Shrek Fan Theories That Add Another Chapter To The Fairytale

People living under tyrannical rule don't often get to share how they really feel about their overlords, so perhaps there's nothing surprising about this theory from Redditor /u/Walnutterzz. They suggest that people in Farquaad's kingdom really wanted Shrek and Donkey to defeat their royal soldiers, even if they couldn't quite show it. In fact, they even begin to cheer Shrek on at one point, encouraging him to use a chair in his fight. The Redditor also points out that when Farquaad ultimately perishes, no one seems to care.

In Shrek 2, the Fairy Godmother makes moves to get her son, Prince Charming, to his would-be place atop the royal family. While her intentions become clear at the end, the means she uses to achieve them might be more than meets the eye. Redditor /u/puffpastry2001 theorizes that the Fairy Godmother has actually put a curse on Fiona, which she uses to manipulate the royal parents into keeping her involved. We see that she has the ability to lift a curse, so why not the ability to cast one as well?

It's never entirely clear where Lord Farquaad gets his title in the original Shrek, so it's possible he's not a Lord at all. That's what Redditor /u/SkullzCross thinks anyway, instead theorizing that Farquaad is a dictator. If you look at the way he rules it certainly makes a lot of sense. He acts with impunity and his command seems to be almost self-proclaimed. Also, when Shrek and Donkey first arrive in Duloc there's something almost eerie about it. It's too clean, too barren; almost like images we've seen in real-life of another square-headed dictator.

Later in the series we are introduced to the idea that other ogres live in Shrek's magical realm, but in the first installment, he's the only one we see. Redditor /u/GaryStoneman thinks that's because our green hero has a deeper backstory than we ever learn. The Redditor theorizes that long ago Shrek was cast out by the other ogres because he didn't want to partake in the human-gobbling and pillaging that his kind is known for. Once on his own, he couldn't find friends amongst humans either, because they were afraid of him. Eventually, Shrek took to the swamp, where we meet him in the first movie.

At the end of the first installment of the Shrek franchise, Lord Farquaad is dethroned and Duloc has a chance to return to normalcy without its tyrannical leader in charge. However, as Redditor /u/premeddit points out, that's not what happened. Years later, in Scared Shrekless, we see that Duloc is in complete ruin, meaning that something big had to happen after Farquaad's reign ended. The Redditor thinks that the magical creatures from outside - a legion of angry fairies and such - attacked and destroyed Duloc once the city was weakened. The motive is clearly there - Farquaad was known for torturing magical creatures, (unhappily) after all.

Shrek opens with a storybook sequence depicting the fable of a princess being locked away in a tower. This is thought to be Fiona's backstory, but in this theory from Redditor /u/SweetSoursop, there's actually something else going on. The Redditor points out in this page-by-page breakdown that the princess in the book doesn't have the same hair color as Fiona, and there are some other unexplained details (a golden cup, a dark castle) that don't seem to fit her narrative. They speculate that this is actually Dragon's story, and that she was once a princess who was cursed into the form of a dragon, which was one day lifted by none other than Donkey. All this being said, the storybook sequence ends with Shrek ripping out a page and using it as toilet paper, so maybe this theory doesn't amount to much more than that.