Hilarious In Hindsight / Garfield and Friends

• The recap\review show Garf Gab likes to point out these from time to time, such as Binky hosting "Name that Fish" before UHF did that exact skit.
• In season one, one of Garfield's post-opening blurbs had him mention the show had no robots. Fast forward one season later...
  • Double funny since the line was clearly meant as a jab at The Transformers, and Garfield's voice actor is now none other than Frank Welker, Megatron himself!
• At the beginning of "Astrocat" Garfield and Odie watch the game show "Hit The Buzzer, Win A Cookie" and Garfield comments "And this is on the educational channel". Mildly amusing comment then, very relevant today thanks to the Network Decay of TLC.
• Episode 35 had a U.S. Acres short ("Hamelot") about a griffon, followed by a Garfield short ("How To Be Funny!") that had a part mentioning practical jokes. Sound familiar?
• Try not to snicker when you consider "Wade, You're Afraid" is about a flightless coward trying to overcome his cowardliness, and involves a bull.
• This isn't the only time Gregg Berger would voice a pig who happened to be a detective.
  • One of the first season's Quickies even featured Orson dressing up and talking like a detective.
• This also wasn't the only time Howard Morris voiced a character who's friends with a Chicken.
• Although both games came out around the same time, "Garfield's Defense" and Disney World's interactive card game, Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom have some amusing similarities. In "Snow Wade and the 77 Dwarves", Snow Wade's dress, red bow and black hair was similar to the Disney version. In "Garfield's Defense" the U.S. Acres characters help Garfield fight the enemies. Wade's weapon to fight off the enemies is a broom. In "Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom", Snow White has a spell card to attack the enemies, "Snow White’s Housecleaning". What weapon is she holding/using? A broom.
• In "The Legal Eagle", Wade was inside a pumpkin with the stem part on top of his head. In the first "Garfield's Defense game, he ends wearing a pumpkin costume similar to this in the Halloween levels.
• The plot of the fake U.S. Acres episode "Much Ado About Orson" in "The Mail Animal" was that Orson had to help Lanolin with her chores. 4 seasons later, the episode "A Little Time Off" occurs, having a similar plot to what Orson described to Wade (Helping Lanolin get her mind off chores by helping her imagine things, which would count as helping her).
  • Plus, three seasons before that, an episode called "Much Ado About Lanolin" aired.
• An example involving real-life events: The prophet Muhammad died three years after he ate lamb that was poisoned. 1,361 years later, the episode Snow Wade and the 77 Dwarfs airs, and Snow Wade was given the poison apple by a lamb, Lanolin.
• The ending of Wanted: Wade involves Booker and Sheldon playing a prank related to the main problem in the episode, which was Wade fearing he would be put in jail. 5 years later, the Animaniacs segment "De-Zanitized" has this exact same ending where the Warner siblings were playing the prank, and the problem was that Dr. Scratchnsniff wanted to see a de-zychatrist in order to stop his problems with the Warners.
• In "Garfield Goes Hawaiian", Frank Welker voices a parrot who does an impersonation of Garfield. Many years later, Welker would become Garfield's voice actor.
  • Also, in the episode "The Bo Show", Bo (who Frank Welker also voiced) played as Garfield wearing a head mask and trying to voice him.
• Another meta example: In the episode 'Nighty-Nightmare' (among others), Jon orders food for himself, only to find Garfield inside the box, having already eaten it all. A couple of years earlier, Lorenzo Music would be the first voice of Peter Venkman on The Real Ghostbusters, and often suffer this same indignity at the appetite of Slimer.
• Probably the most famous of these is a line in the opening that was swiftly (ab)used in YouTube Poop. Even better, Wade then says "I'm scared!" afterward; it's like he knew what was to come.

  Garfield: I hope you bring lots of spaghetti! ^note Parodied in this YouTube Poop.

• There was a weasel who sounds and acts like the one in the US Acres segments in the Magic Adventures of Mumfie episode "Pop Goes The Weasel". The same episode also contains a Rake Take similar to the one in "Wanted: Wade".
• The episode "Cute for Loot" has Garfield ending up in Abu Dhabi instead of Nermal and he complains that there are no Italian restaurants there. While this might have been the case when the episode aired, that is not the case nowadays as there's even a listing of the best Italian restaurants in Abu Dhabi!
• Reruns of the show aired on Nickelodeon in the late '90s. In 2019, Nick's parent company Viacom acquired the rights to Garfield and U.S. Acres and have announced a new Garfield series for Nick is on the way. The show even makes a jab at Ren & Stimpy!
• At the end of "Another Ant Episode" the singing ants promise they'll be back next season. But instead that aired in what would turn out to be Garfield's final season.
• One U.S. Acres segment that spoofed Star Trek was called "Swine Trek". The name of the segment was the same as the name of the spaceship in "Pigs In Space", The Muppet Show's take on Star Trek that had premiered 13 years earlier
• "National Tapioca Pudding Day" has Roy make up a holiday in order to play a prank. Since the cartoon's airing, it has become common practice for "holidays" to be observed for random things, from food to activities. In 2020, National Tapioca Pudding Day is June 28th.
• Many episodes make jabs at Saturday morning cartoons becoming a dying medium because of Executive Meddling. Since the late 2010s, Saturday morning cartoons have been slowly coming back to television.
• In "The Automated Animated Adventure", when Garfield is inside the cartoon computer, at one point he is morphed into the likeness of Bart Simpson. The following year after this episode was made, Film Roman (the production company behind Garfield and Friends) took over domestic production of The Simpsons (from Klasky-Csupo) up until 2016, when production moved to FOX Television Animation.
  • In the same episode, Garfield is then morphed into likeness of Felix the Cat. Four years later after the episode aired, Film Roman produced The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat one year after Garfield and Friends was cancelled.
• "The Tortoise and the Hare" features Orson teaching Booker and Sheldon how to use a computer, which was new at the time of the show’s airing. Nowadays, most kids are computer experts
• In "Moo Cow Mutt", Garfield pranks Odie into thinking he's a cow. In August 2nd 2020, a sunday strip shows Garfield as a cowboy writing his name with a lasso. Odie is seen nearby with bull horns.
• In "Mini-Mall Matters", Garfield says that every mini-mall involves a video rental store. This business would soon die out in favor of DVDs and online streaming, making the episode humorously dated.
• This Cartoon Network Latin America ad for the show, depicting Garfield destroying his house after eating everything inside (including Odie and Jon) brings to mind the memes portraying Garfield as an endlessly hungry Eldritch Abomination that would come into vogue starting in the mid-2010s.
• In "Binky Gets Cancelled Again!", Bobby Buddy Bear wants anchovies and pineapple on his pizza, which his brothers react in disgust at as the three argue over pizza toppings. In the 2010s, pineapples have displaced anchovies as the most disgusting pizza topping (though mostly because pineapples became more commonly used as pizza toppings than anchovies).
• In "One Good Fern Deserves Another", Jon thinks that Garfield (who is clearly in danger of being eaten by a monstrous fern) is the one attacking the fern. Luckily for Garfield, Jon catches on to the truth a LOT quicker than Spongebob did when Gary was in a similar situation.