Shout Out / Garfield and Friends

• One episode, after the opening sequence finished, Garfield said "I'd like to buy a vowel, please."
  • Another post-opening sequence line was "The Garfield Guarantee: No giant robots or annoying little blue people."
  • Still another was "Change channels, and you'll never see your dog again.", referencing the famous "Buy this magazine or we'll kill this dog" January 1973 cover of National Lampoon.
  • Another one of these quotes had Garfield say "Today's show is brought to you by the letter K and the number 9."
  • Another had Garfield say "Heathcliff, eat your heart out."
• In one episode, Garfield opens the door and says "Hello, this is Garfield, your doorman."
• Garfield has to deal with a ghost and thinks maybe "I can call the Ghostbusters. Nah their show was cancelled."
• From the episode "Read Alert":
  Wade: "Oh Jeopardy!! Oh Double Jeopardy! Oh FINAL JEOPARDY!"
• Cactus Jake's name is almost the same as Cactus Jack.
• Also doubling as a Brick Joke: in one episode, Garfield & Nermal contend with mutant guppies, who they defeat by chasing them back into the sewer. Said guppies then appear in the subsequent US Acres Quickie; after scaring Wade and Orson, one guppy turns to his fellows and says "Come on guys, let's go see if we can get a guest shot on the Muppet Babies, whaddaya say?" (Muppet Babies (1984) aired after the show on CBS at the time).
• Aloysius Pig is Kevin Meaney in a pig costume. They both even share two catchphrases! ^note "That's not right!" and "I don't care!", even though the latter was only said once
• In "Clash Of The Titans", as the gang is flying home, Garfield asks if the characters can stop at Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles so they can get a pizza. The show, which also aired on CBS, got extra references in one of the opening quips ("Just think of me as a Teenage Mutant Ninja Pussycat.") and Garfield's assessment of a man who tried to pass as judge, persecutor and defense lawyer in a trial on "Speed Zone" ("If this guy's a lawman, then I'm a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.").
• In "Video Victim", Garfield has a nightmare in which Jon's TV talks to him in a voice similar to HAL 9000 When Garfield unplugs the TV, it sings a portion of "Daisy Bell", just as HAL did while being deactivated.
• In "Temp Trouble", we have this line: "Mrs. Pig, it's Saturday morning. Do you know where your children are?". Ironically, the thing the quote shouts out to ^note A message broadcast on TV at 10:00PM was based off Wee Willy Winkie, a nursery rhyme that would be spoofed 8 episodes later.
• In "The Discount Of Monte Cristo", Aloysius wants Flipper to rescue him from being stranded on an island.
• In "Kiddie Korner", Aloysius says that sitting on a tuffet "sounds naughty". This could be a reference to a "Dot's Poetry Corner" segment of Animaniacs that aired a year before this episode, where Dot reads Little Mrs. Muffet and uses "tuffet" as a euphemism for "butt", while in doing so showing her panties.
• Newsworthy Wade has a Show Within a Show called "7 Minutes", a spoof of 60 Minutes.
• In a weird example of the show having a shout out to itself, one US Acres quickie had Roy on a stage in a competition involving baaing and cocking against Lanolin. One season later, the same stage reappears in the Screaming with Binky short "Laryngitis", and he stands on it in almost the exact same manner!
  • Another shout-out to an earlier episode happens in "Temp Trouble", where Roy's doctor outfit is the same one from the musical number in "The Impractical Joker".
• In "Much Ado About Lanolin", the scene where Lanolina trips on her dress is quite similar to the scene in Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town where Burgermeister Meisterburger trips on a duck in exactly the same way. Lanolina, however, did not get her foot in a cast, but yelled at how the stairs were defective.
• One rather silly episode has the entire episode purposely having animation errors. At the very end, Garfield leaves and Odie follows, except Odie is Marmaduke
• In "Flat Tired", while deciding who to get for the cartoon when Garfield is too tired, the director initially says "Get me Kermit The Frog on the phone," before choosing Odie. Also a bit of an in-joke, since Muppet Babies (1984) was also on CBS at the time.
• In "Peace and Quiet", Binky references the United States Post Office motto, "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds", but replaces "couriers" with "clown".
• The title of the episode "The Lasagna Zone" spoofs The Twilight Zone (1959), and the plot of Garfield getting Trapped in TV Land only to find out that it was All Just a Dream...Or Was It, complete with philosophical narration, could easily have occurred on the actual show.
• In "The Incredibly Stupid Swamp Monster", Roy mentions Hanna-Barbera and Ren & Stimpy during a phone call before he gets trapped by the weasel.
• When Garfield is stuck in a haunted house, he's opening up various doors. Behind one, he finds Nancy and Sluggo (as they appeared during Jerry Scott's tenure on the strip, which was around the time the show aired).
• "The Horror Hostess":
  • "If there's a dragon, then I'm Bugs Bunny. (the dragon appears) Ehh, what's up, doc?"
  • While Garfield runs up the stairs with Odie, he wonders if the writers are recycling old Scooby-Doo scripts.
• In one episode, Wade is seen wearing Grimmy slippers.
• Not only is "Count Lasagna" an obvious reference to Dracula, but the guy Jon works for turns out to be a werewolf, with a transformation that mimics Lawrence Talbot's in The Wolf Man. His werewolf form also has facial features that look just like the Wolf Man's.
• In "Bedtime Story Blues", Wade plays the role of the richest duck in the world (as a request by Booker and Sheldon to change him from Cinderella's Fairy Godmother).