Garfield (Comic Strip)/WMG

Every Garfield strip since Oct 28, 1989 has been the hallucination of a lonely cat starving to death in an empty house.
These are the last Garfield strips that happened. See them in color at the bottom of this page, or in the official website's archive.
 * Jossed by Word of God, as seen here.

Lyman is Luigi
Think about it. They look pretty similar. Lyman has Mario's mustache. And Lyman was last seen in a regular Garfield strip in 1983, the same year that Luigi debuts in Mario Bros. Coincidence?
 * Plus they're both young, under-appreciated, and have names that begin with the letter 'L'.

Garfield, because of his selfishness and the multiple acts of pettiness against Odie and Jon, was transported by the Dark Powers in the Demi-Plane of Ravenloft
Now he is the Darklord and prisoner of a tiny domain where he must be alone as a punishment for treating others the way he did.

Garfield is an ordinary cat with an ordinary cat's mind, and Jon is a clinically depressed and possibly suicidal man who talks to his pets.
Any clever quips in the little thought bubbles emanating from Garfield's head are hallucinated by his owner, Jon, along with the bubbles themselves. For more information about this hypothesis, look here.
 * What's so unusual or strange about talking to a cat?
 * Jon's not suicidal. Low self-esteem, sometimes; but he's energetic and enthusiastic too often to be depressed, much less suicidal. On the other hand, some kind of mild psychosis...
 * Reality Is Unrealistic. Many a suicidal person can appear normal enough in public -- even moreso for depression, especially if meds are a factor. We do frequently see Jon being enthusiastic and upbeat in private, though. Perhaps bipolar disorder? He does seem to have manic episodes, come to think of it... Or else he includes Garfield (whom he thinks is sapient and cartoon) among the "people" he needs to maintain his act for.
 * A couple websites have tried imagining what the comic would actually look like if we saw this from an objective view. Realfield presents edited comic strips that have replaced the wise-cracking, bipedal cartoon cat with a much more realistic one that reacts just like a real cat (that is to say, hardly at all) while leaving Jon's behavior untouched. Meanwhile, Garfield Minus Garfield takes it a step further by removing the cat altogether, which leaves us with Jon literally talking to himself "as he fights a losing battle against loneliness in a quiet American suburb."
 * This also explains why his dates tend to run away from him in terror.
 * Also of note is Arbuckle, a project started by Tailsteak, but thrown to the viewing public. (Who haven't been doing much lately...)
 * Are Liz and the Mailman hallucinating, too? Maybe they're both in Jon's head, too... but that still wouldn't account for the stuff that happens when Jon isn't around to hallucinate it. Maybe it's all Jon's dream - or all someone's dream.

Garfield is a shinigami
His lasagna addiction is much like that with Ryuk's apples. Jon carries the Death Note, but doesn't normally use it.
 * He used once it on Lyman.
 * Scarily enough, Garfield actually has a Death Note in Garfield Gets Real. So this is highly plausible.
 * It actually says "Depth Note" (probably a 3D gag, as Gets Real was Garfield's first All CGI Cartoon.
 * Near gave a speech at the end of Death Note about how a normal person might have tried the Death Note once, as a gag, and then would've been horrified, guilt-stricken and locked it up as soon he realized that it actually works. Clearly Jon is that normal person. He tested it on Lyman after they had an argument over the chores, found out it's real when Lyman died, and has kept it hidden ever since (and is taking care of Odie out of guilt). Garfield's hanging around for the lasagna and because Jon hasn't relinquished the Death Note to anyone else, and Jon seems to a bit of a Cloudcuckoolander because living with the temptation of being able to kill anyone without getting caught would take its toll on anyone (especially when you're the world's Butt Monkey).
 * This also explains why Garfield often seems to be Jon's hallucination: only the people who have touched the Death Note can see Garfield, so most of the time, Jon seems to be talking to himself. Liz, the mailman and a few other humans have, for one reason or another, ended up touching the Death Note by mistake, and Jon takes Garfield to Liz for checkups not only to hit on her, but also to keep her convinced that Garfield's an ordinary cat.

Garfield didn't die in the Oct 28, 1989 strip; he eversed
Garfield has the same eversing powers as the flower-man but is so lazy that he didn't even know he had them. One day, he took a nap in an eversing point and accidentally eversed while he was asleep. After he woke up, he found his house in its everted state, freaked out, and then accidentally re-everted the house back to normal.
 * Maybe it's a good thing he didn't try to get out of the ruined house. Who knows what he would've found wandering around out there...

The Garfield comic strip takes place in the town of Silent Hill.
That is, following the theory that there are three "levels" of existence to Silent Hill: a normal, functioning abode that used to be a mining town, the foggy "otherworld", and the dessicated dark world.

The town has been re-populated, but coal fires continue to burn underground. Jon's supposed Flanderization as the strip progresses is a result of the subtle smoke from the underground slowly damaging his mind, which would also explain Irma's "slow in the head" demeanor. (It's possible that Liz's sharpness results from her living and working on the edge of town, away from the most concentrated coal fires underground) The town, for the most part, lived in peace, unaware of the unspeakable things lurking within the lower two "planes" of its existence.

But in one week in 1989, something happened: the town called for Garfield the cat, and like James before him, poor Garfield had no choice but to answer.

In the infamous Halloween week series of strips, Garfield awoke within the second "plane" of Silent Hill: the seemingly-abandoned, broken-down town.

Silent Hill, mind, does not tend to pull in its chew toys without a good reason: one of the key reasons a protagonist will find themselves drawn to Silent Hill is a sort of guilt within them, an internal conflict as brutal as the creatures they encounter within the town. With that in mind, let's look at Garfield.

He's a lazy Jerkass who takes Kick the Dog to a literal extent, who spends his time deriding and lashing out against Jon, the only person in the world who even gives him the time of day. These attitudes have been pushing him away from everyone else in his life, creating an unparalleled sense of isolation; the Town finally makes him confront this fact with a terrifyingly real depiction of where this road will take him. Garfield is forced to come to grips with the simple fact, which he states in anguish: "I don't want to be alone!"

And suddenly, everything is back to normal; Jon and Odie are there, and the dessicated landscape is replaced by normality. He had learned what the Town tried to teach him, rather quickly; thus, he was allowed to return from it. It's quite a good thing he did not leave the house, as well; Silent Hill aficionados know well that an empty room is far, far preferrable to the things lurking elsewhere.

But it didn't take him long to resume his Jerkass ways. Thus, the Town may soon call on him once more, to teach a more permanent lesson...

Garfield is the story of Jon slowly descending into madness, while his housecat watches
At the beginning of the series, Jon was a relatively normal fellow with a fondness for football, a roommate, and normal-if-unlucky skills at romance. Over the years, he's slowly transformed into a man-child who talks to himself frequently, finds excitement in mundane activities, and frightens any woman he talks to so much that many have restraining orders against him and run in terror.

What we've been taking as normal Flanderization has been deliberate. Jon is suffering from schizophrenia, and the series is showing the account via an unreliable cat narrator. We don't see him working because he's on disability, or his parents have been funneling him money to support him. His assorted freakouts and "comedic" moments are how Garfield sees him react to his delusions and hallucinations.

Right now in the series, he seems to be having a moment of normalcy, perhaps because he's gone on medication and Garfield hasn't noticed. He seems to have gotten his life together slightly; he's begun dressing normally again (this most recent weekend had Jon wearing a somewhat ratty brown suit, purple shirt and matching checkered tie -- it may sound a little unusual, but it's more basic and less eye-burning than his former standard outfit, a yellow plaid jacket, neon green tie, and massive daisy in lapel) and dating Liz.

However, this could just be a Hope Spot. Jon's schizophrenia may yet lead to him having a massive freakout that scares even Liz away.

Jim Davis is winding up the strip.
Think on it. This used to be one of the Status Quo Is God strips, when it came to Jon's love life. Now suddenly he's dating the woman of his dreams?

The strip is ending. And it will end when Jon and Liz get engaged or married.

Note: this comic did what the author intended it to do. And it has been in print for approximately thirty years. He's not doing it for the art; this won't be a Ten Minute Retirement.

Jim Davis wanted to end the strip on Oct 28, 1989, but due to Executive Meddling was forced to continue.
For a while, he tried to make the best of it, but he eventually started to just phone it in. He's been writing for an independent comic company under an assumed name for years now.

Jon Arbuckle is a psychopath

 * He killed his best friend Lyman because he wanted his dog.

Realfield is Weegee.
Or, at least, the comics incarnation of him.

Garfield is telepathic.
Garfield is unable to vocalise any of his snarkiness, yet Jon frequently reacts as though he can, in fact, hear him. Garfield also directly adresses the audience, something no other character does, or at least has done in some time.
 * This has been Jossed by Garfield's Judgement Day, where it is revealed that Garfield - and by extension, all cats - can talk, and the fact that nobody (not even Jon) could communicate with them before is a plot point.

The current Garfield, Odie, Arlene and such in the comic are Generation Xerox.
Cats and dogs don't normally live as long as Garfield and his crew have. Ignoring the rule of Comic Book Time for the sake of this theory, at some point, the original cast passed on. Jon, whose sanity is often questionable already, didn't take this well. However, Garfield had gotten together with Arlene at some point (and Odie with some random poodle or other Temporary Love Interest), with the usual results. Jon adopted one of the kittens that looked the most like his father, named him Garfield, and did the same for Odie. He continues to celebrate the wrong birthday and age as part of his ongoing denial over losing the originals.

This is also why the strip stopped following the Arlene/Garfield romance, and why Arlene dropped out of the strip for so long. These aren't the original Garfield and Arlene; in fact, this Arlene could actually be this Garfield's younger sister.

Lyman was gay. For Jon. But they weren't a couple.
Jon was just a straight, extremely unlucky man, and Lyman eventually moved out, leaving Odie as a sort of Audience Surrogate for himself, since while he couldn't stand to be near but not with Jon, Odie could.

Lyman killed himself.
See above for one possibility, but the possible causes are many and varied.

Lyman killed everyone else.
And Garfield is the ghost of an already-dead cat "living" in a long abandoned house.

Lyman got a job transfer, and the only city apartment he could afford even on his increased salary was a no-pet complex.
Because this page needs some lightening and fluffying.

Garfield's beard was part of a plot to build a franken-facial hair using Tycho Brahe's graverobbed moustache.
Ambrose Burnside was part of the same project. Fortunately, no suitable eyebrows were around during the decades that the project was-- What? The cat? Great, this is JustBugsMe/Cats all over again!

Garfield can transmit thoughts at will
That's why Jon can sometimes understand what he's "thinking" and sometimes he can't! Of course sometimes Jon just ignores him.
 * This may be how Garfield learned this ability.
 * He is too lazy to use it much.

Garfield's trimmer looks over the years are a result of a cartoonish trick
He hasn't actually lost any weight, he simply shifted it all to his feet. LOOK AT THEM. They're HUGE nowadays.

Garfield's hatred of Mondays stems from lasagna withdrawal.
In one episode of Garfield and Friends, Garfield finds a wishing well and wishes Monday out of existence. It's a standard Be Careful What You Wish For plot, but contains a particularly odd reveal. Jon no longer cooks lasagna for Garfield, because Monday night was lasagna night. This doesn't make a lot of sense, considering how much Garfield hates the day and loves the food, unless you think about it the right way. On Monday morning, Garfield has gone seven mornings without lasagna, and this problem won't be rectified until the end of the day. Cue grumpiness and impatience.

Garfield is a Time Lord.
His TARDIS is his bed, that's why he can fit Pooky and other things in it without them showing. Garfield being a Time Lord would explain why his appearance has changed so much over the course of the comic strip, he's changed into new forms. The reason why everyone else in the series has changed so much is because Garfield has traveled into a distant past (or future) that has people similar to the other eras that Garfield has visited.
 * And when Garfield was in the abandoned house that everyone here is obsessed with, he simply travled too far into the future and momentarily panicked.

Garfield and Calvin and Hobbes take place in the same universe.
The connection is Lyman. He disappears from the strip in 1983, then a few years later reappears in Calvin & Hobbes. Lyman is Calvin's Uncle Max: his full name is Max Lyman. The evidence is that Max and Lyman look the same, and have a similar sartorial taste. The few differences between the two (such as Max's bigger nose) can be explained by different artistic impressions of the same character. Max's hairline has receded somewhat since he was living with Jon, but there are years between his disappearance from Garfield and reappearance in Calvin & Hobbes, so that certainly could've happened. Max being Lyman also explain why he's worried about Calvin's imaginary friend, and why he says that all of his friends might've been imaginary too. When he was living Jon, they were caught up in a folie à deux, where they imagined their cat and dog were acting like human beings. Max realized he had to break away from this fantasy, but Jon, being the more infantile of the two, couldn't do the same. Max realized he had no choice but leave: that's why he disappeared so suddenly from Garfield and left Odie behind. His past history explains his comment about imaginary friends (he's referring to Garfield an Odie), as well as why he thinks Calvin having an imaginary friend might not be healthy for him.

Garfield, Odie and Jon are reincarnations or Alternate Universe versions of Bucky, Satchel and Rob.
Snarky cat. Stupid dog. Owner who can understand them. Am I the only one who thought of this?
 * Or perhaps Get Fuzzy is a deconstruction of Garfield, being more realistic and edgy than Garfield, and containing more three-dimensional characters.

Garfield's father is Heathcliff

 * They look similar, and Garfield's mother is named Sonja.

Jon is Witted.

 * He's just not completely aware of it. He can hear most of Garfield's thoughts, and cats can use the Wit to speak with whomever of the Old Blood they choose to, and all the cats you meet in Tawny Man seem to have Garfield's attitude about humans and self-importance.

Jon actually draws the strip, and "Jim Davis" is just a pseudonym; or "Jon Arbuckle" really is Jim Davis.

 * Think about it. We all know Jon is a cartoonist, but we never see what strip he draws, so who's to say it's not Garfield itself? Plus, they were both born July 28, and "Jon" and "Jim" booth start with "J" and go Consonant-Vowel-Consonant.

Binky is Pennywise.

 * This explains his odd behaviors and creepiness, not to mention the evil grin he had at the beginning of the Garfield Halloween Special.
 * Or he could be one of the Killer Klowns From Outer Space.

Since, according to this strip, the day Jon brought Garfield, he had to choose between him or an iguana...

 * That iguana was then bought by a blond nerd, and named Quincy.

Garfield is a Bakeneko/Nekomata (or at least in the proces of becoming one)
. He meets at least two of the three conditions to become one:
 * Living over ten years of age - definately
 * Reaching one kan (3.75 kg or 8.25 lbs) in weight - also definately
 * Growing its tail too long - could be

And he shows several abilities that Bakeneko/Nekomata are known to have:
 * Walking on its hind legs: he has done so for years now.
 * Menacing sleeping humans: Jon frequently suffers from things Garfield does to him. Several older comics focus on Garfield roughly waking Jon up.
 * Talking: in a way, because Jon does apparently understands Garfield's snarkiness according to his facial expressions.

When he goes on a diet, Garfield is put on drugs by Jon
This may explain why everything appears screwed-up in some of the diet-themed comics.

"Doc Boy" is the formal name of Jon's brother.
Mentioned by Jon's mother when the three were looking at a photo album.