About
Creepy Garfield refers to a series of Garfield-inspired artwork in which Garfield is depicted as a horror creature stalking his owner Jon. Popularized by drawings created by horror artist William Burke in Autumn 2018, the trend continued in a series of videos and similar work from other artists, with Garfield often addressing Jon with such remarks as “I’m sorry, Jon” and “I require lasagna”.
Origin
On October 22nd, 2013, artist Dubblebaby posted a comic in which Garfield consumed his owner Jon’s house (shown below).
In 2018, the character was featured in the SCP Foundation as SCP-3166, added by SCP Foundation user Tanhony on February 25th.
On September 12th, 2018, Redditor mnvz posted an original three-panel comic strip in which “Garfold” was reimagined as a horror creature in /r/surrealmemes subreddit. The comic gained over 15,700 upvotes in six months. On September 14th, Redditor idea4granted posted a 3D animation of Garfield bouncing off the floor with the phrase “CONSUME LASAGNA” flashing on the screen, which gained over 12,600 upvotes.
On September 18th, 2018, horror artist William Burke posted a black-and-white drawing of Garfield on Instagram. The drawing depicted Garfield as a monster holding his owner Jon Arbuckle in his hand and demanding to be given lasagna. The post gained over 11,600 likes in six months.
Spread
Following the success of the first drawing, in October 2018 William Burke created four more artworks of Garfield as a horrible creature, each of them receiving over 10,000 likes on the artist’s Instagram.
The Will Burke’s Garfield series has been multiple times reposted on Reddit, Twitter and other online platforms. For example, an October 12th repost of one of the images on /r/creepy subreddit accumulated over 57,600 upvotes in six months.
On October 29th, 2018, animator Lumpy Touch posted a video of a mockup game based on one of the images on YouTube. The video gained over 766,000 views in five months, with Lumpy Touch continuing the series in the following month.
The trend has since been picked up by other artists, including notable artwork by Omega Black (shown below).
On October 8th, 2018, subreddit /r/imsorryjon was launched, collecting original works dedicated to the character.
Various Examples
