Headscratchers / Shrek 2

Mermaids turning into humans via potion

• Can MERMAIDS turn into humans via the Happily Ever After potion? I’m just thinking of the story of Ariel (how it happened in the Shrek universe (if Fiona hadn’t left her to be eaten by sharks)). Could SHE have turned human via Happily Ever After potion?
  • Seeing as it turned Shrek human and Dragon into a pegasus, possibly.

Pinocchio becomes a real boy

• In the battle scene with the Fairy Godmother, when Pinocchio tried to get her wand, why didn’t she turn him into a DONKEY instead of a real boy? I mean, that’s what the Coachman tried to do in the Disney film!
  • Pinocchio becoming a real boy was always the main point of his story. Him gaining that and losing it instantly makes a more fitting joke.
  • Plus there's already an iconic talking donkey in these movies. Let's not overdo it.
  • There's also the fact that Pinocchio and the other boys being turned into donkeys was a very specific punishment for a very specific purpose: it was a form of karma for those who thoughtlessly engage in bad behaviour. That just doesn't apply in this context where Fairy Godmother's magic is implied to focus around the ability to award (and remove) the target's greatest wish.
• That explains the reasoning behind the Godmother turning him into a real boy, but couldn’t she have turned him into a donkey as punishment for helping an ogre since she believes that ogres don’t live happily ever after?
  • A little more context is needed here: the reason the original Pinocchio became a donkey was because he stopped going to school. In the original Italian, to be a "donkey" was the same as a stupid person (like English "jackass.") It wouldn't make a whole lot of sense in this case.

Lumiere and Cogsworth

• The elves that turn into Lumiere and Cogsworth... are they actually CALLED Lumiere and Cogsworth? Because it seems a bit strange that they would be called those names if they weren’t.
  • They're never called anything in the film. The same way that the mermaid Shrek accidentally kisses isn't called anything but we as the viewers are clearly meant to know that it's Ariel. These just happen to be two workers who turn into a candelabra and a clock that resemble Lumiere and Cogsworth and that's probably as far as Dreamworks could take it since there would likely be all kinds of rights issues.

Fiona shaving

• Why was FIONA shaving her face at the beginning on her and Shrek’s honeymoon? Do all ogres in this world grow facial hair, regardless of gender? This troper has a Fiona doll from when Shrek the Third came out and drew facial hair on the ogre mask.
  • Facial hair on women is not uncommon, neither is women shaving.

Dragon gets turned into what?

• What happened to Dragon after Donkey drank the Happily Ever After potion?
  • According to the Director's Commentary on the DVD, they were going to have her turn into a pink pegasus.

True Love of a plant?

• What was the mushroom's (the one that turned into a rose) true love?
  • It didn't say they would have a true love, it said that if they did, it would affect them and they would need to kiss by midnight for the spell to be permanent.
  • Perhaps Shrek's sneeze altered the potion's chemistry?
  • Plants are technically asexual, I think. They also don't have mates or sentience. It probably became its own beautified version.

The cavalry rescuing Shrek

• * How did Gingerbread Man and the rest of the fairytale group get to Far Far Away as quickly as they did? During the trip for Shrek, Fiona and Donkey, they traveled 700+ miles on a carriage, the trip would have been 2 days at least. The fairytale group only just found out about Shrek's imprisonment during the red carpet ceremony of the Far Far Away Royal Ball, so they would have undoubtedly had to travel in a couple of hours.
  • One thing you have to keep in mind is that the carriage was moving at about 2 miles per hour.
  • Its a fairy tale film. In the emergency they probably used a magic talisman of some sort to teleport.
  • Dragon flew them there, then she retreated off to the side to tend to her newborns.
  • It was probably Dragon (who was confirmed to have transformed into a Pegasus) who took all of them there, but there's no mention of her during all the commotion.
  • Or the trip wasn't that long, but Donkey made it feel that way.

Prince Charming meeting the Wolf in Fiona's tower

• It may be deliberately Played for Laughs, but how did the Wolf get to the Dragon's Keep in the first place?
  • The same way the prince and Shrek did?
  • But the bridge that Shrek and Donkey took was destroyed in the original film, so how did the wolf get inside the keep? I know Charming used a zipline, but the wolf? Not likely.
  • Rule of Funny.
  • Maybe he called dibs on it while Donkey stayed at Shrek's place. Dragon probably ran off for a while, so nobody was home.
  • Building on the above, he may even have offered to "castle-sit" for Dragon while she and Donkey were having their little tiff and she was also dealing with her pregnancy, and so Dragon may have taken the Wolf there specifically for that purpose.

Fiona's parents hearing about her rescue

• How did Fiona's parents know Fiona had been rescued?
  • How did they know where she was to send the message to her?
    • Maybe they have someone check if she's still there sometimes.
    • Maybe the big bad wolf told them where they lived.
  • For the first one, perhaps Lord Farquaad announced that he was marrying Fiona to the kingdom and word got to Far Far Away. But by the time the king and queen were able to send word back, Fiona had married Shrek and was off on her honeymoon. Maybe it took them just that long to work out who she'd married and where they were living?
  • Have you guys NOT watched Shrek 4? If not, at the beginning of it, Fiona’s parents were going to sign Far Far Away over to Rumplestiltskin in exchange for Fiona to be free from her curse, but then a messenger came to tell them that Fiona had been rescued.
    • It might have not come out when they wrote that.

The Muffin Man

• Why do the King and Queen allow the Muffin Man to stay in the Far Far Away? When Mongo (the giant gingerbread man) attacks the castle they have a giant foam machine they use to soften him up. Now a giant foam machine would at best annoy the vast majority of your standard attackers, it's not oil. Which means that this has happened before and they are prepared specifically for the attack of the fifty foot cookie. I know at least one easier way to solve that problem though.
  • I'd need to go back and look at the scene with that in mind, but didn't they wheel kegs of mead or ale or frothy milk or somesuch up to the battlements, crack them open and fill the weapon with that? Rather than break up the flow of the scene with trying oil, failing, then switching, they just correctly guess that it would be more effective than oil.
  • A joke about coffee does not mean the Muffin Man has attacked the castle before. "Character is prepared for something" does not mean that something has to have happened before. If I wear a seatbelt, it's not because I was hurled through my window before.
  • And even if they were attacked by a giant animate gingerbread man before, who says the Muffin Man created him? It's a fairytale setting were weird supernatural incidents can mysteriously occur anytime. Witches, Imps, and Fairies are plausible suspects in the creation of a 50-foot gingerbread man as well.

Beauty Divine

• Does "beauty divine" refer to stereotypical fairytale beauty or does it mean whatever the person who drinks the potion finds beautiful?
  • Presumably the former, considering Shrek has an ogre's standards for what's beautiful and yet still turned human.

Where is Far Far Away set?

• When Shrek wakes up after transforming, Jill admiringly asks if Shrek is from Europe. Is the movie's setting not Europe?
  • Maybe in-Verse, she's using a variant of "Are you from around here?", while out-of-Verse it's a Europeans Are Kinky gag.
    • The movie's setting is never given. Not so much Europe as where fairy tales take place, which is a European environment.
  • From a European's point of view... Constitutional monarchy aside, the setting of the Shrek franchise is much too American in tone and feel to plausibly take place in Europe.
  • Considering the fact that Arthur Pendragon is in line for the throne of Far Far Away, it's safe to say that Far Far Away is a (heavily distorted) expy of England specifically. And England has a habit of considering itself "Europe adjacent" at best.

Does the love potion affect Fiona's curse?

• If only the kiss of one's true love can make the Happily Ever After potion's effects permanent, then wouldn't Fiona have turned back into an ogress after it expired regardless of whether or not she'd drunk the love potion? If it requires a potion to make her love Prince Charming, that would hardly count as "true" for her, so when she reverted to an ogress at midnight and Charming didn't, that would prove he wasn't the real Shrek.
  • Especially if what the Fairy Godmother was making when Shrek, Donkey, and Puss were visiting her at her factory was, in fact, the love potion she gave to Harold, she seemed more focused on Fiona having passion towards Charming rather than love.
  • It's probable that the Fairy Godmother planned to just revoke Fiona's curse on her own, before the effects of the potion wore off. Especially since it's been theorized that she cursed Fiona to begin with.

Shrek believed the Fairy Godmother over his own wife?

• So how come after the Fairy Godmother tried to convince Shrek (after locking him away) that Fiona was "into" Prince Charming, Shrek didn't try to find Fiona and demand an explanation? I mean, the two were married! Why would Shrek think that Fiona would dump him for another man like that?
  • Shrek didn't need to demand an explanation - in his mind, he already knew it. It's brought up at least twice in the movie that Shrek thinks Fiona would be happier paired with a charming and handsome prince than a foul-tempered ogre like him. Seeing her "readily" accept Charming only confirmed his own insecurities, which is why he (temporarily) chose to let her go.

Magic potions are easily made?

• One of plot points in the second half of the movie is that Fiona and Shrek must kiss before midnight or they will revert to their ogre forms. However, the dramatic tension of this soon slips away once you realize that the formula for the Happily Ever After potion was almost certainly no secret to at least a few of the factory workers, and even if it was, once she is defeated they can easily just search through her documents until they find the recipe, thereby allowing them to recreate the potion whenever they wish.
  • Entirely true, but the point isn't whether they can, it's whether they should. Shrek doesn't know that Fiona wants him the way he was; he thinks she might prefer to remain human, and (at least by this point in the film) he wants to be whatever she wants him to be. Still, they could rummage for the recipe in the future should they ever decide they need a "vacation" from being ogres. Uh, can anyone say Fifth of Shrek?
  • Just knowing the recipe probably isn't enough. It's a magic potion. It stands to reason that you need to be able to do magic to make it, otherwise Fairy Godmother wouldn't have such a monopoly.

The first film was Farquaad's fault, why blame Shrek?

• Why is it the Fiona's Dad, the Fairy Godmother, and Prince Charming all seem to blame Shrek for intervening in the rescue of Fiona? Sure he's the one who actually did it, but wasn't he just following orders from Farquaad? Hell, they don't even mention that it was Farquaad's fault for arranging it, they just always point the blame at Shrek. Why is that, in this case, the messenger gets blamed and the organizer gets away scott free?
  • The "organizer" was dead.
  • In addition, the Delivery Boy Shrek was the only one to actually succeed. Up to that point, as per the legend, no knights but Prince Charming would be able to rescue Fiona. Granted, Farquaad broke tradition by sending an Ogre to rescue her, but Shrek's non-knighted status made him a loophole in the legend. A legend Prince Charming was going to fulfill, but got beaten to the punch. Hence, everyone else wanted the legend to play out as expected, they just got mad at Shrek for getting involved. They expected Shrek to simply accept his fate in the swamp with all the other fairy tale creatures, instead of sticking up for himself and completely curb-stomping Farquaad's knights. This gave Farquaad an idea, and we all know how that turned out.
    • It could also have something to do with the fact that Shrek and Fiona fell in love during the events of film 1; which meant that Fiona remained an ogre. This can be backed up by the second film, where Fiona's Dad obviously has an issue of Shrek and that Shrek will be the father of his future grandchildren so they will be ogres to.
  • Did they even know about Farquaad and his sending Shrek on that quest in the first place?
  • Shrek and Fiona might be embarrassed by the fact that they met because an a-hole wanted to marry her for personal gain and sent Shrek to escort her to Duloc in exchange for the rights to his territory. Fiona was being treated like a pawn under those circumstances, and even Shrek might feel remorseful about it.

Could Prince Charming be a valid romantic rival to Shrek?

• Did Prince Charming really have any potential to break Fiona's spell? There's really no denying that he's quite a diva. And even if Fiona was set on having a formal happily ever after before meeting Shrek, I can't imagine her falling in love with Charming. True Loves Kiss is the only way to break the spell, and given that Charming really wants to claim succession to the Far Far Away throne, his kiss wouldn't have done squat to Fiona.
  • I’m afraid not. Like you said, he only wanted to marry Fiona to be King, and judging by how she thought that Shrek was her true love before he took off his helmet, she may have only THOUGHT that Charming was her true love, until the sun set and she turns into an ogre, at which point she may have had a mental breakdown.

Fiona's Diary

• It seems odd that the first entry in Fiona's diary was "My parents are sending me to some fancy castle surrounded by lava with a dragon." (Not those words). The rest of the book is full (admittedly, the majority of it is variations on "Mrs. Fiona Charming") but it should have taken some time to fill. Why was it in her childhood room (in the music box, which makes it unlikely she sent it back and her parents left it there), instead of where she had been living since her parents sent her away? Or even the entry at the end of the diary?
  • Maybe, her parents told her about the plan well in advance, but took some time to pick out the right castle with a non-damsel consuming dragon, and then took her away from there suddenly, so she didn't have time to pack it. Or maybe she just forgot it.
  • Uh, that was the last entry in the diary before she was sent away, and she's looking forward to being "Mrs. Fiona Charming". There were ones before that like, "Mom says I can't go to Sleeping Beauty's slumber party."
    • There were a bunch of pages where Fiona fantasized about being "Mrs. Fiona Charming" after what you call the "last" entry. Notebooks and diaries are usually filled in order, and it would presumably have taken Fiona a long time to write all those pages, hence the original question.
    • Yeah, and those entries consist entirely of "Mrs. Fiona Charming" written in different styles over and over again. That's not the work of someone who's going back to it day after day for a long time. That's more like something someone would put down during the initial excitement.
  • Her mother could have treated her to a new, fancy diary for when she's in the tower, so Fiona might have been doodling to fill up the rest of the old diary.
  • That wasn't the first entry, Shrek opened it to a random page.

Fairy Godmother gets shocked by her own magic?

• The Fairy Godmother is so powerful yet the Rebound Effect gets her?
  • That's why Rebound Effect gets her, because she's so powerful. Her spell was powerful, and thusly she got hit with a heavy blast of magic.
  • She's probably a Glass Cannon; powerful attacks, but little defense and HP.
  • More appropriately, she could be a Squishy Wizard.

Shrek threw down a king

• Shrek went and messed with powerful magic that screwed with Fiona and bad. It got her dad turned into a frog, almost got her married to an evil psychotic and lord, I shudder to think of all the other things that might have resulted. Sure, Shrek (and Harold) redeemed themselves at the end but not even one mention of how they screwed up badly?
  • How did it badly screw with Fiona? It turned her back into a hottie. And none of those things were Shrek's fault.
  • The father turning into a frog didn't have anything to do with Shrek's dabbling in magic. He started out life as a frog, the Fairy Godmother turned him into a man so that he could marry Lillian (don't ask me how he got to be a king then) and when Harold turned against the Fairy Godmother, he turned right back into a frog, because he jumped in front of the death ray coming from the Godmother's wand, which was aimed at Shrek.
    • Lillian was probably already a princess.
    • The magic blast seemed to in fact be aimed at Shrek. I'd assume the Fairy Godmother was trying to turn him back into an ogre. The king took the shot and was turned back to his original form. Whether he was saving Shrek or trying to shield Fiona is debatable as she was standing right next to Shrek and he may have thought she was in danger as well.
    • It makes more thematic sense for him to save Shrek, since it shows how he realized that Shrek was a good guy.
  • All drinking the potion did was give Fiona a choice to remain human or an ogre. Fairy Godmother and Charming were already planning to use the potion on her when Shrek stole the Happily Ever After potion, Fairy Godmother is shown brewing it as he shows up. Harold was doomed to frog status the moment he gave Fiona the wrong tea as Fairy Godmother would have zapped him for disobeying her and ruining her plans, it just happened to get lucky when he took a shot for Shrek/Fiona. Taking the potion wasn't the best idea but ultimately all it did was make her slightly easier to manipulate into Godmother's existing plans and give her a choice as to how to live the rest of her life. Nothing she'd be angry about.
    • Come to think of it, FGM's interpretation of "ogre living happily ever after" (incl. not as ogre) extends to Harold. Oh well.

Incompetent Secretary

• I know that modern business policies would probably apply differently in what's obviously a fairly tale satire, but it seems stupid for that elf at the potion factory's front desk to believe Shrek, Donkey, and Puss are union agents without asking for business cards or paper work to confirm it.
  • Cue the intermission as Shrek and company forge their documents in order to fool the secretary.
  • The elf clearly hated his job and was likely enthused enough at the idea of better working conditions that he didn't feel like attempting to verify them.

Shrek ruined the factory elves' jobs

• Shrek seemed kind of callous at all the chaos he put the elf workers through. Sure, magically transforming the guys with crossbows who are out to kill you is one thing. But a lot of nine to five working joes got metaphorically and literally beaten down.
  • So? He's an ogre. He may not eat people, but he still acts like a jerk quite often. Also, that's where they make the potions, presumably they can turn the people back and/or wait for them to wear off.
  • As the first film should make clear, Shrek isn't some fairytale Knight in Shining Armor paragon of goodness. He's just a guy looking out for himself (and, later, his wife). If that means causing some unintentional trouble when the stealth mission to steal a potion goes awry, hey, that's life, and it's not like he can do anything to fix it, so there's no point in worrying about it.
  • Also, the people who were transformed all work for the Fairy Godmother, who could probably change them back with a wave of her wand.
  • It is likely that the joes knew they were working for someone who makes brainwashing potions. Not certain, but likely. In which case...

Does Prince Charming have powers?

• The Fairy Godmother's son is Prince Charming. Given that his mother is a fairy, why doesn't he have any powers?
  • I'm sure he had low-light vision and resistance to sleep spells and some such.
  • Similar to Arwen from Lord of the Rings, I imagine embracing heterosexuality means surrendering your fairy heritage and becoming fully human.
    • Struck out common mistake. Arwen is a completely different case as a member of a half-breed family who for cosmic reasons at some time must choose to which kind she wants to be counted. Normal Tolkien-Elves cannot ever become mortal.
    • Then again, for all we know Charming's dad was human— Or something else. That said, why are we assuming Shrek fairy-logic works anything like Tolkien's elven-logic? They're not even the same kind of magical being... Or maybe Charming had the potential to manifest hereditary powers, but his INT just wasn't high enough for him to learn spells.
    • Thanks. Now I'm going to spend the whole afternoon making stats for Shrek characters just to amuse myself.
  • Why is adoption so easy to rule out?
    • Because the vast majority of people are not adopted, so the laws of probability say that we are better off assuming that any given person is not adopted until given solid evidence to the contrary.
    • But we're not dealing with the probability of the real world, we're dealing with the probability of a fairy tale world, where foundlings and trading away your firstborn for wishes are as common as trees. Charming may have been one of the Fairy Godmother's first successful "acquisitions" in her business.
    • It's still not something we should assume unless given reason to. Besides, this being a fairy tale world doesn't automatically make adoption more common, and we haven't seen any indication that it is. Certainly it's possible that he is, and we can explore that possibility, but we shouldn't conclude that it's more likely than him being her biological son, unless we're on the WMG page. Also, to answer the original question, maybe fairy-ness is recessive, or maybe it's a One-Gender Race, like the witches in His Dark Materials. Though personally, I've always suspected that she reproduced asexually somehow (maybe that's normal for fairies), or even created him with her magic.

Fairy Godmother a queen?

• Come to think of it, if the fairy godmothers son is a prince, wouldn't that make her a queen? Why the elaborate plan to get Prince Charming to marry Fiona to (eventually) become king? He would have become one as soon as his mother died.
  • He wasn't a prince. Prince Charming was his name.

Donkey and Dragon mating

• You see that Donkey had children with Dragon. ARE THEY SERIOUSLY SUGGESTING THAT A DONKEY HAD SEX WITH A DRAGON?!?
  • Yes.
    • Just one question: How?
    • She lifts up her tail and he mounts her? Assuming the mechanics work similar to other quadrupeds.
    • Er, isn't she A BIT too big for that? ^ Missionary position. Donkey on top, Miss Dragon on bottom, that's how.
    • Take Our Word for It: You Do Not Want To Know. Instead I will tell you an amusing little lie about cabbage leaves and storks. It's a fairy-tale world, so I might even be right.
    • Let's just terminate this discussion because, to be honest, I don't really want to think about it.
  • The Third suggests Donkey doesn't know how babies are made. Maybe they never actually had sex.
    • Maybe instead of sex, Dragon simply pleasured Donkey's genitals, collected the resulting semen and inserted it into herself in order to initiate the pregnancy.
  • Dragons are mystical, fictional animals, so no one can say exactly how their biology works. For as much as we know of what the dragons in Shrek are like, it could be a little-known fact that tonguing a dragon is the way to reproduce with one.
  • Provided you don't get roasted in case she breathes fire on you.
  • Stork! For the love of all that is holy, let's leave this one at the stork!
  • Maybe the power of their love brought their children into existence. Being a fairy tale world, it is entirely possible.
    • This is the most likely reason. After all, Fiona was changed into an ogre permanently once it became clear that Shrek was her true love. Maybe this same romantic magic affects newborns, and maybe dragons get pregnant naturally in the Shrek universe. Thus, Dragon was going through a natural egg-laying cycle anyway, and would have laid ordinary dragon eggs if she had never met Donkey, but this magic that affected Fiona determined that her eggs would also resemble her true love. This also explains why Donkey doesn't know "how it happens" and why he's surprised by the fact that she's had babies.
  • Can we revisit the "adoption" argument from earlier?
  • I'm pretty sure that the implication is supposed to be that Dragon was pregnant, but for our own sanity, I think we should just use the previous suggestion that the stork brought them their kids. As others have pointed out, it IS a fairy tale world...
  • Dragons probably run on DND logic, in which they can procreate with nearly any species.
  • This plot point would have made far more sense if they had kept the idea of Dragon becoming a pink pegasus mare while Donkey was a stallion.

A Nice Burro for Donkey

• Is it just me, or does Puss's suggestion of finding Donkey a 'nice burro' seem slightly suspect? Burro is the masculine form, so it should be burra, unless Puss is trying to imply that Donkey is gay. Consider also the little giggle that Puss gives after saying the line. He knew what he was doing there.
  • Writers fearing that having Puss properly Spanish masculine/feminine form the word would cause everyone to miss the joke. And probably right in this case.
  • That said, it's funny to think of it as Puss knowing darn well what he's saying and that Donkey would be too stupid to realize it. Puss even starts laughing after having said it, so he knew what he was suggesting.

What if Farquaad had married Fiona instead of Shrek?

• So... if the Fairy Godmother had agreed with King Harold that Prince Charming was to marry Fiona... what would have happened had Farquaad married her?
  • It probably wouldn't have been anything else than a minor delay. Seeing how much of an egotistical jerk Farquaad was, Fiona's marriage to him couldn't possibly have been a happy one, so instead of Charming saving her from the dragon, he'd save her from the clutches of an evil king once they'd learn what had happened...using the old-fashioned way in terms of the divorce.
  • The same they wanted to do to Shrek; kill him, and then marry Fiona.
    • Given how Farquaad only wanted marry her to become king, unlike Shrek, who'd grown to love her and wouldn't just give her up, perhaps the Fairy Godmother would have made him king in his own right in exchange for divorcing Fiona.
  • Farquaad says when he finds out about Fiona's curse that he's going to have her locked back in the tower. So there's that.

Fiona falls for a masquerade too easily?

• The King, Fairy Godmother and Prince Charming pretend that Charming is Shrek transformed by the Happily Ever After Potion. Fiona is none the wiser, which is understandable, considering she spent the last few years locked in a tower - but what about the rest of Far Far Away? And what about the QUEEN? Surely Charming, as the son of the Fairy Godmother and a pretty big diva in his own right, is fairly well known and recognizable? Hell, the Ugly Sister tending bar in 'The Poisoned Apple' knew who he was! I just can't believe the following situations didn't arise: A) 'So wait, you're married to Prince Charming now?' or B) 'Wow, your husband sure looks a lot like Prince Charming now!' leading to Fiona getting mightily suspicious.
  • It's possible Charming's mostly stayed at home preparing for his day in the limelight. Really, if you scratch the surface of his roguish affable demeanor, you get a spoiled little momma's boy pretty quick. Not hard to imagine she's mostly kept him home and tied to her apron strings as much as possible.
    • Fiona probably has never actually met Prince Charming so she isn't aware of what he looks like.
  • Doris, the stepsister at the Poisoned Apple, had already given Fairy Godmother and Charming a room in the back by the time Charming was mentioned by Shrek and Donkey. She may have been expressing her own option, or was simply covering for them. Or more cynically, dimming Shrek's confidence to further encourage him to give up. (Under Godmother's orders, that is. Doris has no ill will to Shrek herself).

Time for potion to work?

• The deadline to solidify the effects of the happily ever after potion through a true loves kiss is by midnight. But Shrek and Donkey drank the potion in the afternoon and didn't transform until later that night. Is there a 24-hour time frame to enjoy the transformation of the potion?
  • Likely, yes. But blame the labeller for messing it up.

Secret meeting locations?

• One minor observation: when King Harold first seeks someone to eliminate Shrek, he's told about Puss, whose private quarters was in a back room at the Poison Apple (Puss even explicitly says it's his room), yet later in the movie, when Harold meets with Fairy Godmother and Price Charming to call their whole deal off, they meet in the same backroom... so, it's no longer Puss's or anyone can just use it now? Or was Puss simply using it as a place for him to crash and burn at the time?
  • The Poison Apple is an inn. Puss was renting the room, so for the time being, it was his.
  • He is the deadliest assassin in Far Far Away, so the villains had no choice but to give him a room.
  • During their meeting, Fairy Godmother explicitly says Harold picked this place to meet. Presumably, Harold wanted a private place to discuss matters from from the castle.
  • There's absolutely nothing to say it's the same room both times. We go straight from Harold asking of Puss: "where could I find him?" to him opening a door to a completely pitch black room with no hint of furniture except a table and presumably a chair which notably doesn't match the set-up of the room where Harold meets Charming and Fairy Godmother. Medieval inns, which the Poison Apple appears to be modelled on, effectively functioned as motels as well as bars: there would be multiple rooms available to rent for anywhere between one night to a few weeks or, if the owner were particularly greedy, however long someone could regularly make a payment to keep the room.

The Little Mermaid had a sad ending

• Shrek visits Fairy Godmother in order to find a way to make Fiona happy, in which she responds by counting numerous fairy tales that had happily ever after endings without any ogres, tauntingly. But one of the fairy tales she mentions is The Little Mermaid... is she aware that the fairytale had a sad Downer Ending of the mermaid committing suicide when finding out the Prince doesn't love her, turning into foam to suffer for centuries until finally dying? It's not a happily ever after at all!
  • It's referring to the Disney movie.
    • I know that would be the case, but they can't refer to a movie that was rewritten to the original. They are referring to the fake, sugarcoated version.
  • The mermaid goes to HEAVEN, where the BEST "happilly ever afters" take place.
  • Alternately in the Fairy Godmother's mind, it is a happy ending. The prince marries a princess and not the mermaid. The mermaid gets an I Want My Beloved to Be Happy and allows them to be together. Just like she wants Shrek to do with Fiona - realize she's not 'right' for him and allow her to marry Charming. She wants the humans to stay together while the fantasy creatures leave them alone.
    • But what if Fiona was born an ogre due to Harold being a frog? If so, she too would be a fantasy creature.
  • Also, in that scene, one of the Fairytales that the Fairy Godmother mentions as having no ogres is “Sleeping Beauty,” but the original story by Charles Perrault DOES have an ogre as the Prince’s Mother, called the Ogress Queen Mother. That, however, can be understandable, since the version she had could be the Brothers Grimm version, which left out the Ogress.
  • Perhaps she's assuming Shrek never read The Little Mermaid. I doubt she's right though, a guy who uses fairy tale books as toilet paper has very likely read it at some point. Otherwise, maybe she just said it as spur-of-the moment thing. People forget stuff when they're angry.
  • She's not just stating that these stories have happy endings; she's saying more specifically that none of them have ogres getting happy endings.

Does the love potion affect Fiona's curse?

• After Shrek drinks the Happily Ever After potion, turning both him and Fiona human, the Fairy Godmother's plan is to have her son go in and pose as Shrek transformed, and eventually to give Fiona a love potion so that she'll be in love with him even though he's not. But once the clock strikes midnight, even if this plan works, wouldn't she still turn back into an ogre? After all, I'd imagine love that's been induced by a magic potion isn't exactly "true love", so her kissing Charming shouldn't really be able to rectify this.
  • That's a very good point. I assume however that Fairy Godmother can fix it and transform Fiona back into a human. She has a factory full of potions and a wand that could control space and time; this issue would be as easy as removing a pebble in your shoe.
  • Then that begs the question, if the Fairy Godmother could just transform Fiona into a human, why Harold and Lillian didn't just try and find another fairy or magic-user who could do the trick - we saw at least four of them during the first film, I believe, so it's not like they don't exist.
    • Harold is likely afraid of FGM retaliating, for instance.
    • Likewise, said magical people could be afraid of her. And she has the best magic of all - MONEY. Who would want to tangle with the richest magic user around?
    • In Shrek 4 they were doing that by going to Rumplestiltskin.

Fiona forgiving her father

• How is Fiona able to maintain a good relationship with her father after having found out that he ordered an assassination on her husband? You can make the argument that, since Harold sacrificed his human appearance to save Shrek's life, made a heartfelt apology, and offered his blessing, all of this makes up for it, but it only does if you look it from that side of it. From the other side, Harold wanted Shrek dead and if Puss-In-Boots had not chickened out in the middle of his assassination attempt and plead for his life, he would have killed Shrek in cold blood with his sword. So with this knowledge in mind, why would Fiona respect her father right up to his death?
  • You said it yourself - Harold resisted the Fairy Godmother's attempts to brainwash Fiona into falling in love with Charming and threw himself in front of Shrek when she tried to retaliate against him with her magic, not to mention confessing to the mistake he'd made in not realizing that Fiona was happiest with Shrek.
  • I think OP asked why they were on amicable terms up until that point, she's unaware of his conflicting motives in what makes her happiest before his sacrifice. This answers the above too; nowhere in the movie is it said she found out about Harold ordering an assassination; just that he insists he worries of her best. If she knew what he'd actually done, she definitely would have been much angrier with him. But she doesn't, so there's no reason to be mad at him. Simple as that.

Why send knights to save Fiona?

• Why is it that King Harold and the Fairy Godmother allowed other knights to attempt to rescue Fiona, when the deal was that Charming was meant to be the only one to rescue her? Not only this, but they were very shocked and upset that someone managed to beat Charming to the punch, when they could've easily disallowed anyone else from going on the journey. Also, what would have happened if Charming got killed by the dragon while trying to rescue Fiona?
  • Then Harold and Lillian would give up the deal.
  • They couldn't easily disallow people from trying because then their subjects would've wondered why their royal family would want their only daughter locked away in a tower being guarded by a ferocious dragon. Though if every other knight who'd tried had failed, it still does beg the question of why they thought Prince Charming would succeed. Even Shrek couldn't defeat the dragon on his own - the only reason they made it out alive was because Donkey was able to sweet-talk her and keep her distracted.
  • It's possible that Dragon was under Godmother's control and under strict orders to "allow" Charming (and only Charming) to rescue Fiona.
  • Again, I don't recall there being any indication that they knew about Farquaad, so...
  • FGM probably had someone else take care of the would-be saviors.

Magic affecting Harold and Fairy Godmother

• If the spell the Godmother shot at Shrek was rebounded off Harold, why did it affect both of them?
  • The spell destroyed Harold's magical enchantment, the other destroyed the Godmother who was made of magic.
  • The armor is probably has magical properties.
  • The spell was clearly at something close to Fairy Godmother's maximum power and Harold was only wearing a ceremonial breastplate in terms of armour. It's likely that while the armour blocked most of the magic, the spell was too powerful for it to have blocked all of it.

Attack on Mongo

• Why did the soldiers attack Mongo? He didn't look threatening in any way until he reached the castle. Do they distrust nonhumans that much?
  • When did they do anything to attack him before he started approaching the castle? Besides, are you saying you wouldn't consider it a safety risk if a giant cookie monster showed up and started stomping around your hometown for no reason?
  • He was technically already destroying the city (it's played for laughs, but the giant Farbucks "cup" he rips off and throws on the ground cracks the ground around it when it lands; imagine if someone had been beneath it...), terrifying the citizens, and advancing on the castle with a clear intention to get inside at the precise moment all the great and good of Far Far Away are inside.

Magic Mirror never said anything to Farquaad

• If the plan King Harold and the Fairy Godmother had for Fiona all along was to have her be rescued by Prince Charming and Charming alone, then why didn't the Magic Mirror mention this to Lord Farquaad in the original movie? Surely Farquaad wouldn't want a princess who was already "taken" by someone else. (The out-of-universe explanation is that the filmmakers hadn't come up with the idea for the Fairy Godmother and Charming when they wrote the first movie, but there's still no in-universe explanation for why the Mirror never brought this up to Farquaad.)
  • Of course there is. Just because it was intended behind the scenes that Charming would be the one to rescue Fiona doesn't mean she couldn't be claimed by whoever managed to save her before he did. There's no mention of Charming and Fiona being engaged or betrothed to each other before she was locked away, which means from a legal perspective, he doesn't have any claim to her hand until after he rescues her.
  • The Magic Mirror was also going to mention Fiona's curse, but when Farquaad made his mind up that he would marry Fiona anyway, no further information was given. The mirror thought Farquaad was going to learn everything the hard way at this point. (And he would have had he not been eaten by a dragon just a few minutes after saying his wedding vows).
    • WMG on this, but if Mirror has connections with Fairy Godmother he could have been trying to mention to Farquaad that Fiona was off limits because Charming was set up for her. But anyway, Farquaad shut him down.
  • There is one possibility that the Queen did not know about the deal so she asked the mirror to put out the call to help rescue Fiona from the tower thinking that any prince will help.
  • Even if Mirror knew the details of the curse (doubtful, but he is a magic mirror), Mirror and Gingy were established as allies, or at least acquaintances, shortly before the dating game. He wouldn't have told Farquaad about the Prince Charming rider anyway, in the hopes that the fellow would have gotten eaten by Dragon.

Did Lily know the truth about Harold?

• I'm a little confused, the fact Lily remembers that their first date was by the Lily Pads and the fact she doesn't judge Shrek suggests to some people that Lily knew Harold was the Frog Prince (Even listed under the forshadowing and fridge brilliance of this page). But if that's the case what is Harold apologizing to Lily for at the end of the film?
  • Maybe their « first date » was after he got turned human by the Fairy Godmother and that she didn’t judge Shrek because she just wanted Fiona to be happy.
  • The implication absolutely is that Lillian and Harold's romance follows the "Princess and the Frog" fairytale (probably with Fairy Godmother having delivered Harold-the-frog to Lillian's garden in the first place so that they could meet and Harold could get his happy ending) so she would definitely have known about him being a frog. The reason why Harold is apologising to her (and think about the wording he's using: "I'm sorry, Lillian. I just wish I could be the man you deserve") is because he feels ashamed by how he's acted about the whole situation and because he feels he can't stay with Lillian now that he's a frog (his idea of a "happy ever after", after all, is clearly him and Lillian being human together). He's basically saying goodbye and is about to hop away when Lillian catches him and reassures him on both counts.

Harold, where's your respect for Shrek?

• Why does King Harold hate Shrek so much if, as shown in Shrek Forever After, it's thanks to Shrek that he and Lillian didn't sell the kingdom of Far Far Away to Rumpelstiltskin? Okay, maybe he would have preferred that Prince Charming or another human would have been his daughter's rescuer, but at least Shrek prevented them from selling the kingdom to a lunatic...
  • Because as you said, he was expecting Fiona to have been rescued by the prince her parents picked out from her. Consider how long it took him to accept Shrek based on how happy Shrek made his own daughter; it's unlikely he'd have done so any sooner based on a vague sense of gratitude for indirectly saving his kingdom.
  • Besides, it's not like Shrek knew he was helping Harold out. Their interests just happened to coincide.

The KNIGHTS show

• Why were the police pursuing Shrek, Donkey, etc.? All they saw was an ordinary human commoner riding through the woods. That can't be illegal. And they can't have been acting on orders from the Fairy Godmother, because she wouldn't have known what transformed!Shrek looked like. Maybe they were corrupt cops looking for someone to bully, but then why would they want their crimes broadcast?
  • Maybe between Fairy Godmother saying “Stop Them!” and her appearance at the Royal Ball Blowout, she probably told them that her son was Princess Fiona’s true love and that Shrek was an evil ogre who is trying to pass off as him to take Fiona. Heck, maybe some of the guards still believed that after Fairy Godmother’s demise and were among the knights that chained Shrek up in Shrek 3. That would explain away why they sided with Charming right away when he (briefly) took over Far Far Away.
  • If memory serves, the Fairy Godmother cried out "Stop them! Thieves! Bandits!" as Shrek and co. were fleeing the scene. As far as the knights knew, they were probably apprehending them for stealing the potion from the Godmother's factory, even though the Godmother really wants them stopped so they don't interfere with Fiona being given the love potion.
    • To add to this: the factory was in an isolated countryside area. If the cops of such an area were ordered to pick up any strangers they saw, chances are high they'd get whatever Shrek and co. turned into (especially when they're being puppeted by a magical tycoon with access to scrying). They might arrest innocent travellers too, but the Godmother hardly cares about that.
  • Perhaps they're Dirty Cops on the Godmother's payroll. One of them does plant catnip on Puss. It might even be why they were at the Poison Apple to begin with, as insurance for her meeting with Harold (giving the Headless Horseman a DUI test could've just been something to do while waiting).
  • It's also possible that Shrek sought them out to get help, but between the cops' abuse and his social awkwardness, things escalated into a conflict that he and Puss fled on Donkey. The KNIGHTS show doesn't say what the three are being pursued for, just that they are.

Odd character choices in the video game

• So the Shrek 2 video game has the prison break level where Shrek's friends are working to save him, Donkey and Puss from being locked up. The playable characters include the Big Bad Wolf, Gingy, Little Red Riding Hood and... a random fairy that we had never seen prior, in the movie or in the game. Little Red made only a minor cameo in the movie, but at least she was properly built up throughout the game, the fairy just comes entirely out of nowhere. That leaves me wondering why they didn't just make the fourth playable character for that level Pinocchio?

Puss being so easily defeated

• Puss gets hyped up as this professional ogre killer, the only guy who would take such a job. And he actually does prove to be quite effective at hurting Shrek. But then he hacks up a hairball, Shrek grabs him by the back of his fur... and that's it. He just instantly gives up and starts pleading for his life. Why does he not go through with the job, even after Shrek releases him?

True Love’s Kiss

• Fiona’s ogre curse required her to kiss her true love, at which point she would “take love’s true form”. So why didn’t LILLIAN kiss Fiona, like on her forehead or cheek, to end her curse? She clearly loves her daughter, to the point where she accepts her love for Shrek, her true form was human (Harold was born a frog, remember) and as pointed out in Frozen and Maleficent, true love didn’t have to be romantic. So WHY couldn’t Lillian have given her daughter True Love’s Kiss?
  • The Doylist answer is that Shrek was made before those other movies and thus has a more conservative definition of "true love." The Watsonian answer is that the witch's curse might not have worked that way.
  • One could argue that the love of a parent to a child is so basic and instinctual that it doesn’t qualify as “true” enough; of course Lillian loves Fiona because she’s her daughter, but Shrek learned to love Fiona based on who she was as a person. In Frozen, Anna’s love was significant because she and Elsa had grown up apart from each other and Elsa had been particularly antagonistic of late; same with Maleficent, who hated Aurora initially and grew to care for her as she watched her grow up.

The fairy tale creatures getting to Far Far Away

• Just how were the fairy tale creatures able to get to Far Far Away so quickly to save Shrek, Donkey and Puss (the three were imprisoned)? They were house sitting at Shrek's swamp (and you can see it took Shrek, Fiona and Donkey a long time to get to Far Far Away), yet we are supposed to believe that they were able to get to FFA without any problems?
  • It could be possible that Dragoness had transported them. And as for reason why she only showed up near the end, is because she didn't wanted Donkey to see her in her new form.

The Big Bad Wolf

• Just how come the Big Bad Wolf from the Three Little Pigs story isn't categorized as a villain? Last time I checked in the original book, he was an antagonst towards the pigs.
  • I think that after their fairytale ended, the Big Bad Wolf apologized to the Three Little Pigs about the fact he wanted to eat them, the four make peace with each other, and became friends.

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