Garfield and U.S. Acres are both comic strips by Jim Davis. Animated versions of both strips appear in the TV show Garfield and Friends, albeit in separate segments. With one minor exception mentioned below, I don’t recall any crossover between the two strips/shows. Do they take place in the same universe? That is, in Garfield’s world, is U.S. Acres a real farm that Garfield might conceivably visit?
From my limited knowledge, a couple facts would seem to discount the possibility of a shared universe:
In U.S. Acres, the animal characters all talk with their mouths, and humans seem to be absent. By contrast, in Garfield, the animal characters don’t talk, but rather only “think” in thought bubbles (or voice-overs without lip movement, in the TV show). There are humans, such as Jon Arbuckle, but they can’t actually hear what Garfield is thinking.
The only time I’ve ever seen Garfield in U.S. Acres was in one episode of the TV series, where he was featured on a calendar hanging on a wall. This suggests that in the U.S. Acres universe, just as in our universe, Garfield isn’t a real sentient animal but rather just a fictional character that appears in comics and on merchandise.
Does anyone know if a sentient Garfield (or Jon, Odie, etc.) ever appeared in U.S. Acres, or if any of the sentient U.S. Acres characters ever showed up at Garfield’s house or anywhere else in the Garfield universe?
I thought that there was a crossover in the comics at some point but I can’t remember details. It may have been a very small connection like Jon’s brother visiting the farm or something like that. I may not be remembering correctly.
Has Jon ever acted in a way that indicates he does understand Garfield? I swear when I was in 4th grade or so(about the audience for Garfield), I thought Jon understood him sometimes.
He understands Garfield’s body language, which may roughly or exactly correspond to what he’s thinking. I don’t recall any cases where Jon responds to Garfield in a way which could be explained only by telepathy and not by making assumptions about Garfield’s internal state on the basis of external behaviour.
In this 4 July 2010 Garfield strip, Jon draws a cartoon of what looks like Orson from U.S. Acres. Could this mean that in the U.S. Acres universe, Garfield is just a comic strip, and vice versa?
I do remember a human character who briefly appeared early on, a child who convinced her? father to adopt Orson when he was found alone after falling out of a truck.
OK, that’s pretty weird. Canonically, Jon is by profession a cartoonist. Doesn’t it seem rather odd for a cartoonist to show off “Hey, look at this cartoon character I drew!”? That should be a perfectly ordinary daily occurrence, not something in the least remarkable.
Jon’s family are all farmers, right? I had always assumed that US Acres was their farm.
I dunno; don’t most creative types bounce ideas off their friends and colleagues to get feedback? Jon’s kind of a socially inept loser and so it’s not outside the realm of possibility that he’d be soliciting an informal review from his cat.
In both the Garfield comic strip and TV show, Garfield and Jon visit the farm. There are plenty of animals, but to my recollection the U.S. Acres cast are not among them. And I don’t recall the Arbuckle farm ever being referred to as “U.S. Acres”.
Of course, both of Garfield’s drawings, as well as Jon’s, were actually done by Jim Davis, for whom Jon Arbuckle is a fictional stand-in.
Except, of course, that “done by Jim Davis” should really be “attributed to Jim Davis”, because the Garfield comic strip has long been a collaborative effort, with much or all of the actual art done by uncredited others.
Another intriguing discovery today: In the eighth episode of the second season of Garfield and Friends there’s a Garfield segment called “The Lasagna Zone”. An accident involving a satellite dish results in Garfield being sucked into the TV and thereby appearing in various shows. At one point Odie starts flicking between channels and Garfield ends up in U.S. Acres next to Booker and Sheldon:
The implication is that in the Garfield universe, U.S. Acres is indeed a comics franchise that includes a TV show. And from what we know from my OP, in the U.S. Acres universe, Garfield is a comics character that appears on merchandise like wall calendars.
