Did You Know?

Chris Farley was originally cast as Shrek and even recorded part of the dialogue. However, after his death, the role was given to fellow Saturday Night Live performer, Mike Myers. Shrek's "air quotes" in the film is an homage to Farley, whose character Bennett Brauer also used air quotes.

Mike Myers actually read opposite his (then) wife Robin Ruzan when recording his lines for the climactic love scene at the end of the movie.

Computer animation production started on the project on 31 October 1996 and took more than four and a half years to complete.

"Shrek" means "monster" in Yiddish, and is derived from the German word "Schreck", which means "terror" or "fright".

This film was the first winner for the inaugural Best Animated Feature Film category of the Academy Awards 2001.

When the masked executioner, Thelonious, is singing, it is a direct reference to a "Stacker 2" commercial that the "WWF (World Wrestling Federation)" character Kane (Glenn Jacobs), who also wears a mask, appears singing karaoke.

Gaming hosts Jim Lange and Jimmy Fallon recorded the voice of the Magic Mirror (Lange in particular hosted The Dating Game, which the Mirror parodies). Eventually, however, the Mirror was voiced by storyboard artist Chris Miller.

The film's art director Douglas Rogers visited a magnolia plantation in Charleston, South Carolina to do research for look of Shrek's swamp. He ended up getting chased by an alligator.

Over 1,000 fantasy characters invade Shrek's swamp at the beginning of the movie.

Cameron Diaz, having undergone Kung Fu training during the making of Charlie's Angels, became very physical when recording her kung fu moves for Fiona's fight with Robin Hood and his Merry Men, and at times even broke out into Cantonese.

The song "Welcome to Duloc", which is sung by the wooden dolls in the cabinet at the entrance to Duloc, is not only a parody of Disney's "It's a Small World", but is in the same key and has the same beats per minute (tempo) as the Disney song.

The scene where Princess Fiona burps was written after a recording session where Cameron Diaz burped after drinking Coca-Cola.

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.

Robin Williams was going to have a role in the film, but he suffered a bitter falling-out with Jeffrey Katzenberg when Katzenberg was still working at Disney, and refused to work with him.

Gingy, the Gingerbread Man, later became a mascot for Wal-Mart.

Voted number 2 in channel 4's (UK) "Greatest Family Films"

The song "All Star" by Smash Mouth, heard in the opening credits, was only placed in the film for test audiences until a new song could be found. But But test audiences loved it, and the producers kept it in. When the producers decided to keep "All Star" they decided to let the band sing the last song in the movie, "I'm a Believer."

Shrek compares ogres to onions, saying they both have layers. This refers to the Henrik Ibsen play 'Peer Gynt', where the title character declares himself an onion for similar reasons.

Mike Myers recorded Shrek's voice in a natural accentless voice before the film was test-screened. After watching it, he decided that the voice didn't sound right and had all of his lines re-recorded with a Scottish accent, based on the voice his mother used when reading him bedtime stories as a child.

Cameron Diaz has said that Princess Fiona's romantic/practical nature was more like her sister rather than herself.

Rumors abound that Lord Farquaad was based on former Disney CEO Michael Eisner.

The list of fairytale characters in the movie: Snow White and the Seven Dwarves; the Wicked Witch of the West (or the East); The Three Bears; Pinocchio and Geppetto; the 3 Little Pigs; Tinkerbell and Peter Pan; The Big Bad Wolf; The Pied Piper of Hamelin; The Gingerbread Man; Cinderella; Robin Hood and his Merry Men.

Eddie Murphy and Jeffrey Katzenberg have known each another since the beginning of their film careers. They promised that one day, they would do an animated film together, which culminated with Shrek. Katzenberg even recommended Murphy for the part of Donkey, and no-one else. He thinks its his best work.

An additional scene was storyboarded but never filmed that revealed Lord Farquaad's plan for Duloc. He wanted to turn the entire kingdom into something like a gigantic shopping complex. Another scene planned and scrapped was Fiona getting Shrek and Donkey lost on the way back to Duloc.

Shrek showering in mud and bathing in water were two of the hardest things to animate in the movie. Any scene involving fire also proved difficult.

In the original pitch, Shrek was to be a knight and rescue Donkey from a wicked witch. Shrek also varied from Scottish to Canadian and than back to Scottish again.

The whole animation team from Antz, DreamWorks' first animated movie, were recruited to work on Shrek.

Because the film took so long to make, DreamWorks were able to reference other films that weren't even made when the film was conceived. The Matrix, for example.

Monsieur Hood's Merry Men perform to Riverdance: The Show.

Although Antz was the first computer animated film produced by DreamWorks, it was Shrek that established the studio as a major name in the field, alongside its main competitor, Pixar.

Shrek received his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Shrek was almost made in stop-motion animation, but early tests proved too costly and executives weren't pleased with the overall look and lack of facial expression in the main character. After live-action miniatures and motion-capture graphics also proved unsatisfactory, the studio went with computer-animation.

Eddie Murphy's BAFTA nomination for his voiceover performance was the first of its kind.

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.