The flute solos played by the Pied Piper were played by Jeremy Steig, a well-known jazz flutist. He is also the son of the late William Steig, the author of the original Shrek books.
Hair is notoriously difficult to re-create in CGI animation. There's a huge difference between Fiona's rather stiff braids in Shrek (2001) and her flowing locks in this movie, courtesy of advances in computer animation in the intervening nine years. Fiona's hair in this movie was largely modelled on that of Janis Joplin.
As the head of the story, Walt Dohrn performed all of the voices during storyboard meetings. No other actors came close to matching the voice he had come up with for Rumpelstiltskin, and so he was cast.
One of Rumpelstiltskin's witch cronies is named "Baba", after the witch from Slavic/Russian folklore Baba Yaga.
In the audio commentary for the DVD release, director Mike Mitchell states Brogan was originally meant to be Prince Charming, the villain from Shrek the Third (2007), with the same curse as Fiona, called "Gnimrahc", which is "Charming" spelled backwards.