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Trivia Trope tropes pertaining to Adventure Time:[]

  • Actor Allusion:
  • Actor Shared Background: Hynden Walch and Princess Bubblegum have both learned to speak fluent German.
  • Adored by the Network: The show is slowly becoming this, despite its rather odd premise. A full series marathon is played almost every other weekend.
  • All-Star Cast: Let's see, in various episodes we have Donald Glover, Andy Samberg, John DiMaggio, Jonathan Frakes, Levar Burton, Wallace Shawn, Andy Milonakis, George Takei and Neil Patrick Harris.
  • Approval of God: Pen pretty much loves all works made by fans, simply because he appreciates that they care enough about the show to do them. There are some works that he even praises over his Twitter.
  • Ascended Fanon: The idea that there were cat/monochromicorn wars. [1] And of course, some fans put it on the "official" wiki.
    • One fan made a drawing of a tiny cat assassin named Me-Mow. The creators liked the idea, and thus, the episode "Jake vs. Me-Mow" was born.
  • Bad Export for You:
    • The Australian version of Adventure Time has a truckload of stuff cut out due to censorship, making a lot of episodes look and sound choppy and incomprehensible...
    • The UK DVD issues have no special features. The British Season 2 DVD had four full episodes missing, including some highly significant ones for larger arcs.
  • Banned in China:
    • In Australia, episodes that aren't butchered are merely pulled from rotation (such as "Fionna and Cake" and "What Was Missing" due to many scenes deemed too sexually suggestive). Thankfully, when the series appeared on free-to-air it was screened unedited (though a few episodes were out of order).
    • In 2017, the entire show got banned in Kenya due to its content.
  • Blooper:
    • In "Storytelling", Finn says "aminals" instead of "animals".
    • In "The Limit", Jake says he can't blink... and then blinks mere seconds later.
    • They forgot to put the snail in "Trouble in Lumpy Space" and "Blood Under the Skin".
    • Finn mispronounces "sword" at least twice.
    • In "Business Time", they misspell Finn's name as "Fin".
    • In "Reign of Gunthers", Princess Bubblegum says "calvary" instead of "cavalry" at one point, which is more out of character than Finn's malapropism above.
    • In "You Made Me!", Lemongrab's shoes randomly disappear when he takes out the Sound Sword for the first time.
  • The Cast Showoff:
    • Olivia Olson as Marceline displays her vocal skills in multiple episodes.
    • The Gender Bending episodes seem built around the idea of having the guest cast sing. Madeline Martin voices Fionna the Human and sings in both episodes, with NPH-as-Prince Gumball gets to sing in "Adventure Time with Fionna and Cake", then Donald Glover who voices Marshall Lee, sharing a duet and singing to Fionna in "Bad Little Boy".
    • Jake gets to show off John DiMaggio's beatboxing skills at the beginning of "Conquest of Cuteness".
  • Celebrity Voice Actor: Neil Patrick Harris as Prince Gumball.
  • Channel Hop: The pilot was created for and aired on Nickelodeon's Random Cartoons.
    • Ironically, as of the third season, Adventure Time is now airing on Nickelodeon in Germany.
  • The Character Died with Him: Flame Lord was noticeably absent from the lantern in "Bun Bun", most likely due to Roddy Piper's death due in July of 2015.
  • Creator Backlash: Natasha really hated the design of Ghost Princess.
    • Pen doesn't really like Tiffany very much and is perfectly content with him never returning again.
  • Creator Breakdown: Pen Ward quit the series after two seasons when he couldn't handle the sudden influx of work and stress which came with running an extremely successful show. He now only serves as producer.
  • Cross-Dressing Voices: Played straight with Pendleton Ward as Lumpy Space Princess and Ghost Princess.
    • And Steve Little as Turtle Princess.
    • Beau Billingslea is the voice of The Moon.
    • Finn is voiced by women in Spain, France, and Japan. In America, he's voiced by boys (both of them brothers).
    • In the Polish and Russian dubs, Cake (the gender-bent version of Jake) is voiced by a man in her first appearance. Not only that, but in both dubs, Cake is referred to as a guy.
  • The Danza:
    • Finn's alter-ego, voiced by Davey Johnson, was named "Davey Johnson" in the episode "Davey". In the same episode, Davey's friend Randy is voiced by Randy Liedtke.
    • The horse that makes people happy, voiced by James Baxter, was named "James Baxter" in the episode "James Baxter the Horse".
  • Defictionalization: Anyone want a Finn hat?
  • Deleted Scene: A lot. For example, in "The Enchiridion", there was a scene that included Choose Goose. It would have been his first appearence ever, but they saved him for Season 2.
  • Development Gag: Ice King's fiancée back when he was a human was named "Betty", which was PB's first name in the original network pitch.
  • Executive Meddling: According to Word of God, originally the ending of "Tree Trunks" had Tree Trunks just explode after eating the crystal apple. Cartoon Network made them add the scene where she is inside the crystal. It's hard to say if said meddling affected "Crystals Have Power", in which she is shown to be completely alive and healthy, and Finn and Jake manage to snap her out of being villainous.
    • Also completely altered the ending of "His Hero", which originally would have ended with Billy's throne being revealed as a Sealed Evil in a Can once Billy gets up, leading to a You Shall Not Pass moment. The new ending does get some crap past the radar though.
  • Fan Nickname: The muscular robot-armed Finn from "Mortal Folly" has been named Guts Finn by users on /co/.
  • Flip-Flop of God: At one point, the creator (Pen Ward) said that Tree Trunks was definitely dead. But then "Crystals Have Power" came along....
  • God Never Said That: Andy Ristaino (character designer) never said that "What Was Missing" was a musical. He said that the episode would kind of resemble one because it has a couple of songs in it.
    • This was the reason for the whole "BubblegumXMarceline Mathematical" fiasco. Frederator took down the video because it made it seem like the show was openly asking for plot input for further PBxMarcy development and Adam Muto, the storyboard artist and writer of the episode, didn't like the video framing that interpretation as only being romantic.
  • God Does Not Own This World: Pen Ward may be the main creative force behind Adventure Time, but if we wanna get really technical, Frederator owns the show, not him (though that should be kind of obvious). From an interview:
Cquote1

Pen: I get a lot of emails from people asking, "Can you give me permission to make this?" Well, first of all, I don't own Adventure Time, so I couldn't give permission if I wanted to.

Cquote2
Cquote1

Asker: Do you know who will be voicing Marshal Lee?
Natasha: arthur kade
(four weeks later)
Another Asker: why did you lie about Marshall Lee's voice?
Natasha: because I wanted to see an Arthur kade article on the wiki

Cquote2
  • Marth Debuted in Smash Bros: Flame Prince and Lady Lemongrab made their first official appearances in the comic book.
  • Meaningful Release Date: Wellll... accidentally. "Mystery Train" (the episode featuring Finn's 13th birthday) aired on March 14th (3/14 or "Pi Day"), which sorta means that Finn's birthday is on Pi Day. Mathematical!
  • Missing Episode: Some of the early episodes from Season 1 aren't re-run much.
  • Name's the Same: BMO shares his/her abbreviation (and colloquial pronunciation) with the Bank of Montreal, which makes the show kind of amusing for Canadian viewers.
  • Network to the Rescue: Nickelodeon planned to develop the short into a series, but didn't give the show its due diligence. When the rights of the short returned to Pendleton Ward in 2007, the idea was pitched to Cartoon Network and greenlit a year later.
  • No Export for You: "Fionna and Cake" was never aired in France and Belgium.
    • The DS version of Adventure Time: Hey Ice King! Why'd You Steal Our Garbage?! was never released outside the US. The 3DS version finally came to Europe over a year later, albeit in digital form only.
      • As Video Games Awesome! pointed out, Canada had only just started airing the first season, so there was no reason to release the game. The crew recieved episodes and the game through outside means.
  • Official Fan-Submitted Content: Me-mow.
  • Old Shame: Adam Muto is so ashamed of his performance of Billy's song in "His Hero" that he can never watch that part of the episode again.
  • One of Us: Pen likes Dungeons & Dragons. And Halo.
  • The Other Darrin:
    • Played straight with Zack Shada. Zack hit puberty and he couldn't get his voice to sound like Finn's anymore, so when the show went from being a Nickelodeon pilot to a Cartoon Network series, the voice director got Jeremy Shada (Zack's younger brother). Now averted with Jeremy, as rather than get rid of him because of his voice changing, the writers incorporated Jeremy's vocal change to Finn's by periodically aging him (at time of writing, he is 16).
    • Princess Bubblegum is played by Paige Moss in the pilot and Hynden Walch in the series.
    • Ice King is played by John Kassir in the pilot and Tom Kenny in the series.
    • In the pilot, Lady Rainicorn was voiced by Dee Bradley Baker and spoke nonsense. In the show, her voice actress is Niki Yang (the same Niki Yang who plays BMO) and the nonsense was replaced with fluent Korean.
    • Ghost Princess is played by Pen in "Loyalty to the King" and Maria Bamford in "Ghost Princess".
    • In the video game, Marceline is played by Jessie Seely instead of Olivia Olson. Granted, the difference is barely noticeable.
    • In "Davey", to make his disguise more authentic, Finn changes his vocal chords to a more adult tone of Davey Johnson.
    • In his first appearance, the Cosmic Owl has a feminine-sounding voice provided by Finn's actor, Jeremy Shada. In his next speaking role, M. Emmet Walsh took over the role and gave him a much more masculine, older-sounding voice.
    • John DiMaggio voiced Jake's brother Jermaine in "Crystals Have Power", but in "Jermaine", he's voiced by Tom Scharpling of Steven Universe.
    • Huntress Wizard is voiced by Maria Bamford in "Reign of Gunters", but in "Flute Spell", she's voiced by Jenny Slate, fresh out of Zootopia.
    • In "Five Short Tables", Prince Gumball is voiced by Keith Ferguson instead of Neil Patrick Harris, as the latter was likely too busy at the time.
  • Playing Against Type: Henry Rollins as Lady Rainicorn's father.
  • Real Life Relative: Olivia Olson is the daughter of Martin Olson, and they voice Marceline and her dad, the Lord of Evil (respectively).
  • Real Life Writes the Plot: Since Finn's teenage voice actor is developing a deeper voice, the writers decided to age up Finn from 12 to 13. They have also slowly introduced more mature themes like romance.
  • Rerun: Occasionally during syndication, two weeks pass before a new episode airs. For example a week after "Hug Wolf" aired and a week before "Princess Monster Wife" aired, "What Was Missing" was rerun.
  • Screwed by the Network: In 2015, the series began getting this treatment for unknown reasons, though the saturation of the schedule with Teen Titans Go! reruns (either for financial reasons, or so the network can artificially lower the series' ratings to justify shitcanning it), its age (the series premiered in 2010, and is pretty old by industry standards), or Moral Guardians (the show has had alot of violence, some gore, and many Getting Crap Past the Radar moments) are most likely to blame. The series wasn't rerun much in 2015, and new episodes are only advertised online.
  • Shrug of God: Whenever someone is asked whether Susan is human or not. The answer is usually "Come up with your own conclusion."
    • The same answer is usually given regarding the relationship between Lemongrab and his clone. Princess Bubblegum and Marceline used to get a lot of this to until Olivia Olson finally just flat out confirmed that they're ex-girlfriends. They can never explicitly say it in the series, though, because the series airs in countries where homosexuality is illegal (i.e. Russia).
  • Talking to Himself: Tom Kenny voices both the Ice King and his penguins.
    • While it's not clear if any of her characters talked to each other, stand-up comedian Maria Bamford has voiced twenty-six voices for the show, even doing male voices such as Manfried in "Slumber Party Panic" and the Butterfly Bandit in "The Other Tarts".
    • Justin Roiland voices Lemongrab, Lemongrab's clone, and all of their children.
  • Teasing Creator: A lot, if not most, of the staff count. Exhibit A, Adam Muto:
Cquote1

Asker: What was the deal with the worm king at the end of evicted? Who is that guy and what are his motives?
Adam Muto: There's a very interesting story there. He was there to en–wowowowowowowowowowo!!!

Cquote2
  • Throw It In: An unusual example. When Adam Muto originally pitched "What Was Missing", he flubbed the original line that read "I'll get your toy back, kid!", and he said "I'll get your kid back, toy!". They thought it was funny that way, so they kept the line flubbed.
  • Tribute to Fido: Marceline's poodle, Schwabl, is based off of Pen's friend Marie's dog, Schwabble.
    • Natasha's cat Pancake has been inserted into the show on many occasions.
  • Trolling Creator: Natasha Allegri, on an ambiguous level. For example, there's all her Bubblegum/Marceline fan art after "What Was Missing" when she claimed that she didn't even understand what shipping was. Hell, someone even called her out on it, and she responded, "I've never drawn them kissing." And later, when someone showed her a picture she drew of PB kissing Marceline, she said, "It doesn't have my signature on it." (That's only because she drew it for 4chan, and she doesn't sign those pictures.) And there's also when she drew this Fubblegum picture right before "Incendium" aired. And ALSO when she drew Flame Prince just to cause war-shipping in the gender-bent lovers of the fandom.
  • What Could Have Been:
  • Why Fandom Can't Have Nice Things: Allegedly, Pen stopped answering Formspring questions because he got tired answering the same ones over and over again.
    • The uproar that happened over the Ship Teasing in "What Was Missing" caused "Mathematical!" to stop producing recaps.
    • Nat and Pen used to make themselves known on /co/, but they stopped due to... obvious reasons. Nat later came back for the show's second anniversary. She also came back the Sunday night before the Season 4 finale.
  • The Wiki Rule: The fan-made wiki can be viewed here.
  • Word of Gay: Lead character designer Andy Ristaino revealed that the Gladiator Ghosts are gay after "Morituri Te Salutamus" aired, which explains all the Ho Yay between them in the episode.
  • Word of God: Princess Bubblegum is actually made of bubblegum, while the Ice King is around 600 years old.
    • Princess Bubblegum's composition is actually a plot point in "Mortal Recoil".
    • BMO is "sexless", being a robot, and also genderless. S/He has been called masculine or feminine pronouns by different characters. For what it's worth, BMO is voiced by a woman, and the episode title "BMO Noire" uses a feminine spelling for the French adjective; however, that same episode has BMO imagine having a relationship with a female (chicken), while in another s/he pretends to be a "real boy".
  • Working Title: Many of the episodes have had original titles that were changed. Some examples:
    • "The Royal Promise" → "Slumber Party Slaughter" → "Slumber Party Panic"
    • "Meet the Ice King" → "Prisoners of Love"
    • "Ice King and Son" → "What Is Life?"
    • "Return to Nightosphere" → "Marceline's Dad" → "Nightosphere" → "It Came from the Nightosphere"
    • "Click-click!" → "Blood under the Skin"
    • "Born to Die" → "The Real You"
    • "Finn the Wizard" → "Wizard"
    • "Door Jam" → "What Was Missing"
    • "An Assassin In Jake's Nose" → "Jake vs. Me-Mow"
    • "They Went To The Nightosphere" → "Return to the Nightosphere"
    • "Prince Huge" → "The Hard Easy"
    • "Help" → "I Remember You"
    • "LSP Gets Robbed" → "Candy Streets"
    • "Only Wizards Allowed" → "Wizards Only, Fools"
  • Write Who You Know: In "Return to the Nightosphere", Marceline's dad is officially given the name Hunson Abadeer. While it seems like a fancy name that means something, it's actually the name of the family Nissan of storyboard artist Jesse Moynihan when he was a child. [dead link]. Also the name of his first band; they wrote one song titled "Girls Girls Girls".
    • Tree Trunks was based on as well as written expressly for Livingston, who is an old friend of Pendleton Ward's family.
    • Not so much a person, but a urinal where Penn works was the inspiration for the Cosmic Owl. The light reflects off the very shiny metal urinal and resembles the Cosmic Owl. This strange little tidbit of triva came from a interview with Nintendo Power.
  • You Might Remember Me From: As mentioned, Fear Feaster is Luke Skywalker.