The Far Side / Referenced By

It may be a coincidence of character design, but in the Eppy Thatcher arc of Grendel, the villainous Torture Technician Mother Aimee looks like an evil version of one of Larson's middle-aged women with beehive hair and cat's-eye spectacles.
One of Jason Fox's anti-lawsuit schemes involved displaying a collection of randomly-placed black-and-white pixels that only coincidentally looked like his favorite Far Side strips.
- In one series of strips, Jason makes his own version of The Far Side when he hears about Gary Larson's retirement. All of his cartoons are jokes at Paige's expense (and a cow is hidden somewhere in each).
Liō: one strip has the title character receiving a "Map to the Homes of Stars", which takes him to a house populated by various stock Far Side characters.
In PS238, Zodon's Holographic Disguise (which he didn't get to choose) makes him look like a fat nerdy kid with opaque glasses, exactly like the Far Side stock character.

Film - Animated

The gag in Toy Story where the shark toy wears Woody's hat and says, "Look! I'm Woody! Howdy, howdy, howdy!" is a reference to a strip in which a vulture wears a cowboy hat and denim jacket (most likely from the dead body he devoured) and says to his friends, "Look at me, everbody! I'm a cowboy! Howdy, howdy, howdy!"

In The Cardinal of the Kremlin, it's mentioned The Far Side is a favorite among CIA agents.
In the Discworld novel Soul Music, it's mentioned that Unseen University's Reader in Esoteric Studies is known as the "Reader in the Lavatory" owing to his ongoing investigation of the theory that all the funniest books in a building end up in a pile in the privy, but nobody knows how they got there, or has any time to read them. A footnote elaborates that these books have cartoons about cows and dogs, and captions like "As soon as he saw the duck, Elmer knew it was going to be a bad day".

One episode of Cheers has a scene in which Cliff and Norm attempt to explain a Far Side cartoon (the one with the cows standing on their hind legs until a car goes past) to Woody. Turns out Woody got the joke, he just didn't get the comic in his local paper.
The Documentary Now! episode "Searching for Mr. Larson: A Love Letter from the Far Side" is about a fan of the strip who sets out to make a documentary about Gary Larson. This was made as a Whole-Plot Reference to Dear Mr. Watterson.
Gilmore Girls: In the first season episode "Emily in Wonderland", Emily gets angry at Lorelai when she finds out Lorelai lived in a shed at the Independence Inn after she had Rory, instead of marrying Christopher as she, Christopher and Richard wanted. Rory asks her mother if she's ever really tried to talk to Emily about the whole situation, and Lorelai responds it would be useless, because while she thinks she's being clear about what she's saying, all Emily hears is "blah blah blah Ginger".

Henry Stickmin Series: In Completing the Mission, alongside Pearls Before Swine and Garfield, there's a comic strip taped to Burt Curtis' communication room that references The Far Side.
Duck: (talking to other ducks in front of a barn) Look, all I'm saying is I'm not as witty as Gary Larson.

In the Homestar Runner Halloween cartoon "Jibblies 2", Strong Sad dresses up as the fat kid seen in several Far Side cartoons for Halloween.

This Skin Horse strip references the "What you say" vs "What your dog/cat hears" strips, with Unity, as was common in the early strips, portrayed as the "pet" of Uplifted Animal Sweetheart.

Jake and Amir: 'Mountain Hiker' has Ben Schwartz cite this comic as a documentary, claiming half of cars in the United States are driven by bovines.
Jake: That's a cartoon.
Ben: A cartoon based on facts.
Jake: A cartoon based on jokes.
Ben: A cartoon based on jokey facts.
The Nostalgia Critic: In his review of We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story, Critic compares the opening scene, which has a dinosaur talking to a bird while playing golf, to a Far Side cartoon without the caption.

Darkwing Duck:
- The episode "Twin Beaks" features cow-like aliens that resemble the cows that frequent The Far Side. They claim to be from the planet Larson on "the far side of the galaxy".
- "Beauty and the Beet" had two scientists named Dr. Gary and Dr. Larson
The Simpsons:
- In "Once Upon a Time in Springfield", Homer, Lenny and Carl are given a tour of a competing power plant, which has employed Gary Larson (voicing himself) to create Far Side cartoons just for their employees.
  Homer: Man, a lion would not want to see that on his x-ray.
- The Simpsons has also made fun of The Far Side's more highbrow humor. In "Treehouse of Horror VIII", Homer flips through a Far Side calendar, saying "I don't get it" each time.
- When the Simpsons attend a dinosaur stage show in "The Book Job", Homer and Lisa pass by some dinosaur actors recreating the famous Far Side strip "The Real Reason Dinosaurs Became Extinct".
Family Guy: In "Lois Kills Stewie", Stewie commissions a portrait of himself that is done by Gary Larson, depicting Stewie in The Far Side's artstyle talking to a chicken.

Yeah, real life. A real-life part of Stegosaur anatomy (the little arrangement of spikes on their tails) is called the Thagomizer simply because Larson named it that for a joke and paleontologists realized that they hadn't devised an official name for that part.
At one point, the California Academy of Sciences had an entire exhibit displaying The Far Side panels.

Referenced By / The Far Side