Web Video / Lasagna Cat

One man lives with the burden of making the entire world laugh every day... It's time we showed him just how much we care.

Lasagna Cat is a series of YouTube videos created by Fatal Farm. All of them follow the same formula: reenacting a Garfield strip as a live action video, and then showing a bizarre music video or "tribute to Jim Davis" usually relevant to the preceding comic, which then usually ends with the camera focusing on a mugshot of a smiling Jim Davis.

The original videos were posted in 2008. After nearly a decade of inactivity, a very short teaser was uploaded in February 2017, followed, two months later, by all 27 episodes of Season 2 (plus a promo), with possibly more to come.

Check out the official site here.

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These videos contain examples of:

• Affectionate Parody:
  • There clearly has to be some appreciation of the strip on Fatal Farm's part given the overwhelming amount of effort and research that's gone into the series. 12/20/1996, in particular, had them looking for a strip for two weeks that had a character say the phrase "Thanks for nothing" so they could link it to the tribute, as revealed in an interview.
  • "10/20/1984" is a damn-near perfect remake of the famous "In the Air Tonight" scene from the pilot of Miami Vice, only with Garfield and Odie in place of Crockett and Tubbs. The sheer accuracy of the recreation is downright stunning - right down to the shirt Jon wears being identical to that of Crockett's wife in the actual episode.
• Anthropomorphic Personification: Late in the "Sex Survey Results" video, a spooky-voiced personification of Monday comes calling as Garfield answers the door, with the words "My name's Monday, and I've had you... once... every week." Garfield actually sounds spooked as he responds, the only time in the entire four-hour-plus video he sounds anything but bored or annoyed.
• Audience Participation: In the teasers for the second season, fans were encouraged to call a phone number and answer an automated survey. It turned out that the survey only asked the caller to state two things: their name and how many sexual partners they have had throughout their life. The results were included in in the "Sex Survey Results" video.
• Bedlam House: The setting of the 08/14/1986 episode, with Garfield as the head doctor and Jon Arbuckle as the patient.
• Big Budget Beef-Up: The "tributes" in the second season are very different from the first, with highly elaborate studio work that is a far cry from the basic greenscreening of prior works. Some examples being 10/20/1984, 7/27/1978, and the last 5 minutes of the Sex Survey Results video.
• Bilingual Bonus:
  • The girl at the end of "Sex Survey Results" speaks in untranslated Polish (though it is provided on screen when subtitles are enabled). When translated, it comes out to something like this:
  "This child is not mine. This child is something from the darkness. I give birth to a human curse. I can ask for grace, which I will not get. My soul will be swallowed and vomited and swallowed again. Forever. A sick joke, but no one laughs. My blood will stay. Death isn't the end. I'm in hell. This is hell."
  • The two ofuda on the wall in the Japanese bathhouse in 02/26/2003. The one on the left reads "Sexy Shampoo Showdown," while the one on the right reads "Lasagna Cat."
• Bloodier and Gorier: Some of the more recent uploads fall into this category, highlights include Odie slitting his wrists, Garfield giving an insane Jon a gory lobotomy, and a Polish woman giving birth to a stillborn baby in the toilet.
• Brick Joke: The sex survey ends with another Jon declaring he's had two sexual partners to the Jon in the house, the natural conclusion to him declaring so in the February announcement. This is not a joke, but a sign that things are about to get nightmarishly bizarre.
• Captain Obvious:
  • "There was a cake in the oven and Garfield ate it before it rose" in 09/15/2006.
  • 'GARFIELD IS ON A DIET', 'HE ATE A PURSE', 'YOU CANNOT EAT A PURSE', and 'A PURSE IS NOT FOOD' in 06/15/2007.
• The Cameo: Several in the Sex Survey Results:
  • Max Landis shows up.
  • Garrett Hunter from Mega64 as well.
• Couch Gag: The photo of Jim Davis at the end always appears in some shape or form.
• Damned by Faint Praise:
  • The critic reviews at the end of 05/22/1980 form a running gag based on this.
  • 06/08/2001 has a number of dogs going to Heaven because they "never molested children", except for one named Oksana, who is going to Heaven because they "only molested one child."
• Darker and Edgier:
  • This is played for laughs in 04/08/1998, which incongruously mashes a Garfield strip up with the music video for "Head Like a Hole" by Nine Inch Nails. It includes images of Garfield and Jon in goth fashion as well as a random appearance of crows, and the Jim Davis photo is altered (very roughly) with goth makeup and his smile inverted.
  • Played more straight with the new season of episodes, which tend to feature far more overt violence and darker themes. Notable standouts include 02/26/2003, 06/08/2001, 06/19/2002, 08/14/1986 and especially the ending of the Sex Survey Results video.
• Dark Parody: The series features a lot of surreal horror and the Garfield and Odie suits are clearly designed to be weird and creepy. Exaggerated in "Sex Survey Results", which ended with a scary picture of an older Jon.
• Deconstructive Parody: The series often calls out the strip for certain things. For example, a laugh track is played at the end of every strip reenactment as if to lampshade that the joke in each isn't really that funny. Honestly, it's hard to tell whether the creators of Lasagna Cat were making an Affectionate Parody or if they hated the orignal strip, and even the end of the series (with all it's cynicism) doesn't give much of an answer.
• Driven to Suicide: Odie in the 06/08/2001 episode.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: The 02/26/2003 episode's sketch involves a group of half-naked Asian men armed with shampoo bottles covering Jon — who for some inexplicable reason exclusively speaks Japanese — with shampoo, and said shampoo bottles are censored with a pixellation filter. Yeah...
• Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory: Played for Laughs In-Universe. 07/27/1978 is an hour long video of John Blyth Barrymore discussing the philosophical implications of this strip◊, which is nothing more than Garfield smoking Jon's pipe.
• Fluffy Cloud Heaven: The climax of 06/08/2001 has one filled with Odie lookalikes.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: In 03/28/1992, the newspaper article actually does have text pertaining to the story, and many other side-stories if one pauses to read it.
• Gainax Ending: The ending of Sex Survey Results, combined with a helpful dose of Nightmare Fuel, Squick and enough Mind Screw that would leave David Lynch confused. While most of it is extremely surreal on its own (What with a time-skipped Jon receiving a taxidermied Garfield and eventually turning into dirt and worms), the part that has become the most infamous is the very end, where a Polish girl gives birth to a possibly stillborn baby that may or may not be Jon Arbuckle.
• Hollywood Hacking: Deliberately Invoked in 07/30/2000, with Tron-like visuals and a Kraftwerk soundtrack, as a way of mocking Jim Davis' painful attempt to keep the strip relevant in the new millennium with a joke about the Internet.
• Homage:
  • 08/18/1978 is a big homage to Final Fantasy, the music and interface specifically being from Final Fantasy VI.
  • 04/25/1979 is done in the style of a live music show from The '70s, appropriately using the theme from Taxi.
  • 05/14/1979 was apparently inspired by Norwood Court.
  • 10/26/2007 is an homage to the early Animutation works of Neil Cicierega.
  • 10/20/1984 is a shot for shot remake of a scene from the Miami Vice pilot, complete with 80s VHS errors.
• Level Ate: The setting for the 11/19/1979 episode is a small idyllic neighborhood made entirely out of and inhabited of various kinds of breakfast food, (except for Jon Arbuckle, who is, for some reason, still a normal human living in one of the breakfast houses). The neighborhood then gets destroyed when a giant Garfield happens to come by and accidentally sneezes on it.
• Laugh Track: One follows the punchline in every single video.
• Lyric Swap: Done in 11/19/1979 to Deep Blue Something' "Breakfast at Tiffany's"
  And I said "What about
  BREAKFAST WITH GARFIELD?"
  She said "I think I
  WOULD LIKE BREAKFAST WITH GARFIELD."
  And I said "Well, that
  CAN BE ARRANGED."
• Madness Mantra:
  • "A PURSE IS NOT FOOD" in 06/15/2007.
  • "I'm sleeping with my socks on!" and "LIFE IS A GAS"
• Mondegreen Gag: 06/01/1982, set to the Macarena, shows an image of macaroni and cheese every time the titular word is sung.
• Mundane Made Awesome: What the videos usually are in relation to the source material.
  • Taken to its ultimate extreme in 7/27/1978.
• The Oner: 7/27/1978 consists of John Blythe Barrymore extolling the genius of "The Pipe Strip" for an entire, uninterrupted hour.
• Overly Prepared Gag: The video Garfield and Odie watch in 12/04/1980, "Ultimate Enemies - The FINAL Battle", was uploaded onto YouTube on May 22nd, 2012. 12/04/1980 came out on February 23rd, 2017.
• Overly Long Gag:
  • The Survey Results video's format involves one of the characters answering the call-in survey results in the form of a knock-knock joke. Totaling at a staggering 1,000 calls, it's nearly 5 hours long, and has other, smaller OLG's contained within it:
    • A man named Robert rants about his ex-girlfriend.
    • A man named Keith calls while apparently stoned.
    • Jon contemplates the name "Krahm".^note Given the caller's tone, they likely meant Chrom
    • A man named Ryan McGroudy recommends a Facebook comedy channel for the show's creators.
    • A man named Raymond calls three separate times, each time going on a long tangent about his sexual encounters online.
    • A man named Paul Des Marais calls in four times in a row, each time changing his answer.
  • invoked 07/27/1978 is over an hour long and is a ridiculously in-depth Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory analysis of just one three-panel comic strip.
  • The music video at the end of 11/01/2007 is over a minute of Odie hugging Garfield while Ebony and Ivory plays.
  • The entire series is in and of itself an Overly Long Gag in relation to the comparatively dry and minimalist comic strip.
• Quote Mine: Parodied in 05/22/1980, in relation to the Garfield Live Action Adaptations. After a straight quote from Roger Ebert's positive reviews of both movies, the video begins quote mining from other, more negative reviews. The quotes start out saying nice things about the movies, then become vague, then scathing, then outright ridiculous. One review saying "It faithfully captures the banality of Jim Davis' cartoon" was edited to change "banality" to "consistency" .
• Rimshot: One almost always follows the Laugh Track in his earlier videos, though the newer videos uses a piano riff.
• Room Full of Crazy: 08/14/1986 has Jon writing "LIFE IS A GAS" on the wall, with his own feces.
• Self-Deprecation: 03/28/1992 has a newspaper article at the end that headlines, "Paws Inc. Wins Landmark Copyright Infringement Case Against Dumb Internet Video Makers".
• Shout-Out:
  • 10/26/2007 randomly mentions Kevin Costner, Godzilla, Bob Saget, and Uncle Jesse.
  • 12/20/1996 is a recreation of "Colin's Bear Animation" with Garfield in place of the bear. The joke being that both the strip and the video contain the phrase "thanks for nothing".
  • 07/30/2000 Garfield appears as a Gundam.
  • 10/20/1984 is a shot-for-shot recreation of the iconic scene from the pilot of Miami Vice, differing only by Garfield and Odie replacing Crockett and Tubbs and Justin Roiland doing an intentionally abominable cover of "In the Air Tonight". This is because the episode this was based on aired four days before the titular Garfield strip was published.
  • Sex Survey Results:
    • One person calls in as Donald Duck, even using an impersonation of the duck's voice.
    • When a person named "Jan Michael Vincent" calls during the Sex Survey Results, Jon hums a few notes from the Airwolf theme song before opening the door.
    • Jon also makes the "Home Improvement noise" before answering the door for a man named Tim Allen.
    • One person calls in under the name Peridot Facet 2F5L Cut-5XG.

• Smash To Orange: The final seconds of "Sex Survey Results", following a subtle jumpscare from the stillborn Jon Arbuckle.
• Soundtrack Dissonance:
  • The 08/14/1986 video, which features some dark and disturbing imagery, is set to "Fergalicious" by Fergie.
  • 06/08/2001 shows Odie commiting suicide and then being sent to hell. The music? "Bad Romance" by Lady Gaga.
• Stealth Insult:
  • In 08/18/1978, Jim Davis is shown as having horrible stats and no skills despite being at maxed out level.
  • A person named Rusty Shackleford in the Sex Survey stated "classified" as their number of sexual partners. The caption adds "(Virgin)" at the end of his statement.
• Stylistic Suck: The video made by Garfield and Odie on 12/04/1980. Also, all the videos featured on the youtube channels lazycat619 and darthmauldog1125
• Subverted Kids' Show: The second season videos are a lot less family-friendly than the source material.
• Sugar Apocalypse: In the 11/19/1979 video, Garfield destroys the idyllic and peaceful breakfast village by accidentally sneezing on it.
• Surreal Horror: The entire channel is not afraid to play into this at times, especially in second season which overall is markedly darker than the first. The ending of "Sex Suvery Results", which gets dark, exemplifies this.
• Surreal Humor: Quite prevalent. the videos like 05/16/1987 and 10/26/2007 take the cake,
• Take That!: In the 08/18/1978 video parodying Final Fantasy VI, the player tries to open the menu to look at Jim Davis' skills. They are unable to because he doesn't have any.
• Toilet Humour: Jon playing with his feces in 08/14/1986.

• Womb Horror: The end of "Sex Survey Results" has many nightmarish scenes, one of them being a scene of a woman giving birth into a toilet. She proclaims in Polish that she gave birth to "A human curse", and that if she asks for grace, she won't get it, only having her soul "swallowed and vomited and swallowed again". Looking into the toilet reveals the baby is wearing Jon Arbuckle's shirt.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Didactic?: Invoked and Played for Laughs with 07/27/1978, where actor John Barrymore III spends an hour analyzing a single comic strip about Garfield stealing Jon's pipe.
• Your Head A-Splode: Happens to Jon Arbuckle in the 11/19/1979 video.
• Zeerust: The basic premise of the Jim Davis tribute in 07/20/2000.

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