>>80183522>Somebody fucking explain. The Garbage Ape is some legendary being that lives in the Heathcliff universe.
He originated as the explanation for all the noise you hear at night involving garbage cans, and how they end up knocked over a mess in the morning.
The joke here being that animals like cats (and especially Heathcliff) are responsible, but they insist upon the existence of something as absurd as a "Garbage Ape" in order to direct suspicion away from themselves.
But then the joke gets taken even farther, in that there actually *is* a mysterious Garbage Ape. And like most legendary creatures, he can do a bunch of shit.
OP's joke shows a town covered in snow. Normally, this would mean no trash put out/pick up.
But that doesn't stop the Garbage Ape. He takes the form of a big unstoppable machine associated with snow: an Imperial AT-AT Walker from the Battle of Hoth.
At this point, the Garbage Ape no longer represents ridiculous explanations for easily explained incidents, but has an in-universe meme in and of itself.
Like how Moe in the Simpsons was originally just there to be Homer's bartender and the victim of Bart's jokes, but now he's a recurring character who is ugly and hates himself.
