Garfield (Comic Strip)/Tear Jerker

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • The 1984 Story Arc in which Garfield wanders away from home while Jon's at a convention and ends up stumbling upon the abandoned Italian restaurant where he was born. The strip has several tear-jerking moments, such as Odie trying to console Jon by abusing him like Garfield did; Garfield discovering that the restaurant is now abandoned; and finally coming home just in time for Christmas. It also subverts this trope on the December 23 strip, with Garfield collapsing dramatically in the front door; Jon asks if Garfield's okay and he replies, "Actually, yes, I just thought it would be more dramatic this way."
  • After Lorenzo Music died, Davis made a drawing of Garfield, and his thought bubble read, "I'm speechless."
  • When Charles M. Schulz, creator of Peanuts, passed away, there was this strip with Garfield standing next to Snoopy's iconic red doghouse looking up at it, and then lying on top of it like Snoopy does and sighing sadly.
  • Sometimes Garfield Minus Garfield gets like this.
  • There was one 5 or 6 strip comic where Garfield wakes up to find his home abandoned for years, and Odie and Jon are long gone. What really got me was, in 1 of those strips, when Garfield hears Jon saying, "Dinner's ready!" and Garfield rushes in to find Jon and Odie in the kitchen, but they disappear in the next panel. It redeems itself by having a Heartwarming Moments where Garfield hugs Jon, saying, "Forget the food." This troper tears up every time he reads that set.
  • Garfield's Christmas Special, as Jon's Grandma reminisces about her late husband, and how on Christmas eve she misses him the most.