Referenced By / Garfield

(This page counts for both the comic and the cartoons)

Advertising

• Garfield appears in a commercial for Honey Nut Cheerios, where Buzz challenges him to a race for the titular cereal. Through means of sabotaging Buzz's efforts, Garfield manages to win the race.
• A commercial for Olive Garden that tied in with The Garfield Movie has Garfield watching television. When he turns to a commercial for Olive Garden, he becomes so enthralled by the titular restaurant's lasagna that he ends up eating the television.
• A commercial for the 1997 Plymouth Voyager has a Garfield car window toy sneak out of his car and into the titular vehicle.

Anime and Manga

• One Piece's Cat Viper is shown to have a love for lasagna.

Asian Animation

• Happy Heroes: In Season 7 episode 15, an orange cat clearly meant to be Garfield, along with two others that look like Hello Kitty and Doraemon, is rejected as a potential recruit for Cat Planet.

Comic Books

• De Kiekeboes:
  • In Black-Out a plastic surgeon is such a comic book fan that the molds the faces of his clients into comic book characters, such as Garfield.
• One of the Take That! variety occured in the The Simpsons comic book "Clown Therapy", where Krusty states he hangs up Garfield cartoons on his cubicle because he's not allowed to laugh in his workplace.
  • In "Homeowner Homer", Homer...well, becomes homeowner and bans "flags with Snoopy or Garfield or rainbows on them".
• In an issue of the IDW My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic comic, Celestia has an "I Hate Mondays" coffee mug.

Comic Strips

• Bloom County had several references, some lighthearted, others not so much. The most notable one is the entire character of Bill the cat, who was introduced by Milo as their way of cashing in on Garfield.
• Dogbert showed Dilbert Garfield after the latter was accused of "petimony" for petting the neighbor's cat.
  • Later, Ratbert invested the Pointy-Haired Boss' pension fund in Garfield posters.
  • In an earlier strip, a neighbour complains that Dogbert attached suction cups to their kitten and stuck it to their car windshield. Dogbert wonders if the problem is "some kind of copyright infringement". ^note At the time, Garfield Stuck-On-Yous, plush Garfields that attached to a window in exactly this way, were the big craze.
• Foxtrot:
  • This exchange:
    Paige: I hate mondays.
    Peter: That's Garfield's line.
    Jason: Paige often confuses herself with other fat, hairy animals.
  • Peter also had to dress up as Garfield at his movie theater for a week to promote the then-recent movie.
• Several references in Mother Goose and Grimm:
  • Including several confusions with James A. Garfield and a doctor turning into Garfield after giving Grimm a knock-out medicine.
  • Possibly the best one of all, though, is a November 2013 arc where the characters have cosmetic surgery to become the Garfield characters and get a massive boost in popularity.
• Peanuts: Snoopy as the World War I Flying Ace decides to give the Red Baron a birthday card, then starts to wonder if he likes Garfield.
• Pearls Before Swine:
  • At the end of an arc involving traveling to other strips, Goat is about to be crushed by Garfield with a newspaper.
  • A much less positive one occurred when Rat performed a Hostile Show Takeover by threatening to read passages from a Garfield book, which Pastis said would destroy Pearls.
  • Another arc has Rat accidentally eat Garfield (long story), forcing Pastis to seek out Jim Davis to apologize.

Fan Works

• At least one of the two authors running the Calvinverse love the series, and indeed it shows.
  • In Can You Imagine That?, Tracer Bullet asks, among other things, "What do you know about the Klopman Diamond?" and "IS PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING FIXED?" (the latter being a reference to "All About Odie").
  • Attack of the Teacher Creature is inspired by a little known chapter book.
  • Calvin's father runs over a cow during Calvin and Hobbes Get XTREME!, similar to Jon here◊. Another story actually acts as a crossover between the two series.
  • Calvin & Hobbes: The Series has several references:
    • The opening references that of Garfield and Friends at the beginning, featuring Calvin tap dancing to a CD player (replacing the original's record player) and starting it.
    • "The Black Turning Funnel, part 1" has a scene with dialogue taken exactly from this strip◊, just between Calvin and his mother.
    • In "A Calvin and Hobbes Christmas", the line "FIVE BILLION PRESENTS!" (from Calvin's parody of "the 12 Days of Christmas") is from a 12 Days of Christmas feature that appears on the website during Christmas. Also, "Christmas is Here" from A Garfield Christmas is sung near the end.
    • "So Long, Old Friend" and "Together Again", both from Here Comes Garfield play on the radio in "Tonsil Terror".
    • The line "Oh no, a wrinkle! Oh no, a gray hair! OH NO, A WRINKLED GRAY HAIR!", from this strip◊, is used in "Gasping for Air".
    • Socrates recites the cast of the comic, among other things, during his sleep talking in "It Will Build Character".
    • Jack asks "I wonder if Charlie Brown could use a robot?" in "The Alien Huntress", referencing this strip◊.
    • The titular duo watch Garfield and Friends on Cartoon Network in the beginning of "Dad".

Films — Animation

• DC League of Super-Pets has a Garfield stuck-on doll attached to a car's window.
• Once Upon a Studio: Wreck-It Ralph accidentally runs into a glass door while heading into the courtyard of the Walt Disney Animation Studio and, stunned from the collision, responds to Mickey Mouse asking if he's alright with: "Never better, Garfield!".
• Shrek:
  • Shrek 2: While Shrek, Donkey and Puss are drowning their sorrows at The Poison Apple, Puss drinks from a milk bottle and mutters "I hate Mondays."
  • Shrek Forever After: In the alternate reality, Puss is a blatant Expy to Garfield; he is now overweight and a little bit lazy.

Films — Live-Action

• Most likely unintentional, but Fat Bastard's lament "I eat because I'm unhappy. I'm unhappy because I eat. it's a vicious cycle" in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me is eerily similar to a late eighties Garfield in which he states the same thing, only there it was followed by "That took years to perfect!"
• Jill from Blood Harvest has a Garfield poster on her bedroom door.
• Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022): A sketch of a muscular Garfield can be seen on a poster in Sweet Pete's bootleg studio.
• In Ghostbusters (2016), after Erin ends up painting her hair orange, she says "I should've known it would happen. The box said 'Garfield'. And not even the cat, but the President."
• In Loaded Weapon 1, the Hannibal Lecter parody has a Garfield stuck-on doll in his glass cell.
• In Ninja Terminator, Ninja Master Harry has a Garfield phone.
• In Smiley Face, Jane stares at a piece of corn in a frame and decides she'd frame a picture of lasagna because she loves it, and then decides to frame Garfield and eventually James A. Garfield as a subtle way of saying she loves lasagna.
• Ted features a scene where the titular character draws on a girl's naked chest to prove Garfield's eyes look like a pair of tits.
• In Wrongfully Accused, Laughra has a Garfield suction cup doll.
• According to Zombieland, Garfield is Bill Murray's only regret. The post-credits scene of the sequel shows he was at a press conference for Garfield 3 on day one of the Zombie Apocalypse, and he takes out numerous zombies while quipping "I hate Mondays".

Live-Action TV

• The Big Bang Theory:
  • In the episode "The Wheaton Reoccurrence", Sheldon gives Amy ice cream for being upset due to studying Cathy. He then states "If you were a cat, I would have bought you a lasagna."
  • In "The Raiders Minimization", Sheldon is looking for flaws in Amy's favorite newspaper comics to get back at her for pointing out one in Raiders of the Lost Ark. He attempts to find one in Garfield, but finds the comic too funny and gives up. Near the end, he finally finds one: Garfield has no reason to hate Mondays, since he is a cat and has no job.
• In the pilot of Crash and Bernstien Crash attempts to send Amanda away in a crate marked "Dubai", a la Garfield attempting to send Nermal to Abu Duabi.
• In Married... with Children, Kelly is a fan of Garfield.
• Mystery Science Theater 3000:
  • In the episode featuring Manos: The Hands of Fate, a comic produced by the "Cartuner" is described as having Ziggy having Garfield neutered.
  • Upon seeing the title of Kitten with a Whip, Mike quips "The hottest Garfield episode ever!".
• Caroline in the City:
  • The pilot has Del lamenting eating Cap'n Crunch and watching Garfield on Saturday mornings.
  • Another episode mentions having a Saturday morning show like Garfield.
• One Saturday Night Live episode mentioned the fake "Garfield 3" in an Access Hollywood spoof.
• The Middle: In "The Safe", among the things at the garage sale that Sue and Brick visit is a Garfield phone.
• A 2009 episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart has Jon Stewart comment on the small controversy caused by an Obama speech preempting A Charlie Brown Christmas, with some politicians saying he did it on purpose because he's Muslim. saying that soon, Obama would push for networks to air A Garfield Ramadan
• In the Brooklyn Nine-Nine episode "Full Boyle", Jake describes Canada as being "the Odie to America's Garfield".
• Home Improvement: While filming Tool Time, Al has to run off-set to get something while Tim is stuck holding up a window pane with giant suction cups. As he's waiting, Tim complains that he feels like Garfield (in reference to the fad of Garfield suction-cup plushies in the '80s).
• Shining Time Station: In "Things That Go Ga-Hooga in the Night", Tanya is shown to have brought a Garfield pillow when she and Matt stay at the station for the night.
• At the beginning of an episode of an Malaysian series, you can see some Garfield plushies in a girl's bedroom.
• Young Sheldon: In "Quirky Eggheads and Texas Snow Globes", Mary buys a collection of Garfield comic strips in a fruitless attempt to hide her other purchases (books about mental health) from the other customers.

Music

• The Lonely Island song "We're Back" has the line "I write freaky fan-fiction where cartoons fuck, got CGI Garfield licking Marmaduke's nuts!"
• Early British Grindcore band Unseen Terror (nowadays best known for being one of Shane Embury's first bands) had a few songs about Garfield, including "Nermal", "Garfield for President", "Odie's Revenge" and "Garfield Strikes Back".

Video Games

• A Dummied Out scene from Portal 2 involves GLaDOS reading the comic (although it isn't mentioned by name), which she hates and rewrites.
• Kingdom of Loathing has a few referenced:
  • The fishy fish lasagna is given the following description:
    "Oh, man. If somebody ever finally broke down and strangled Garfield, and he somehow made it to Heaven, this is what he'd find there waiting for him. Well, this and maybe a suit made of Odie's skin."
  • The steel lasagna item (don't ask), upon consumption, mentions that the player character feels "somewhat like robo-Garfield".
  • Likewise, eating a skewered cat appendix gives you a craving for lasagna.
  • The funny paper hat describes several classic comic strips, one of which being a "schizophrenic loner who can hear his cat's thoughts". (This might be an allusion to Garfield Minus Garfield as well.)
  • One choice adventure has the Cheshire Cat mentioning his love of lasagna and hatred of Mondays, despite not having a job.
  • The potion of the field gar. Need I say more?
    This potion is made from the squeezings (best not to inquire further) of the mythical field gar. Field gar are recognizable in the wild by their sluggish, obese, orange bodies, and their ravenous appetite for lasagna (a strange evolutionary quirk, since lasagna doesn't naturally occur in their habitat).
    Biologists who have intensely studied the field gar claim they can hear the gar speaking to them telepathically, but that's probably flashbacks from their wild toad-licking days.

Web Comics

• Brawl in the Family features a parody in which Dedede as Jon complains that Kirby as Garfield ate Odie.
• NSFW Comix had a "Guest Strip" by Jim Davis in which Cuthwald as Garfield masturbates and ejaculates on Jon's lasagna.
• xkcd has this infamous strip:
  Garfield: The world is burning. Run.
  • In the Alt Text of a later strip, Randall discusses a complicated problem he had with the comic and states "The Garfield guy doesn't have these problems..."
• Yet another Take That! (as you might have guessed by now, it's quite a popular comic for potshots), courtesy of Two Lumps.
• Obviously, Square Root of Minus Garfield is an entire comic full of Garfield references. They've also referenced Garfield and Friends three times:
  • #860 takes screenshots from the quickie of Garfield replacing the phone with a banana from the episode "The Mail Animal/Peanut-Brained Rooster/Mummy Dearest", and recaptions them with the original text as a Recursive Adaptation In the Style of photonovels.
  • #1241 edits a strip about ants to have them sing the ant song from "The Picnic Panic".
  • #1473, an otherwise unrelated strip, is entitled "The Webcomic That Lived on the Internet, Behind a Pop-Up, Next to the Scroll Bar, and to the Left of a Long Title", referencing "The Creature That Lived in the Refrigerator, Behind the Mayonaise, Next to the Ketchup, and to the Left of the Coleslaw".
• Nedroid references Garfield quite a bit:
  • Bartholomew is an in-universe comic made by Reginald, who has never seen a cat.
  • After using a joke similar to one featured on xkcd, a comic was released in response where they promise that nothing like it won't happen again...followed by a Garfield rip-off.
  • This strip has Reginald wake up as Garfield, and...er...
• Cyanide and Happiness has a strip where someone kills their cat because Garfield made them think cats loved lasagna.
• Curvy has a page where the characters briefly pass through Self-Loathing World. Among the recognizable characters is Jon holding a gun to his own head.
• Tiger (a dog) in Housepets! is a parody of Garfield. He hates Thursdays, loves pizza, has a teddy bear called Poom, and his owner is named Jerry Arbelt. He is also pathologically self-centred and his food intake is some kind of scientific anomaly.
• Sheldon: This strip has Sheldon and Arthur reading the comic. Arthur comes up with a theory...
  Arthur: Maybe we're reading it wrong. Maybe Garfield doesn't REALLY hate Mondays. Think about it: he doesn't go to work or school, so his Mondays are indistinguishable from his Sundays. But maybe it's all a PERFORMANCE PIECE. An absurdist magnum opus that uses subterfuge and public spaces to make unexpected art.
  Sheldon: So you're saying Garfield is Bansky.
  Arthur: Dude's a tub, tho, so I bet the lasagna thing's real.

Web Original

• The Angry Video Game Nerd has reviewed four video games based on the franchise; Garfield for the Atari 2600, A Week of Garfield for the NES, Garfield: Caught in the Act for the Sega Genesis, and Garfield Labyrinth for the Game Boy.
• A Very Potter Musical: At the top of Act II, Hermione gets annoyed with Harry's attitude in the wake of Cedric's death and Voldemort's return, telling him, "You are acting like Garfield on a Monday." Harry is highly offended.
• In the Homestar Runner Halloween Special "Homestarloween Party", The Cheat dresses up as Garfield and holds Pooky.
  • Sherlock, the blue cross between a helicopter and cow of "Sweet Cuppin Cakes", trying to catch a worm all the time could be referring to the U.S. Acres bits on Garfield and Friends, specifically the pursuit between Booker and the worms.
• The Nostalgia Critic:
  • In his review of Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue, which featured Garfield, the Critic uses a clip from A Garfield Christmas of Garfield stating "Bizzare."
  • The Critic also called the monster in My Pet Monster "a radioactive Garfield".
  • Upon getting fed up with the lazy song lyrics in The Thief and the Cobbler, the Critic declares "It's like Homer Simpson, Al Bundy, Snoopy, and Garfield procrastinated and came up with these lyrics!"
  • In his review of James and the Giant Peach, when the titular peach becomes gigantic, the Critic refers to it as Garfield's anus.
  • In the episode about The Disney Afternoon, while discussing Adventures of the Gummi Bears, the Critic lampshades that Tummi Gummi was voiced by Lorenzo Music by saying it sounds like he ate Garfield.
  • The Critic has also reviewed the live-action movie, as well as its sequel, A Tail of Two Kitties, Garfield and Friends, and a Garfield Christmas.
  • In his "Top 11 Halloween Guilty Pleasures" video, Garfield's Halloween Adventure is placed in the #5 spot.
• In SWAG.MOV, Spike responds to the tidal wave of Discord's blood with a dry "I hate mondays.".
• SCP Foundation: SCP-3166 is a hostile entity resembling a Garfield costume. The entity manifests whenever the Garfield franchise declines in popularity and is known to attack those it deems responsible for the decline. Its method of attacking people is to assault them with blunt objects, then stuffing lasagna it manifests from its innards down their throats until they choke to death. The Foundation's method of containing it is to make sure the Garfield franchise remains successful and popular for as long as possible, and if the entity emerges, pacify it with offers of frozen lasagna.
• A plush Garfield is a recurring character (part of the "Ninja Cats") in TV Trash.
• When Todd in the Shadows and Pushing Up Roses teamed up to let's play Fatty Bear's Birthday Surprise Todd reacts to a living dish on the fridge with "a creature living in the refrigerator, behind the mayonnaise, next to the ketchup, and to the left of the cole slaw".
• Garfielf is a deeply strange Deranged Animation parody.
• Both The Editing Room and The Cinema Snob, when reviewing Sex and the City 2, made sure to use the film's Abu Dhabi setting to remind us that Nermal is always being sent to that city.
• TikTok users itskeyes and Evan Diem's "The Saddest Character Disappearance" discusses the history of Lyman from the early Garfield comics... as a ballad. The full song has been uploaded as "The Ballad of Lyman".

Western Animation

• Robot Chicken referenced it six times. The first has Heathcliff taking him to "Cat Court" for debuting five years later than him, the second features Breckin Meyer complaining and ending it with "I was in Garfield...", the third (which has Breckin Meyer as Jon) has Liz announcing Garfield has type two diabetes from too much lasagna which he promptly dies from, causing Jon to get a second one who prefers normal cat food over spaghetti and meatballs, the fourth features Garfield as a contestant on The Fattest Fat Loser, the fifth has Garfield getting buried in the pet cemetery and the sixth has Garfield joining the musical phenomenon Cats as the cat who hates Mondays.
  • The Golf Jam sketch has Tiger Woods mistaking Heathcliff for Garfield.
• MAD also references it, most notably in the skit "Garfield of Dreams" where he gets Seth MacFarlane to reintroduce newspaper comic characters (which has Frank Welker voicing him.)
• The opening of the first Treehouse of Horror in The Simpsons has a tombstone of Garfield.
  • In "Old Yeller-Belly", Luigi makes Snowball II lasagna as a reward for a daring escape.
    Luigi: You eat it all up just like the cat in the-a funny papers...who's not so-a funny.
  • In "The Mook, the Chef, the Wife, and her Homer", Millhouse offers Fat Tony a Garfield binder or one of Love Is.... He picks the former, as "He hates Mondays. We can all relate."
  • In "Homerland", Lisa gets caught spying on Homer and pretends to be a cat. Homer then tests if she's a cat by asking her if she hates Mondays (like Garfield) and likes lasagna (like him, even though Garfield likes lasagna, too).
  • In "Sideshow Bob's Last Gleaming", an officer says they'll find Sideshow Bob as fast as Garfield finds lasagna. Nobody lets out a even a slight chuckle.
    Colonel Leslie "Hap" Hapablap: Oh. Sorry, my wife thought that was gangbusters.
  • In "The Cad and the Hat", the episode of The Itchy & Scratchy Show that Bart and his guilty conscience watch is called "The Garfield Assassination". In it, Itchy, disguised as Garfield, offers a bomb disguised as a piece of lasagna to Scratchy, who eats it.
• In the South Park episode "Eek, a Penis!" Cartman goes to teach at Jim Davis High School, paralleling Garfield High School from Stand and Deliver, which the episode is a Whole-Plot Reference to.
• The Mr. Bogus episode "Hipster Tripster" has a scene involving the titular character rolling down a cliff similar to one in Garfield in the Rough
• Family Guy:
  • Stewie reads Garfield at Large, the first collection, to Chris and Meg in the episode, "North by North Quahog", and mentions Nermal (although he didn't debut until Bigger Than Life).
  • In the extended cut of "Amish Guy", Peter goes on a rant about the darkness of the original Garfield: His 9 Lives graphic novel, in particular, the "Primal Self" chapter.
  • In a Cutaway Gag in "A Fistful of Meg", Peter turns his house into a castle. He is hesitant to let down the drawbridge to let Lois inside, until she reveals that she was at the video store and bought Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties.
  • In the episode, "Peter's Def Jam", the loud music Peter hears when he becomes a DJ causes him to become deaf. He realizes this when he watches a cartoon of Garfield, but can't hear Jon scold Garfield for eating his lasagna.
• American Dad!:
  • In the episode "The American Dad After School Special", Hayley says that fat people stimulate the economy with their purchases of Garfield books and Haagen-Dazs.
  • In "100 A.D.", Roger hallucinates while on Turkish amphetamines and sees Klaus as Garfield.
  • One episode was called "Garfield and Friends", a play on the show of the same name.
• In the Tiny Toon Adventures episode "Test Stress", a brief shot of a parody named Garfunkel is seen.
• In the Futurama episode "The Tip of the Zoidberg", Fry is infected with "Garfield syndrome", causing his skin to turn orange with black stripes.
  • In "Leela's Homeworld", a balloon head of Jon is seen in the giant balloon float formation.
• The Rick and Morty episode "Rixty Minutes" has Rick and Morty watching an alternate-reality version of Garfield called Gazorpazorpfield. They then comment that Lorenzo Music is still alive in that reality.
• The Loud House:
  • In the episode "Suite and Sour", when Lincoln and his sisters put on a play to convince their parents to let them go on vacation with them instead of having to go to Aunt Ruth's house, the orange cat costume Lana wears resembles Garfield.
  • In the episode "The Whole Picture", when Charles eats his lasagna, Lynn Sr. laments "I hate Mondays".
• In Harvey Beaks, Harvey can be seen reading comics in one episode, and he remarks "that cat sure loves lasagna".
• In BoJack Horseman, Andrew Garfield hates Mondays and loves lasagna.
• Jellystone!: In "DNA, A-OK!", Yogi moves in with Top Cat and his gang after a DNA test says he is a cat, and, among other things, Yogi asks them if being a cat means eating lasagna and hating Mondays, which Top Cat brushes off as just cat stereotypes.
• The Looney Tunes Show: In "Best Friends", the series' first episode, Daffy Duck signs him and Bugs Bunny up to be contestants on Besties, a game show about best friends and how much they know each other. When Daffy is asked what Bugs' catchphrase is, he incorrectly guesses "I don't do Mondays!"
• Bugs Bunny Builders: In "Cheddar Days", a tired Sylvester holds a cup of coffee similar to how Garfield does during his usual mornings.
• Monster High (2022): In "Monster Midterms", the assignment given to the werebeasts is to retrieve the Klopman Diamond, a reference to the item of the same name from Garfield and Friends.
• Ducktales 2017: In "Nightmare on Killmotor Hill!", as part of a shared dream sequence, Louie's dream is to live as a lazy, fat house cat. His cat form strongly resembles a green Garfield.
• Animaniacs (2020): In "Groundmouse Day", while stuck in a "Groundhog Day" Loop, Brain notes that his situation is like "that awful repetitive Bill Murray film with that surly protagonist who somehow learns to 'change and grow' as a character after an endless array of monotonous scenes." He then reveals he wasn't talking about Groundhog Day, but Garfield.

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