Shere Khan
Contents
Introduction
Shere Khan is a tiger character that first appeared in the book The Jungle Book by the author Rudyard Kipling, who was born with a withered leg and nicknamed Lungri (The Lame One) by his mother. Shere Khan was aggressive, arrogant and self-centered and saw himself as the rightful king of the jungle. The only one who looked up to him was Tabaqui the jackal. The worst thing Shere Khan knows are human people and when he finds out about Mowgli, he sends out to get his paws on him. But staying in his way are the bear Baloo and the panther Bagheera. Shere Khan have a big weakness and that is his great fear of fire.
Disney's The Jungle Book
Disney animated their very own version of Kipling's book which basicly have the same plot and characters with small differences. Shere Khan does not show any cases of being born with a withered leg and the jackal Tabaqui does not show up anywhere. But Shere Khan is still the villain of the story and is out to get Mowgli. The Jungle Book is one of Disney's most loved classic animated movies.
Other Animations
There was once also an animated series that had appeared in some European countries airing in the mid-90's, mixing in characters from both The Lion King and the Jungle Book, where Shere Khan was bossing around a wimpy Striped Hyena and was out to get Simba to put an end on him and become the king of the jungle. This was not animated by the Disney company but took a lot of ideas and character interpretations from it. It was told to be animated in France or Italy.
Name Fame
Since Shere Khan's popularity it became common to name tigers after him. Both plushies, wild tigers, and real tigers in zoological parks. But behind the name, Shere Khan was named after a king of the Khan clan which were living in parts of Asia. An another famous Khan is Genghis Khan.
Disney's Talespin
In 1990 Disney released the miniseries Talespin where most of the loved characters of the Jungle Book appears with more humanoid charaestics. In this story, Shere Khan is the multi-millionare buisnessman and villain, manipulating and taking advantage of both the air pirates and Rebecca Cunningham's air delivery company. As a cold-hearted selfish buisnessman he does not care for anything else than money and power, yet knows his duties and does not waste his time on pointless actions. He simply just cares for buisness, that is all.
Although being the great villain in Disney's Talespin, he does not make that many apperances, but you can notice that his plans runs through the episodes, mainly through the air pirates and their leader Don Karnage. Such as blaming the air pirates for the increasing price of gas and their raiding of his oil, while making twice the money if not more. So Shere Khan shows that he is not afraid to use manipulation to get to his goal. Whatever it takes, he'll do it even if people gets hurt or exploited in the way.