Kilby writes: This is another one of CIDU Bill’s old draft posts from March 2019. The only CIDU element is how he ran into a strip from 2013 nearly five and a half years later. (I checked: Barney & Clyde was not in reruns during that month.)
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Comics I Don't Understand 
Today’s Barney & Clyde strip is an amazing bit of semi-synchronicity, but there’s no way that anyone could have planned it:
The reveal of Gramps is nicely done.
P.S. Speaking of revealing grandfathers, here’s the Bloom County strip (15-Dec-1980) from which the gag was lifted:
Wow, today’s strip is total plagiarism! Perhaps they have some sort of arrangement with Berkeley Breathed.
I note that the mother in today’s strip is not in fact old enough to remember a strip from 1980. Maybe she read it in a collection.
I wouldn’t say it is plagiarism, which is the uncredited stealing of another’s work and passing it off as your own; this is a credited homage, and even credited very obviously in the body of the work (ie, not a tiny marginal footnote some might miss).
It’s a much better citation for “borrowed” material than we usually see on the comics page.
First, in 1980, we had Breathed’s original one. Second, in 2013, we had the Barney & Clyde which cited Breathed’s original one. Third, today, we had another Barney & Clyde which copied Breathed’s original one almost exactly. I hope Weingarten & Clark had some sort of arrangement with Breathed.
@ Boise Ed (8) – The only (minor) connection between the two Barney & Clyde strips is the concept of “remembering” a joke. I don’t see any relationship between the 2013 strip and Bloom County.