The strip from August 28th 2002 gives a valid viewpoint on the issue of obesity: that some fat people eat a lot because they have low self esteem, and that making fun of them doesn’t help the matter at all.
In a few of the early strips, Jon was planning on getting Garfield declawed. Garfield then quipped that his main means of defense would be gone. In recent years, more and more pet experts are against declawing cats for that very reason.
In the June 3rd, 1983 strip, Jon utters the line "Okay, who greased my wiener?!" (in reference to a hot dog that was so slippery it shot out of his bun when he grabbed it too hard).
After a strip went viral for being interpreted as Jon drinking dog semen, Jim Davis had to explain he was actually referencing the high protein supplement given to pregnant cows.
The strips and cartoons constantly toy around with what level Jon can understand Garfield. It is often implied he can't hear Garfield and often treats him like a normal non-sapient cat, though in certain gags seems to definitely comprehend when he is being snarky around him. As fan-works like Garfield Minus Garfield and Realfield demonstrate, some of Jon's retorts are downright bizarre assuming he can't notice Garfield communicating with him in a human-like way, making his treatment of him more equatable to a son or roommate.
One Twitter user pointed out that Garfield has no reason to hate Mondays, as the reason it's disliked by many is because it's the start of their work week. The only difference from any other day is that Jon has to work after having had the weekend off to spend with his pets, suggesting that Garfield's hatred of Mondays is his way of saying he loves Jon. This one is subject to Common Knowledge, though. The early strips and original animated series indicate that Jon is a freelance cartoonist who works from home—in fact, there are strips of Garfield playing in the wastebasket while Jon tries to draw. (for what it's worth, Jim Davis said Garfield hates Mondays because it reminds him "that his life is the same old, same old cycling again".)
Is Odie actually dumb? Is he just carefree and thus looked down on by the titular character? Is he playing around to annoy Garfield? His intelligence seems to vary a lot.
According to Jim Davis, the joke of May 30th, 1990, where Jon takes a drink from a cup and is told he'll be giving birth to a litter of puppies, is based on something that was common at the farm Jim grew up at, where they would give high-protein supplements to pregnant cows; because these were provided by his local vet, he assumed that they would have a similar supplement for dogs. The large amount of people who didn't have the context resulted in the infamous misinterpretation of "Jon drank dog semen".
What is the meaning of this 2006 strip? Garfield comes across a sign reading "beware of bunny", and comes across a dog-like creature. Either (1) there was a bunny but the dog ate it, (2) the dog is named Bunny and Garfield is surprised at how unfitting such a name is, (3) the bunny wasn't as worthy of that "Beware" sign due to Point #1, or (4) the "dog" is just a really odd-looking bunny.
In one strip where Garfield put on a singing performance on top of the fence, the resident of some distant Pacific island called Booga-Booga threw money at him in the form of a millstone. While there's no such thing as an island with the name of Booga-Booga, the Yap islands in the Pacific really do use enormous round stone discs with a hole in the middle as a form of currency. Anyone who grew up in the '60s or '70s would remember the Yap stone coin's frequent appearances in Ripley's Believe It or Not! on the funny pages, but everyone else....
In one strip, Jon purchased a "battery powered battery charger". At first glance, this seems like an absurd waste of money, but in fact many people carry external battery packs to recharge the batteries in their phones and other portable electronics when there's no power outlet available.
Better on DVD: A rare printed comic example: aside from the serialized story arcs being easier to follow when you aren't reading them one a day, the continuity between comics comes across stronger when read as a whole. And some of the strips have delayed punchlines delivered in the next day's strip, so the gag lands better when you read both in a collection instead of being confused by the first strip and having to wait a day for the punchline.
October 28, 1978 is one of the very few strips where Garfield is neither seen nor mentioned, and it features Jon receiving a bachelor magazine in the mail.
Broken Base: There are many fans who think the comic's still pretty funny, and many fans who believe the strip ran out of jokes in the mid-90's and lost its place when Jon and Liz got hooked up, and still others who think said hook up helped revitalize the strip.
When Garfield encountered his 1978 self (see Bizarro Episode), those who watched The Fantastic Funnies heard 1978!Garfield as Scott Beach.
In a bizarre meme-driven example, some online fans have admitted that they now automatically hear Jon and Garfield as the text-to-speech voices that were first used in Garfielf.
Critical Dissonance: The comic frequently draws the ire of many people for its lack of humor and blandness, yet when many newspapers removed it from their syndication they were overwhelmed by write-in campaigns demanding to return the strip. It's also frequently found on the front page of the comics section, if not at the very top.
"As a joke, I have tied Jon's shoelaces together. And as a bonus joke, I have attached this rope to an airliner about to leave for Italy."
When asked what his favorite movie is, Garfield answers, "It's Old Yeller. I love movies with happy endings."
A spider trips and his contact falls out. Garfield squishes the spider with a newspaper... then after a Beat Panel, crushes the contact lens with one of his fingers.
In the Halloween 1989 arc, the title cat kept snapping back and forth between hallucinations where the house had been abandoned and hallucinations that Jon had come back with food only to switch back to the "abandoned" one. While the entire thing was All Just a Dream, it's since spawned a popular theory that every strip after the arc's conclusion is part of Garfield's Dying Dream as he slowly starves to death.
It's also been speculated that Garfield isn't real and Jon is hallucinating. This theory has been championed by Garfield Minus Garfield, a webcomic featuring every character except Jon being removed from the original strips, creating a parallel universe in which Jon is a delusional schizophrenic talking to people only he can see.
Because of many fan-works that deconstruct the comic such as Garfield Minus Garfield, there are some theories out there that Jon might actually be schizophrenic.
Epileptic Trees: The mysterious disappearance of Jon's roommate Lyman from the strip has led to some very strange (andquiteoftenincredibly dark) fan theories about just what the hell happened to him. Amusingly enough, Jim Davis and even the official Garfield media has quickly started playinginto this, when asked directly by a fan where Lyman had gone, Davis gave the incredibly ominous answer "Don't look in Jon's basement."
Fans of Heathcliff have said that Garfield's character is too similar, and some have gone as far as accusing Jim Davis of ripping George Gately off. Robot Chicken even pointed this out in a segment where Heathcliff takes Garfield to court.
Fans who appreciate the sophisticated, philosophical humor of Calvin and Hobbes see Garfield as being too lowbrow and repetitive for enjoyment. Garfield fans usually retort that Mr. Watterson and his fans are too stuck up to simply smile — Calvin and Hobbes minus Hobbes would never have flown. It doesn't help that the two creators are basically the antithesis of each other: Watterson has stated Calvin and Hobbes was done for its own sake and he infamously turned down nearly all merchandising and spin-off offers, while Davis has fully admitted Garfield was made just to get rich and was manufactured to be as marketable as possible.
Fountain of Memes: In the most incredibly bizarre manner. Similarly to the inexplicable internet followings of Jimmy Neutron and Shrek, it's not so much that the comic itself has produced a lot of memes, but a huge number of parody works created by other people have become incredibly popular: Garfield Minus Garfield, Square Root of Minus Garfield, Garfielf, Fist of the b0rf Star, Lasagna Cat... And the fact that all of those works have their own trope pages goes to show you how massively popular they've become.
Despite the Fandom Rivalry, there are plenty of people who are fans of both Garfield and Heathcliff, primarily because they're both very different cats save species and color. This became especially true once Heathcliff rose to Internet meme fame in the early 2020s, highlighting its more absurdist nature.
There is some degree of overlap between the Garfield fandom and the Hello Kitty fandom, due to both characters being cats, but very different in terms of personalities.
Garfield is incredibly popular in Asia — particularly in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and China, which regularly receive exclusive events and merchandise. For example, a Garfield land with a dark ride was planned for a Six Flags park in China (though this was eventually canceled), and in 2022, Hong Kong received exclusive Garfield merchandise by the artist Plastic Thing crossing over with their own character, Fatty.
The strip is also very popular in France. So popular, in fact, that they produced The Garfield Show, which garnered higher ratings than other French-produced shows and other popular foreign shows such as SpongeBob SquarePants.
Growing the Beard: For its first month and a half, the strip was centered on Garfield and Jon. The introductions of Lyman and Odie made the strip one of the most familiar to many readers.
That time when Garfield said "We cats nap anywhere, anytime. Everyone should be so lucky. With the possible exception of airline pilots." In 2011, there were many cases of airline traffic controllers sleeping on the job and tragic accidents ensuing as a result.
One strip◊ features Jon responding to two separate phone calls with "He WHAT?!" before Garfield smirks and tells the reader that "I've been a busy boy." Like all strips, it was written in advance, and it wouldn't be too out of the ordinary... if it wasn't for the fact that it was published just one day before the September 11 attacks (and on a Monday, no less). This led to it earning widespread attention online years later thanks to how eerie the timing was.
One strip◊ has Jon saying "We all have to live together. We all have to be considerate of our neighbors." The final panel shows Garfield in women's clothing as Jon yells "SO RETURN THOSE TO MRS. FEENY!" This was written in advance like all comic strips, and what day did it get printed on? September 11, 2001.
This strip with the dangers of riptides becoming all too real since the mid-2000s.
One strip from the early 1980s has Garfield predicting that the question to the answers "suicide, dieting, and exercise" is "name three forms of self-abuse." It comes off as a joke, but we now know that crash dieting and excessive exercise are symptoms of eating disorders.
This strip was released just one month before Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans.
He Really Can Draw: The 1989 nightmare week featured a departure from the usual "camera-at-mid-level" look of the strip. Instead, Jim Davis utilized dramatic angles and shading to really set the mode of each scene. It's a big reason those strips stand out so much, even beyond the mysterious narrative being told.
When the localized "Jon"/"Garfield" was picked up for national syndication, the initial working title was "Garfield and Friends." Obviously, they decided to stick with "Garfield."
In a 1981 story arc, Garfield auditions for a cat food commercial. 9 years later, he actually was in one.
Plus in the third strip, he said that after the commercial, there will be movie deals. In 2004, 20th Century Fox released Garfield: The Movie.
This strip, considering that Garfield looks like the "Stuck on You" Garfield toys when he's hanging on the screen door.
Any pre-2006 strip involving Liz is especially funny to read nowadays, considering Jon and Liz are a couple now.
This strip became one. As of November 28, 2011, Garfield comics are now created on computers rather than hand-drawn.
This strip where Garfield realizes he may have eaten chicken bones. In 2013, KFC added boneless chicken on their menu with its commercials having people shouting "I ate the bones!"
Another one pointed out by Square Root of Minus Garfield; one early 90's strip saw Jon get a fortune cookie fortune that claimed "A tall, beautiful blonde will change your life". Fast-forward about 15 years, and Jon's date with the tall, beautiful blonde Ellen eventually leads to him becoming an Official Couple with Liz.
In one 1990 strip, after Jon orders a pizza, it's revealed that Garfield recorded Jon's order, and remarks how useful the tape will be. Two decades later, an episode of The Garfield Show had Garfield do the same thing, except this time we actually got to see him use the recording to great effect.
A slight example. Jon living with another man (Lyman) is believed to have attracted some concerns from specific Moral Guardians back in the day thinking that it was promoting a homosexual lifestyle (in spite of Jon's hopeless attempts to go on a date from Liz and various other female characters). This likely contributed to Lyman being written out of future strips past 1983 and Jon becoming the sole owner of Odie from that point onward.
In this 2014 Christmas strip, Odie gives Garfield a long, backward-dipped kiss on the lips under the mistletoe.
Informed Wrongness: Garfield's complaints about the various diets he's put on are generally meant to make him seem like an immature glutton. However, considering these diets are often excessively small (one time, he was given half a leaf of lettuce as an entire meal), it's not hard to imagine that they would do more harm than good (especially considering how they ignore the fact that cats are obligate carnivores). Not helping matters is the fact that Garfield, weight aside, generally seems pretty healthy and has canonically reached his forties (which is older than any real-life housecat is known to have lived), indicating he's doing something right. Readers could be forgiven for questioning whether he even needs to diet at all in the first place, let alone suffer through the crash diets he gets forced on, in light of this fact.
Memetic Psychopath: Much like Shrek before them, the strange and occasionally horrifying world of fan work (especially Garfielf and Fist of the b0rf Star) has turned Jon and Garfield into psychopaths, with Jon commonly perceived as an antisocial, insane recluse who hears voices and murdered Lyman to steal his pets and Garfield as a ceaselessly hungryEldritch Abomination that will devour the entire world if not appeased with lasagna. Hell, there's even an entry (#3166) about Garfield on the SCP Foundation. There's also a very active subreddit dedicated to fanart of Garfield as an Lovecraftian eldritch horror, "r/imsorryjon".
After commenting on his coffee being too weak, he dumps it into Jon's shoes. Jon then wrings it out of his socks and into Odie's dish. Odie begins lapping it up, finds that it tastes horrible, and subsequently dumps it back into the coffeepot. Garfield takes a drink and says, "Much better." Watch it adapted into Garfield and Friends in its entirety.
(Jon and Garfield are eating cheeseburgers) Jon: This cheeseburger is delicious, Irma! What's your secret? Irma: We let our cheese age, hon. Been sitting in my pickup for almost six months now. Garfield:Spit Take on three...
In-universe and out. One comic had Garfield tie a mouse's tail around it, then pull, spinning the mouse like a top. The mouse once stopped spinning vomits in Jon's coffee cup. Towards that, Jim Davis cheekily stated "My publisher said that people are usually eating breakfast when reading the funnies. This is for them."
During one visit to the farm, Garfield goes inside an outhouse one way and leaves the other.
Never Live It Down: They only did the "we're bachelors, baby" punchline a few times, but the way fans react to it you'd think it was used constantly.
No Problem with Licensed Games: While most of Garfield's video game outings typically run the gamut between being mediocre at best and absolutely dreadful at worst, Garfield: Caught in the Act for the Sega Genesis and Garfield's Nightmare for the Nintendo DS are regarded to be surprisingly decent 2D platforming outings for the fat cat, even if they're not perfect. There's also the Garfield's Scary Scavenger Hunt web browser games released in 2002 and 2003 — both of them are worth playing, and the first game in particular is considered to be a classic browser game.
Padding: Many, many Sunday strips are lengthened simply to take up space, and asnumerousSquare Root of Minus Garfieldeditshavedemonstrated, could easily be shortened down to half their panel number or less and have no effect on the joke. In the comic's defence, this has long been a common practice for Sunday strips, allowing newspapers to drop a panel or two to fit the comic into their Sunday section's chosen format.
Periphery Demographic: While a majority of Garfield fans are average people who unironically enjoy the character and his antics, a significant and vocal part of them are "ironic" fans who enjoy making fun of the perceived stagnation of the comic, by making parodies that veer into absurdism (Lasagna Cat and Garfielf being notable examples) or depict Garfield as an Eldritch Abomination. This was especially popular in the 2010s, but seems to have died down somewhat in the early 2020s.
The Problem with Licensed Games: Very few games starring Garfield and pals have really stood out as particularly good games:
The Famicom game A Week of Garfield starts going wrong with its Excuse Plot, where Garfield somehow wants to save Odie. In actual gameplay, it's a side-scrolling platformer with ugly graphics and primitive level design. Beating a level requires jumping around randomly to make a key appear. Difficulty comes mainly from having to face enemies like spiders with a pathetic kick attack and no Mercy Invincibility or extra lives. The array of weapons Garfield can use are limited and inaccurate.
The 2004 video game (completely unrelated to the movie; simply named Garfield) for the PS2 and PC, which is a Luigi's Mansion knock-off (except with no ghosts, you suck up objects and place them back in the right areas) with abysmal voice acting (just so you know, Garfield and Jon are voiced by the same actor, making them sound very off; see for yourself), terrible graphics (Garfield is stuck with a permanent grin and Jon with an angry expression), repetitive, awkward dialogue ("Jon's gonna put me on a diet now and I don't want to go on a diet!"), rather poor grasp of the source material, strange controls, frequent and long loading screens (especially on the PS2 version, possibly due to being printed on a CD instead of a DVD) and Odie only flipping over when attacked. Fortunately, this review of the game has a link to a patch that fixes most of the game's flaws.
Garfield had a string of generic platformers between the Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS (with only the aforementioned Garfield's Nightmare for the DS standing out above the rest). However, the worst of them is generally regarded to be Garfield: The Search for Pooky. The game's start screen is written in Comic Sans and miscapitalizes the title, which sets the tone perfectly. The cutscene graphics are poorly cropped directly from the comic, ripe with scaling and coloring errors*most infamously, Jon's mother is no taller than Garfield himself◊, and the dialogue is awkwardly written. It has to be seen to be believed.◊ The gameplay suffers from weird physics and boring sidescroller levels.
Garfield Kart and its remaster Garfield Kart: Furious Racing are arguably two of the fat cat's most famous video game outings...for all the wrong reasons:
The original game for the Nintendo 3DS garnered much ridicule from gamers over its absurd premise, and when they finally got their hands on it they found the game was hardly any good in practice either. The presentation is bland, the gameplay is exceedingly run-of-the-mill, the karts control very poorly, extra content is frustrating to unlock, and there's hardly anything distinctly "Garfield" about it besides the playable characters. The game is also absurdly easy due to the rampant Artificial Stupidity of the AI drivers. Sharing a system with Mario Kart 7 (which, mind, was Christmas Rushed onto the 3DS as an emergency and still ended up a stellar game for the system) only serves to highlight how bland and unambitious the game was compared to other kart racers at the time.
The upscaled port for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and PC, Furious Racing, manages to be even worse than the original game. That it adds very little new content that wasn't already in the original game is problematic enough, but the game also has the misfortune of being an absolute trainwreck. The AI drivers went from being dumber than Odie to playing so unfairly they put the infamously unbalanced Rubberband AI in Mario Kart Wii to shame (not helped by the addition of hat power-ups that can give AI players either additional or more accurate ammunition to hit you with) and make finishing most races in a position higher than third a chore. The game and physics seem poorly designed for the new speeds the karts can reach as well, as on higher difficulties races are absolute chaos with karts regularly shooting off the track due to not being able to turn quickly enough, dropping through the track or through walls, driving on walls if you hit them right, and going flying out of control or being flipped completely over from so much as hitting an anthill. Add the game's broken and unhelpful respawn system that resets the player's position if they do as little as brush their kart against a wall and you get a game whose only true merit is getting your friends togetherto revel in how hilariously broken it is.
Garfield is a Fat Bastard sociopath that tortures other smaller animals (and his owner/vet/any other human) for fun. Taken up to eleven with r/imsorryjon, which depicts Garfield as a monstrously evil god that exists just to torment Jon forever.
Odie is secretly evil and only pretending to be stupid so he can kill everyone in the house and look innocent enough to get away with it.
Seasonal Rot: The number of people defending the strip is shrinking as the years go by, for various reasons: the comic doesn't have a lot of storyline strips anymore, opting with only gag-per-day strips with loose plot threads, many newer strips are recycled from older strips or just very slight variations of the same jokes, and the artwork has become stiffer over the years. The strip still has an online fandom, but it's a mostly ironic one.
Trans Audience Interpretation: Viewer Gender Confusion notwithstanding, there is a small, very vocal portion of the fandom who interpret Nermal as either transgender or nonbinary. He has long eyelashes, a trait usually reserved for female characters in the strip, and his entire personality revolves around looking cute in contrast to Garfield, whose primary trait is laziness. Some have also pointed out his voice change between Garfield and Friends and The Garfield Show is him changing his voice to sound more masculine while still somewhat high-pitched.
Jon seems to attract a lot of these: In many 1978 strips he was shown to smoke (albeit a pipe, but still), which understandably was downplayed as soon as the strip hit the 80's and smoking became taboo, and a very early strip had him subscribing to an adult magazine, complete with a centerfold, something he was never shown doing again.
There's also a 1979 strip where Garfield fears going to the vet because his Uncle Bernie went to one and came back as his Aunt Bernice. While the strip was probably supposed to be a joke about neutering, people today are likely to see it as a knock against transgender people.
And this other strip from 1979 where Jon outright French-kisses Liz after she refused a date with him. With sexual harassment now being treated a serious issue, this strip would never get away with the backlash it would get if it were published in the present day.
In ANOTHER 1979 strip, Jon says to Liz, "Tell me, Liz, haven't we met somewhere before? A rice paddy in Hong Kong?", which comes off as rather racist today. Note that Liz is annoyed about Jon hitting on her, not the racist remark.
Values Resonance: With the rise of the internet, celebrities like "Weird Al" Yankovic, and mainstream revelations of niche hobbies and/or holding onto one's childhood, that might be featured on shows such as The Big Bang Theory, and recognition of disabilities that spur these interests (such as autism and ADHD), Jon can be seen less as a loser, and more of an outcast of restrictive normative society. This, as well as his previous inability to find a romantic partner, resonate with those aforementioned disabled and outcast odd individuals who grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, and their interests have been seen as less and less quirky and tasteless, and more compelling and personality-revealing.
Nermal is canonically male but looks youthful and feminine, made only more confusing by his female voice actor on Garfield and Friends. The Spanish dub referred to Nermal as gatita (female kitten) before finally correcting it in the later seasons. In addition, the app game Garfield's Defense refers to Nermal's attacks as "her('s)" in the character introduction.
The Woobie: Jon, at times. His pet cat openly disrespects and sometimes assaults him, he's frequently the victim of bizarre occurrences, his interests don't line up with society's, and he's unlucky in love (though the last bit has changed since his Relationship Upgrade with Liz).
In Brazil, this strip had Garfield saying his fighting style was actually 'Cat Fu'. It even inspired a local band to name themselves Pato Fu.
In a February 1979 strip, Jon is doing a crossword puzzle and asks Garfield what a six-letter word for "pain" is. Garfield hits him in the arm, Jon yells "ARRRGH!", and asks how many Rs it has. As Square Root of Minus Garfieldpointed out, the punchline doesn't exactly make sense because he already knows how long the word is. In the German version, he says "Autsch!", and asks "Is that with a D or a T?"
In Norway back in the 1980s, the strip was published by two separate publishers and as such got two separate Norwegian translation — one that kept Garfield's original name, and one which changed his name to "Pusur." While the former stuck very closely to the original, the latter — penned by Jan Amundsen and Tore Kvil — was an extremely liberal translation with a slightly more adult feel and a very strong satirical streak. "Pusur" often commented on and made fun of various sides of Norwegian society in the 1980s, often namedropping Norwegian celebrities, politicians, entertainment and trends. Nowadays the more faithful translation is used, though Garfield is still called "Pusur".
A particularly meta example came in 1987, when parliament member Britt Harkestad raised concerns about the annual Garfield-themed school diary, claiming that Garfield encouraged "playing hooky, lying, bullying and contempt towards women." Her concerns weren't really taken that seriously and her attempts at having the school diary discontinued never led anywhere — but Amundsen and Kvil put a lot of references to it in the strip and portrayed the entire thing as ridiculous. One strip, where Garfield is watching TV, completely changed the text and the context, turning a crazed weatherman into a ridiculous newscast that depicted the politicians as bratty children:
Original:
TV: Nothing is showing up on the computer radar, so I'll put a nice "Mr. Sunshine" here. But satellite pictures show an approaching low-pressure area, so I'll put mean ol' "Mr. Thunderstorm" and his lightning bolt right here. LOOK OUT, MR. SUNSHINE! BOOM! KABOOM! BLAM! Garfield: Millions in state-of-the-art electronic equipment to gather data, and we get baby talk.
Translation:
TV: Today, the Parliament has raised the question whether Garfield the Cat is a bad influence on our kids. Everyone is joining in on the fun! A sandbox has been placed in the middle of the room, and everyone has brought a bucket and spade. Some are cranky because there isn't enough ice cream. Look out! The Minister of Defence has a water gun!
Garfield: The politicians spend millions to get their people into the Parliament. The result — me.
Critical Backlash: Roger Ebert unapologetically liked both films to the point he reviewed the second in Garfield's voice, ribbing his co-star Richard Roeper for criticizing him over the first movie.
Critic-Proof: In spite of very negative reviews from film critics and poor reception from the comic strip's fans who complained that Garfield wasn't meant for live-action, both films did very well at the box office. The sequel in particular saw massive success in China.
Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Both films were big overseas successes, particularly in China, despite the second film being a domestic bomb.
First Installment Wins: The first movie is seen in a more positive light compared to the second one.
Though also Harsher in Hindsight, as Bill Murray's comments that Lorenzo voicing Venkman made the latter sound like Garfield ended up getting Lorenzo kicked offThe Real Ghostbusters. Bill did later state he felt bad about that and likely why he took the role of voicing Garfield in the movie both as an apology and in honor of Lorenzo.
Moral Event Horizon: Happy Chapman crosses this when he steals Odie for his own gain, then uses a dreaded shock collar on him forcing him to do tricks, and even laughs at the dog's pain from the powerful jolts (despite Wendell reminding him that he'd promised he'd never use the collar, claiming it to be "inhumane").
Narm: Happy Chapman pointedly stating he hates lasagna after he just so happens to be offered it. Y’know, Garfield’s favourite food. Feels like an incredibly awkward way to assert who’s the bad guy here, as if kidnapping and torturing a dog didn’t make that clear enough. Made further odd by how this never comes into play afterwards.
No Problem with Licensed Games: The tie-in game for the second movie is surprisingly good, being an all-around solid Collectathon Platformer with satisfying movement mechanics, curious places to explore, and just the right amount of challenge in later sections of the game.
Signature Song: "Hey Mama" by the Black Eyed Peas and "Holla" by the Baha Men for the first film.
Special Effect Failure: The screamingly obvious CGI Garfield. He sticks out like a sore thumb when compared to all the other animals who are more realistic looking. He looks like Grumpy Cat if she were the offspring of Chester Cheetah.
Spiritual Adaptation: The first movie is essentially a live-action film based on Here Comes Garfield.
gives a valid viewpoint on the issue of obesity: that some fat people eat a lot because they have low self esteem, and that making fun of them doesn’t help the matter at all.
