Shan Yu was inspired by the real-life Attila the Hun. Though while Shan Yu died by the hands of fireworks, Attila died by choking on his own blood the night he was to be wed to his future wife, Ildico. Coincidently the name of the computer system that was used to animate the Hun army charge was called Attila.
Shan Yu is based primarily on Genghis Khan. He is voiced by Miguel Ferrer in Mulan. Shan Yu is the cruel leader of the Huns who is bent on conquering China, and with his Hun army, climbs over the Great Wall and invades the land to prove his "superiority" to the Emperor.
In 1998's Mulan, Imperial China is invaded by Shan Yu and his Elite Hun army - who are based in part on Genghis Khan and the Mongol empire and also on Attila the Hun - and Mulan is forced to join up in the place of her aging father, disguising herself as a man to allow her conscription.
French scholar Joseph de Guignes proposed that the Huns were descended from the Xiongnu, but this theory remains under intense debate. This is further supported by Shan Yu's name, as a "Shanyu" or "Chanyu" was what the Xiongnu leaders were called, much like a Mongol leader would be "Khan."
Shan Yu doesn't have yellow eyes because of an infection, he looks like that because in the original script of Mulan he shared a telepathic connection to his pet falcon.
Shan Yu’s Full Story - Rise Of The Ruthless Warlord: Discovering Disney’s Mulan
Was Shan Yu a real Hun?
The movie's Shan Yu is more or less fictional. There was a famous Chinese warrior called Xiang Yu who went to war with the Han emperor in the third century, but he wasn't a Hun.
Instead, he's interested in forcing all of her people into subjugation by invading the country with his Hunnic army. When we're shown the devastation that the Huns leave one of the mountain villages in, it's pretty clear that Shan Yu is heartless.
The Mongols and the Huns are distinct peoples. The Mongols unified in Mongolia during the early 13th century and quickly established the world's largest-ever continuous land empire. In contrast, the Huns invaded Europe in the 4th century AD and established the Hunnic Empire in Central and Eastern Europe.
The villains of her story are the Huns––a fierce army of Mongolian warriors bent on conquest. Historically speaking, that's complete B.S. First of all, Mulan would have looked more like the Hun than the Han. Her people, the Xianbei, were a proto-Mongolian tribe of horsemen.
Historians do believe that the Huns were responsible for invading the region of China where the film takes place during the time this story was set, according to China Highlights. The Huns lived to the north, in the Rouran State, although their leader in the film, Shan Yu, was not a real historical figure.
China blocked the release of Disney's animated “Mulan” for eight months in the late 1990s after the company backed Martin Scorsese's “Kundun,” a film seen as sympathetic to the Dalai Lama. The animated “Mulan” bombed in China as a result.
Mulan then pins him to the roof with his own sword as Mushu launches the rocket (lit by Cri-Kee) that slams into Shan Yu and propels him into a tower full of fireworks, killing him in the explosion.
Most accounts describe him as tall and strong with a flowing mane of hair and a long, bushy beard. Perhaps the most surprising description comes courtesy of the 14th-century Persian chronicler Rashid al-Din, who claimed Genghis had red hair and green eyes.
What Makes Him Pure Evil? Wished to conquer all of China. His main motivation is seeing the Great Wall built by the Emperor as an insult and a challenge to his strength.
The color contrast between the two cultures shows that the Chinese are depicted as the good guys, while the Huns are viewed as the bad guys, with their dark colored clothing, horses, and general appearance.
Mulan is a fictional folk heroine from the Northern and Southern dynasties era (4th to 6th century AD) of Chinese history. According to the legend, Mulan takes her aged father's place in the conscription for the army by disguising herself as a man.
The tale of Mulan is often thought of as a Chinese story, but there are clues that point to the possibility of Mongolian origins. First, she was fighting for the khan, the title for Mongol leaders. And although Mulan stepped up so her father could avoid the draft, China didn't have military conscription.
For instance, a specific discrepancy in the original film is regarding Mulan's family name. It was changed from what it is commonly known as “Hua” in Chinese households to “Fa” in the film to create a character more comfortable for American audiences.
In terms of ethnicity, they were likely very diverse. They came from the eastern steppes and certainly had steppe nomads from Central Asia. It's believe that they incorporated Iranian nomads (who are Caucasian Indo-Europeans). IIRC, even some Eastern European and Germanic peoples joined the Huns.
That is because the Imperial German forces were referred to as Huns by the English-speaking world. Today, this feels like an obscure reference. The Huns were not German, and there is no tangible link between the German Empire and Attila's hordes.
In Hungary, a legend developed based on medieval chronicles that the Hungarians, and the Székely ethnic group in particular, are descended from the Huns. However, mainstream scholarship dismisses a close connection between the Hungarians and Huns.
The Hunnic language, or Hunnish, was the language spoken by Huns in the Hunnic Empire, a heterogeneous, multi-ethnic tribal confederation which invaded Eastern and Central Europe, and ruled most of Pannonian Eastern Europe, during the 4th and 5th centuries CE. A variety of languages were spoken within the Hun Empire.
He is the mysterious chieftain of the Huns and a ruthless warlord who is determined to invade and conquer China because he believes that the Chinese emperor built the Great Wall as both an insult and a challenge.
Hayabusa is Shan Yu's pet falcon and sidekick. The bird often acts as a warning/danger signal, alerting China's victims that Shan Yu is near. He appears to be similar to his master: strict, ruthless, and vicious.
