Garfield and Friends - Nighty Nightmare: Alternate Version

Many of you remember Garfield and Friends, right? Well I love that show. But recently, I found what’s possibly the strangest discovery related to it. On my 20th birthday, I decided to look for some Garfield DVDs on Amazon… and wouldn’t you know it, I found a DVD with a never-before seen version of my favorite episode: "Nighty Nightmare"! I was amazed, ordered the DVD and went to my room. I went home, got myself a hearty plate of fried chicken, pork schnitzels and French fries, opened a bag of my favorite popcorn, busted out the Lays baked potato chips, poured myself a glass of ice cold, refreshing Coca Cola and began glazing a warm Christmas ham. I topped it all off by baking myself Garfield’s favorite foods: lasagna and pizza. As I started up the DVD, the episode played normally for the most part.

However, getting to the news report scene, the reporter didn’t claim Garfield had eaten their mobile unit and run away. Instead, he claimed it was their journalist who was eaten and held his hat to his chest in respect. I was very shocked but I thought it was a morbid joke or something. The rest of the episode was normal until the supermarket scene.

As Jon and Odie ran outside, they saw Garfield being chased by the National Guard… they were in tanks, cannons and whatnot. He was still calling out “MORE FOOD!”, but it sounded frantic and panicked instead of self-satisfied. Jon and Odie quickly ran after Garfield. It then cut to the next scene, but most of the people on the streets were dead. The ones that were still running were quickly shot down by the tanks.

I looked on in horror as Garfield climbed the skyscraper like normally. However Garfield was still scared in this scene, so no quips. Then it cut to Jon and Odie calling out to Garfield to get him somewhere safe. However, a plane quickly passed by Garfield and cut his tail off. He yelled in pain as Jon and Odie, now covered in blood, looked on traumatized.

As the flying saucer took Garfield away as usual, his owner and dog friend found themselves cornered by the Guard. “Come with us!” the general demanded. With that, the scene quickly cut to Jon and Odie on electric chairs, screaming as their brains were being fried. It then cut to Garfield in the saucer, his tail has grown back, but Garfield still said no quips whatsoever and the alien had a demonic voice instead of a computerized one.

This scene was pretty much normal, but instead of fading to Garfield in bed, it faded to an oven. Green hands opened the oven and in it was… a dead Garfield. There were “X”s in his eyes and his realistically drawn roasted corpse had an apple in his mouth. His chest cavity had been stitched shut with turkey stuffing pouring out the sides, and the Clarion chefs were serving him on a plate to the guests!

“The Thanksgiving dinner’s ready!” One of the chefs called out while ringing a bell, then the scene wiped to the citizens of Clarion eating Garfield’s corpse. The king of the planet exclaimed "It's delicious!", as the scene then panned out of the Clarion palace’s window and to the starfield, as the music quickly turned into a series of loud drones and thuds for the remainder of the episode.

The panning stopped when the screen reached the moon, its hyper-realistic face making me recoil in fear. Its teeth were yellow like they were never cleaned before and were in the shape of kitchen knives, and were also part of a demonic grin. Its eyes were big and bloodshot with small red pupils, and the eyebrows gave it a manic, bloodthirsty glare that was staring right at me. As the iris closed the episode, the moon winked its eye at me, grinned wider and wider, and finally one of the Clarion hollered “WHO'S NEXT?” in a demonic tone and at such a volume, it felt like my eardrums would burst! Instead of the iris closing, everything faded out, the eyes and grin staying for half a minute more than everything else.

The credits were more simplistic, lacking backgrounds and music, but otherwise listed the producer, writer, animators, voice talents and other usual stuff... then it launched into a list of names that I could tell belonged to pets. As I watched, I swore I saw the name of my friend's cat flash by in one of the frames. It continued to list off animal names for several minutes, and ended on a large credit. My insides froze. It was MY name! The screen focused on it for longer than it had the other credits, then went black.

The DVD ejected by itself immediately after that, hit me in the eye slicing my cornea in half, and started yelling “YOU’LL PAY!” at me. I ran away from that DVD as far as possible, but it chased after me... and materialized the cooked Garfield out of hammerspace. “EAT YOUR FUCKING CLARION DINNER!” the DVD screamed, shoving chunks of him in my mouth. I could only puke before fainting. During that time, the last I heard was the DVD laughing sinisterly... at me, with the last thing I saw before closing my eyes being the DVD burning the apartment down with the residents' charred bodies falling on the ground.

I woke up in the hospital. Turns out, the doctors had injected lasagna to my heart during a surgical operation that took roughly 16 hours. They called it a medical miracle, stating I had three days left to live. Day one, alert Facebook, YouTube and whatnot about the living hell my life is right now. Day 2, visit the world’s largest McDonald’s and order some coleslaw. Day 3, march straight into the Nickelodeon headquarters and demand to know the meaning of this godforsaken DVD. I stormed in, slamming the DVD on the counter. “WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT? ARE YOU FUCKING HIGH?!” I yelled to who I thought was the manager of the company. The chair swiveled around, revealing… Lorenzo Music, Garfield’s voice actor in the show. He had gained way too much weight and his skin was orange and covered in hair. I wondered why he was here if he had died in 2001. He had warts and scars all over his body, and had a small nose, big eyes and a big mouth.

He was accompanied by Gregg Berger, who voiced that alien in the normal episode. He also had a different skin color than the usual skin color of a human. He was green, wearing no pants, short and stout, pointy-eared (like Link from Zelda or something), had pimples and scars over his face, and his feet and eyes were bigger. I know they both looked horrifying, but Gregg more so than Lorenzo. Three boars that resembled Orson’s cousins barged in, with a clown riding one of them, and the clown lunged bombs at me. I deflected the bomb at Lorenzo, Gregg, the pigs and clown, when suddenly they, as well as the office itself, exploded into lasagna. After that, I was arrested by a police, taken to court, and exported to Canada. They took all of my clothes off except my underwear. Several men have painted me orange and black, given me a hair transplant and forced me to live in a suburban house with an eccentric cartoonist. They forced me to perform such demeaning tasks as eating lasagna and kicking the dog off the table on a daily basis. After about a month, a strange man came in holding a video camera. He was filming me and snickering. Other, smaller Hispanic boys threw plastic chicks and stuffed Nermals at me, making me choke on my lasagna and pass out as I lay there in my cat bed, confused, lightheaded. Cold.

When I woke up, I was laying on some strange, flour-shaped floor. As I looked up, I noticed that tomato sauce and grated cheese were being spread all over the floor. Oh my god. Bacon, pepperoni and mushrooms followed. One of the other clowns threw in some salt, pepper and oregano. I was being… baked into a pizza. “Oh my god!” I screamed, and tried to awaken from this horrible nightmare. But it wasn’t a nightmare. It was reality. They folded the pizza like a calzone. “Oh my god! What’s all of this about?” I screamed. A familiar voice began to speak to me, though I couldn’t see anything in the wrap. “You will be part of the Easter dinner...” My heart skipped a beat. “…for the entire planet of Clarion!”

As I was burned to death inside the oven, I came to a deep realization. See, underneath everything, we’re not deep, intellectual human beings. We’re not special either. Film Roman lied to us as children. They wanted our money, so they sold us a lie. We’re not even unique in style and taste. Go up to your neighbors and greet them as skeletons. Recognize them, for the true skeleton inside. Because one day you might be that skeleton, in fact, you already are that skeleton. The end credits of my existence rolled up, with the words...

“GARFIELD AND FRIENDS IN CHARGE OF FILM ROMAN: SATAN. EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: BEELZEBUB, LUCIFER, ABADDON, MAMMON. WRITER, DIRECTOR, CLARION LUNCH: BILL RODRIGUEZ.”