Garfield And Friends - Television Tropes & Idioms

Insert witty Garfield one-liner here

Animated series based on the works of Jim Davis.

Each episode is in Three Shorts ABA format. The A series is Garfield, derived from the massively famous comic strip of the same name. The B series (referred to in the title sequence as "and Friends") is US Acres, based on Davis's other, less famous comic strip.

Garfield is a fat, lazy orange cat whose hobbies include sleeping, eating lasagna, sleeping, watching television, and sleeping. He lives with his human owner, Jon, and Jon's dog, Odie, who slobbers incessantly and lacks internal speech. Other recurring characters include Nermal, the world's cutest kitty-cat; a tribe of mice (Garfield refuses to hunt mice, since human food tastes better and is easier to catch); Liz the Vet, on whom Jon has a crush; and the relentlessly annoying TV show host Binky the Clown.

Unlike Garfield 's non-talking pets, U.S. Acres is set on a farm inhabited and apparently run by Talking Animals. Every episode includes a point where the characters stop and sing a song related to the episode's plot or theme, often including a more or less abitrary Aesop.(U.S. Acres is known as "Orson's Farm" in the UK, Canada, Australia, and Latin America, where the original title's slight pun is not the selling point it was in the USA.) Characters include:

Orson Pig. Relatively normal, but reads a lot and lets his imagination run away with him from time to time.
Roy Rooster, a lazy practical joker with a high opinion of himself.
Wade Duck, a hypochondriac who can work himself into a frenzy of fear over anything. He's even afraid of water, and always wears an kiddie pool inner tube around his waist; it has a duck head on the front that looks just like him and mimics his facial expressions.
Bo and Lanolin, a brother-sister sheep duo. Bo is laid back to the point of absurdity, while Lanolin is hot-headed and argumentative to the point of contrariness.
And the little chickens Booker and Sheldon
- Booker hunts worms with an obsession comparable to Elmer Fudd's pursuit of Bugs Bunny (and similar results). He likes ninjas.
- Sheldon, the younger of the two, appears as an egg with a pair of legs sticking out the bottom. He choose to stay inside his shell after reading horrible world news from a pile of newspapers put under him while incubating.

Those who only know Garfield as "that comic everyone likes to make fun of" might be surprised to hear how popular this series was and still is. In large part this is because of Lorenzo Music's dead-on performance as Garfield; anyone who saw this cartoon as a kid will still hear his voice in their head if they read one of the comic strips. Also influencing things is the fact that Jim Davis had little to do with the series, besides putting his name on it (much like Steven Spielberg's involvement with the 1990s Warner Bros Animation revival); TV veteran Mark Evanier was the showrunner, wrote most of the episodes and was responsible for a lot of the edgier humor.

This series contains examples of:

Anvilicious (Parodies)
Biting The Hand Humor: Much jokes are made in reference to "the network", a.k.a. CBS.
By The Lights Of Their Eyes: "Wade, You're Afraid"; "Sales Resistance".
Carnivore Confusion: See trope page for details.
The Complainer Is Always Wrong Parodied, rather viciously at times, with the Buddy Bears.
Couch Gag
Deadpan Snarker: Who do you think?
Double Take
Dumbass DJ: DJ Jon, much to Garfield's dismay.
Edited For Syndication
Efficient Displacement: "Wade, You're Afraid" and others.
Ensemble Darkhorse: Odie and Nermal, Wade the Duck.
Exploding Calendar (multiple episodes)
Exploding Closet: In the theme song sequence.
Fable Remake ("Hansel and Garfield", "Odielocks and the Three Cats", "Bedtime Story Blues", "The Name Game", "Badtime Story", and "Snow Wade and the 77 Dwarfs")
Hey Its That Voice: In "Supermarket Mania", Paul Winchell voices the kind-hearted Gramps and the greedy Mr. Baggit; as a result, the former sounds like Tigger, and the latter sounds like Gargamel.
- Recurring character Cactus Jack was voice by Mr. Haney himself, Pat Buttram.
It Came From The Fridge: The Creature Lived in the Refrigerator Behind the Mayonnaise Next to the Ketchup to the Left of the Cole Slaw.
Monster Clown: Binky - not evil, but very, very annoying: "Heeeeeeeyyyyyyyyyy, CAT!!!"
- Happy birthday, happy birthday, whoop-dee-doo, whoop-dee-doo...
No Fourth Wall: Garfield knows he's in a TV show, and frequently speaks directly to the audience; the U.S. Acres characters also address the audience directly at times.
Overly Long Gag
Pie In The Face: Numerous cream pies - splut!
The Rashomon
Running Gag (splut!; the Klopman Diamond)
Something Completely Different: "Ode To Odie" has no dialogue, only narration in the form of a rap song; "All About Odie" is an academic lecture.
Sleep Learning
Standard Snippet: Orson's Brothers onscreen would always mean In The Hall of the Mountain King usually performed by a lazy-sounding tuba. Likewise, Odie's presence was often accompanied with the fox hunt call.
Talking Animal: Although like in the comics, all Garfield characters are actually thinking rather than talking.
Thematic Theme Tune: Subverted: Garfield and the cast of U.S. Acres sing about friendship while fighting each other for screen time.
Viewer Gender Confusion: Most fans thought Nermal was a girl because of his feminine voice and there is absolutely nothing boyish about him.
Where Where
You Blockhead: The "Screaming with Binky" quickies.

The Garfield segments contain examples of:

Acme Products ("Good Mousekeeping")
All Just A Dream ("The Binky Show", "Rip Van Kitty")
And The Winner Is ("Caped Avenger")
Anvil On Head ("Monday Misery")
Banana Peel ("Fraidy Cat")
Big Ball Of Violence ("Good Cat, Bad Cat")
The Cat Came Back (Garfield's attempts to get rid of Nermal always end in failure)
Cat Concerto
Compressed Vice ("Sales Resistance" revolves around Garfield's obsession with buying useless stuff off the Shopping Channel - an obsession which he has only in this episode)
Devil In Plain Sight ("Pest of a Guest")
Does Not Like Spam (Garfield hates raisins)
Dream Sequence ("Nighty Nightmare", "Fair Trade", and others)
Drill Sergeant Nasty (the obedience school trainer in "School Daze")
Ear Worm (OH WE ARE THE BUDDY BEARS WE ALWAYS GET ALONG. WE STAY, WE DO A LITTLE DANCE AND SING A LITTLE SONG, IF YOU EVER DISAGREE, IT MEANS THAT YOU ARE WRONG. OH WE ARE THE BUDDY BEARS WE ALWAYS GET ALONG!)
- Get ready to party, we're ready *boom boom*/I hope you bring lots of spaghetti (~~"Oh shit!""I'm scared!"~~ "Lots of spaghetti!")
- "Happy birthday, happy birthday,
  Whoop de doo, whoop de do,,
  Hope it's really pleasant
  Open up your present,
  Just for you, just for you."
  (repeat until insane)
Good Angel Bad Angel ("Good Cat, Bad Cat")
Gravity Is A Harsh Mistress ("Magic Mutt")
Identity Amnesia (Garfield in "Forget Me Not")
Illogical Safe ("Monday Misery", in a Dream Sequence)
Kawaiiko (Nermal has an obsessive love for cute things and speaks with a really high-pitched squeaky voice. The rub? Nermal is a male cat.)
Lazy Bum (Take a guess)
The Leisure Suit Larry (Jon)
Lethal Chef (minor example: Jon is fine on everyday meals, but his attempts to produce something special invariably have results that even Garfield would rather starve than eat)
Lottery Ticket ("Fat & Furry": Garfield and Jon win millions in the lottery, but the win is disqualified when the authorities discover that it was Garfield who bought the ticket — not because he's a cat, but because he's under eighteen)
Meat-O-Vision (the life-boat sequence in "Box o' Fun")
News Monopoly ("Hansel and Garfield": not news, but daytime TV - there's a Soap Opera on every channel, all playing essentially the same scene)
- Also, from the Video Rental short: "You! You're not Sylvia! You're one of the Kung-Fu Creatures on the Rampage! II!"
No Indoor Voice (Binky the Clown "Heeeeeeeeeey Kids!")
Off Model (Parodied in "Mistakes Will Happen")
Or Was It A Dream ("Rip Van Kitty": it was, but for a moment it seemed otherwise)
Planet Looters ("Rip Van Kitty" includes an alien race that descend on defenseless planets and eat all their food; in a development that even the characters remark on as obvious, they turn out to look an awful lot like Garfield)
Recycled Script (Season 7's "Clash of the Titans" repeated the plot from Season 2's "Attack of the Big Robots")
Rip Van Winkle ("Rip Van Kitty")
Roadrunner Vs Coyote: One segment involved Garfield desconstructing Tom And Jerry style cartoons from a cat's POV, wondering why dirty, disease-ridden vermin would be presented as heroes and questioning why the resident Angry Guard Dog would be so immediatly and violently hostile towards the cat. At the cartoon's end, Garfield himself is forced into a Tom And Jerry-esque segment due to Executive Meddling.
Running Gag (Semi-deconstructed; in one episode, while attempting to explain humor, Garfield explains that mundane jokes can be made funny through repetition. As an example, throughout the entire episode, he calls for "Lights!" and is offered lightbulbs.)
- Of course, the show itself does have running gags, such as Nermal getting sent to Abu Dhabi.
Scooby Dooby Doors ("Magic Mutt", with a three-compartment magician's cabinet)
The Speechless (Odie)
- He does speak coherently once, as a "mistake" in "Mistakes Will Happen".
Spinning Paper ("Fat & Furry")
Swapped Roles ("Fair Trade")
Take That (One episode in the last season has a Tyrannosaurus Rex enslave mankind by painting himself pink and singing sappy songs on television. You can probably guess what they're making fun of here.)
Theme Tune Cameo: Several episodes begin with a character humming along from where the title music left off; in "Short Story", Bo Sheep remarks that he's had the tune in his head all day, and wonders where he heard it.
Trademark Favorite Food (Garfield loves lasagna.)
Trapped In TV Land ("The Lasagna Zone")
You Cant Win ("The Binky Show": Garfield tries to win something nice for Jon on Name That Fish!, but the prizes are terrible, the games are rigged to humiliate the contestant, and in the end it's All Just A Dream)

The U.S. Acres segments contain examples of:

Accidental Hero
Adaptation Displacement: Not many people know that U.S. Acres was a comic strip too. As a result, they also don't know of the Adaptation Decay - the comic strip version of Bo was very unintelligent, the comic's Sheldon had a philosophical side, and two characters, Cody the Dog and Blue the Cat, were left out of the cartoon altogether (possibly to avoid the Talking Animal confusion that would have arisen regarding them and the non-speaking Garfield and Odie).
Ascended Extra (Orson's brothers)
Brother Chuck: Early on in season 6, we met Roy's previously unmentioned niece Chloe. She prominently appears in two episodes (well, three, because the second was a two-parter; both these episodes are on the last disc of the Volume 4 DVD set) and is then completely forgotten afterwards. (This troper, having not been exposed to season 6 since it originally aired, assumed that we'd see a lot more of her on the first disc of Volume 5 before eventually leaving, and was shocked when she didn't show up once on that disc.) When asked what happened to her, Mark Evanier stated he'd planned to have her make several more appearances, but it slipped his mind.
Clown Car Base (Sheldon's shell purportedly contains all mod cons, including a microwave, barbecue, pinball machine, and table tennis table, and enough space to hang pictures on the walls)
Ensemble Darkhorse: Wade the Duck, arguably the most popular of the U.S. Acres characters.
He Who Must Not Be Seen (the farmer)
Hypno Fool ("Wade, You're Afraid", which itself is loosely based on a storyline from the strip)
Identical Stranger ("Scrambled Eggs": Sheldon crosses paths with another ambulatory egg, and confusion results until one of them hatches)
Imagine Spotting: One of the most extreme examples, Orson's fantasies are a mix of this and And You Were There. The other characters are very well aware of their having been somehow transported into his mind. It's claimed that he just has that vivid of an imagination.
This Is Something Hes Got To Do Himself ("Shy Fly Guy")
Wild Take (Wade, at least Once An Episode)
Wonderful Life ("It's a Wonderful Wade")
Status Quo Is God: One episode revolved around Sheldon hatching. What was inside the shell he shed? Another shell.