YMMV / Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Did the Winter King transfer his madness to Bubblegum turning her into the Candy Queen deliberately in a moment of sanity as the Ice King or was it an accident from a spell the Ice King made? While it's clear that he's aware of him being the cause of the Candy Queen's madness and that he feels no remorse for it, the details of the point at which he made the transfer leaves the initial malice of the act up to interpretation.
• Alternate Self Shipping: Some fans have started shipping Simon with the Winter King, who is an alternate universe version of him, though given the twist in the episode, most seem to only do it jokingly. This motion isn't unfounded, especially considering that when Cake says that the Winter King and Simon should kiss, Winter King cheerfully says he's interested in doing so.
• Awesome Music:
  • Episode 1's opening song "Not Myself", an upbeat sitcom song that describes Fionna's depression.
  • The actual opening titles to the show, using samples from "To The Top" by Too Many Zooz, is as ominous, chaotic bop of a tune perfectly pairing up with the visuals, very telling of what interdimensional shenanigans our heroes will find themselves get into.
  • "Cake on the Loose", a solo song sung by Cake, her firsthand experience to Ooo, while at the same time behaving like a normal cat.
  • "Winter Wonder World", sung by the titular Winter King, about how he overcame the madness of the crown's power.
• Continuity Lockout: Much like Adventure Time: Distant Lands, the spin-off is a proper continuation of the original series, meaning if you haven't watched the original series and Distant Lands, you're going to get confused. In fact, several reviews of the show before its premiere pointed out that the spin-off feels more like a sequel than Distant Lands, and it heavily relies on knowledge of everything before watching it.
• Crack Pairing: Quite a few people have taken to shipping Simon with Minerva, despite the two only ever interacting at the end of "Cheers" where she's giving him therapy.
• Crossover Ship: It's become a trends to ship Fionna with Bee seeing as how both are Womanchild Magical Girl protagonists co/created by Natasha Allegri.
• Cry for the Devil: Believe it or not, the Lich, of all people, receives this in "Jerry". While it's to an extent as he is responsible for wiping out all life in an alternate universe, it's shown that he's become a shell of his former self due to being left without a purpose now that he's finally succeeded in his mission, up to the point where he can't even be bothered to kill Fiona, Cake, and Simon, knowing that he'll just be depressed again. Despite everything he's done, it surprisingly comes across as rather pitiable. Doesn't get any better for him in the next episode either, where he finally gets to confront GOLB/Betty about his feelings of emptiness only to be ripped apart and transformed into a Tetris block for his trouble.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Some fans who are especially fond of Scarab try to present him as only doing his job, echoing the character himself complaining he did "everything right." They usually don't have any defense against his entirely petty rage-driven attempt to destroy Fionna's universe out of pure envy and indignation, claiming it's "understandable" at best and outright ignoring it even happened at worst.
• Dry Docked Ship: Several fans have joked about Prismo and Scarab not only being exes, but outright divorced.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • The Winter King and The Candy Queen became instant fan favorites upon their debut. They're cool Role Swap AU versions of PB and Ice King. One of which is Crazy Is Cool and the other has a hidden dark nature (and is voiced by Brian David Gilbert). Many consider their episode to the highlight of Season One.
  • The Star and Vamp World PB.The Star is genuinely scary, charismatic, wears cool looking gothic dresses and manages to genuinely be a stylishly evil Vampire Monarch. VWPB is a more tomboyish version of regular Bonnie who acts as a military general and is even more of anti-heroine.
• Evil Is Cool:
  • While "evil" may be too strong of a word, Scarab has gained quite a few fans thanks to his cool design and being a total Determinator who will not stop until he's hunted Fiona and Cake down. The fact that he's mostly just doing his job, with Fiona and Cake inadvertently making things worse, has even caused some to be Rooting for the Empire.
  • Candy Queen is an alternate evil and Crazy Is Cool version of Princess Bubblegum who's been very well received. She's got a great design, a super fun over-the-top personality and has a fantastic Villain Song in "Baked with Love" that's caught on with people.
  • "The Star" is a version of Marceline who's genuinely evil and has been very well received by fans. She's genuinely scary, charismatic, wears cool looking gothic dresses and manages to genuinely be a stylishly evil Vampire Monarch.
• Fan Nickname: The Lemoncarbs have been dubbed "Lemonkarens" by fans due to them looking and acting like stereotypical Karens.
• Fanfic Fuel:
  • Fionna Campbell's world being essentially a Modern AU to the fanfic world inspired fans to come up with ideas about what happened to characters whose human counterparts weren't shown. This also applies in reverse to characters like Hunter and female Fern, whom have fans making stories about how their fanfic counterparts might have acted.
  • Because the Role Swap AU premise of Winter World was revealed to be the result of that world's Simon forcing his madness upon Princess Bubblegum, fans made AUs of the world to examine what a "true" role swap would be like (the Winter King and Candy Queen roles being natural, what that world's Finn might have been like, etc.)
  • With Fionnaworld being canonized at the end of the miniseries, fans ran with the premise that there are now alternate universes that have versions of them. Whether this means that there are genderbent versions of universes like Farmworld and Vampire World,^note While genderbending alternate timelines has been a staple since the original series and the dubiously canon How to Warrior book, this is specifically referring to genderbent worlds with the traits of the mundane Fionnaworld or if that means there's a world where the fanfic counterparts can exist alongside the changes made to the original Fionnaworld, depends on the fic.
• He's Just Hiding: Farmworld Finn gets stomped pretty hard by Scarab's legs, like two long icepicks slammed into the side of his head. However, since it was Bloodless Carnage and we don't get confirmation of his death on-screen, many fans have liked to point out how animal hats were previously stated to be resistant to puncture attacks (such as vampire bites) so he very well may have survived. The ending sheds no light on his well-being, although his son and Destiny's daughter do appear again they make no mention of Farmworld Finn or his condition.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: One of Fionna and Cake's alternate worlds is where Marceline becomes the evil human-killing vampire queen The Star due to her being raised by the Vampire King instead of Simon and she's implied to have a Villainous Crush towards her version of Princess Bubblegum named Bonnie who has a buzz cut. A couple of months afterwards, Invincible Season 2 would showcase an alternate universe where Mark joined his evil father Omni-Man in wiping out humanity. This Mark has a more explicit twisted love for his version of Eve who has a shaved head, drawing parallel's to The Star and her dynamics with the Vampire King and Bonnie. The Star and Mark #646 are also both brunettes while Eve #646 and Bonnie are associated with pink.
• Harsher in Hindsight: As "Jerry" is implied to take place in the original timeline (from seasons 1 through 4 of Adventure Time), it makes everything post Season 5 this trope. All the original versions of everyone in Ooo have been dead for almost two decades in-universe.
• Idiosyncratic Ship Naming: The commonly agreed-upon ship name for Prismo and Scarab is “Prohibited Wish” in reference to their roles as a Wish Master and a God Auditor, respectively.
• LGBT Fanbase:
  • Not surprising, considering the source material, but once it was made clear that Gary and Marshall would become a couple, just like their female counterparts, gay men were all over it. This was furthered when this actually happened on screen, with their subplot in episode 6 being focused on a Meet Cute between them and subsequent wholesome, but flirtatious interactions.
  • Gay men have similarly quite enjoyed adult Finn's looks as a rugged and handsome man.
• Memetic Badass: After fans noticed the Baby Universe Finn was left behind all alone in the vampire-infested universe with an uncertainty on his final fate, speculation led to him being theorized to eventually grow up into a vampire slaying One-Man Army who'd singlehandedly defeat all the vampires and save the world (and some other subjokes instead have him slay the entirety of the vampires as a baby since it's unknown if he'll grow up due to his origins). These were all ultimately jossed when Baby Finn was planted into Fionna's universe at the end of the series, but AUs for the ideas still run rampant after the fact.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Toxic Yuri / Healthy Yaoi. ^ExplanationA joke about how, in "The Star", Marceline and Bubblegum are mortal enemies despite constant flirting, while Gary and Marshall have a much more wholesome budding romance dynamic.
  • Bandit Heeler takes Scarab's legs. ^ExplanationScarab's boss, Orbo, is voiced by David McCormack. He also voices Bandit Heeler in the popular kids' show Bluey. Almost immediately after the episodes' release, various pieces of fan art depicting Bandit being Scarab's boss, Bandit hanging out with Orbo, or the audio of Orbo's last scene in "Jerry" where he threatens to take Scarab's legs being used to make animations of Bandit literally taking them, cropped up online.
  • Tetris^{Explanation (SPOILERS for "Casper and Nova")}In "Casper and Nova", the Lich visits GOLB, who turns him into one of its blocks. Fans immediately began poking fun at how the blocks looked like tetrominos and joked accordingly, doing things like putting music over the scene and saying GOLBetty was a fan of Tetris.
    • "I drew the Lich."^Explanation Seeing the Lich get reduced to so simple a form has led people to drawing his fate as a joke.
• No Yay: Seems reception to Fionna being shipped with Farmworld Finn or the Winter King has been met with a pretty chilly if disinterested response from fans.
• Salvaged Story: After some fans were left dissatisfied with the lack of clarity behind the status of Finn and Huntress Wizard's relationship in Adventure Time: Distant Lands, "Simon Petrikov" confirms that the two are indeed still seeing each other. The series goes even further with the confirmation that many of their alternate selves are destined to be together, such as Farmworld Finn. And by the end of the series, the show starts teasing Fionna with Hunter.
• Signature Scene: The scene where Fionna takes off her pants in front of Queenie in the first episode and showing the two-finger salute after that quickly gained notoriety on the internet, not only to show the spin-off was going to be very different than the original series, but also for obvious reasons.
• Tainted by the Preview: While the multiverse was already established in the original series, it becoming the main focus of the plot made some fans groan, thanks in part of the concept being over exposed to mainstream media such as games, cartoons, movies and the two biggest superhero movie franchises outside of comics in the years leading up to its airing. However, according to an interview with Adam Muto, he's already aware of how much the concept has been used and revealed that the multiverse will play a different role than people are familiar with.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • General consensus is while the Scarab is a visually impressive and imposing character, the fact we know so little about him and never really delve into his backstory or motives makes him come off as wasted potential. The only things we know for sure about Scarab is he always wanted to be a Wishmaster, hates Prismo, and in general is a micro-managing middle-manager for the higher powers that no one seems to really get along with.
  • It is a common thread in every universe visited that some version of Simon/Ice King had something to do with how that world turned out, either actively or passively. The only Ice King variant excluded from this is Fionna's own, both Ice Cream Queen and her fanfic counterpart Ice Queen, as because Simon himself is the important figure, she can't do much more than cameo.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Scarab is played as a character who is Hated by All just for doing his job, with the only addition being that he's a bit unfriendly. Across the season he's continuously treated as a Butt-Monkey by the narrative and in "Jerry" it's revealed even his bosses hate him for merely doing the job they gave him. Scarab is also right about Prismo misusing his own power and Fionna and Cake altering universes they come across for the worse. When he finally snaps in the last episode, he's treated with no sympathy for everything that's happened, and his only consolation after his defeat is Prismo seemingly not holding a grudge. Granted, he did sort of get what he wanted. While he isn’t a Wish Master, he’s working under Prismo who lets him write out new world ideas and is a nicer boss compared to his old one.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: Unlike the series it is directly related to (which granted, has a lot of mature situations), this one does not have the pretense of being aimed at kids, as it has a TV-14 rating and is both Bloodier and Gorier and Ruder and Cruder than the original series. However, this didn't stop YouTube from marking the trailer for kids before later changing it back a few days after the decision. Cartoon Network Latin America and Brazil even planned to air the miniseries since its announcement, but cancelled it at the last minute because of the adult content in it. Ironically enough, it did manage to air on Cartoon Network Canada (granted, is a lot more lenient towards mature content than it's American counterpart due to differences in BS&P, but still quite odd.)
• The Woobie: Simon, unsurprisingly, continues his woobie status from Adventure Time. Although he's freed from the crown's influence, Simon is still traumatized by his time as the Ice King and is struggling to find a purpose in life. On top of that, he's still trying to find a way to bring back Betty, but all of his efforts thus far have been in vain. By the final episode he's in a better place, but he still has a long way to go for his mental health.

---