Garfield is evil cosmic entity bent on destroying our world
What you see in the picture above is Garfield. Yes the cat that loves to eat lasagna and hates Mondays. Yeah I know, how did this cartoon become this horrible monstrosity? Don’t people have better things to do with their time? I first became aware of this fandom while watching Rick and Morty. At one point there is a cat from space who talks and the whole bit is the cat keeps asking people to not ask where it is from. Rick in Rick fashion scans the mind of the cat but upon seeing inside pulls out his gun and nearly kills himself. Jerry, upon seeing it, cries and rolls on the ground. Rick erases his memory because Jerry could not live with what he has seen. So the question is what did they see inside the cat? There are a lot of theories and I think the creators eventually said it was a meta-commentary on the fans watching the show over-analyzing everything. However, one theory that caught my eye was the cat was some sort of unspeakable evil like Garfield. Curious I did some research and found out there are some horrible illustrations of Garfield like the one above. The central idea is Garfield is this cosmic evil entity that destroys the world. I figured this was one of those “the internet has already invented anything you can think about” situations and went on my merry way.
Fast forward a couple of years and a best friend of mine shares a video with me from Super Eyepatch Wolf (yeah I know the name sounds like a nerdy super smash bros reference). This video completely changed my perspective on this comic evil Garfield. The video is over an hour long and I recommend anyone interested to watch it, but the crux of it is this. If you look at most Garfield comics, Garfield is tormenting John in some way. This tormenting manifests in ways ranging from giving John a hard time to explicitly disobeying a command from John. This tormenting takes a turn when you take out Garfield in the comics. Suddenly you realize John is a depressed guy fighting his inner demons. In a lot of the strips without Garfield John says something slightly depressing and ends the strip with a more dejected face. Instead of helping, Garfield exacerbates his depression and loneliness. Or…perhaps Garfield is the cause of it. It was from this idea where the idea of Garfield as an evil entity arose. Garfield is a demon that haunts John. But why stop there Garfield not only haunts John but also everyone, taking over the world and converting it to a hellscape of death, depression, and loneliness.
Okay okay this sounds crazy and a bit of a stretch but just think about it. Garfield IS everywhere. There’s yet another Garfield movie coming out where Garfield is voiced by Chris Pratt. There’s so much Garfield memorabilia ranging from couches to plush toys to even underwear. In fact Garfield phones once washed up on some beach in France! Garfield has silently taken over the world. It’s all one big conspiracy. So the next time you see some Garfield merch somewhere hiding as a cute sticker on a refrigerator or a doormat to an apartment, know that this is Garfield taking over and slowly surrounding us.
If you know me I love the idea of a big conspiracy, especially when I am in on it. But all joking aside, this Garfield saga has really stuck in my mind the last couple of days. Horror is often a reflection of some internalized fear in society. We project this fear onto the horror we create. So what are we projecting onto Garfield? Perhaps this is a reflection of the perception that we live in an increasingly tense time. As climate change, disease, and other factors threaten our existence, we project onto Garfield, a creatively malleable cartoon character. But maybe, as the writers of Rick and Morty tried to tell us, we are reading waaaaaaaay too much into it.
