Jon not only killed Lyman, he did something much worse. Lyman’s last known appearance in the comic strip was in 1983, and fans have been wondering what had happened to him since. Well, after extensive research I have recently discovered that Lyman can be found in the Garfield.com flash game “Garfield’s Scary Scavenger Hunt”, chained to the wall in the basement of the haunted house. As @nuzjockeworld had already kindly iterated in a reblog to this post, when a fan asked about Lyman’s whereabouts, Jim Davis had previously replied “don’t look in Jon’s basement.”.
With these two key pieces of information, we can now shine some much needed light on the situation. The first pivotal piece of the puzzle is that the haunted house is then most likely owned by none other than Jon Arbuckle himself. This also means that Jon has been pulling the strings of this game all along. The true plot of the Scary Scavenger Hunt is that Jon hides donuts and other sweet treats around a terrifying house that he owns, and gets Garfield to look for it to emotionally scar and abuse him. But that’s besides the point, the real thing to focus on is the fact that Lyman is chained in his basement. My theory is that Jon bought the house in secret shortly before kidnapping Lyman and holding him in that basement, so he can torture Lyman whenever his sadistic tendencies grow too strong. This means he has been in this basement for at least 30 years.
However Unfortunately, this isn’t the end of the story for Lyman. There was a sequel. In Scary Scavenger Hunt 2, Garfield finds himself back in the same house with more goodies. However Lyman is no longer in the basement, and in his place is a coffin. It holds a vampire, but the coffin is heavy foreshadowing of Lyman’s true fate. Later in the game, you find his decapitated head in the oven. You can also find Liz Wilson’s decaying head propped up in the master bedroom like a trophy, as well as Orson Pig’s head from US Acres also in the fridge. That is why I theorize that this game actually takes place in the future, when Jon finally snaps and goes on a mass killing spree. This can be prevented, hopefully it is not too late for him. Stop Jon Arbuckle and free Lyman before its too late!
