Garfield (Comic Strip)/Trivia

The comic strip

 * Missing Episode: For some reason, May 2, May 3, May 4 and May 5, 1990 never made it into Garfield Takes Up Space, and the next book (Garfield Says a Mouthful) starts with the May 6. This is true of the "Fat Cat 3-Pack" reprints of those books, but they finally return in the colorized "square" reprint of Takes Up Space (they're also available on garfield.com).
 * Recycled Script: Some gags have been repeated in the strip's 30+ year history.
 * The December 5, 2009 strip had a similar punchline to December 10, 2003.
 * For a less recent, but more exact example, December 3, 2001 was recycled into December 7, 2002. That's right, only a full year later.
 * August 16, 1985 (a daily strip) was recycled into July 19, 1998 (a Sunday strip), with a secondary punchline added. It was also used as a US Acres strip here.
 * The November 30, 1983 strip had a similar punchline to December 15, 1981.
 * Take June 23, 1993, subtract the neighbor's mail, add Garfield looking into the wallet, and you'll get January 1, 2001. Happy New Year.
 * Not as big as the above examples, but it seems rather odd that the strips published on June 7 and June 29 of 1991 (barely three weeks apart) would both have the same basic gag.
 * The Remix Comic makers of Square Root of Minus Garfield didn't let that one go unnoticed.
 * A cross-media example: The Garfield Show episode "Fame Fatale" and Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties have the same basic plot of Garfield switching lives with a British doppelganger.
 * The May 19, 1981 and June 3, 1996 strips have got pretty much the same punchline.
 * July 21, 1987 and March 11, 1995 are almost exactly the same.
 * "I couldn't stop screaming." Even nearly eight years later.
 * What Garfield does to Odie's nose.
 * The October 2008 was similar to the Garfield and Friends episode Fair Exchange.
 * March 31st, 2005 has pretty much the same idea as October 10th, 1997.
 * July 25, 2011 has the same gag as November 9, 2009, right down to the dialogue.
 * June 27, 1983, July 7, 1983, July 16, 1983, July 18, 1983, July 25, 1983 and August 1, 1983 all contain the exact same premise and first two panels.
 * May 7, 1993 and May 11, 2010 have the same gag.
 * May 6, 1988, November 26, 1995 and March 10, 1996 all end with the same joke.
 * The December 1984 arc of Garfield re-meeting his family was recycled from the 1983 special Garfield on the Town.
 * July 20, 1978 and April 28, 1983 are exactly the same.
 * August 14, 1978 was recycled into January 23, 1980.
 * The Christmas special took a punch line from a 1980 strip ("Why, just look at me. I talk to cats!").
 * December 7, 2001 was recycled into December 21, 2003.
 * An Animated Adaptation example: The Garfield and Friends episode The Legend Of The Lake has a throwaway gag where Garfield says "This is a statue honoring Buttons, who set the world record for horse swallowing when he swallowed one horse. Tied for second place is everybody else in the entire world." Decades later, in the The Garfield Show episode Up A Tree, a Kent Brockman News reporter makes the exact same joke, but with "hippopotamus biting" instead of "horse swallowing".
 * June 18, 2002 was recycled into June 11, 2003.
 * Screwed by the Lawyers: There was a short run of Believe it, or don't gags... until PAWS Inc. got a cease-and-desist letter from the Robert Ripley estate

The film version

 * Old Shame: Bill Murray said in Zombieland that he regrets being in the first movie.
 * The Other Darrin:
 * Sandy Kenyon voiced Jon Arbuckle in Here Comes Garfield, but all other traditionally animated Garfield specials, including Garfield and Friends, used Thom Huge as Jon's voice actor. Then Breckin Meyer played him in the live-action movies Garfield and Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties. After that, Garfield Gets Real, Garfield's Fun Fest, Garfield's Pet Force and The Garfield Show utilized Wally Wingert's voice for Jon.
 * Strangely, Huge (rhymes with "loogie") has literally no other credits. According to Mark Evanier, Thom Huge was one of Jim Davis' associates at Paws, Inc.
 * In the very first animation, a nameless short film from 1980 that was just animated versions of thesethree strips, Garfield was voiced by Scott Beach. Starting with Here Comes Garfield, Lorenzo Music was his voice actor for all the animated adaptations. After he died, Garfield has been voiced by several other voice actors, most notably Bill Murray in The Movie (which is either a Casting Gag or a coincidence, considering who played Peter Venkman in both Ghostbusters and its cartoon show). Frank Welker is his most recent replacement..