Shere Khan - Disney Version

Disney Version

In Disney's 1967 animated adaptation of The Jungle Book, Shere Khan is the main antagonist, emerging into the story about two-thirds of the way through the film. His sly, purring voice was the magnificent performance of the late George Sanders. He was designed and animated by animator Milt Kahl. Khan is not depicted as being lame—quite the contrary, he is powerful, deadly, and sophisticated. Despite this, he is unabashedly murderous, conniving, and villainous, causing all the inhabitants of the entire jungle to fear him. His mere presence in the jungle compels the wolf pack to send Mowgli away, since Shere Khan will kill him because he is human. That, and the fact that not even the entire wolf pack can protect Mowgli from him (as told by Akela). Man's gun and Man's fire are the only things Shere Khan fears. He avoids falling victim to Kaa's hypnotic powers, though whether from intuition, observation, or immunity is unclear.

In the climactic battle of the movie, Shere Khan finds Mowgli, who, of course, refuses to run off and instead stands up against Khan, saying that he's not afraid. Impressed by the boy standing up to him, Shere Khan, for his own amusement, gives him a ten second head start to run away, but Mowgli still refuses to run off. Once he reaches ten, Baloo grabs his tail and holds him back. Shere Khan chases Mowgli, who is being carried away by the vultures, while dragging Baloo behind him. Baloo proves such an impediment to Khan that he decides to fight Baloo, nearly killing him, until the vultures arrive and distract him. Mowgli finds a burning branch from a lightning-struck tree and ties it to Khan's tail. When a vulture's comment prompts Khan to notice the branch, he attempts to put the fire out and then flees when he fails.

In the Disney sequel, The Jungle Book 2, Shere Khan returns to the jungle, humiliated and determined to kill Mowgli for tying the stick with fire to his tail, this time as revenge. Nothing could stop the tiger, not even the fire as he had overcome his fear of it. During the conclusion of the final battle in an ancient temple surrounded by lava, Shere Khan falls into a pit of molten lava but lands on a stone slab, trapped underneath the head of a tiger statue. He is not killed, and is last seen being teased by Lucky (voiced by Phil Collins), the new member of the Vultures who had been teasing him throughout the whole movie. His death was not shown or mentioned, but was implied at the end of the film when Bagheera lets Mowgli, Shanti, and Ranjan come into the jungle to spend time with Baloo when he had been opposed to it when Khan was not trapped. In The Jungle Book 2, Khan was voiced by the late Tony Jay, who reprised his role from the Disney Afternoon series Tale Spin.

Shere Khan was included in the cast of characters in the Disney Afternoon series Tale Spin, being cast as the richest mogul of a company called Khan Industries in the harbor town of Cape Suzette. He was a nominal villain who occasionally takes enjoyment in driving small companies out of business to expand his own enterprise, but sometimes allied with the heroes when it suited him—such as when he allowed Baloo to fly his plane to lead the attack against the Air Pirates after destroying the robotic pilot he had been using previously, as the pilot's A.I. lacked the ability to cope with unexpected occurrences during the flight. He was voiced by the late Tony Jay, who provided a voice remarkably similar to George Sanders's rendition and who later voiced Disney villain Judge Frollo.

In the 1994 film, Shere Khan is presented as a more sympathetic character. Despite being a dangerous threat to Mowgli, Khan appears rarely and instead serves as an anti-hero of the film while an arrogant British captain named William Boone (who is played by Cary Elwes) serves as the villain of the film. Unlike Boone, Khan does not kill for sport, and his sole goal is to protect the jungle from those who break "the laws of the jungle", including humans who trespass with guns and kill animals for fun instead of food. At the beginning of the movie, he sees two British guards and a hunter named Buldeo (who would later become one of Boone's henchmen) shooting animals for fun, and becomes enraged at this. That night, he attacks the humans' camp in revenge for the animals' death, and kills Mowgli's father, who was defending Buldeo, in the process. Other than killing Mowgli's father, Khan also kills a guard and a British sergeant named Claiborne, both of whom were responsible for the jungle law being broken alongside Buldeo. This event is what led Mowgli to be separated from civiliation and living in the jungle to survive for all these years. Khan is not seen again until the second half of the movie, when he kills Lt. Wilkins, a henchman of Captain Boone. After the climactic battle between Mowgli and Boone ended with Boone being killed by Kaa, Khan and Mowgli meet face to face for the first time. Khan is obviously distrusting of Mowgli (and all humans in general), and attempts to scare him away by roaring in his face, but Mowgli stubbornly roars back and stares Khan down. Seeing Mowgli's courage, Khan develops a newfound respect for him, and begins to see him as a fellow "creature of the jungle". Because of this, Shere Khan spares Mowgli and allows him and his friend Katherine Brydon to leave peacefully.

Shere Khan also appeared as a main character in the Disney Channel series Jungle Cubs, where he was portrayed as a tiger cub, more a bully than a predator, but nonetheless friends with the other characters. In this show, Shere Khan is voiced by Jason Marsden. The producers originally wanted Khan to keep his British accent for the show, but later changed their mind and Shere Khan ended up with an American accent, completely different from that of his adult version. The adult version of himself appears in the Jungle Cubs: Born to be Wild video (again voiced by Tony Jay), and in these cutscenes, he attempts to kill Mowgli when he (Mowgli), Baloo and Bagheera walk into his part of the jungle. Baloo and Bagheera try to reason with Khan by recounting the Red Dogs story, in which they and the other animals saved Khan's life, but Khan refuses to listen and himself saying to them that "the past is the past". Baloo then throws a stone at a beehive and grabs Khan by the head, letting go only when the beehive falls on his head. Khan, with the beehive still on his head, runs away from the angry bees.

Shere Khan appears once again as a villain in Jungle Book: Mowgli's Story, where he is voiced by Sherman Howard and accompanied by his sidekick Tabaqui, who in this version is a spotted hyena.