Gary Larson's The Far Side relied on a number of recurring elements, ideas, and motifs over the years, some of which stand out above the rest for one reason or another. For new and old fans of Larson's work alike, it is worth taking a broad overview of the most memorable Far Side material, in order to develop a better understanding of what makes the comic so great.

Many classic elements appeared consistently throughout The Far Side's entire fifteen-year run; others predominated early, but later faded from frequent use, while some did the opposite, becoming more common as Gary Larson's abilities as an artist and a humorist were sharpened over time.

Whether it is cows or chickens, prehistoric people or anthropomorphized animals, growing familiar with The Far Side's recurring cast, and its overarching obsessions, adds a layer of appreciation to any reader's time spent with Larson's cult-favorite newspaper cartoon.

10 Anthropomorphized Animals

Far Side Appearance Status: Constant

When readers think of The Far Side, they might initially think of its absurd and irreverent tone, or its unusual, cerebral humor – but if pressed to ask how these traits were best embodied in any given , they will almost certainly point to Gary Larson's use of anthropomorphic animals. Underlying The Far Side's humor was Larson's unique perspective on the human experience, which he routinely filtered through various of the animal kingdom in his comics.

Larson also anthropomorphized insects, and to a lesser extent, The Far Side even featured anthropomorphized objects in some memorable strips. For longtime fans of the comic, animals acting like humans served as the basis for some of The Far Side's funniest jokes, while new readers will find themselves acclimating quickly to Gary Larson's chaotic world of comedy, where everything is alive.

9 Bugs

Far Side Appearance Status: Constant

From an early age, Gary Larson was endlessly fascinated by the natural world, including the world of insects, an interest that manifested regularly throughout The Far Side. Larson's bug cartoons are notable for the way they pushed the artist's distinct ability to approach human behavior from an outside perspective even further than with his animal punchlines.

That is to say, The Far Side's bug humor was based in the artist's observations of the natural world, but what made many of them truly great was Larson's ability to draw on the parallels – as well as the major gulfs – between insect life and humanity. For fans of The Far Side still learning how to navigate Gary Larson's humor, his insect cartoons serve as a good reminder that his best work offered insight into how people behave, even if the subject was a worm, or a beetle, or a spider.

8 Cats

Far Side Appearance Status: Regular

One critical function of The Far Side's recurring elements was to give readers something familiar to grab hold of, so that Gary Larson could take them on a wild ride. Naturally, cats and dogs were the most immediate shortcut to making a connection with the reader, in order for them to not only understand the joke, but respond to it.

Whether a Far Side joke used animal behavior to provide commentary on humans, or was simply based in an observation about a particular species, readers had to have some understanding of what Larson was poking fun at, in order for the joke to work. The Far Side's cats were great for this, because cat behavior has preoccupied humans for literal millennia, since they were first domesticated.

7 Cows

Far Side Appearance Status: Constant

If there is one single species most closely associated with The Far Side, it is cows. A cow starred in what is widely considered the most confusing Far Side comic ever produced, and the iconic farm animals appeared in perhaps more individual cartoons than any other recurring element.

In other words, cows appeared constantly in The Far Side, at one point or another taking center stage in virtually every scenario that Gary Larson conceived of. At some point early in the comic's run, it seems Larson came to the conclusion that cows were the funniest animals, and the beloved bovines proved to be the subjects of many of the most entertaining, laugh-out-loud Far Side installments, as well as countless s that reached the peaks of absurdity.

6 Chickens

Far Side Appearance Status: Regular

Chickens are right there alongside their barnyard brethren, cows, as one of the most prolific of The Far Side's recurring animal subjects. Like cats and dogs, cows and chickens offered a familiar touchstone for readers –something they recognized, that Gary Larson could then warp into something strange, and at times, even shocking.

In other words, Larson's chicken jokes often tended toward the darker side of the spectrum of Far Side humor; while some of the strip's recurring elements were more geared toward silliness, spawning irreverent and even downright inane humor, The Far Side's chickens were often the target of its more morbid manifestation of comedy. As a naturalist, and an advocate for animal rights, Gary Larson surely found it hard to reckon with the rise of industrial farming, and this tension frequently found outlet in outright hilarious s.

5 Dogs

Far Side Appearance Status: Constant

Right at the heels of The Far Side's cows and chickens for the comic's most memorable recurring element are its dogs; ubiquitous presence in Gary Larson's world. Though on a visual level, The Far Side's cows might stand out more, Larson's humor was rarely more dialed in than with his canine cartoons.

Dogs were the perfect focus for Larson's techniques of inversion and subversion; The Far Side's humor largely consisted of inverting the familiar, and subverting expectations. Few of the strip's recurring elements and themes showcase this more than dogs, as their unparalleled proximity and connection to humans allowed for the perfect blend of the real and the surreal.

4 Ducks

Far Side Appearance Status: Very Regular

When it came to The Far Side, ducks often proved to be unusually dangerous – or at least, adversarial to humans. Again, this seems to have resulted from Gary Larson's estimation that the seemingly least-intimidating bird imaginable would be the funniest to depict as a threat, a premise he returned to repeatedly throughout the years, always to high-level comedic effect.

For fans who are still getting used to The Far Side's brand of humor, this is a great lesson to learn. Gary Larson's style of was certainly observational, at its root, but his jokes rarely if ever stopped there. Instead, there was usually some degree of elaboration, or extrapolation, in which the observation was twisted and tweaked until it was unmistakably a Far Side joke. Being able to recognize the root of a Far Side comic's punchline will invariably make many of them come across as even funnier.

3 Death

Far Side Appearance Status: Constant

When describing The Far Side's humor, "morbid" not simply a synonym for "dark," but is in fact its whole own distinct category. That is, The Far Side frequently depicted characters dying, or about to die, or just after they've died – and what's more, a number of times throughout the years, the Grim Reaper himself made appearances in Gary Larson's cartoon.

Though it isn't wrong to suggest Larson was obsessed with death, it is more accurate to say that he was endlessly fascinating, and perplexed, by life. Death is an essential and inscrutable part of life, and so The Far Side's relentless depiction of life's absurdities, from the macro to the micro level, would not have been complete had he not been able to extract comedy from tragedy, and offer a balm for readers' own fears of mortality with his characteristic humor.

2 Early Humans

Far Side Appearance Status: Constant

While The Far Side's animal characters often steal the spotlight from its humans, the earliest ancestors of modern society are the major exception, as Gary Larson's cartoons about prehistoric humans are among the most fondly ed in his oeuvre. Largely, that is because they were both visually and comedically distinct from the rest of The Far Side, and also because they appeared so frequently that readers came to look forward to their next installment.

Larson's prehistoric s lampooned civilization's most formative inventions, often hilariously depicting the early days of human evolution as a repeated process of trial-and-error; though many depicted these characters as amusingly, if appropriately, archaic, others confronted contemporary readers with the fact that they have not advanced as far as they might think, by reframing modern human behavior and activities through a cave-dweller's lens.

1 End Of The World

Far Side Appearance Status: Regular

As a child of the Cold War, Gary Larson grew up under the looming specter of nuclear cataclysm, and this civilization-level existential anxiety would later serve as the basis for multiple Far Side s featuring mushroom clouds, bomb shelters, and the fallout from all-out atomic war.

The Far Side's end of the world comics, like so much of Larson's best work, were a product of converting anxiety into humor. Among the most memorable aspects of The Far Side is its creator's ability to put his own fears and concerns on the page, make a joke out of them, and in turn, allow the reader a form of release from their own worries in the form of humor. The strip's Armageddon cartoons offer a prime illustration of that, making them as essential to understanding what has made The Far Side such an enduring cultural artifact as any of its other recurring elements.