8 Fictional Movie Villains Inspired By Real People

6. Lord Farquaad (Shrek) - Michael Eisner

Michael Eisner Lord Farquaad Shrek
Ed Schipul (via WikiMedia Commons)/DreamWorks Pictures

Lord Farquaad, villain in the first Shrek film, is the short and short-tempered ruler of Duloc, a towering medieval city.

A behind-the-scenes feud between Michael Eisner (former Disney CEO) and Jeffrey Katzenberg (who used to head up Disney's motion picture division) resulted in Katzenberg modelling Farquaad on his former boss.

To put it bluntly, Eisner and Katzenberg did not like each other. As a result, Katzenberg was forced to resign from Disney in the mid-90s, and went on to form DreamWorks SKG, where he set about producing one of the studio's first movies, Shrek.

And it was here where Katzenberg saw an opportunity to subtly hit back at Eisner, by loosely basing the film's villain on him.

Eisner is a very tall man, and is infamous for saying "I think I hate that little midget" in reference to Katzenberg - so the fact that Farquaad is tiny is Katzenberg's way of turning the tables on his old colleague.

Farquaad and Eisner have the same pale, square face, and in addition, Farquaad's name sounds a heck of a lot like a certain derogatory term, which we shall not repeat here. The character also rules over a jolly fairytale land, living in a city (Duloc) that bears many similarities to a Disneyland theme park.

Contributor
Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!