Gary Larson’s beloved comic The Far Side is known for its morbid and surreal sense of humor – qualities which the strip often applied to classic movies like Alien, The Sound of Music, and King Kong. Larson’s comics are generally pretty timeless, but every so often a movie came along which was iconic enough to earn itself a Far Side roasting.
A lot of Larson’s The Far Side movie references are funny, but some of the best are also dark – reflecting on the bleak realities or unseen consequences of famous movie moments, or else giving them a unique Far Side spin. With each film on this list limited to one entry, here are the 13 darkest references to iconic movies offered up by the beloved comic.
13 Peter Pan
The Far Side likes to mock Disney movies for their sweet worldview and happy endings, and Larson takes frequent shots at the House of Mouse, making a particular target of Peter Pan. While there are a few contenders for the darkest – like Captain Hook’s crocodile nemesis making threatening calls long into his old age – the most existentially freaky is this strip, where a version of Peter Pan thinks back wistfully on Neverland at his boring office job. In an odd twist, this premise was actually used in the 1991 movie Hook, starring Robin Williams as a version of Peter Pan who left Neverland and became a workaholic. At least in the movie version, Peter gets to go back and discover his childhood joy – The Far Side leaves him stuck at his desk.
12 Alien
In an odd twist on its usually dark humor, The Far Side sits down Alien‘s Xenomorphs for a family dinner, only for the young Chestbursters to give in to their instincts. Recreating John Hurt’s horrific movie death via Norman Rockwell is a great premise, but this strip still scores relatively low on the darkness scale purely because the alien monstrosities are clearly having such a good time in each other’s company, regardless of the argument brewing at the kids’ table. On top of all that, seeing Gary Larson interpret the nightmarish alien imagery of H.R. Giger is a pop culture artifact few would guess exists.
11 The Mummy
The Far Side is more known for surrealism than scatological humor, but here it hits the mark with some bathroom mishaps. Though it’s been endless remade, the movie referenced here is 1932’s The Mummy, starring Boris Karloff, though the title remains a household term thanks to 1999’s Brendan Frasier-led reboot, and the 2012 Tom Cruise dud intended to start its own Dark Universe film franchise.
10 King Kong
Lots of The Far Side strips imply a death toll, but this King Kong-inspired comic goes further than most in confirming a body count. The image of multiple crushed humans all fitting within Kong’s silhouette is a smart visual premise, but the general disinterest of the New Yorkers walking past is in many ways a grimmer point of view.
9 To Have and Have Not
While Humphrey Bogart’s To Have and Have Not is nowhere near as famous as some films on this list, the iconic line “You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow” is truly iconic, and has been endlessly parodied. Here, it becomes significantly more brutal, and it’s hard not to think of the poor pig involved in the equation. The strip is made far darker once you know that Larson himself was nearly killed by a python. In The Pre-History of the Far Side, Larson reveals that he had to get rid of his pet Burmese python after it attacked him, perhaps explaining why so many Far Side strips see characters consumed by snakes.
8 Them!
The 1954 horror movie Them! is famous for being one of the first films about giant nuclear monsters running rampant, though in this case the titular beasties are huge ants. Pop culture references in media like Fallout 3 and Ant-Man and the Wasp have kept Them! alive, but there’s something particularly surreal about this strip, as a businessman uses a phrase that should suggest the expected latecomers to a meeting have arrived, but actually presages everyone in the room being torn limb from limb.
7 Pinocchio
While The Far Side has its fair share of Disney references, Larson loves putting Pinocchio through hell. The franchise includes comics where he’s beset by beavers, used as a scratching post, and transformed into a ‘real boy’ while surrounded by a pack of lions. However, this comic – where the usual image of vultures settling on a body switches the birds out for woodpeckers – is the darkest, if only because Larson deviates from his usual artistic style to capture the little wooden boy staring open-mouthed at the reader as if begging for help.
This comic proves Gary Larson’s The Pre-History of the Far Side theory about why violence in The Far Side often upset people more than similar moments in animated cartoons or multi-panel comics. Reflecting on the infamous ‘Tethercat’ comic where two dogs bat around a captured feline (which attracted major heat from some readers), Larson theorizes:
What I think I’ve figured out is, in animation, a cat might be flattened by a steamroller or get blown up by dynamite, but a few seconds later we see him back in business … In a single-panel cartoon, however, no resolution is possible. The dogs play “tethercat” forever. You put the cartoon down, come back to it a few hours later, and, yep – those dogs are still playing ‘tethercat.’
In the same way, The Far Side makes it so that Pinocchio is always being pecked to pieces by woodpeckers.
6 The Sound of Music
A genuinely weird comic, this strip references the song ‘My Favorite Things’ from The Sound of Music, starring Julie Andrews. The humor seems to come from how easily the stated objects fit into a noir setting, and The Far Side has a running joke about criminals being killed for bizarre contraband (most adorably, a hidden stash of ducks), however the idea of Maria’s ultra-innocent list of life’s simple pleasures being motive for a murder has a bleak charm all its own.
5 The Godfather
In one of the most famous scenes in film history, The Godfather sees a disobedient producer wake up to find the head of his prize horse in his bed. Here, a similar situation plays out, but with a (presumably) prized chicken. However, rather than the smaller animal lessening the horror, the dainty chicken head somehow makes this moment even more disturbing – though it sends the same message that anyone, including Henry, can be gotten to. Larson at least gets credit for just drawing a chicken head, while the movie used a real horse head from a local slaughterhouse after Francis Ford Coppola was unsatisfied with the prop heads available.
4 Jaws
The Far Side has several comics on the theme of iconic movie music secretly being audible in the film itself, but none more perfectly executed than this Jaws parody. It’s a fun premise and a perfect use of an iconic image no-one could mistake, and yet even in Larson’s playful style, it’s still an image which is surprisingly chilling, as the two cartoon fishermen hang in a final moment of innocence before learning exactly where John Williams’ score is coming from.
3 Psycho
A joke for those who love fishing, this comic combines Psycho‘s Bates Motel with the term for a specialized bag used to safely store live bait. Norman Bates’ mother can be seen in the upper window prepping her rod, and sadly it seems this all-American family of worms will soon join the long list of Norma’s victims. The joke may hinge on some very specific knowledge, but Larson does up the darkness factor significantly by including two invertebrate children who won’t survive the night.
2 Nightmare on Elm Street
Another incredibly surreal movie reference, this strip sees a chicken swap out the family pet ahead of dinner. Those who have only encountered The Far Side in passing would likely bet there’s no strip where it’s implied a family are tricked into cooking and consuming their dog, but they’d be wrong. However, the most ghoulish detail isn’t directly referenced in the strip, that being the implication of where the chicken managed to find such a realistic dog ‘costume’ on such short notice.
1 Wizard of Oz
While not as surreal as the chicken comic that proceeds it, this Wizard of Oz comic is darker for one solitary reason – anyone with a dog can basically hear the noise currently emanating from that box. In a world where the Wizard of Oz was apparently as good as his word to Dorothy’s plucky group, the Scarecrow got a literal brain for his troubles, but sadly wasn’t smart enough to keep hold of it. Thankfully for movie fans, the comic ignores an extra detail that would have made it as dark as possible – the dog eating Scarecrow’s brain could have been Toto.
While The Far Sidemay take some shots at iconic movies, it’s rarely to their detriment, and these strips instead see Gary Larson tapping characters and imagery that everyone is familiar with, with no insult meant and no harm done… unless you’re Pinocchio.
