History Fridge / Shrek

** also, when Donkey first asks Shrek his name, Shrek pauses a bit and finally says it in the tone of someone who barely remembered something. Shrek has been alone so long that he's forgotten his own name.

* The LogoJoke shows the DreamWorks logo turning green and popping out ogre ears, in the night. It's doing Fiona's transformation!

* The first movie has a joke where the smell of brimstone is blamed upon Shrek, to which Shrek tells him, "If it was ''me'', you'd be dead." This just seems like hyperbole at first, until you remember the beginning of the movie where Shrek ''did'' kill a fish with his flatulence...
** He didn't exactly kill it. When he was getting out of the water, he grabbed the fish and it freaked out like any fish would if it was being take out of the water. So maybe Shrek's flatulence temporarily stunned the fish until Shrek grabbed it. Just a thought.

[[AC: Fridge Logic]]
* Farquaad's height is the butt of several jokes in a movie about ''not'' judging somebody by their appearances. Granted, one could argue that Farquaad's villainy makes him an AcceptableTarget, but imagine the less tall viewers who probably felt conflicted by the mixed messages.
** It could be argued that this is part of the point. The satirical nature of the movie gives a second theme: Nobody's perfect. This could easily be a way to show that even "good guys" can be less than perfect people, along with other things like Donkey's annoying attitude, Fiona's rage and stubbornness, and Shrek's being a jerk.
* By about halfway through the first movie (or maybe even a little earlier), Donkey had won Shrek over and had become a trusted friend. But it wasn't until near the very end of the film, after nearly everything had gone wrong (Fiona goes off to marry Farquaad due to her and Shrek's mutual misunderstanding, Shrek and Donkey's big blow-up) that Shrek really stops being dismissive toward Donkey and treats him more as an equal partner. Why? Donkey, after initially being run off of Shrek's land, later returns to reassert his rights to half the booty by virtue of his aid and contributions. He refuses to let Shrek (who, mind you, is ENRAGED and miserable at this point) scare him off or intimidate him into backing down or giving up his rightful claim, even getting into a shoving match with the monster. Donkey them proceeds to give Shrek a classic "TheReasonYouSuck" speech that makes him come around. As it was at that point Donkey truly earned Shrek's respect, Shrek starts to treat Donkey decidedly differently than just an annoying tagalong or even pet, but as a true ally (aside from some good-natured ribbing, of course).
* Why does Shrek's nightmare have lots of babies who are always getting into something that will hurt them? It's because he's thinking of the overwhelming responsibility of having a baby and how hard he'll have to work to make sure they don't get hurt.
** Although this is more Fridge Brilliance than Fridge Logic...

* In ''Forever After'''s alternate universe, Donkey says that he needs his job pulling the witches' carriage because he doesn't want to go back to [=Old McDonald=]. Considering his ragged appearance and the way the witches whip him when they want him to sing different songs, just how bad must his old job have been?
* In ''Forever After'' it is implied that only one timeline can exist at a time- the original timeline is replaced by the alternate timeline, and then replaced again by the original timeline when Rumple's deal is broken. When this happens all of the alternate timeline characters are "poofed" out of existence as their reality crumbles. They are then replaced by their original counterparts- yet Shrek is the only one who retains any memories of the alternate reality. This means that the original timeline characters and alternate reality characters were separate beings. [[InferredHolocaust And all of the alternate timeline characters' existences were erased completely.]] Alternate Fiona never got to experience having children with Shrek or living in a tyranny-free world because she disappeared from existence 10 seconds later.

* In ''Shrek 4'' Rumple says "Sign the kingdom over to me and all your problems will disappear" and Harold and Lillian vanish, obviously removing their problems. This makes more sense than you think. Obviously the only problem they're thinking of is their Princess problem and yeah, that vanishes, and yeah, Rumple probably didn't need to wipe them out to fix it, but their problems don't end there - there's the detail of Shrek showing up, then the king gets sick and the kingdom needs a new king - whom originally Shrek went and fetched - and of course there's all the little problems that a king and queen have to deal with. Rumple wasn't wiping them out for the sheer joy of it - it was the ONLY way he could possibly remove ALL their problems. Even if he wasn't so bad, he couldn't have kept the magical contract WITHOUT wiping their existance and taking over the kingdom. That's magic for you. He knew that. They didn't.
* Another moment of ''Shrek 4'': If Fiona says she rescued herself by escaping the Dragon's Keep, then Charming presumably never made it to her. He's never mentioned by anyone, so it's presumable that he was killed by the Dragon, as was any other knights sent by Farquuad.
* ''Shrek 4'' again: The area around Rumpelstiltskin's palace is a dessicated-looking wasteland despite Far Far Away never being implied to have such a climate. Of course it is when he's seemingly created a ruling class of witches who dissolve on contact with water. ''That's probably their native climate!''
* Another Shrek 4 one: Why do we never see Fairy Godmother and Prince Charming in the movie? EquivalentExchange. Remember, Harold knew of the plan to marry off Charming to Fiona and forced into it by his own warty problem; it was another problem that Harold himself wanted to get rid of, and Rumpelstiltskin's magic would require a life to get rid of a life (two in fact) for his magic to work. The kingdom was probably just a bonus to the contract.

* How exactly did Donkey impregnate an egg laying dragon?
** There's an old Dragon Myth which tells that dragons can impregnate or be impregnated by any species there is. If your question is about how Donkey DID it...let's either say that the Dragon maybe [[WildMassGuessing morphed into a smaller shape]], [[HotSkittyOnWailordAction or that the Donkey has his ways...]]
** Even more intriguing, when Donkey drank the potion and became a horse, what happened to his true love Dragon? If the potion affects both parties, did Dragon become a mare? Or more likely (and disturbing) some completely different creature, considering Donkey's rather unorthodox tastes on females?
*** WordOfGod is that she became a Pegasus.

* In ''Shrek 2'', when the Fairy Godmother first sees Fiona (in her ogre form) she seems startled but not terribly shocked at her appearance and then proceeds to sing about how she's going to improve Fiona's life by changing her appearance and plying her with material objects. Then when she finds out that Fiona married Shrek, she's shocked and horrified and quickly takes off. Since she probably hadn't yet heard from Prince Charming that he'd failed to get to Fiona in time and she'd married someone else, she probably thought Fiona had married Prince Charming and they simply weren't each others' true loves so the curse still held her. No wonder she was trying so hard to make Fiona feel better: she probably thought Fiona was depressed about the spell not being broken and was trying to manipulate her into staying with Prince Charming!
** That makes sense. In her song, she mentions landing a "prince with perfect hair and sexy tush." And what is one of the things most complimented about Charming?
** Actually, I always thought the Fairy Godmother is secretly the "witch" who cursed Fiona in the first place. Think about it; first she makes King Harold owe her big time by transforming him into a human (as implied when she threatens him to revert the effect) thus allowing him to marry a princess (queen Lillian) and therefore becoming the king of Far Far Away. Then, she (secretly) curses Fiona causing her to be locked in the tower until the day her true love (Prince Charming, if everything goes as planned) arrives to save her. When that happens the Fairy Godmother can simply lift the spell and have her son be next in line to the throne of Far Far Away (and this would be a cynical explanation to why the kiss at the end of the first Shrek didn´t have any noticeable effect on Fiona...). So all the time, the Fairy Godmother was plotting the conquest of Far Far Away!
* In ''Shrek 2'' after [[EmergencyTransformation Shrek drinks the "Happily Ever After" potion,]] Puss comments that "at the end of the day, you will have one satisfied princess." Of course, he was referring to how Shrek was now a handsome human and he thought Fiona would prefer that to an ogre. The princess doesn't become satisfied until the potion wears off and he becomes an ogre again. When does it wear off? At the stroke of midnight.
* In ''Shrek 2'', when Fiona wakes up after the "Happily Ever After" potion takes effect, she screams when she sees her human self in the mirror. Of course, she has no idea of the potion at this point yet. So, the reason for the scream? She most likely thought the curse that had affected her almost her whole life was active again, because she was human during the day and an ogress at night, and she had fainted thanks to the potion the night before.

* In the second movie, Shrek reads Fiona's childhood diary where she has written about how she looks forward to marrying a young, handsome Prince Charming. While reading, he gets startled by the king knocking on the door and lets out a yelp. Later when he confronts the king about it he says that he was just reading a horror story. I didn't think of this moment much until my brother pointed out that it basically ''is'' a horror story to ''him''; Fiona's childhood dreams are pretty much crushed because she never married Prince Charming she wished to as a child, since she married Shrek, an ogre, ergo he lives in fear that she ''still lives with these dreams deep down and will never be truly happy with Shrek.''
** Alternatively, since the words are "a scary book," he could have found the obsessive repeating of Mrs. Fiona Charming pretty off-putting. Which is just one more reason, along with those above, for it to be scary.

* In Shrek 2, Lillian brings up the subject of Shrek and Fiona's children and Shrek is so horrified by it that he swallows his spoon. In Shrek the third, he again expresses his fear of fatherhood by saying he is afraid of being a bad father. Based on what Shrek says about his father to Artie (when Shrek was a baby, his father tried to ''eat'' him!), we can guess that Shrek had a very abusive childhood. It isn't uncommon for there to be a cycle of abuse. We never see or hear of Shrek's parents besides that so we can assume either they are dead or Shrek never spoke to them again. That was Shrek's fear, that he would repeat what he endured as a child and abuse his own children and his children would disown him, like he had with his parents.
** There's confirmation about Shrek's abusive childhood on the musical, the first number has his parents sending him to move away from their house at age seven.
** It's actually confirmed (albeit in a more general sense) by an earlier scene as the reason for Shrek's worrying over his future children. After waking up from a nightmare, he tells Puss in Boots and Donkey that he's not worried for himself, he's worried for the kids; as he puts it, few people would describe someone as being "caring and kind like an ogre", and you wouldn't expect a child to say "My dad is so cool, he's an evil ogre!" Shrek is obviously aware that being raised by stereotypical ogres would never pan out well for anyone, and worried that he would not be capable enough to do things differently for his children.

* In the BadGuyBar seen near the beginning of ''Shrek the Third,'' among the specials advertised by the sign hanging from the ceiling is "Crunchy Children Fingers". Think about that one for a second.
** Unless it's a take on "Lady Fingers" or some such.

* In the third film, Shrek tells Artie that when he was a baby, his father tried to ''eat'' him. No wonder he wants to be left alone in the first film, as if this statement is anything to go by, he had an abusive childhood so it seemed like the whole world hated him, including his parents. [[TheWoobie Poor guy...]]
** It also explains why he was so afraid of becoming a father himself. He though of his own abusive father and was worried he'd repeat the cycle and have the same relationship with his future children.

* In ''Shrek the Third'', I always thought Puss and Donkey switching bodies seemed random. But I watched it last night, and the two held hands when they were transported by Merlin's spell. That's why only they switched.
* It may seem odd that Little Red Riding Hood has a cameo as a villain in Shrek 3, but then remember that her enemy the Big Bad Wolf is one of the good guys.
** Or she might be getting revenge on Shrek and Fiona... because they scared her off during their honeymoon in the second film. If so, that's DisproportionateRetribution right there.

* Also William Fitzooth, Robert's father, was of born Norman and Saxon parentage so it isn't like French would have been unknown to Robin.

* In the third film, we meet Fiona's four princess friends: Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Rapunzel, the last of whom is a turncoat who sells them out to Prince Charming. There's some foreshadowing there, with Rapunzel's bickering with the others being far less good-natured than most of their friendly ribbing, implying Rapunzel is TheFriendNobodyLikes. There's probably a good reason for that, one that neither the film nor WordOfGod would ever be allowed to say out loud: the reason the other princesses pick on Rapunzel, and the reason for her bitterness that leads to her FaceHeelTurn, is probably that she's the only one of the foursome who doesn't have a Disney film. Disney wouldn't make [[Disney/{{Tangled}} a Rapunzel film]] until five years later, while the first three had been Disney characters for over half a century. In some weird fourth-wall-breaking way, Rapunzel is probably somehow aware that she's not at all on equal footing with the other three.

* Farquaad's height is the butt of several jokes in a movie about ''not'' judging somebody by their appearances. Granted, one could argue that Farquaad's villainy makes him an AcceptableTarget, but it's still amusing to notice the contradiction.