Whether you're a lifelong fan of Adventure Time, a newcomer to the show, or you just
want to know what the buzz is all about, these behind-the-scenes facts are sure to get you
feeling lumpy.
This is everything you don’t know about Adventure Time.
Just picture it: at a mall somewhere in America, a Nickelodeon programming executive walks
by a Hot Topic.
He or she sees the plethora of Adventure Time merchandise on sale, from the "Mathematical!"
keychains to the plush Jake toys to the Finn-style white hats.
And they’d weep if they could, because while Adventure Time has been a massive critical
and commercial success for Cartoon Network since its debut on the channel in 2010, the
show was actually rejected by Nickelodeon, the once-prime destination for kid-friendly
entertainment.
Twice.
"Re re re re re jected!"
Landing a job on the staff of a long-running Cartoon Network series is an achievement unto
itself.
But it’s even more meaningful for writers, animators, and voice actors when that show
is something like Adventure Time, which was immensely popular, explosively creative, and
on the air long enough to guarantee a paycheck.
Creator Pendleton Ward and other higher-ups on the show clearly had an eye for talent
too, because the show's credits seem to also serve as a list of the most important names
in 21st-century animation.
Many cartoon visionaries got their big breaks making the Land of Ooo come to life for Cartoon
Network, and Cartoon Network was savvy enough to keep them and their talents in the family.
Rebecca Sugar wrote 22 early episodes of Adventure Time before moving on to her own series, Steven
Universe.
Patrick McHale penned nearly 100 episodes over the show's entire run, taking some time
in the middle to develop his fantasy miniseries Over the Garden Wall.
J.G.
Quintel and Pete Browngardt both served on the staff before leaving to focus on their
own boundary-pushing series, Regular Show and Uncle Grandpa, respectively.
Finally, voice actor Justin Roiland became a legend to animation fans after playing the
Earl of Lemongrab on Adventure Time, before going on to co-create a little show called
Rick and Morty.
"Unacceptable!"
By now, Adventure Time fans will be very familiar with the voice of Jeremy Shada, the actor
who brings Finn the Human to life.
However, the show came close to getting an entirely different voice actor for the role:
Jeremy's brother, Zack.
Zack voiced the character in the Adventure Time pilot, back when the character was called
"Pen" instead of "Finn”.
However, when the show became a full series three years later, Zack's voice had already
changed, and he could no longer convincingly portray a younger, teenaged Finn.
His younger brother realized that he sounded a lot like Zack once did, decided to audition,
and got the role for himself.
Of course, Jeremy's own voice was destined to change eventually, so the show’s creators
made the decision to have the character age as the series progresses.
"You fool!
Your new-fangled thinking will get us all killed!"
"Youth culture forever!"
The character of Marceline became a fan-favorite character almost as soon as she appeared on
the show.
She originally served as a kind of antagonist for Finn and Jake, but soon became their gothy,
guitar-rocking older friend.
Like many of the show’s characters, she carries a little baggage from the past, which
stems mostly from her daddy issues.
"He's not worth the effort."
Eventually, Finn and Jake encounter her father, who turns out to be a kind of evil VIP: he’s
the ruler of the Nightosphere, which is pretty much Adventure Time's version of hell.
But to Marceline’s voice actor, he's an entirely different kind of VIP: her father.
"You are by far the most evil thing I’ve encountered.
Offer your soul to me, Dark One!"
Marceline’s voice actor is Olivia Olson, and it’s her adoptive father, Martin Olson,
who plays her onscreen father, Hunson Abadeer.
The elder Olson is a veteran comedian and singer, as well as a writer for shows such
as Phineas and Ferb.
But it’s Adventure Time which seems to hold a special place in Olson’s heart, in addition
to playing Abadeer, he was also the writer of a number of popular Adventure Time books,
including the official encyclopedia, The Enchiridion and Marcy’s Super Secret Scrapbook.
One of the longest-running areas of discussion surrounding Adventure Time is whether Marceline
and Princess Bubblegum were ever a couple in the past.
This speculation really kicked into gear after the third season episode "What Was Missing",
in which a mysterious creature steals personal items from different characters and hides
them behind a mysterious door.
"This door shall yield to no command, save for a song from a genuine band.
What is this gripper-grap?"
The characters decide to form an makeshift band, and veteran singer Marceline starts
singing a breezy song about sucking the color out of Princess Bubblegum's face.
When Bubblegum objects, Marceline launches into a song that sarcastically apologizes
for not treating Bubblegum like a goddess, asks if Marceline wasn’t sweet enough for
her, and proclaims that Marcy shouldn't have to prove anything to her.
The song makes it sound a lot like the two characters were once a couple, which makes
it all the more noteworthy when the item stolen from Princess Bubblegum turns out to be a
T-shirt from Marceline that the princess sleeps in each night.
Fans wrote reams of fanfiction and fan art about this new pairing, which they dubbed
"Bubbline.”
And the series continued dropping hints that almost but-not-quite confirmed the characters'
romantic history.
Because these were only hints and the pairing was never quite confirmed, fan debate about
this forbidden love became very intense.
However, that debate came to an end after the show’s last episode, when Bubblegum
and Marceline finally kissed.
Adventure Time is a hard show to pigeonhole.
It's science-fiction to an extent, since it takes place in a futuristic dystopia.
But it's also fantasy, what with all the magical wizards, princesses, and talking unicorns.
Sometimes it's very funny, sometimes it's serious, and sometimes it's very sad.
The show even gender-swapped itself for a while with the characters of Fionna and Cake
having adventures in an alternate show universe.
Of course, all those rich layers just make fans love Adventure Time more, but the show's
complexity stymied the Cartoon Network head office.
"It's so confusing!"
An anonymous CN staffer told IndieWire:
"It was a risk.
People at the network were scratching their heads.
It never really fit into a category, so Cartoon Network didn't really have a model in which
to manage its ever-growing popularity."
Even the target age for the show’s audience has caused some contention.
Fred Seibert, one of the show’s producers, told IndieWire:
"Cartoon Network aims for kids ages 2 to 14.
The fact that Adventure Time has a significantly larger audience for that, a more expansive
one, is great gravy… but they can’t benefit from it directly.”
Even a show as out there and wildly original as Adventure Time has to have taken something
as inspiration, and Adventure Time took cues from some very unexpected places.
In 2012, the show’s creative leaders Pendleton Ward and Rebecca Sugar told io9 that their
most unlikely source of inspiration was the 2010 made-for-ABC family telefilm Beauty & the
Briefcase.
The plot?
Hilary Duff plays a lovelorn freelance writer who pitches a story to Cosmopolitan about
going undercover at a financial company to look for romance.
Ward said:
"I came home one day and my roommate was watching it on Netflix.
That led to an episode where Lumpy Space Princess wants to write a book and goes undercover."
In 2016, showrunner Adam Muto told the Huffington Post about the inspirations behind the physical
appearance of Martin Mertens, Finn's biological dad.
Muto apparently wanted to make Martin "as roguish and dishonorable as Finn is heroic."
The character's pointy and revealing red one-piece is a direct riff on the one Sean Connery wears
in the notorious 1974 sci-fi dud Zardoz.
Adventure Time was often dark and almost always weird, but Cartoon Network generally took
a hands-off approach to the show.
But while Adventure Time's writers had the freedom to explore the Land of Ooo and its
characters, keep in mind that Cartoon Network is first and foremost a channel geared toward
children, which means some content restrictions were put in place.
Pendleton Ward told AV Club in 2012 that most of the changes he and his staff had to make
came from the show’s predilection for toilet humor.
Ward recalls one particular instance in which he was finalizing the audio for an episode
at a post-production facility.
For the story and its joke to work, the episode had to contain "a really long fart sound."
"Don't squeeze me I'll fart!"
Ward was forced to get on the phone and have a serious conversation with the network about
making sure that fart wouldn’t be cut from the episode.
He and this de facto censor even went back and forth about how juicy it could be.
In the end, Ward and the network representative agreed the fart wouldn't be juicy, but dry
and not at all "diarrhetic."
Ward then hung up and immediately made the Cartoon Network-sanctioned fart sound into
the microphone himself.
With his mouth, of course.
"Um, how do I say you’re the grossest thing ever without offending you?"
The final episode of a long-running series is always going to be an emotional affair.
Filming a finale marks the end of a long, often life-changing chapter for actors, and
when their characters are hugging each other goodbye, those tears and choking sobs are
likely more real than make-believe.
Sadly, you don’t quite get that raw, on-screen emotion with animated shows.
Nonetheless, behind the scenes those voice actors may very well have needed a moment
to regain their composure.
John DiMaggio portrayed Jake the Dog on Adventure Time for eight years.
Although he’s a veteran voice actor, this particular gig will probably go down as his
most popular, maybe even more so than his role as Bender on Futurama.
So giving up the show was never going to be easy.
At 2018’s San Diego Comic-Con, DiMaggio said:
"I'm going to miss how much Jake became a part of me, and I became a part of Jake."
But, it got much worse after it was all over.
"I was driving home, and I all of a sudden just burst into tears.
It shocked me.
I just realized how connected I was, emotionally."
Whether or not a rumored movie ever comes to fruition, Adventure Time may still be subject
to the whims of the television world from which it recently departed.
The name of the game in TV right now is reboots and revivals, and it seems like every halfway-popular
show from decades ago is now back on screens.
It's even a phenomenon in the animated world, as evidenced by the recent revivals of She-Ra,
ThunderCats, and allegedly, King of the Hill.
New episodes of Adventure Time also seem to be an inevitability.
Adventure Time showrunner Adam Muto told Dot and Line:
"I think that will just happen, and it's when it will happen.
That's just how franchises are now.
Will it happen now or 10 years from now?
I don't know."
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