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50 free Garfield trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
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 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who created the Garfield comic strip?
Jim Davis
Born in Marion, Indiana, he grew up on a Black Angus farm in Fairmount and had first tried a strip about a gnat.
Q 02Under what title did the Pendleton Times run the strip from 1976, before it became Garfield?
Jon
Jon first appeared on 8 January 1976, two weeks after Davis's failed strip Gnorm Gnat ended; the archives were rediscovered on microfilm in 2019.
Q 03What was Davis's first comic strip, about an insect, which one editor said readers 'can't identify with'?
Gnorm Gnat
It ran in the Pendleton Times from 1973 to 1975; Davis then studied the funny pages and noticed dogs were popular but no strip served cat owners.
Q 04Garfield was named after whom?
Jim Davis's grandfather
James A. Garfield Davis was 'a large, cantankerous man' whose personality rubbed off on the cat.
Q 05Jon Arbuckle's surname came from a businessman Davis heard mentioned in a commercial for what product?
Yuban instant coffee
John Arbuckle was a 19th-century coffee magnate; Jon's roommate Lyman was named after a Gnorm Gnat character.
Q 06Odie was originally called Spot. Why was he renamed?
To avoid confusion with a dog in Boner's Ark
The dog belonged to Jon's roommate Lyman before Lyman quietly vanished from the strip.
Q 07On what date did Garfield debut in national syndication, in 41 newspapers?
19 June 1978
The date is now celebrated as Garfield's birthday; the Chicago Sun-Times briefly dropped the strip and reinstated it after complaints.
Q 08Which newspaper dropped Garfield after a test run, only to bring it back after readers complained?
Chicago Sun-Times
The strip was in 850 papers within three years and over 1,000 by 1982.
Q 09Which fellow cartoonist, Jim Davis's mentor and rival, advised the 1980s redesign that put Garfield on his hind legs?
Charles Schulz
Schulz was also irritated that Garfield's merchandising rivalled Snoopy's; the slimmer design made the cat easier to animate.
Q 10Which body certified Garfield as the most widely syndicated comic strip on Earth, at about 2,580 papers?
Guinness World Records
By 2004 it was in nearly 2,600 newspapers and selling up to $1 billion of merchandise a year in 111 countries.
Q 11What is Garfield's favourite food?
Lasagna
He was born in the kitchen of Mamma Leoni's Italian Restaurant and calls it 'nature's most perfect food'; he refuses only raisins and spinach.
Q 12Which two foods will Garfield NOT eat?
Raisins and spinach
He will happily eat Jon's houseplants and pet fish instead.
Q 13Which day of the week does Garfield famously hate?
Monday
Along with diets, spiders and any form of exertion; he shows unusual mercy to mice, and only mice.
Q 14Garfield's recurring fantasy is to mail which annoying kitten to Abu Dhabi?
Q 21What was the first book collection of the strip, published by Ballantine in March 1980?
Garfield at Large
Davis devised the wide, short book format so strips could run as they did in newspapers; several hit the New York Times bestseller list.
Q 22Which actor voiced Garfield in every TV special and in Garfield and Friends from 1982 to 1994?
Lorenzo Music
Music was also Carlton the doorman on Rhoda and co-created The Bob Newhart Show; he voiced Peter Venkman in The Real Ghostbusters before Murray, who later voiced Garfield.
Q 23Garfield's animation debut, voiced by Scott Beach, came in which 1980 CBS special about comic strips?
The Fantastic Funnies
Nermal
The grey striped kitten torments Garfield about his age; when the post office is closed he simply throws Nermal out the front door.
Q 15What is Pooky?
Garfield's teddy bear
Arlene, the pink cat, is Garfield's on-off girlfriend, and Binky the Clown is his least favourite TV star.
Q 16What is Jon Arbuckle's profession?
Cartoonist
He is shown at the drawing board in the very first strip; like Davis he grew up on a farm with a brother, Doc Boy.
Q 17What is the name of the veterinarian Jon spent decades trying to date?
Dr. Liz Wilson
Irma is the slow-witted waitress at the diner where Jon eats terrible food.
Q 18What is the name of Jon's brother, who once watched socks in the washing machine as if it were TV?
Doc Boy
Jon's parents live on the farm; his father once drove into town on a tractor with a rooster to wake him.
Q 19A famous 1989 storyline, unique in not being meant to be funny, showed Garfield doing what?
Waking in a future where the house is abandoned
It ran the week before Halloween; the panel of a lonely, starving Garfield fuelled years of internet theories.
Q 20Davis joked that for years he thought OPEC was what, explaining why the strip avoids politics?
A denture adhesive
The lack of social commentary was deliberate, and part of the strip's global appeal.
The strip was only two years old and was introduced as a newcomer.
Q 24What was the first half-hour TV special about the cat, aired on CBS in October 1982?
Here Comes Garfield
Directed by Phil Roman, it was a ratings hit and drew two Emmy nominations; Garfield Gets a Life in 1991 was the twelfth and last.
Q 25Which 1985 special, a pirate ghost story, won the Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program?
Garfield's Halloween Adventure
Originally titled Garfield in Disguise, it opens with Binky the Clown waking Garfield up; Odie is conned out of his candy.
Q 26Garfield and Friends also adapted which other Jim Davis strip?
U.S. Acres
Orson the pig led the barnyard cast; Mark Evanier was head writer and nearly every episode was his.
Q 27U.S. Acres launched in 1986 in an unprecedented how many newspapers?
505
Most papers ran only the Sunday strip beside Garfield; internationally it was called Orson's Farm.
Q 28Who voices Garfield in the 2004 and 2006 live-action films?
Bill Murray
He later claimed he took the job thinking writer Joel Cohen was Joel Coen of the Coen brothers; the co-writer disputes that.
Q 29Who played Jon Arbuckle in Garfield: The Movie?
Breckin Meyer
Carrey, Stiller, Ferrell, Jack Black and Hugh Jackman were all considered; Jennifer Love Hewitt played Liz.
Q 30Garfield: The Movie was a hit despite bad reviews, grossing about how much worldwide on a $50m budget?
$208m
The 2006 sequel took the gang to Britain, where a lookalike cat named Prince has inherited a castle.