Take That / Square Root of Minus Garfield

With so many Shout Outs in Square Root of Minus Garfield, quite a few were bound to be negative:

• In No Time for the Dog! (a strip originally created for the now defunct webcomic Social Networking), Jon says that they will need to go somewhere where they will appreciate their particular brand of repeated identical gags and two-dimensional characters. Garfield's response? "Of course! To Friends!".
• The aptly named Oh Snap!, which invokes Nerds Are Virgins:
  Jon: I'm a computer programmer.
  Woman: How about a date?
  Garfield: Such unrealistic writing.
• Jon and Lyman #5: Scary TV Show shows Lyman screaming so loud at his TV that Jon is ejected through the ceiling. The description states "Maybe Lyman caught a glimpse of Garfield: The Movie...".
• The description to Garfield Goes Green states "I'd make a joke about how this is as eco-friendly as NBC's "Green Week", but nobody watches NBC even here in America so it wouldn't make much sense".
• "She Makes Me Wanna Garfield", on the Boy Band JLS, gives a Take That! to them and another group: "Owners of Now That's What I Call Music! 80 will be aware that [JLS's] output pales in comparison to that of One Direction, whose début single 'What Makes You Beautiful' would be perfect if not for the presence of One Direction on it."
• Two different contributors submitted two different takes on the "I liked that ringtone!" Running Gag showing the ringtone as being a particularly bad ringtone/song. Manyhills' take had it being the Crazy Frog making motorcycle noises ringtone, and Colin Foster's take had it be "I Kissed a Girl". As a bonus, David's notice pointing out the coincidence ends with "If only Justin Bieber would write a song about pudding pops...".
• In Jon's Twilight Saga, when Jon hears over the phone Bella dumped him for Jacob, Garfield snarks "Still better than the movies.". Further hammered in by the description, which calls the whole franchise a "lingering nightmare".
• Barneyfield, in which Garfield accidentally turns himself into Barney the Dinosaur. It appears to be a mere Shout-Out until the annotation makes it quite clear: "I actually hate Barney like everyone else does in the world. Wanted to make that clear because this could be construed as a pro-Barney strip.".
• Bryan Adams-field, which is an installment of the Broken Record gag with Bryan Adams' "Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?". Similar to the above example, it doesn't appear to be a negative reference until the annotation states "Oh, how I despise that song".
• The description to Awful Show jokes that the titular show Jon and Garfield are watching is My Little Pony 'n Friends (the author is a brony).
• Also playing on the ringtone gag with Crazy Frog, Scat Talkin', where Garfield smashes Jon's phone playing the Crazy Frog version of Axel F before the scatting, because the author personally hates the scatting but loves the music in the song. He flat out states this, mentioning the author.
• The aptly named Take That, where Garfield watches a Nickelback concert consisting of nothing but fart noises.
• Garfield Minus Humour. Nothing is changed from the original strip.
• Nick-ah-lo-dee-yun! contains a potshot to CatDog. (Although it's then subverted in the description, which claims the show wasn't that bad and the theme tune rocked.)
• The author's note for Skeleton in the Closet says this:
  Andrew Kepple: It bears repeating that when asked about the disappearance of Lyman as a character, Jim Davis has joked "Don't look in Jon's basement".
  
  I apologise in advance for any SRoMG readers confused by the phrase "Jim Davis has joked".
• There's a "The world is constantly changing" edit that involves Jon talking about how the world is constantly crashing, following by an error message box. The title of the strip? "Super Meat Field".
• Fan FictionField is a Take That towards Cupcakes (Sergeant Sprinkles) It shows Pinkie Pie standing next to a cupcake while saying "cupcakes" in a freaky sort of way. Garfield then says "Sorry you had to see that."
• The 2013-12-22 comic, in which Garfield gets upset at hearing the same Christmas song over and over on the radio and smashes it to bits, much to Jon's annoyance, inevitably became another stock source for these. The first one, Insert Your Own Take That Here, made it [Trope Name] by inviting the viewer to put in the name of their least favorite pop artist, complete with a Call-Back to the earlier Nickelback example. The second, Do Wah Diddy Diddy, put in Manfred Mann's "There She Goes (Do Wah Diddy Diddy)" as the song.
• Down, Down is one to the official banning of strips generated by the Garkov website.
• Reedfield, in which Jon listens to Lou Reed's infamous Metal Machine Music album. The author's description of the strip ends with "(fill in your own Justin Bieber joke here)" after mentioning that the album inspired other artists to make their own music in the same vein.
• Garfield in LA, in which Garfield violently coughs at air polluted by smog. Although the author states "The air's not that bad in LA...usually" and explains the events of the strip as "probably a large wildfire".
• Vegan Garfield shows Jon converting Garfield to veganism and bragging about it on Tumblr. The author states he does not support "the (eventually) lethal practice of enforcing a vegan diet on obligate carnivores".
  • Then followed with a sequel wherein Jon has a literal Sock Puppet account on Tumblr. The annotation goes even further: "Keep your sock puppet accounts off Tumblr and check your thin privilege, Jon! Don't bring the Social Justice League into this!"
• Ready Set Roll does it to Country Music singer Chase Rice (specifically his song "Ready Set Roll") and "bro-country" in general.
• Garfield Plus Fan Rage references the notorious Joe Quesada quote "It's magic, we don't have to explain it" in regards to why a cupcake appeared out of thin air. (The title is what gives it away as a Take That!, rather than a Shout-Out, although whether it was aimed at Quesada or his detractors is unclear.)
• Zappin' T-Shirt has Garfield spit taking at a shirt of Sonichu.
• A title-only Take That!: Garfield: Greg Land Edition consists of a traced strip, tracing being a frequent accusation hurled at Greg Land.
• Disaster Days is a collection of panels from strips that ran on the dates of certain disasters. The first and third of them are the Challenger explosion, and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill; the second is the premiere of Alvin and the Chipmunks 2: The Squeakquel.
  • Disaster Days 2: Electric Boogaloo uses a similar setup involving industrial disasters, but with Smokey and the Bandit Part 3 as the punchline.
• Without Me has an In-Universe example pointed out by the transcript:
  {apparently, Garfield hates Eminem}
• Garfield Plus an Absolutely Horrible Movie is one to Foodfight!
• The description for "Another Reason to Have Adblock", when asking why Jon! was wearing a bowtie in "Fair Exchange", ends on this note:
  ***Okay, whoever just said "Because bowties are cool!", go stand in the corner.
• Day Tripper's description contains two potshots at Project Almanac: referencing the possibility of Garfield erasing himself from the timeline by seeing his past self as "some Project Almanac nonsense", and even outright saying:
  Trust me, we don't want another Project Almanac on our hands. One is enough, and that is already bad.
• The description of Joe Root Of Minus Garfield contains a minor one:
  This was originally longer, but really the entirety of the joke is in the title so I didn't see any point in just repeating it over and over. This isn't The Onion.
• #2412 has a kid say Garfield made a Stupid-Looking Snowman. Once it changes into Olaf, Garfield agrees.
• The title of strip #2488 is kind of self explanatory...
  • However, #2489's was more tongue-in-cheek given how both strips had the same general idea, were made independently, and yet were released back to back.
• "Darn!" hypothesises that Garfield chose "Darn!" as his last words because he realized he was in a Michael Bay film.
  Quite frankly, I don't blame him for his reaction.
• What can you really say about this one that the Author's note didn't already say?
  I could've made this about Five Nights at Freddy's, Undertale, or the Pope. I instead decided to make it terrible. That, really, is a more straightforward Game Theory reference.
• Lampshaded in "Take That Bait".
  • And then deliberately subverted in a strip based on it, Garfield Minus Snark.
• Uninspired Comedy Sequel has this to say in the author's note:
  A common complaint about comedy sequels is that they tread tiredly over the same ground the original covered (frequently even reusing the same jokes), which is made worse when the original wasn't all that great in the first place. So, consider this my Porky's 4, or my Weekend at Bernie's 3.
• Mail Time has Steve receiving a letter containing a Garfield comic. The author's note has this to say:
  Originally, Steve was going to get the pudding pop strip. But then I realized that by doing that, I would be torturing him.
  • The strip also doubles as a stab at the original strip◊, as Steve closes the letter in disgust right in the middle of the punchline.
• "Catch-22 (Is Not The Film Being Referenced)" is a subtle stab at "Garfield Minus Garfield Plus John Garfield", which used a super compressed image of John Garfield as part of the joke.
  John Garfield was a movie actor famous for films such as The Postman Always Rings Twice, Humoresque, and Gentleman's Agreement.
  He also wasn't squished.
• "You Ever Sat Down and Read This Thing?" was made in response to "1 Corinthians 13:11"'s "slight against Sesame Street".
  Don't diss Sesame Street. That's the moral for today.
• "No. 3643: Dispatch war rocket Ajax to bring back his Odie" shows Odie watching the HD remaster of one of the first thirty episodes of Garfield and Friends, only to be horrified that the Title Sequence has been reanimated in Adobe Flash (which the author's note describes as being "Johnny Test-level").
• "Garfield Plus Another One of Disney's Live-Action Remakes" takes a jab at the 2019 live action remake of Aladdin and how creepy the live action Genie looks. Specifically, it takes this strip◊ and has the live action Genie pop out of the cookie jar, resulting in a terrified Garfield running away screaming.
• "Liz, the Filthy Interlinguist" takes a crack at the conlang Interlingua, with Liz's claim of "Interlingua es superior" being met with hostility and Garfield remarking in Esperanto, "Mi alportos la flamĵetilon."^Translation"I'll fetch the flamethrower."
• As pointed out in an added note, the image used for "GAME"^note Garfield keeping a tally of the games he has was sent in with the filename "why would you willingly buy crash bash.png".
• "I Said" is this to the COVID-19 Pandemic and its overexposure in news and social media.
• "Ease on Down the Road" is pretty obviously a stab against The Hitchhiker, with both Garfield rebuking it for attempting to be associated with "Garfield's Horror Theater"^note causing the titular Hitchhiker to cry, and the Author's Note directly calling the show bad.
  I didn't think it was possible to make a bad anthology series... but, hey, shows what I know...
• Two similar strips have Garfield facepalm after a show he's watching announces its sponsor—Raid: Shadow Legends (an otherwise undistinguished Mobile Phone Game that gained a brief but intense period of notoriety as an extremely aggressive YouTube sponsor that enforced laughably formulaic plugs). As if that weren't enough, the former strip is titled "Scamfield", in reference to Raid's allegedly free nature.
• "What About You?" uses Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat (specifically, its "What About You?" segments) for a similar joke at the expense of the 06-19-2014 strip◊ as "Mail Time" above.
• "I Hate NFTs" is this to, well, NFTs, as when Jon suggests selling Garfield's artwork as an NFT, Garfield immediately shreds the art and states his dislike for damaging the environment; the author also makes their dislike for NFTs very clear in the Author's Note.
  I hope to god this strip doesn't become an NFT itself...
• "Not Cool, Jon" and "Not Cool This Time Either, Jon" deconstruct the "Jon and Liz getting together" arc, which, as the author points out, uses "a lot of outdated and problematic tropes". The latter has the author chew out Jim Davis in the Author's Notes.
  Not cool, man. Not cool.
• Right out of the gate, the title of "From the Network That Couldn't Be Bothered to Spell 'Beckett' Correctly In The Closing Minutes"^note a strip based on Quantum Leap's series finale is a direct stab towards the fact that the inserted-at-the-last-minute info card that closed out the show^note "Dr. Sam Becket never returned home." misspelled Sam Beckett's name with one T, not two.
  • Later on, in the Author's Note, after openly admitting the strip was only created because of them having a potentially-false memory of a Quantum Leap strip already being made for the site:
    But hey, at the very least, I still put more effort into this Quantum Leap comic than Innovation did for its Quantum Leap line.
• Garfield's Punishment is an unsubtle Take That! against the Sequel Trilogy of Star Wars. The Author's Notes go further with a jab at Space Jam 2.
  Garfield: I still think Jon's being a bit excessive. I mean, I did shred his curtains and all...
  Garfield: ...but forcing me to watch Disney's Star Wars trilogy? Too far, man.
• Invoked in Heavy Meta, Or Choose Your Own Punchline, which invites the reader to insert their own Take That. Mentioned possibilities include The Twilight Saga and Fifty Shades of Grey, along with the Haskell programming language. It also mentions Rudy Giuliani's book Leadership, stating that he earned his Take That in the years since his book was written.
• After then-Disney CEO Bob Chapek made comments implying that only children care about animation, a contributor responded with this comic, showing Chapek (as played by Jon) using quotes from his controversial interview in question in a phone conversation and then expressing disbelief that the woman on the other end loves animation despite being an adult. Incidentally, the comic would be published on the site very shortly after it was announced that Chapek would be ousted as CEO and that previous CEO Bob Iger would return to his position.
  Yup, imagine being so inept at your job they have to lure the guy you replaced out of retirement. That's what I call the CEO equivalent to New Coke.
• As its author notes, Fat Cat Pride was made to vent their frustration over the United States government's treatment of "certain groups", comparing it to when Garfield was created during the fitness craze of the late 1970s.
• I'm Gonna Miss Her delivers a barb at Brad Paisley and his song of the same name, and compares the original strip◊ to the line "My wife told me to choose between her and fishing . . . I'm gonna miss her" from said song.
• Set It To Reverse, Jon was made as a response to the November 22, 2022 strip◊ (which was made to commemorate Charles Schulz' 100th birthday); its author explains that they detest sentimentality and how said strip was too sentimental, and therefore decided to go the complete opposite route. It jabs at Peanuts by calling it unfunny and bland, and accuses Schulz of "selling out".
  • You Redeemed Yourself, Jon was made as a direct response to this strip, this time roasting Brooke McEldowney and his strip, 9 Chickweed Lane (which was dropped by the Los Angeles Times at the end of 2021), with Jon gleefully saying "And nothing of value was lost!" and Garfield telling Snoopy, "Thank goodness we have decorum" as they and Odie celebrate the strip's cancellation. The author (being a fan of Peanuts) argues that there are worse strips to mock; it also doubles as a jab at the original strip's author, who is described as "the sort of person that blatantly desecrates Charles M. Schulz and tries to get away with it", and is alleged to be a fan of either the aforementioned strip, Dilbert, Mallard Fillmore, or Crankshaft (all of which have attracted controversy as well).
  • Meanwhile, "The Fallacy of Glass Houses", also made in response to "Set It To Reverse, Jon", points out the hypocrisy of using Garfield to accuse Peanuts of selling out:
    {He then becomes a phone, because Garfield doesn't get to disrespect Peanuts in such a manner}
    {And, you know, Garfield has sold out worse}
    {Cough.}
• In Which Pooky Gets Banned From The Oscars satirizes the controversial incident during the 94th Academy Awards ceremony in which Will Smith (represented by Pooky) smacked Chris Rock (represented by Jon) on stage for cracking a joke about the former's wife, resulting in Smith getting banned from the Oscars for ten years.
• Invoked in Garfield's Hot Take, Pt. 1, in which Garfield considers The Empire Strikes Back a terrible movie due to Darth Vader inviting the heroes for lunch but not feeding them, and what Luke has to eat on Dagobah. The author explains that Garfield's lines are taken word-for-word from a post in a thread prompted by the aforementioned "Garfield's Punishment", and expresses their belief that Take Thats are funnier when they're against well-received works, proving their point with this jab in the Author's Note:
  Could be worse, though. He could have watched Spaceballs instead.
• Invoked again in Garfield's Hot Take, Pt. 2. There, Lyman expresses to Jon that he dislikes how Monty Python and the Holy Grail had No Ending, not even credits. The author points out that contemporary moviegoers were confused, expecting a historical drama rather than a slapstick comedy.
• In the author note for Fat Cat, the author compares the repetitiveness of Garfield to the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series since 2013.
• When it's time to party we will always party hard sees Garfield cover his eyes in horror when "We're Ready to Party" (the second theme song to Garfield and Friends) starts playing.
• A Pebble's Worth of Free Advice is essentially "A Nickel's Worth of Free Advice" under the filter of Club Penguin, where an unnamed player tries to tell Not Cowbelly to abandon the game while he can, before it is replaced with Club Penguin Island.
  Orange Penguin: (to Not Cowbelly) Quit while you still can. This game is only going to get worse from here. You still have a chance.
  Not Cowbelly: (to Orange Penguin) How about no, you {orange} raisin. (gets right in Orange Penguin's face) There is no way that this game will die.
  (Meanwhile in the future...)
  (Orange Penguin is now shilling Club Penguin Island as a pirate, don't ask)
  Orange Penguin: I tried to warn him.
• Garfield Minus Any Kind of Save Functionality has this to say in its author's note:
  This is one demonstration of the game's wacky nature, as no-one would ever willingly warp to 2022 in real life.
• Doubling as Self-Deprecation, Death of the Author is an edit of the creator's earlier submission Meta Commentary in order to restore the original strip as intended.^note Upon creating the strip edit of Garfield sleeping for a day, the author concluded it was bad, and added some Book Ends where Jon was the one making the strip, only to reach the same conclusion.
  Now, keep in mind, I don't think "Death of the Author" applies given how I was the original author, but whatever, enough time has passed. Past me's opinions don't matter anymore.
• Moving on satirizes both the closure of GarfieldEats (a Garfield-themed restaurant founded by Nathen Mazri) and the founding of Scooby-Doo Eats (a Scooby-Doo-themed frozen food line also founded by Mazri). It depicts Mazri as waiting for (nonexistent) outrage, prompting him to create the latter, in a parody of a bonus strip◊ Jim Davis produced about the outrage sparked by the Chicago Sun-Times briefly dropping Garfield from their papers.
• invoked Odie's Least Favorite Dog Story, per the author's admission, was made in response to an old Garfield magazine claiming that Odie's favorite dog story is Greyfriars Bobby... even though the story is about a dog being so attached to his owner, he stands vigil by his grave until he himself dies, and a kindhearted puppy like Odie would not like such a story. As such, in this Original Flavor strip, Garfield makes Odie get him a sandwich by threatening to recite the story.
  Garfield: I hate having to do that to him, but it works.
• The Last Action Hero rips apart Warner Bros. Discovery (referred to as WarnerMedia, one of its corporate predecessors) and Netflix for canceling various completed projects. The strip has Jon telling Garfield he could be an action hero, then several months later, reading a newspaper article stating that Loserman, a project he starred in, has been shelved as a tax write-off despite being 98% finished, never to be shown. Garfield chews out a crestfallen Jon for trusting Warner to release it.
• Garfield Goes to Willy's Chocolate Experience mocks the infamous Willy's Chocolate Experience and what a disaster it was; it's more obvious in the author's note.
  PROTIP: When you want to capitalize on a hit movie (i.e. the recent Wonka movie starring Timothée Chalamet), it's best you do so with love and care, and not try and bait people with AI-generated images and then whip out a fraudulent "event" that will go down in history right alongside the Fyre Festival. Otherwise, it won't go unnoticed.
• In Mighty Kongfield, Garfield watches the 1998 animated Direct to Video film The Mighty Kong, bemoaning when King Kong doesn't actually die, but performs a musical number instead.
• An Even Uglier Fish: The "uglier fish" in question is Oscar.
• Garfield Suffers From Success is a satire on how heavily Garfield has been licensed over the years. Specifically, Garfield walks to a mirror, but instead of a reflection it displays the text "Sorry! Product temporarily unavailable; check back later!", implying that his own reflection has become a product due to the extensive licensing, and that his image has become so popular he couldn't get a copy for himself for the strip.

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