribbean, the Matterhorn Bobsleds, and the Country Bear Jamboree.

14) Another deleted scene was to take place after the tournament, with Farquaad explaining the quest to Shrek and showing him his desire to turn Duloc into a more "modern" city with convenience stores and mini-malls.

15) In the Norwegian dub of the film, Shrek isn't an ogre but rather a troll. Similarly, the Swedish dub makes him a "swamp troll".

16) Speaking of Norwegian dubs, the Norwegian dub of Shrek 2 replaces the gag of Donkey singing "Rawhide" with an old Norwegian song a la "Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall" about how many people it takes to pull a root out of the ground. Eventually, he gets to several hundred people... just before messing up the lyrics and forgetting where he was in the song. Then he says, "Oh, well. I'll take it from the top!"

More early concept art.

17) Shrek's line "You're going the right way for a smacked bottom!" was improvised by Mike Myers.

18) Shrek and The Prince of Egypt were in production at the same time. According to one animator, if you failed on The Prince of Egypt, you were punished by being forced to work on Shrek. This was known as being "Shreked".

19) Monsieur Hood is voiced by Vincent Cassel. He also provided the voices of Diego in the French dub of Ice Age and Rodney Copperbottom in the French dub of Robots.

20) For a while, Gingy the Gingerbread Man wound up becoming a mascot of sorts for Wal-Mart, appearing in ads for the store. For whatever reason, in these ads he was given pupils, which looked very creepy.

21) Remember Little Red Riding Hood's appearance in the montage at the beginning of Shrek 2? That was originally supposed to appear near the beginning of the first film, but it was removed because they thought having Shrek scare Little Red Riding Hood might make him come off as unlikable. And that's not the only thing that was recycled for the sequel - originally, instead of giving Shrek the deed to his swamp after he delivers Fiona to him, Farquaad was going to double-cross Shrek and throw him in the dungeon. Donkey would enlist the help of the fairy tale characters to break him out. They felt that this scene, while funny, was slowing down the picture and nobody really wanted to see more of the fairy tale characters when they could be watching Shrek and Fiona, so they cut it.

22) The "Happily Ever After" potion affects both the drinker and the drinker's true love. So what did Dragon turn into when Donkey drank the potion and became a stallion? Apparently, a deleted scene was going to reveal that she became a big pink pegasus.

23) During the scene in Shrek 2 where Puss in Boots is drinking milk in a bar, look closely and you'll see a curly-haired bull on the bottle of milk next to him. That bull is a caricature of Puss' voice actor, Antonio Banderas.

24) Spoiler alert - it turns out that King Harold, Fiona's father, is actually the Frog Prince, as revealed at the end when he saves Shrek and the Fairy Godmother turns him back into a frog. Harold is voiced by John Cleese, who years earlier voiced a frog in The Swan Princess named Jean-Bob, who believes himself to be royalty. Probably just a coincidence, but who knows?

25) Artie from Shrek the Third was supposed to reappear in Shrek Forever After, but they weren't able to get Justin Timberlake back.

26) Remember the Poison Apple bar from Shrek 2? It pops up again in Shrek Forever After - it's now a Chuck E. Cheese-esque tavern called the Happy Apple. Which admittedly isn't as clever of a name.

27) Jennifer Saunders and Rupert Everett, the voices of Shrek 2's villains the Fairy Godmother and Prince Charming, both auditioned to voice Disney villains. Jennifer auditioned to voice Ursula in The Little Mermaid and Rupert auditioned to voice Gaston in Beauty and the Beast (he didn't get the part because the producers didn't think he sounded arrogant enough. He remembered this when he voiced Prince Charming).

28) Shrek actually makes a cameo in at least one other DreamWorks film, Monsters vs. Aliens. General Monger wears a pin of the ogre's head on the right side of his chest. Shrek is also mentioned in the follow-up Halloween special, Monsters vs. Aliens: Mutant Pumpkins From Outer Space.

29) A whole new computer animation program had to be created to animate Puss in Boots' fur.

30) This exists:

Thank you for joining me in this first edition of Did You Know?. If you already knew any of these things, then I'm afraid that I can't refund the time you spent reading this post. Sorry.