Fridge / Shrek

Fridge Brilliance

• The Logo Joke shows the two S 's in the DreamWorks logo turning green and popping out ogre ears, in the night. It's doing Fiona's transformation!
• How does Donkey know the way to Duloc when none of the other fairy tale creatures do? He's first seen essentially being fired from a gig as a beast of burden. He probably used to pull carts there all the time.
• Why does Donkey promise not to be stubborn to his former owner anymore, despite him barely if ever being stubborn for the rest of the series? Well, it's possible that his "stubbornness" is more related to his tendency to be friendly and insightful, but also incredibly chatty and occasionally irritating. It's likely that he kept on trying to befriend and dig deep into others' personalities to help them out, but unlike his true friends later on, his former owners didn't appreciate this due to their bigotry and unwillingness to recognize their problems.
• When Shrek and Donkey are joking about Farquad's diminutive size, it looks like a continuity error to the kids, since they'd never seen Farquad anywhere except up in the castle balcony where one couldn't see how short he was. We grown-ups, however, are more likely to notice, based on Shrek's earlier crack "Do you think maybe he's Compensating for Something?" that they're not joking about Farquad's height but rather about his length, which for obvious reasons they didn't see any need to check to support their assumption that he's rather lacking in that department.
  • As it turns out, this is because there were cut scenes where they did meet up close.
  • While that would apply for the later scene when they joke about him to Fiona, Shrek's initial comment was made before they met him, so the Parental Bonus still applies.
• During Shrek's fight against the knights, he's clearly eating up the attention from the crowd, even waving to them to keep it going. After a lifetime of being hunted down and ostracized for who he was, the positive attention must have been really refreshing for Shrek.
• Towards the end of the film, Donkey encounters Dragon, utterly heartbroken and crying her eyes out. It might seem a little strange and maybe even unrealistic that Dragon would be so torn up over losing a funny little creature she'd just met and had known for maybe 5 minutes, but consider where Dragon was when we first encounter her. She's chained up in a volcanic castle keep and forced to act as a guard dog, obviously against her will, and she's been there quite a long time. Dragon was probably INCREDIBLY lonely, and it's easy to conjecture that none of the knights, warriors and whatnot that came to fight her and free the princess even tried to be nice to her, let alone flatter and woo her. Donkey was probably her first and only shot at true love, and he was suddenly gone, apparently forever.
  • Note, also, that the one individual who was present in Dragon's vicinity was Fiona, who herself had spent their mutual period of isolation awaiting a heroic rescuer/suitor. If Fiona'd been in the habit of talking to herself and/or reading her "someday my prince will come" fairy tales aloud, Dragon may well have listened in on her prisoner's romantic fantasies, and had them rub off on her!
• Regarding the time when Donkey meets Dragon again, why did he approach her? Because he realized he had judged her before truly knowing her the same way people always did with Shrek. He only saw her as a terrifying monster, but when he let of this conception he had of her, he started to like her (to the point they eventually had kids together).
• Fiona's transformation. By day, one form, by night another. And when Shrek kisses her, she murmurs that she's "supposed to be beautiful," to which Shrek says she is beautiful. Think about it - a pretty human probably wouldn't turn an ogre's head, but Fiona as an ogress? Smoking hot by Shrek's standards! Plus, she's more comfortable in her skin as an ogress than she is a princess, and being comfortable with one's self is always a turn on.
  • ...duh, that's the entire point of the ending.
  • Exact Words are in play here because the curse will be lifted "by true love's kiss, and then take true love's form"
  • And foreshadowed, when he talks about the sunflower. He doesn't like it, but since Fiona is "pretty", she might. He thinks Fiona is unattractive, and says so!
  • He doesn't say that she is unattractive, he actually does state that she is pretty. He seems more like he is stumbling on his words as he has never felt this way before and doesn't know how to confess his feelings.
• In Shrek, it is only after the scene with the arrow in his butt does Shrek start to slowly fall for Fiona; so, the arrow is a symbolic Cupid's Arrow.
• Farquaad chose Shrek's swamp for his Fantastic Ghetto because he knew there was an ogre there and decided it's easier to move every other fairy tale creature to his place rather than taking pains to move him anywhere else.
  • This may double as Fridge Horror: he is literally sending all of the annoying cartoony people and animals to live with an ogre who has a reputation as a sociopathic monster who butchers and devours people. He may have just been hoping Shrek would eat/kill/maim them all!
    • ...Was that not obvious?
  • Shrek likes the swamp for the same reason Farquaad thinks it's a good place to put the fairy tale creatures - it's an unpleasant, unproductive piece of land far away from human settlements that no human would ever want to use. Shrek values his privacy and can deal with the stench and filth; Farquaad doesn't care about the condition the fairy tale creatures are in as long as they are somewhere he doesn't have to ever look at them.
  • Actually, it doesn't seem like Farquaad knew about him beforehand; at the beginning the knights try to arrest Shrek and bring him to the "designated relocation area", clearly not knowing he already lives there. And when Shrek confronts him about this, his reaction to the information seems to be genuinely suprised, though obviously still willing to negotiate for it.
• It may be surprising for viewers that Robin Hood in Shrek is apparently French, since he comes from English folklore. However, during the historical period in which Robin Hood would have existed, England was ruled by the French Plantagenet dynasty.
  • However, this might be a mistake of the writers, as in the original Robin Hood tale, Robin Hood was a Saxon who was resisting the Norman (aka French) rulers.
  • 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.
• 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 fart...
  • 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 fart temporarily stunned the fish until Shrek grabbed it. Just a thought.
    • It is most likely that the fish (as well as the other two behind Shrek) are dead, given that living fish don't float to the surface like that as fish have an organ that regulates their buoyancy.
    • In the Shrek novel by J.E Bright, it says the fish aren't dead, they just floated up because they didn't want to keep smelling the flatulence.
• Lord Farquaad's famous "sacrifice" line does at least make sense if one only looks at the words. They are his soldiers, and judging by how they've won the competition, some of his best, so if they die, he had technically sacrificed them.
• Donkey getting distracted by the "onions have layers" with parfaits actually makes more sense with what Shrek was trying to say. If you peel back an onion's layers, you get the same thing; more onion. In a parfait, there's a new flavor in every layer, like a new layer under Shrek's seemingly distant personality.
• This exchange:
  Farquaad: Ugh, it's hideous!
  Shrek: Well that's not very nice! He's just a donkey!
  Farquaad: Indeed.

At first blush it seems that Farquaad is simply brushing off Shrek's insult-deflecting rebuttal in order to get on with more pressing business; but if you stop and think about it, Farquaad was actually low-key agreeing with Shrek's assessment, thereby deftly negating the deflection attempt. Farquaad's reply might well be expanded into "Indeed, he's just a donkey; YOU are hideous."

• Other characters making short jokes at Lord Farquaad's expense may seem to contradict the "appearances don't matter" moral, but there's a deeper layer to it. Many of the gags aren't just that he's short, but that he's refusing to accept what makes him different (his disproportionately large bed, the cake topper representing him being as tall as the one representing Fiona, etc.). His entire identity is about denying who he is. Shrek, on the other hand, is all about embracing who he is, to the point where he thinks he can never change (at least until Character Development kicks in). That's why he's always making fun of Farquaad: he's trying so hard to deny that he's "abnormal" while also making life harder for other people who don't fit the traditional mold.
• It's possible that the characters featured in the movie are not only 'fairytale creatures'. Peter Pan, the Ugly Duckling and a few others shown are literary characters and not from fairy tales. There is even a story in the Bible itself featuring a talking donkey. It's possible that this particular crowd of creatures can be more accurately called 'characters'. Shrek, Farquad and others are simply misnaming them out of ignorance, which is also common in real life.
• "March of Farquaad," the music that accompanies Farquaad's introductory scene, is regarded as Awesome Music by many, a cool-sounding Leitmotif fittingly conveying the menace of the Big Bad. The only problem people generally have with the track is that they wish it were longer than the 20 seconds it lasts. Much like Farquaad himself, the track is too short.
• Why is it that Dragon freshens her breath, whitens her teeth, and seemingly has lipstick and eyelashes? Seems like hanging around Fiona might have made her more inclined to be ladylike and refined...
• Another factor that might make Donkey and Dragon attracted to each other is the fact that they share similar facial structures, with long snouts, crescent-shaped nostrils, and long ears, unlike the rest of the mostly humanoid cast.
• The humans feel fairly stiffly animated and less stylized and appealing in the first film, which makes little sense when you see how expressive other characters are, but it's actually all because of Fiona. When the humans look less natural and appealing, it helps broadcast that her ogre form is best for her, as she feels more vibrant and alive in the form she doesn't want for herself. The human animation is weird to convince the audience that being a human is wrong for Fiona, as they can see her ogre form is more natural and charming. Well, okay, that and that's just where CGI technology was in 2001, but hey, it's more fun to think of it this way.
• A small moment, but when Shrek reveals himself to Fiona as an ogre, and sarcastically notes that she was probably expecting Prince Charming, and her response is "Well, yes, actually." In the second film, we learn that Prince Charming is an actual and distinct individual, and that, judging from her diary (and the Madness Mantra in it of "Mrs Fiona Charming"), he actually was who she was waiting for.
• The song I'm on My Way by The Proclaimers played during Shrek and Donkey's Travel Montage to the dragon guarded castle is very fitting. Specifically the lyrics "I'm on my way from misery to happiness." Why? Because Shrek is headed to meet Fiona who'll, unknowingly, prove to be so important to him.
• At no point in the film does Farquaad ever directly harm a fairy tale creature himself - he even comes in the room holding Gingy's legs. Combined with his physique, it emphasizes that he isn't a physical threat to anyone; rather it's his political power that makes him so dangerous.

Fridge Horror

• In truth, the whole first movie is a very lighthearted take on some very serious situations. Let's look at our main cast: Fiona, alone in a tower, and in reality would be completely insane from years in solitary confinement. Shrek, living, you guessed it, alone, because his only view of the world is that it hates him. Donkey, friendless, but a hopeless optimist. Farquaad, ruling, yet again, alone, with a Napoleon complex and no one but a magic mirror to keep him company. Hell, the whole cast is just lonely, before anything else.
  • 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 almost forgotten his own name.
• In the beginning of the movie, the 3 bears (Papa, Mama, and Baby) are arrested by Farquaad's men. In the middle of the movie, you can see a bear skin rug with a pink bow on its head on the floor of Farquaad's bedroom. At the end, when all the fairy tale characters are freed and dancing, only Papa Bear and Baby Bear are seen. That means that Mama Bear has been killed and skinned.
  • Even worse: way before the scene with the rug, you see Baby Bear and Papa Bear sitting around a fire in the swamp. Baby Bear is crying, Papa Bear is comforting him, and Mama Bear is nowhere to be seen.
  • There's another one. Near the end of the movie, Farquaad is eaten by Dragon when Shrek and Donkey crash the wedding between Farquaad and Fiona. Fast forward to the dance party mentioned above: Farquaad is singing "Staying Alive" while inside Dragon's stomach. He's never seen in the movies after that point, suggesting that he was digested alive.
    • Either that, or that's his ghost in there, as featured in the spinoff theme-park attraction.
  • All three bears appear alive during the "Karaoke Dance Party" on the DVD. Farquaad is also seen, albeit in Dragon's stomach, so whether it is canon or not is up to you to decide...
    • Maybe Papa Bear got remarried and it’s actually Step-Mama Bear in that scene.
• Fiona spent the vast of her majority of her childhood in complete isolation, with absolutely nobody to talk to, just waiting for rescue. The musical explores just how terrible this must have been in the song "I Know It's Today".
  • Spending upwards of 20 years alone in a tower with nothing but storybooks? By all accounts, Fiona should be completely insane from solitary confinement.
• Donkey visibly flinches when his owner raises her hand to him. Has she physically abused him before?

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