Wizards rule!
Peppermint Butler, starting over at the beginning, is just another inexperienced Wizard School student. When mysterious events at the campus cast suspicion on Pep, and his checkered past, can he master the mystic arts in time to prove his innocence?
Tropes:
- Academic Alpha Bitch: Spader is a male example; He's the star student at the school, very popular with both his classmates and teachers, and a smug, elitist jerk who enjoys mocking "Pepper Mint" at every opportunity.
- Amnesiac Dissonance: Subverted. Pepper Mint might be Peppermint Butler having been essentially Brought Down to Normal with a Heel–Face Brainwashing, but he's fully aware of who he used to be...since his former self is capable of manifesting as a spirit he vomits up, and is pushing him to become him again in full. In any other story, the reveal would have happened once the Amnesiac Hero met the Evil Cult and learned their plans. That said, he seems to at least have some morals.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Bufo instructs his students to stop with the walla in order to begin class.
- Brilliant, but Lazy: Cadebra is more interested in being a Stage Magician than a wizard, but when fighting against the Coconteppi-possessed Pepper Mint, she manages to use her magic to hit him in the stomach hard enough to make him vomit up the ichor.
- Continuity Nod:
- Coconteppi actually showed up earlier in the season 6 episode, "Gold Stars", as one of the monsters the Lich was alluding to.
- Peppermint Butler's scrapbook has pictures of him golfing with Hunson (a reference to a Funny Background Event in "Return to the Nightosphere"), him on a couch with Death and Jake (possibly a reference to the opener of "Wake Up") and him hanging with a possessed Cinnamon Bun (a reference to "The Suitor").
- Pepper Mint crossing his eyes is a reference to "Death in Bloom", where Pep-But taught Finn and Jake to enter the underworld by doing just that.
- Dr. Caledonius urges Pepper Mint to "start the second age of terror", The Second Age of Terror being an event alluded to by Matthew back in "The Mountain".
- Death of a Child: Played straight with Spader, who is reduced to a skeleton via the cult forcing him to drink Coconteppi's ichor.
- Demoted to Extra: After the final season set her up as a major character, Huntress Wizard is once again demoted to a background character in the special, only appearing for two seconds during Con Wizard's song.
- Evil Is Not a Toy: Unsurprisingly this is in full swing when the cult revived Coconteppi, he lays waste to the cultists. When will wizards learn?
- I Ate WHAT?!: During potions class, Ron James uses a reverse potions machine in class for showing what potions are made of. In demonstrations with Pepper Mint's coffee, he used the machine, and it turns out the coffee was made from leaves and rat bones. Pepper Mint is clearly disgusted with the revelation.
- I Hate Past Me: Played With. Pepper Mint doesn't like his former identity as Peppermint Butler...not because Pep But was an evil wizard, but because he's constantly manifesting to nag and berate Pep about being weak. Pepper Mint is fully on board with becoming a powerful dark wizard, just a different person than Peppermint Butler.
- Involuntary Shapeshifting: Larry is transformed into a small boulder and remains that way until the very end of the story. While everyone acted like he was still more or less the same, Larry's dialogue after Peppermint and Cadebra change him back indicates that he couldn't see or hear anything during the time, and is thus unaware of Spader's death.
- Not Me This Time: After Dr. Caledonius reveals how she had Spader drink the ichor of Coconteppi in an attempt to turn him into a vessel for the entity and it ended up killing him instead, Cadebra asks if she killed Bufo for failing to find the right vessel. Dr. Caledonia reveals that Bufo’s toad body actually died when he tried to take the ichor’s power for himself, though the tadpoles did survive.
- Persona Non Grata: Peppermint Butler is banned from setting foot in Wizard City due to his past dabbling in dark magic, and his dum-dum juiced self needs to create an alias ("Pepper Mint") just to get in and study there.
- Red Herring: While Bufo was far from innocent, he ultimately isn't the true villain of the story.
- Religion of Evil: Dr. Caledonius leads a cult trying to revive Coconteppi, one of Orgalorg's fellow evil cosmic entities.
- Stage Magician: Stage tricks are Cadebra's actual passion, preferring them over her actual magic. She even fantasizes about and later dons a classic black tuxedo and top hat.
- The Stinger: After the credits roll, we get a scene of Choose Goose deciding to turn evil and eat Bufo's tadpoles. It later sets up his Face–Heel Turn being completed by the time of his reappearance in Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake.
- Strong Family Resemblance: Cadebra looks very similar to her uncle Abracadaniel.
- Sudden Sequel Heel Syndrome:
- Played With regarding Peppermint Butler. While he was canonically evil, he was also friendly, loyal to Bubblegum and on good terms with Finn and Jake. Not only is he considerably nastier in the special, his evil side is not Played for Laughs. He cruelly berates Pepper Mint when he shows weakness and ineptitude and encourages him to drink the ichor of Coconteppi so he can become a havoc-wreaking host for an Eldritch Abomination.
- Played Straight for Choose Goose since he turns evil after surviving Coccontepi's ichor at the end of the episode.
- Synchronous Episodes: It's implied that the episode takes place at about the same time as "Obsidian", since Choose Goose is making his delivery of "illegal moisturizer" that he was trying to hide from Glassboy to Bufo in the opening scene. This would confirm that Obsidian takes place around 10 years after "Come Along With Me," same as this episode, while the time difference between them was unclear before this episode beyond Jake being dead by this point.
- Wizarding School: Wizard Arts of Wizard City people. (duh)
