- In this strip
◊, Garfield mentions going to the North Pole to eat a penguin. Intentionally or not, this gaffe makes it obvious that he's BS'ing Nermal. - Garfield has had a notable thing against raisins, frequently citing them as his least favorite food. In real life, raisins (and, in turn, grapes) are poisonous, possibly fatally, to cats.
- On the other hand, Garfield has no problem with chocolate, which is also not good for feline digestion.
- Chocolate tastes better.
- Onions and undecaffienated coffee are also not the best things for cats in large amounts. Hopefully Liz makes sure certain foods are eaten very sparingly.
- On the other hand, Garfield has no problem with chocolate, which is also not good for feline digestion.
- Dieting rarely works and people gain the weight back more often than not. Garfield's constant yoyo-dieting has probably messed up his metabolism, making it even harder for him to lose weight.
- Why can't Odie communicate with his thoughts like pretty much everything else? He doesn't have any thoughts to communicate with.
- Did Garfield die hallucinating Jon and Odie? Hardly. If you died hallucinating in 1989, how could you have heard of a selfie?
- This could overlap with Fridge Horror, but most of the time when he is put on a diet, Garfield is given only vegetables like carrots and lettuce to eat. Cats are obligate carnivores, meaning that they NEED meat in their diets to be healthy. No wonder Garfield calls a diet "die with a T"!
- Liz for a long time turns down Jon, though she did go on one date with him and accepted his invitation for a Thanksgiving dinner. Why did she change her mind in the 00s? Because Jon was making an effort to move on rather than keep asking her; a case of You Were Trying Too Hard. It's not that Liz finds Jon unbearably nerdy — she always knew that about him. Rather, the issue was that he wasn't giving her space.
- In one strip Garfield laughs at the idea of a talking cat. Arbitrary Skepticism? No because technically Garfield can't actually talk either. In the strips we only hear his thoughts and doesn't actually speak in a human language.
- Jon stays surprisingly trim because Garfield always steals his food.
- Garfield might actually be starving to death in an abandoned house.
- If you think about it, the house Garfield is trapped in has been abandoned for years, which suggests that Garfield is ALREADY DEAD- and his spirit is bound to the place, a strong sense of denial is the only reason he doesn't scream.
"You have no idea how alone you are, Garfield!- It actually gets much worse if one reads the article in the present day (and imagines the year as such) while reading it. Garfield is very big on marking the eponymous cat's birthday, and how old he's getting-his birth year is stated as being 1978 (the year of the comic's inception)- by the late 80's, the 'aging' jokes were starting to be laid on pretty thick at his birthday time as the strips were written in 1989... A cat born in 1978 would be pretty damn old by then- and when you factor in Garfield's weight and general lifestyle, dying before 1989 seems more likely...
- But the real horror comes in when you remember that the comic never stopped being printed between 1989 and now, remains in print- and will probably remain so for some time to come. Garfield's still scarfing lasagna and harassing Odie, but any normal cat that was born in 1978 should not be alive in 2012! And the 1989 comic offers a nice Fridge explanation for all of it.. It's a perpetual illusion by a long-dead Garfield's ghost...
- And this is meant to be PLAYED. FOR. LAUGHS. As Davis said... "During a writing session for Halloween, I got the idea for this decidedly different series of strips. I wanted to scare people. And what do people fear most? Why, being alone. We carried out the concept to its logical conclusion and got a lot of responses from readers. Reaction ranged from 'Right on!' to 'This isn't a trend, is it?'" Holy. CRAP.
- And to pile on, most cats live 20-30 years. The middle is 25. Take 2012 and take away 25 is 1987. If calculations are PROPER, garfield DIED BEFORE THESE COMICS BY 2 YEARS.
- The world record is 38, and the current oldest cat (according to a quick websearch) is 27, but it's rare to find any beyond 17.
- Also note that A: In spite of the fact that birthdays, Christmases, and New Year's are celebrated in the comic with religious punctuality, Jon finally getting Liz is about the only life change in the comic from 1989 up to now! B: It's entirely plausible that a house which was low enough on the real estate market to be a freelance cartoonist's bachelor pad (circa 1980) would now become an abandoned wreck today, and C: Garfield just "snaps out of it" at the end of the strip... No waking up, no being licked by Odie or prodded by Jon... Jon and Odie are just suddenly there again. Conclusion? Garfield has been a hallucinating ghost since some point in the 1980s- the 1989 strips were a brief, unexplained awakening from the reverie. And the comic since then has been an uninterrupted continuation of the hallucination, including a "happy ending" for his owner that may or may not have actually happened. The creepiest cherry on the creepy cake comes in when you note the Aesop at the end of the strips...which is an Aesop that Garfield ''never'' learned until it was too late.
- Actually, although thirty-four (at the time of this edit) is an unlikely age, some cats have lived longer than that. Eleven also wouldn't have been terribly old for a cat, even an overweight one. Not that that invalidates the theory, though; there's plenty that can kill a pet besides old age. In reality, a whole lot of stuff in the food he eats could poison him; tomatoes are toxic to cats, and his favorite food is lasagna...
- According to an extra in one of the book collections, Garfield may have "retired to a South Sea island and has been replaced by a bionic duplicate."
- WordOfGod says it's not true, however.
- In one of the TV specials, Jon wants to take Garfield to the vet because he's been hyperactive. Consider that the cure for hyperactivity in male cats is generally castration. Garfield probably had a legitimate fear of going to the vet.
- Garfield might be a were-cat. See the Halloween strip for proof.
- If it's any consolation, he clearly scares himself as much as he threatens the audience, making it unlikely he'd do much damage. Although, given later gags that involve Garfield acting feral and barring his teeth and claws, it's possible that part of him could resurface.
- There's a strip where Liz offers Garfield an oatmeal raisin cookie. As mentioned in the Fridge Brilliance section, raisins are poisonous to cats, and being a vet, one would assume she knows that. Yet another reason for Garfield to fear her.
- Jim Davis himself having one is possibly why Jon and Liz became and Official Couple. He read Garfield Minus Garfield, and may have realized they had a point in their Darker and Edgier take on Jon Arbuckle's life.
- As humorous as it may be, how does Garfield's birthday cake expand when he blows the candles out in this birthday strip?
- I think the joke is that he wished for the cake to be bigger.
