Garfield Trivia
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8correct to beat the crowd
49 free Garfield trivia questions with answers. Garfield has hated Mondays in print since 19 June 1978, and this quiz covers everything since, and a fair bit before. Fifty questions run from the easy stuff (favourite food, least favourite day, the kitten he keeps trying to post to Abu Dhabi) to the deep cuts: the strip's original name, why Odie was renamed, the coffee commercial behind Arbuckle, the 1989 storyline that was not meant to be funny, the Atari game that never shipped and the Dubai lasagna restaurant. There are questions on the CBS specials and Garfield and Friends, Lorenzo Music and the other voices, the Bill Murray films, the 2024 Chris Pratt movie, Garfield Minus Garfield, Paws Inc. and the Viacom sale, U.S. Acres, Ball State and Muncie. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on the strip, its characters, specials and films, and each question shows its source. Good for a comics quiz round, a family trivia night or a very lazy Sunday.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Jim Davis made his star a cat after noticing the comics pages were crowded with which animals?
Dogs
Dogs: Davis saw Snoopy, Marmaduke and Fred Basset thriving and reasoned that if dog lovers liked dog strips, cat lovers would want a cat of their own.
Q 02What Garfield novelty items kept washing up on beaches in Brittany, France, for more than 30 years?
Telephones
Telephones: the bright orange phones spilled from a shipping container lost in a storm in the early 1980s, which was only found in 2019, wedged in a sea cave.
Q 03Which comic strip about insects did Jim Davis draw before Garfield, without ever finding a syndicate?
Gnorm Gnat
Gnorm Gnat: after years of rejections for his bugs, Davis shelved the strip, took a long hard look at what was selling on the comics page and came back with a cat.
Q 04Rather than a US president, Garfield the cat is named after which relative of creator Jim Davis?
His grandfather
His grandfather: Davis remembered James A. Garfield Davis as 'a large, cantankerous man', and the cat got his temper along with his name.
Q 05Jim Davis took Jon Arbuckle's surname, as an inside joke, from an old commercial for what?
Coffee
Coffee: the ad traded on the name of John Arbuckle, a 19th-century tycoon who got rich by selling roasted beans in sealed packages instead of loose from the barrel.
Q 06Odie first joined the Garfield strip as the pet of which character, a roommate of Jon's who later vanished?
Lyman
Lyman: Jim Davis brought him in so Jon had someone to talk to, then dropped him once the pets could carry the jokes, and the dog simply stayed on.
Q 07Garfield's official birthday is June 19, the anniversary of what?
The strip's national debut
The strip's national debut: by June 19, 1978 the cat had already spent two years in a small Indiana weekly, in a strip named after his owner.
Q 08What happened after the Chicago Sun-Times dropped Garfield three months into its run?
Readers got it reinstated
Readers got it reinstated: the paper relented, and within four years seven Garfield books sat on the New York Times bestseller list at once.
Q 09Which fellow cartoonist, a mentor to Jim Davis, redrew Garfield's feet so the cat could stand on his hind legs?
Charles Schulz
Charles Schulz: he was working next door when Davis couldn't make the cat dance for his first TV special, so he sketched in bigger back feet, the trick that lets Snoopy stand.
Q 10In the late 1980s, millions of plush Garfields with suction-cup paws were stuck where?
On car windows
On car windows: the suction cups were a factory mistake, because Jim Davis had asked for Velcro so the toy could cling to curtains, and he never expected cars.
Q 11What is Garfield's favourite food?
Lasagna
Lasagna: the taste is Jim Davis's own, and he likes to point out that he and his cat both love the dish and both refuse to go jogging.
Q 12Which childhood illness kept farm boy Jim Davis indoors, where he passed the time by drawing?
Asthma
Asthma: bad bouts kept him in bed and away from the farm chores, so he drew to fill the hours, with some 25 barn cats around the place for inspiration.
Q 13Which other orange comic-strip cat, created by George Gately, reached newspapers five years before Garfield?
Heathcliff
Heathcliff: George Gately's troublemaking tomcat first appeared in 1973, yet it was the newcomer Garfield whose fame went on to eclipse his.
Q 21Garfield at Large, which topped the New York Times bestseller list in 1980, was the first what?
Collection of Garfield strips
Collection of Garfield strips: its long run at number one brought the producers of the Peanuts TV specials to Jim Davis's door, and the cat was on CBS two years later.
Q 22Which actor voiced Garfield in every CBS TV special and throughout Garfield and Friends?
Lorenzo Music
Lorenzo Music: after hundreds of auditions Jim Davis heard his sleepy drawl, already known as the unseen doorman Carlton on Rhoda, and said almost at once, 'That's the one.'
Q 23Which soul singer of 'You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine' sang on Garfield's early TV specials?
Lou Rawls
Q 14Which annoyingly cute kitten does Garfield keep trying to mail to Abu Dhabi?
Nermal
Nermal: the self-proclaimed 'world's cutest kitten' delights in needling Garfield about his age and looks, which is why he keeps ending up boxed and addressed overseas.
Q 15In Garfield, what is Pooky?
Garfield's teddy bear
Garfield's teddy bear: he found Pooky stuffed in a drawer a few months into the strip, and the bear has been his closest confidant ever since.
Q 16What is Jon Arbuckle's profession?
Cartoonist
Cartoonist: Jon is Jim Davis's pen-and-ink alter ego, a farm boy turned artist, and he announces the job himself in the very first strip.
Q 17What is the name of the veterinarian Jon spent decades trying to date?
Dr. Liz Wilson
Dr. Liz Wilson: after almost three decades of brush-offs, she finally admitted in a 2006 storyline that she had feelings for Jon, and the two have been a couple ever since.
Q 18What is the nickname of Jon Arbuckle's younger brother, who works on the family farm?
Doc Boy
Doc Boy: Jim Davis took the nickname from his own younger brother Dave, known as Doc, who grew up beside him on the family's Indiana farm.
Q 19What happens to Garfield in a bleak week of strips that ran just before Halloween in 1989?
Wakes in an abandoned house
Wakes in an abandoned house: Jim Davis, bored of ghosts and spiders, went for what he calls the biggest fear of all, being totally alone, and alarmed his own editors.
Q 20Jim Davis says his own grasp of which subject 'isn't strong', one reason Garfield has always steered clear of it?
Politics
Politics: Davis kept topical and country-specific jokes out from the very start, so that a gag about a fat cat and his dinner would work anywhere and never date.
Lou Rawls: the first special opens with Garfield dancing to Rawls's theme song, the very number whose choreography had forced a redesign of the cat's feet.
Q 24Which was the first Garfield TV special, aired on CBS in October 1982?
Here Comes Garfield
Here Comes Garfield: for all its breezy title, the story sends Odie to the pound to be put down at dawn, and Garfield has to break him out.
Q 25Garfield and Friends also adapted which other Jim Davis strip?
U.S. Acres
U.S. Acres: the barnyard strip folded in newspapers in 1989 after only three years, yet its pig, rooster and duck stayed on Saturday-morning TV beside Garfield for years afterwards.
Q 26In the first Garfield strip, Jon tells readers 'Our only thought is to entertain you'; what is Garfield's own thought?
Feed me
Feed me: Jim Davis has twice named that 1978 debut among his favourite strips, and it set the pattern for everything after, with Jon playing host while the cat thinks of his stomach.
Q 27Who voices Garfield in the 2004 and 2006 live-action films?
Bill Murray
Bill Murray: by his own account he took the job after misreading screenwriter Joel Cohen's name as Joel Coen of the Coen brothers, and only caught on at the recording session.
Q 28Who played Jon Arbuckle in Garfield: The Movie?
Breckin Meyer
Breckin Meyer: his co-star was never on set, since the film's Garfield was a computer creation added afterwards, while Odie and the other animals were played by real ones.
Q 29Which actress played the veterinarian Jon falls for in the two live-action Garfield films?
Jennifer Love Hewitt
Jennifer Love Hewitt: her vet is the reason Odie joins the household, since Jon, too smitten to say no, agrees to adopt the pup she is trying to rehome.
Q 30Which villain steals Odie in Garfield: The Movie, the 2004 live-action film?
Happy Chapman
Happy Chapman: the smarmy morning-show host, played by Stephen Tobolowsky, sees Odie dance and snatches him as his ticket to network stardom.