Line #0 Trivia/TheFarSide


1	* ApprovalOfGod: Anthropologist and primatologist Jane Goodall was a longtime reader of the strip, and she in particular enjoyed one fairly controversial comic that poked fun at her famously close relationship with chimpanzees. She was horrified to find that the executive director of her wildlife institute had unilaterally threatened Larson with legal action for the perceived harm done to its and Goodall's reputation by the cartoon, without her knowledge, and went to some lengths to make amends. It was arranged to use Larson's cartoon on a t-shirt that profits the institute, while Goodall went on to write a four-page foreword to the anthology ''The Far Side Gallery 5'', which strongly hints that the "''then'' executive director" had not lasted much longer in her post... Larson in turn visited Goodall at Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania -- where he was set upon by a rambunctious adolescent "bully" of a chimp ([[Literature/TheLordOfTheRings named Frodo]]), meaning that, karmically, he had been more or less HoistByHisOwnPetard.
2	* DenialOfDigitalDistribution: The comic was an example of this for a long time, with Gary Larson disallowing any official releases of his work except in book collections and calendars, although fans posted the strips online ''unofficially'' with great frequency. He eventually relented in late 2019, with the strip's website relaunched to become its official online home.
3	* ExecutiveMeddling:
4	** Arguably a [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools positive example]]. Part of Larson's commemorative book, "The Prehistory of the Far Side", consists of him saying how grateful he is that his editors kept him in line and prevented certain risky cartoons from making it to the newspapers. He even credits one case of this as saving his career.
5	** [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools However]], in the same book, he expresses his displeasure whenever strips were altered without telling him first. One particular case that he offers up involved a penguin among his hundreds of identical brethren singing "I Gotta Be Me," that the syndicate inkers decided to color yellow (since the image was just penguins and ice, and thus didn't exactly require a lot of color), which still worked as a minor heartwarmer (i.e. "He's singing because he's ''unique!''"), but also utterly ruined Larson's joke (i.e. "He's singing because he's ''not'' unique.").
6	** The name itself was a result of this; When his strip ''Nature's Way'' got accepted for syndication, they asked him if it could get changed to ''The Far Side'' as they felt it would be more appealing. Larson felt this was a much more positive change, saying "They could have called it ''Revenge of the Zucchini People'' for all I cared".
7	* FollowTheLeader: Since the early 1990s, plenty of one-panel, gag-a-day strips have cropped up, including ''The Dinette Set'', ''Bizarro'', ''Close to Home'', ''Argyle Sweater'', ''Real Life Adventures'', etc. Some are pretty good in their own right; others aren't.
8	* HeAlsoDid: Larson drew the cover art for a jazz album called ''[[https://www.joesalbums.com/images/product/ellis-mitchell-doggin-around-record-lp.jpeg Doggin' Around]]'' and that of [[http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=2003-11-17#folio=CV1 the Nov. 17, 2003 issue]] of ''Magazine/TheNewYorker''
9	* KeepCirculatingTheTapes:
10	** The ''Tales from the Far Side'' DVD is perpetually sold out on Larson's web site and is unavailable elsewhere for sale. Your best hope to see the specials is to get lucky on a video-hosting site (like Website/YouTube) before they're yanked on copyright grounds.
11	** Larson has always been adamant about keeping any of his work from appearing online, saying he feels like they're his kids and he doesn't like the thought of them staying out late in a strange place. In 2020, he finally created an official website that updates daily with his strips, but they're still not allowed to be anywhere else, and the full catalogue was only unveiled very slowly.
12	* ScienceImitatesArt:
13	** One comic depicts cavemen in a lecture hall, where the caveman professor is pointing to a slide of a stegosaur tail and stating that that end of the animal is called a thagomizer, "after the late Thag Simmons". The term afterwards came into use as an informal name for stegosaurian tails, including in formal museums, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thagomizer the Wikipedia page]] on the anatomical feature, and the occasional technical paper.
14	** ''Strigiphilus garylarsoni'' is a type of owl louse named after Gary Larson, in honor of the author's popularization of obscure nature facts. In the ''The Prehistory of the Far Side'', Larson stated that he considered this to be a great honor.
15	--->''"Besides, I knew no one was going to write and ask to name a new species of swan after me. You have to grab these opportunities when they come along."''
16	* ShortLivedBigImpact: The strip only lasted from 1980 to 1995, with a sabbatical in 1989, but has remained one of the most iconic and influential in newspaper history due to its unique humor style.
17	* TheWalrusWasPaul: Gary Larson got many calls and letters asking what the meaning of the infamous CowTools comic strip meant and simply said it had no meaning and the joke was just that cows would make weird-looking tools.
18	* WriteWhatYouKnow: According to ''A Prehistory of The Far Side'' the only cartoon that comes directly from Gary Larson's personal experiences is the one where a guy knocks himself unconscious by installing an extending bar in his doorway and doing a pull-up. He admits, though, that some other cartoons of his took indirect inspiration from personal experiences. For example, one depicting a recently shorn sheep going on its first date was based on an embarrassing experience in Larson's youth where his dad cut his hair short right before his first date at a time when [[SeventiesHair longer hair was cool]].

Context Trivia / TheFarSide