Culture Shock: Everything You Need To Know About “A Garfield Christmas”

“A Garfield Christmas” follows everyone’s favorite Monday-hating, lasagna-loving feline through a Christmas with his family. If you’ve never seen Garfield, Jon, and Odie celebrate Yuletide, use this primer to catch yourself up!

Garfield is voiced by Bill Clinton when he’s happy but by Diana Ross when he’s mad: When “A Garfield Christmas” was made in 1987, Garfield’s voice was supposed to be performed by then-Arkansas governor Bill Clinton. However, Clinton couldn’t capture the raw power of Garfield’s anger, so scenes in which Garfield is furious were re-dubbed by Supremes singer Diana Ross.

“A Garfield Christmas” reveals that Odie has an IQ of 164: An eight-minute-long subplot in the middle of the special revolves around Odie discovering an unsolved equation on a blackboard at MIT, solving it, and eventually being tested for mathematical genius. Jim Davis later sued Ben Affleck and Matt Damon when they ripped off the idea ten years later in Good Will Hunting.

Binky’s original catchphrase was “I’m Gay!” before Jim Davis’s brother came out: Binky, the titular character of the in-universe book Binky: The Clown Who Saved Christmas, was originally supposed to be a flamboyant homosexual stereotype. However, after Jim Davis’s brother came out as gay in 1986, Binky’s sexuality was integrated into the storyline in a more respectful manner.

The letters to Grandma that Garfield finds in the attic are written in the same Enigma code solved by the cryptanalysts at Bletchley Park: While the Arbuckles do a good job of hiding the truth from Garfield and Odie, keen-eyed viewers can spot the clues that suggest that Grandma was secretly communicating with the Nazis until at least 1942.

Jon Arbuckle is a deeply depressed man who ingests large quantities of hallucinogens to give himself the illusion that his pets are talking to him: You really think a fucking cat knows what day of the week it is?