Watch a nightmare fuel version of Garfield hunt for Lasagne in this Game Boy horror game spoof

Garfield was never funny. Don’t listen to the part of your brain that focuses on nostalgia, because it’s lying to you. I mean, have you actually read a Garfield comic strip in the last two decades? The only way I’d laugh were if I had a gun pointed at my head and a madman demanding a chortle or he’d pull the trigger. Fact is, is that Garfield creator Jim Davis drummed up the character as a way to sell merchandise.

A business plan that worked marvellously for him, as Garfield became not only a newspaper strip icon, but a global brand that gave birth to rancid spin-offs and so so many bad CGI cartoons. What’s great about all this, is that the Jim Davis empire also managed to inspire some amazing tributes to Garfield that made far better use of the character, reworking him into an existential nightmare. Just take a look at Garfield Minus Garfield, which turns the Lasagne-loving cat’s owner into a manic depressive everyman when the star character of the strip is removed entirely:

For added madness, check out the Lasagne Cat videos, which are…special, to say the least.

Not to be outdone, artist Will Burke decided to reimagine Garfield as one of the greatest horrors to ever infest the meme psyche, drawing the hater of Mondays as an otherworldly nightmare that torments his “owner” Jon Arbuckle. That gave rise to a whole wave of nightmare fuel art on reddit, eventually reaching a new zenith: Garfield Gameboy’d Complete.

If the thumbnail alone has put you off, what follows when you click through that video is a terror that cannot be matched. Jon Arbuckle, desperately trying to cling to his sanity while a misshapen abomination that is beyond mortal ken hunts him through his home, demanding lasagne. Where’s my lasagne Jon? Where is it? Do I have to remove Odie’s bones again to remind you how important my lasagna is?

It’s 13 minutes of this, lovingly rendered in a style that makes this Garfield game look like it came straight out of the Nintendo GameBoy library of horror. If you watch it you’ll probably never sleep again. Thanks LumpyTouch, we’re all cursed now.

Last Updated: May 15, 2019