Characters / Adventure Time: Main

aka: Adventure Time Princess Bubblegum

Adventure Time Main Character Index
Main Characters (Ice King) | Antagonists and Enemies | Land of Ooo (The Candy Kingdom | Other Kingdoms) | Other Characters | Multiverse Characters

The main characters of Adventure Time.

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Finn the Human

Finn Mertens/Finn the Human

"Mathematical!"

Voiced by: Jeremy Shada, Jonathan Frakes (adult), David Bradley (elderly)

"Is that what you think adventurers do? Die and make all your friends feel terrible 'cause they couldn't save you?!"

The intrepid human boy and one of the two lead characters of the series. Hyperactive with a love of adventure and good deeds. That thing on his head is actually a hat. Originally 12 years old, he gets older as the series progresses.

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• 10-Minute Retirement: In "Freak City", Finn goes through one of these after getting turned into a foot, during which he memorably goes into Auto-Tuned song. Though it's more thirty seconds than ten minutes. The later episode "Davey" is built around this also with him developing a split personality.
• Adoption Angst: Finn was raised by a family of talking dogs after the parents found him as a baby. Though he loves his adoptive parents, Margaret and Joshua, he also angsts over not knowing where he came from or who his birth parents are, all the more punctuated by the fact that he's never met another human being. When he does eventually meet his biological father, he is disappointed to find that Martin does not actually care about him. Thankfully, meeting his biological mother goes over much better.
• Aesop Amnesia: Fionna and Cake shows Finn continuing his previous habits of relying on adventuring to address emotional trauma instead of actually dealing with it. When he sees Simon in a depressed existential crisis over losing Betty and being stuck in a world he doesn't belong in, he decides to take Simon on an adventure. During the adventure, Simon brings back some past memories with Betty, though Finn tells Simon not to talk about sad stuff, believing it is better to forget about it. It's clear that Jake's death has caused him to regress to his previous mentality of repressing emotional trauma, given how Finn outright admits to Jake in the afterlife that a part of him was always waiting to die to reunite with Jake again.
• Amazon Chaser: He often gets starry eyed whenever Flame Princess is fighting someone.
  • In fact, let's run down the list of his love interests: Princess Bubblegum, Flame Princess, and Huntress Wizard. Yeah, the guy Has a Type.
  • Averted, however, in Pillow World, where he settles down for married life with the much lower-key Roselinen.
• Ambiguously Bi: He had a crush on Princess Bubblegum, and went into a relationship with Flame Princess, but has kissed people of his gender willingly a few times. Finn reached puberty without ever having met somebody of the same species as him, so it's quite plausible that his sexuality might be a bit... undirected.
• Amicable Exes: With Flame Princess. It took a genuinely long time and a lot of growing up until he could honestly become her friend and come to terms that they are Better as Friends, as well as genuinely apologize for his actions in "Frost & Fire" and move on. He mentions in "Elements" that he is proud of the friendship they built and that he likes having her as a friend.
• An Arm and a Leg: In "Escape from the Citadel", Finn loses his right arm when he tries to tether himself to his father's star ship so that he won't escape from the Citadel. His grass blade mutates and envelops his arm, twisting it into a horrific mass of grassy mutated flesh, and the force of the ship flying out of the Citadel rips his grass arm off leaving him without an arm beneath the elbow. Some of the guardian's blood manages to get on his arm afterward. Sporting a flower on his stub though it seems it'll take time for the grass blade to recover.
  • In "Breezy", the arm comes back when the flower left by the grass sword turns into a tree over Finn's arm stub and leaves behind the arm covered in a waxy substance; this happens after Finn finally feels a warm, loving feeling after seeing a vision of Princess Bubblegum. Yeah, it's pretty weird.
  • In "Reboot", Finn alienates the grass sword during a moment of pacifism, causing it to detach and merge with the Finn Sword instead, forming a new entity and taking the new arm he'd gotten in "Breezy" with it.
• Angst? What Angst?: Invoked. He hates the process of facing and treating traumatization, so he applies Brain Bleach or just suppresses his emotions outright. In fact, when confronted with disturbing experiences, he places them in the Vault.
  • Finn meets with a cloud spirit living in a drifting cloud who teaches Finn a lesson on this subject. The spirit tells Finn not to bottle up his feelings but to instead dwell on them, because that's the only way you'll ever comes to terms with those feelings. Finn eventually does learn his lesson at the end of the episode as he finally lets go of his anger.
    • Unfortunately, this doesn't mean that Finn is able to face the trauma of everything that a seasoned veteran hero has faced, especially at his age.
      Jake: You just went through some outrageous beeswax with losing your favorite arm and etcetera. You can't just expect to bounce back to normal.
      Finn (genuinely surprised): I can't?
• Animal Motifs: Butterflies. Finn has had a lot of past lives, one of which was a butterfly, and the series goes over his metamorphosis from inexperienced boy-adventurer to a full-blown hero. This was in play from all the way back in season 3's "Still" where he summons a swarm of butterflies as his astral beast.
• Artificial Limbs: Alternate depictions of Finn always show his right arm to be a crude prosthetic, such as his dream of himself as an adult.
  • Even applies to his past life as Shoko.
  • Also, his "lifetime" spent in the pillow universe. How the heck he lost an arm in a world made up entirely of pillows is anyone's guess.
  • Now that Finn has lost his right arm, his need for one is perfectly justified. In a recent episode we see Finn experiment with replacement arms that Princess Bubblegum made for him, which all annoy him because they don't handle anything like his old arm. Eventually the flower in his stub of an arm gives him an artificial arm made out of psychic, white glowing energy.
    • "Breezy" has the flower on Finn's arm grow into a large tree, which eventually bursts leaving behind a bit of a hollow log on his arm. When that's peeled off, a brand new, perfectly healed arm is revealed covered in sap.
    • In "The Comet," it's revealed the arm is still somewhat artificial. The thorn reappears and we see that the thorn was the Grass Sword growing. When the fake skin breaks off, we see it's a large vine that Finn uses as a whip to stop Orgalorg before it makes an arm and hand shaped vine.
    • As of "Two Swords", he matches his alternate counterparts'. After the grass sword freed itself from his body in "Reboot", and took his arm with it, Princess Bubblegum has outfitted him with a prosthetic replacement. She opts for a slender metal model instead of one made of candy this time.
    • In the series finale, he loses his metal arm in the fight against GOLB. He doesn't get it back and in fact seems content with living with one arm, at least for a while.
    • "Together Again" shows that in his final years up to his death, Finn's right arm was now completely mechanical, and though it was cruder than the one Bonnie had given him, it was sturdier and had a metal pauldron.
• Auto-Tune: He's able to switch this effect on and off for his actual singing voice after he swallows a tiny computer immediately prior to "The Jiggler".
• Awesome Backpack: His big, green, circular backpack.
• Badass Adorable: He skinned a polar bear for his hat as a baby. Do the math.
• Badass Decay: In-Universe. In the second half of Season 5. After his breakup with Flame Princess, he gets into a rut, he's more focused on wooing his old love interests when they want him doing heroic things instead. It's so bad, he gets overshadowed by Cinnamon Bun of all people (granted, he's Taken A Level In Badass.)
• Badass Normal: He fist fights monsters or uses some other mundane tool on a regular basis; including the Lich.
• Badass Pacifist: He prevented the Gum War without fighting Fern or Gumbald, instead using the Nightmare Juice as an opportunity to work out everyone's issues, including his and Fern's.
• Barbarian Long Hair: While it was long, straight and beautiful during his youth, by Fionna and Cake it's grown wild and reaches out of his hat sticking every direction, pairing well with his beard and increased muscle mass to make him look like an experienced adventurer.
• Barbarian Hero: A downplayed, Lighter and Softer example, due to him being an adolescent, and more prevalent in the earlier seasons. Finn lives in an isolated area in the Grasslands of Ooo, is fairly unsophisticated, has Blood Knight tendencies, is stronger than you would expect from the average mortal, usually forgoes wearing armor in combat,and has unbelievably long flowing hair underneath his white hat, which he skinned from a bear as a child. He also has more than a few magical nemeses, most prominently the Ice King and the Lich, both of whom he has employed direct physical force to defeat in the past.
• Better as Friends: With pretty much everyone of his love interests.
  • With Marceline, both realized they don't have any interest in being more than friends.
  • With Flame Princess, the events of "Frost & Fire" have permanently damaged any possible romantic outcome of their relationship, with Finn betraying her trust. While he still chases her for a longer while, she refuses anything but friendship from him. After several events in his life, he came to understand that they won't be together, at least for a long while and is proud of the friendship and trust they built with each other.
  • With Princess Bubblegum, it's actually been on and off. While he did move on from her and to Flame Princess, it's evident even in Season 7 and 8 that he harbors strong feelings for her. During a vision when processing the trauma of his lost arm and the flower that was there, he saw Bubblegum there and the feeling of happiness allowed his arm (or a plant-based facsimile) to grow back. When LSP gets Finn to go to his happy place (after he succumbed to the rage of the corruption of the Fire Kingdom), it's him (or rather a younger him) with a younger PB. However, it's possible this is just because of feelings of friendship and family, or perhaps a hint that Bubblegum actually is bottling up her emotions.
    • Almost certainly Better as Friends as of the series finale. Not only is Bubblegum now the Official Couple with Marceline, but when she kisses Finn for the last time, he doesn't get his usual Luminescent Blush—just smiles.
  • It's initially played straight with Huntress Wizard, who finds Finn's attraction to her and her own to him inconvenient considering "exceptional beasts" such as themselves should not be together, instead trying to take on a more platonic relationship. That said, she does progressively seem to open up to the idea of romance, possibly subverting the trope, although it remains unclear by the end of the series if they're a romantic pairing yet or not.
• Beware the Nice Ones: As nice a guy as he is, it would be unwise to get on his bad side.
• Big Brother Instinct: He is fiercely protective over Jake, despite being the younger brother.
  • In "Evicted", Marceline kind of killed Jake for a minute. Finn's reaction was... not pretty.◊
  • In "To Cut a Woman's Hair", the witch merely uses Jake as a cushion (albeit in the context of Finn's requiring someone to be in "danger" in order to help her), and Finn charges.
  • When Jake is transformed into a Lumpy Space guy.
    "I f-f-f... AAAAHHHHHH I'LL KILL YOU LUMPY SPAAACE!"
  • He also shows this towards Fern by constantly supporting and encouraging him, getting over the trauma of killing Fern by picturing him as someone Finn needs to save and killing the Grass Demon to protect him.
• Blood Knight: He may be in it mostly to slay evil, but there's no denying that he really likes fighting for its own sake ("If you're an evil witch, I will punch you for FUN!") When he wins the Fight King's "favor," he really hams it up.
  • Toward the end of the series, he's moved on from this, and spends the last few episodes actively working to prevent a war between Bubblegum and Gumbald.
• Bodyguard Crush: On Princess Bubblegum, though as time goes on he has more or less gotten over it, with only tiny hints that he still has feelings for her.
• Book Dumb: See Idiot Hero.
  • Seemingly repaired as of "Dentist."
• Broken Ace: Multiple times, but he always manages to pick himself back up.
• Celibate Hero: After his breakup with Flame Princess Finn decides to forgo romance entirely. That is, until he mets Huntress Wizard.
• Character Development: Happens twice, both negatively and positively. First becoming a teenager with hormones makes him more selfish, self obsessed, putting a wet dream before doing good and being prone to depression. And then in season seven/eight, after going through all that, he's an emotionally mature young man who can apologize to Flame Princess for manipulating her and can have more chill relationships.
  • On a grander scale, Finn's grown from a rowdy kid that loved fighting to a generally rational young man that's more interested in helping people as a whole.
• Characterization Marches On: Early episodes had him be the more wild Chaotic Good half of the main duo ("I'll slay anything that's evil, that's my deal."), before making him into The Paragon.
• Chick Magnet: So far, lots of princesses want to give Finn a peck on the cheek.
  • Also he foolishly promised a pack of princesses that he'd get them married to whomever they wanted. Slime Princess wanted him (and was only the first one to speak up).
  • During "To Cut a Woman's Hair," every princess he talks to seems to think he's in love with them (except Princess Beautiful, fortunately). He eventually gets Princess Bubblegum to go to the forest and have dinner with him.
    "If there's one thing I learned today, it's that I'm awesome at talking to ladies."!
  • The fact that Huntress Wizard is still hanging around him◊ in "Wheels" proves it: Finn has so much game he pulls the ladies in his sleep.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: In one episode, he displays this, the reason being when he was a baby, he was left alone in the forest and nobody came to help him. It's downplayed in general; he takes his hero work as a calling in life, but tries not to step on anyone's toes.
• Collector of the Strange: In "The Jiggler" it's revealed he has a glass eye collection. It's never mentioned again.
• Colorblind Confusion: In "Red Starved", Finn's shown to be red-green colorblind after he mistakes a green emerald for a red ruby. Strangely, Jake (a dog) CAN tell the difference, and is the one to correct him.
• Combat Sadomasochist: The kid jumped into a volcano for fun. You finish the math.
  "You just gotta imagine that every bruise is a hickey from the universe. And everyone wants to get with the universe."
• Compressed Hair: Hair that would probably go down to his feet, until he cut it off.
• The Conscience: Good grief yes. Finn's heroic nature counterbalances his closest's friends amoral tendencies. While it tends to be played for laughs with Jake, it's played more seriously (and more subtlety) with Marceline and Princess Bubblegum.
  Jake: Look at all this grave booty! CHA-CHING!
  Finn: Jake! You LOOTED? That's bad, man!
  Jake: Oh... I didn't know it was wrong...
  Finn: (sigh) Come on, let's put all of this back.
  Jake: What?! All of it?!
  Finn: Yes, Jake.
• Cool Sword:
  • His first one has a blade of gold. The second has an interesting, woody handle and an Absurdly Sharp Blade.
  • It doesn't get any cooler than a black hole sword in "The Real You".
  • From "Dad's Dungeon" to "Play Date", he gets a sword made out of a demon's blood.
  • From "Blade of Grass" to "Escape from Citadel", he gets a cursed blade made of grass that can cut through anything.
  • As of "Is That You?", he has the Finn Sword, a sword made from an alternate version of himself.
  • After the Finn Sword and Grass Sword combine to create Fern, Finn wields the rapier-like blade he got from Rattleballs.
  • He gets his final sword in "Marcy & Hunson," when Peppermint Butler summons the Lord of Evil to make Finn a sword infused with the power of the Nightosphere. A giant version of this is still being used by an adult Sweet P 1,000 years in the future.
• Cool Uncle: He seems to be so in Distant Lands while hanging out With Bronwyn. Or in Fionna and Cake where he also do quests with TV
• Cool Old Guy: "Together Again" shows he remains just as awesome as an old man, having continued adventuring up until his death.
• Crazy Jealous Guy: He gets extremely jealous when someone comes in the way of him and Princess Bubblegum or Jake or FP.
• Creepy Child: From snuggling a piece of Princess Bubblegum's hair to watching Jake sleep and taking pictures, Finn can be a disturbing child at times. It's implied this is the result of some serious abandonment issues.
• Cursed with Awesome: The Grass Sword. It is literally cursed, and while it gives him exceptional swordsman skills, he can't remove it from his person. It tried to slowly take over his arm, but once he accepted that the sword would be a part of him forever, the sword retracted to form a bracer around his wrist. He can summon it at will.
  • In the Season 6 premiere the grass sword overtakes his arm once more, this time to help him, only this time he finally loses his arm. He regains the arm some episodes later but seems have lost the grass blade in the process.
  • And then in the Season 6 finale, the grass sword triumphantly returns. Only for it to be gone for good in the Season 7 finale.
• The Cutie: He is quite adorable at times, especially when in pain.
• Dating Catwoman: Flame Princess is quickly revealed to be evil, or at least a dangerous wild card. Finn develops a crush on her after she attacks him. This becomes more of a downplayed example after Flame Princess's second appearance, as she becomes more emotionally stable.
• Deadpan Snarker: He's of course very excitable, but as his voice got deeper (and he knew what apathy felt like), Shada's voice got quite excellent for deadpan lines.
• Death Seeker: Downplayed as he's not exactly trying to get himself killed, but after Jake passed away, Finn admits that part of him is waiting for his own death just so he can reunite with him again.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Two big deconstructions:
  • Kid Hero: Finn has been fighting and killing monsters and supernatural beings since at least the age of twelve (his age when the series begins). Even though he's quite cheerful and upbeat most of the time, psychologically he's really messed up. In fact the reason he manages to stay upbeat despite the horrors he's seen is because he's very good at suppressing traumatic memories (he refers to the process as "putting them in the vault"; the fact that he does it so often that he has a term for it is a bad sign). Because he's spent so much of his life fighting and adventuring, he doesn't know much about making personal connections. His emotional immaturity and Blood Knight nature drove his girlfriend away, and his tendencies toward white knighting are steadily getting creepier as he gets older. All he really knows how to do is punch things; life situations that require a more complex solution are beyond his ability to navigate.
  • Insecure Love Interest: Sure, Finn has a Precocious Crush on PB and he frequently rescues her, but she only thinks of him as a close friend at most. They come very close to confirming their ship when she is de-aged, but it's thoroughly nixed when she returns to her original age. One episode involved him singing a song about how confusing it was ("What am I to you? Am I a joke, your knight, or your brother?") that also includes his sentiment that it doesn't really matter as long as they are at least friends and get to hang out. He eventually gets over the romantic aspects when he meets Flame Princess, although he makes a few attempts to re-kindle something with PB after that relationship ends.
• Defiant to the End: Showcased in "Escape from the Citadel" when The Lich reaches out his hand to finish him off. Finn defiantly smacks the hand away despite the fact that The Lich immobilized him with just a single word, and Finn had no guarantee that such a feeble attack would keep The Lich at bay.
• Determinator: His very first appearance has an amusing double-subversion. Finn is told to believe in himself in order to escape his prison of ice; Finn refuses, but then breaks out through sheer willpower. In the series proper, he soldiers past numerous injuries, breaks out of the Lich's mind control, literally ignores two broken legs to save the day(s).
  • In "You Forgot Your Floaties," he's transformed into an egg. Through sheer force of will, he forces himself into a bowl of batter, and then bakes himself a new body made of bread.
• Did Not Get the Girl: Twice, he tried with Bubblegum after her age down but this was dashed when she had to restore her age to save the kingdom from Lemongrab and she's shown no interest in pursuing romance (though the end of the series gives a very good reason why in her case). Then came Flame Princess and that lasted for awhile, but she broke it off after the incident with Ice King and any hope of getting back together with her was crushed when Cinnamon Bun professed his love for her. He does fall in love, get married and have children when he travels to the pillow world, being his most lasting relationship until he "dies". But it's ambiguous if that was real or not. Huntress Wizard seems to have likewise taken an interest in him, but due to the finale not directly focusing on their romance, this is more of a Maybe Ever After.
• Didn't Think This Through: The reason he lost Flame Princess. Though that was just one of many examples he displays through the series. He has a tendency to act first without really assessing the situation, often making a bad problem worse.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: He frequently goes there. For instance, in "Freak City" he, in a fit of rage, decides to beat up Life. In another episode he attacks a fourth-dimensional black-hole type construct, and destroys it. After he gets the cursed blade of grass he slays the Fear Feaster with it in "Billy's Bucket List". In "Escape from the Citadel", he takes down The Lich by gooping him with the blood of the fallen Guardian, which has massive amounts of healing properties, thus bringing the Lich to life into an innocent giant baby.
  • Has gone toe to toe with the Lich no fewer than four times and has always managed to throw a wrench in the Lich's plans. Of note, this makes him the only being to ever defeat the Lich more than once.
  • In "Crossover" he takes out an alternate universe version of the Lich using a Wavemotion Gun given to him by Prismo.
  • And not just our Finn... after the Lich was spread throughout the Multiverse, the Lich mentions being bested by Finn in many worlds, implying the Alt-Finns have been able to stop their Liches as well.
• Disappeared Dad: His dad was being held in the Citadel. He doesn't care that Finn exists at all.
  • Complicated by later revelations that Martin was actually on his way to being a loving and present father when his past intervened and started him on the road to Jerkass-dom.
• Distaff Counterpart: Fionna.
• Dumb Blonde: He has blonde hair under his hat, and he can be quite clueless sometimes.
• Easy Amnesia: Finn can put frightening memories in his "vault". What's disturbing is that he does it so casually...
  Finn: That one's going in the vault. Aaaaaaand... it's gone.
  • Once Finn opens the vault just a crack, he's apparently easily able to discover his past lives.
    • "Come Along With Me" reveals the Vault to contain representations of the monsters Finn was most traumatized by fighting—the Lich, the Lich-possessed Bubblegum, Brainwashed and Crazy Susan, and his own father.
• Empowered Badass Normal: He eventually gains the ability to generate a psychic limb, giving him super powers. He loses that, but later on the Grass Sword's remains give him the power to turn his arm into a powerful vine tentacle. He eventually loses that during "Reboot" when it detaches itself from Finn to join with the Finn Sword.
• Enlightenment Superpowers: Finn has shown high knowledge in spiritual matters, introspection and various powers born from pure enlightenment: summoning his astral beast, astral projection, controlling his own memories of past lives and making the universe give him a way to stop Gunter/Orgalorg, with auto-tuned singing, no less. It's implied this is the result of being a reincarnation of a past Catalyst Comet.
• Entitled to Have You: Sympathetic example, but nevertheless, "All Gummed Up Inside" has him despairing about not being able to "keep" Bubblegum, not really grasping the fact she was never his in the first place.
• Everyone Has Standards: While a Blood Knight, Finn largely refuses to kill anyone or anything that's not evil, to the extent that, in "The Enchiridion," he let out a Big "NEVER!" to being ordered to kill a "neutral" ant. Also, in "What Have You Done?", despite being enemies with Ice King, Finn made it clear that he wouldn't beat him up when Ice King hadn't actually committed any recent crimes, stating it as "against his alignment."
• Evil Laugh: Non-evil example; in "What is Life?", Finn mischievously does this, while thinking to prank Jake after he pranked Finn himself, as a type of revenge.
• Fatal Flaw: Lust seems to be this for Finn in later seasons, particularly in Season 5, where it's what caused his relationship with Flame Princess to fall apart
• The First Cut Is the Deepest: Princess Bubblegum making it clear she didn't want him made him wallow for a while.
• Foreshadowing: A lot of hints were dropped that Finn would lose his right arm starting with his Farmworld depiction. This eventually happens in the Season 6 opening.
• For Great Justice: His reasoning for why he fights evil.
• For Happiness: When he and Jake aren't busy fighting evil, they're just trying to have a good time.
• Fetish: As established in the Amazon Chaser entry above, he has a sexual fetish for seeing women fight and/or fighting together with them. Wallowing in this while not being honest about it destroys his relationship with Flame Princess.
• Generation Xerox: While not as bad as Martin, Finn has shown he's able to be be as manipulative as his father if given the opportunity to do so. It's not all bad, as his father showed physical feats that easily match his son's. Apparently, Finn shares most of his positive traits with his mother, a genuine Helper who enjoys aiding others just as much as her son does.
• Given Name Reveal: In "Finn the Human", it turns out his Alternate Self has the full name "Finn Mertens". By "Dentist" he indicates he's learned the name and taken to using it himself, and "The Visitor" shows it is his father's surname in this timeline as well.
• Good Counterpart: To the Lich in a sense. The Lich was born from a Green Catalyst Comet that killed the dinosaurs, Finn's the Reincarnation of the Blue Catalyst Comet.
• Growing Up Sucks: After his breaking up with Flame Princess, Finn starts to feel things become more complicated as he grows up, and wishes to have things be like they were before.
  • Note that his romantic attachments tend to retire from dating him to spend more time leading their people (while he has none to lead).
  • The realization that his human father never loved him and never will also left him very depressed.
    • Well, not never loved him. But never will again.
• Guest Fighter: DLC skin for Jhala in Brawlhalla.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Although his hair color was originally only mentioned by the creators, it's since been seen. And it is glorious. He has the associated purity.
• The Heart: He's the only one who can get Bubblegum and Marceline to stick together; in 'What Was Missing', it's clear that their attempt to get through the Door Lord's door would have fallen apart easily without his influence. He also serves as The Conscience to them.
• Heartbroken Badass: His love life hasn't exactly been kind to him. Being abandoned by his human dad twice doesn't make things any easier either.
• The Hero Dies: "Together Again" opens with him having already died and found himself in the Dead World, after briefly being trapped in a Lotus-Eater Machine by a parasite.
• Heroes Fight Barehanded: Despite owning at least two swords, Finn often fights with his bare hands.
• Heroes Prefer Swords: Though he uses Good Old Fisticuffs much more and an ax at least once.
• Heroic BSoD: He goes through a (hilariously brief) one every time somebody reminds him that he's almost certainly the last human.
  • Spends half of "Dad's Dungeon" like this because he thought Jake and Joshua turned against him. It's bad enough that he actually tries to eat the apples. Twice, the second time he's actually watching what the apples do to a person. Jake has to stop him both times.
  • In "Hot to the Touch," when he realizes he can neither fight or hurt his new crush the Flame Princess, nor allow her to destroy the goblin kingdom, he curls up and cries, right before briefly passing out.
  • The end of "Escape from the Citadel" leaves him with Prismo dead, his arm and sword gone, and his dad having abandoned him. He doesn't even try and swim to the surface of the lake he's in and Jake has to pull him out. He spends "The Tower" singing a Madness Mantra about how he intends to tear off his father's arm to replace his, and then spends "Breezy" having a series of meaningless relationships in a futile attempt to feel better.
  • After killing Fern in "Three Buckets," Finn loses his ability to be Ooo's protector, as every monster he fights reminds him of his dead doppelganger.
• Heroic Willpower: Goes hand-in-hand with his many Determinator feats.
• He Is All Grown Up: As of "Obsidian", he's now on his 20s, and he grew a lot by the time between the finale and Distant Lands.
• He's Back!: "Billy's Bucket List". Season five zigzagged on his heroism with hormones taking precedence and making him act like a jerk, but in said episode he's determined to finish Billy's list and conquers his fear of the ocean. Though, with the revelation of his human father still being alive, more angst was to follow.
• Hidden Depths: Lightly hinted at a few times. In particular, he may hide a desire for civilized life, as well as trauma stemming from his Parental Abandonment. He rarely if ever dwells on such things.
  Finn: I... am complicated.
  • If the video game Pirates of the Enchiridion is anything to go by, Finn, despite normally being Book Dumb in more than a few areas, is surprisingly skilled in cartography.
• Hormone-Addled Teenager: His yearly aging leads to more complicated relationships with girls.
• Hotblooded: Doubles with Large Ham. Throughout the series, there have been several instances where he has been intensely agitated.
  • From the "Hero Boy Named Finn" song:
  Finn: And I'm not gonna be cool... 'cause I'm pipin' ho-oooooot!
• Hulking Out: Whenever something happens to Jake.
• I Am Not Weasel: Flame Princess comes to the conclusion that he must be a Water Elemental due to him crying each time she's seen him and him repeatedly hurting her without realizing it. Also, the squirrel from "Up a Tree" mistakes him for a chipmunk.
• I Can Change My Beloved: After the Flame King explicitly explains that his daughter, like everyone else in his kingdom, is evil, Finn makes influencing her to good his goal. (It definitely helps that she's on board with it.)
• Idiot Hero:
  Why is Finn missing so many teeth?
  The creators' answer: He bites trees and rocks and stuff. He's stupid.
  • Which makes it that much more interesting when his brain works perfectly, like in "Morituri te Salutamus".
  • As shown in "The New Frontier", Finn occasionally forgets how the sun works, and is seemingly floored when Jake re-explains it to him.
  • In "In Your Footsteps", he freely gives away the Enchiridion, a "hero's handbook" he got dozens of episodes ago, because he's mostly used it for sitting on. It falls into the Lich's hands.
  • In "From Bad to Worse," he mixes random potions to stop the candy zombies. The result was a bunch of random effects, most of them made the zombies even stronger.
  • In "The Real You", Finn himself says that he's "full of stupid."
  • This is more of an early season character trait as he becomes more intelligent as the series goes on, especially emotionally.
• I Gave My Word: Deconstructed as the events of "Slumber Party Panic" get more and more out of hand because of his promise.
• I Just Want to Be Loved: In both a familial and romantic sense. He's at that age where he's looking for a girlfriend and is utterly devastated to find that his dad barely cares about him.
• I'll Kill You!: A couple of times. When his picture frame of Bubblegum is set on fire after he spent hours crying over it, he snarls:

  "WHO LIT THAT FIRE? I'LL KILL YOUUU!"

• Important Haircut: To save Jake from eternity in a witch's butt. Since then he seems to be letting it grow out again.
  • Averted when he cuts it again right before visiting Mars with Jermaine. It's not actually very important at all.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: With paper airplanes. He manages to get one to cook him eggs. Unfortunately, it doesn't stick the landing.
• Incorruptible Pure Pureness: It's eventually revealed that he is pure good, since he is the Reincarnation of the Blue Catalyst Comet, which incarnated as a butterfly, a symbol of rebirth. His goodness extends to the point that he tries to beat his purity into others. This is noticeable in the episode "Goliad": when the golem that Princess Bubblegum created turns evil, what does she do to stop it? Make a new one with Finn's DNA instead of her own. The original tries to invoke We Can Rule Together, but because of the pureness, it refuses and sacrifices itself to stop the other. On another occasion, the Lich uses Finn's innocence against him to open up a portal to the multiverse by a means Finn thought would prevent it. Throughout the series, he also has helped countless characters. Despite his Blood Knight tendencies and Hot-Blooded moments, Finn is still a purely good person.
• In a Single Bound: He pulls one off in "Mystery Train" when he jumps between two fast-moving trains.
• In Touch with His Feminine Side: He's a cutie who openly shows his emotions and affections. He also spends the night with the Ice King in "Thank You". Downplayed though, since he's a Blood Knight who loves fighting, wrestling, adventuring, rescuing princesses, etc.
  • His instrument of choice is the traditionally feminine flute.
• In-Universe Catharsis: In "Fionna and Cake", Finn has shown to have adopted a fairly unhealthy coping mechanism for dealing with his problems (re: Accepting Jake's death), which involves carelessly throwing himself into danger to distract him from his problems, which he tries to use on Simon to help him deal with his depressive rut. He even shrugs off a nasty series of back gashes given to him by a bear.
• Inexplicably Awesome: Finn, besides his robot arm, has zero cybernetic or biological augmentations, while a pretty sizable chunk of humanity does, including his own mother. Despite his, he consistently seems to be a great deal stronger, faster, and tougher than most of humanity besides the explicitly superhuman Seekers, and even in that case they're not that much stronger than him. It's very telling that, as an adult, he's able to treat a mutant bear the size of a bus like a literal plaything.
• Innocent Blue Eyes: According to Andy Ristaino, Finn's eyes are blue.
• Innocently Insensitive: He refers to Fern as something even closer to him than a brother. Of course, this is because he was Finn up until he was turned into the Finn Sword, and still wants to be Finn.
• Inter-Class Romance: Has romanced two princesses.
• Interspecies Romance: So far he's crushed on a candy person (princess) and a girl made of flames. And in "Puhoy", he even married and had two children with a pillow-girl. Of course, seeing as how there aren't very many pure-bred humans left on Earth, he doesn't have a lot of choice in avoiding this.
  • It's unclear what Huntress Wizard is, but she's not human.
• It Runs in the Family: Like his father, Finn often keeps up a cheerful demeanor no matter what kind of stuff is blowing up around him.
• It's All About Me: Not at first, but he can be a typical self-absorbed teenager later on, especially when it comes to romance (Bubblegum isn't talking about sacrificing her love life with you, Finn). Self-obsession is one of the flaws that make him think he's a monster in "Don't Look".
• It's All My Fault: Starts blaming himself for the state of Ooo during the Elementals miniseries, wondering if he subconsciously wanted Fern to fail at protecting the kingdom.
• Jerkass Ball: A couple of episodes from season 5 showcase some of his more selfish, dishonorable traits: In "Jake Suit" he doesn't care that Jake gets hurt when he wears him as armor and tells him to toughen up then at the end of the episode he wears the 'Jake Suit' and jumps down a volcano hurting Jake and himself (of course it's more of an example of him holding the Idiot Ball then). And later in "Frost & Fire" and "Too Old", the former of which has him ruining his relationship with Flame Princess, and the latter lying to Jake in hopes of getting alone time with PB. It doesn't work.
• Keet: Finn is hyperactive, joyful, and sometimes surprisingly tender-hearted, when he's not beating his enemies to a bloody pulp.
  • His ceaseless energy is used as a plot point in "Power Animal", where a society of malevolent gnomes kidnaps him and attempts to harness his energy for a machine they built which would allow them to essentially take over the world.
• Kid Hero: 12 when the series starts, 17 when it ends.
• Large Ham: Not just large, massive. He competes with a World of Ham and manages the impressive feat of being one of, if not the hammiest ham in the land of Ooo.
• Last of His Kind: At first, it was assumed that Finn is the last human in Ooo. However, this later turns out not to be the case as it's revealed that Ice King used to be human, other humans (namely Betty) appear in the series and, in the Islands mini series, it's revealed that humanity is thriving in a series of distant islands.
• Lightning Bruiser: Finn has been shown to excel in all types of combat within the series, plus he is quick to his feet & able to take a HUGE beating. He just destroys any foe that stands in his way.
• Like Father, Like Son: Despite having never met them, or at least before he did meet them, Finn took a lot after his parents, at least on some level or another. He mostly takes after his mother who dedicated her life to helping and protecting people. While he has none of his father's Jerkass tendencies, Finn does have his sense of Adventure and the ability to turn problems into solutions, along with Martin's barefisted fighting skills.
• Limited Wardrobe: Invoked a couple of times. For example, a plot point in "BMO Noire" and "Princess Potluck"^note They happen concurrently is that he seems to only have one pair of socks, and in "Little Dude" he has to go slay (another!) evil bear if he wants a replacement hat.
• Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: Finn's romantic interests don't tend to work out well for him. It reaches the point that one interest admits that she likes him then follows up by saying they wouldn't work together, because of the reasons that she likes him in the first place!
  • Fortunately for those hoping for any hint of a happy romantic ending for the poor kid, he meets Huntress Wizard again and they decide to give dating a shot after all.
• Love at First Punch: Finn developed his crush on Flame Princess after she smacked him in the face with her (burning) hand and nearly destroyed his house with her fire powers.
• Love Hurts: Both princesses have caused him no small amount of emotional (and physical) hurt.
• Love Makes You Dumb: He tells Flame Princess she has this effect on him.
  Finn: When I look at you, my brain gets all... stupid!
  • Several episodes ("Too Old", "The Red Throne") have even had Finn taking a ride on the Jerkass Ball as well because he put trying to impress girls ahead of actually thinking.
• Made of Iron: The kid has survived battles against multitudes of monsters, cosmic horrors and falling into a volcano, the last of which he did for fun. Painfully subverted in the season 6 premiere, where he loses his right arm.
• Major Injury Underreaction: In Reboot, when the grass vines take off the lower half of his right arm, all he has to say is "AH! m'arm!"
  • He barely reacted when he lost his original arm, as he was more in shock over his father caring so little for him and fleeing.
• Manipulative Bastard: Downplayed. Finn has a manipulative-obsessive streak. His tendency to manipulate people to instigate conflict so he could resolve it (since he is The Hero) was explored in All the Little People and bit him in the ass in Frost & Fire.
• Maybe Ever After: His relationship with Huntress Wizard is left open-ended after the finale, especially after "The Wild Hunt" and "Seventeen" established a relationship between the two. After all, she did give him her heart.
  • The Season 11 sequel comic implies that they're still together.
  • The status of their relationship in Distant Lands is a complete mystery, as the miniseries doesn't give any hints if they're still together or not.
  • Fionna and Cake implies they're still together.
• Meaningful Name: "Finn" means "fair-haired." He's blond.
  • It can be also understood as related to the word "final", as in "the last".
  • And might also conjure comparisons to legendary Irish hero Finn McCool.
• Mind over Matter: The flower growing from the stump of his right arm allows him to manifest a shapeshifting arm out of pure psychic energy as well as levitate large objects using what remains of the Grass Sword's magic.
• Missing Mom: His biological mother is actually still alive, (sort of), and has been wishing for his return for years. It's the reason Susan was sent to Ooo in the first place.
  • At the very end of the finale, she and the other humans arrive in Ooo.
• Morality Chain: Finn may be the protagonist, but it becomes increasingly clear that he's also the Morality Chain to... damn near everyone else. He consciously takes on the role of turning Flame Princess good, but it's also strongly implied that without him Jake would still be a thief and conman, Princess Bubblegum might be much more of a Totalitarian Utilitarian, Marceline would be the psychopathic troll she likes to see herself as, and Ice King would be doing some seriously squicky things to Princesses.
  • He tried to be this to Fern during Season 8. He initially failed after Fern tried to kill him in "Three Buckets", but he does help Fern redeem himself during the series finale.
• Morphic Resonance: It's implied Finn's reincarnations and alternate timeline selves are all destined to lose their right arms, to the point where after it happens to Finn he notes that - in retrospect - having two arms felt weird.
• Motive Decay: In "Too Old," Finn focuses on flirting with Princess Bubblegum instead of focusing on the diplomatic mission, rescuing Lemonhope, or being a hero.
  • In "The Red Throne," Finn focuses on trying to get back with Flame Princess, ignoring the Fire Kingdom's tyrant problem.
• Muggle Best Friend: To anything that isn't completely evil. It makes him slide towards All-Loving Hero.
  • Princess Bubblegum tends to show off her creations to him.
  • Marceline trusted only Finn with her Fries song.
  • Heck, even the Ice King seeks Finn out when he wants somebody to chat to.
• Mundane Made Awesome - "ALGEBRAIC!"
  • "Mathematical!"
  • His hat.
• Mysterious Past: A Zig-Zagged Trope. Finn does have a known and simple past in which he was Happily Adopted by Joshua and Margaret and raised to fight evil. But how he wound up where they found him and the whereabouts of any other humans were complete mysteries until the "Islands" mini-series.
• The Napoleon: Downplayed; he's more short than Princess Bubblegum, but he has also a lot of moments when he acts like a Jerkass.
• Neutral Good: In-universe assigned alignment in the comic series.
• Nice Guy: Probably one of the nicest members of the cast.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • Season 4 Finale. Congratulations, Finn. You've single-handedly released the Lich into The Multiverse.
  • In "Frost & Fire", his obsession to see Flame Princess and Ice King fighting almost causes Ice King's death and the destruction of Ice Kingdom, and also ends up hurting Flame Princess' feelings, leading to their breakup at the end of the episode. When the Ice King tells you that you blew it, you know you really blew it.
  • Taken to an extreme in the Season 6 opening two-parter. The plan to get Finn to meet his father gets Prismo killed and ends up freeing a whole bunch of cosmic criminals, which, sadly, includes his birth father.
• The Noseless: He isn't drawn with a nose. The creators state that it's a mutation.
• No-Sell: In "Flute Spell" he gains immunity to electricity.
• Not Allowed to Grow Up: Averted. In fact, he grows up in real-time! He ages every year, according to the creators. Though he's only had one on-screen birthday from 12 to 13, his Twitter profile identifies him as 14 as of 11/2012. He claims to be 16 as of "The Comet," and is 17 as of, well, "Seventeen."
• Our Founder: In the Grand Finale the ruins of a gigantic memorial statue and grave complex for Finn are shown 1000 years in the future, having been constructed directly outside of Marceline's/Shermy and Beth's cave on the Grass Lands. There's also fallen statue of either Jake or Jermaine as well, and the remains of a plaque that appears to read "Finn" and "Jermaine" nearby.
• The Paragon: In "Freak City", Finn refuses to let any of the freaks lay down and let life kick them around. So instead, Finn kicks them around until they decide to stand up for themselves.
• Parental Abandonment: Not only was had he lost his birth-parents from babyhood, it is heavily implied that his foster-parents, Joshua and Margaret, are also dead, leaving him with only Jake at 12. However, "Billy's Bucket List" reveals that Finn's biological father is still alive. As well as his mother in "Islands".
• Parenthetical Swearing: He loves this trope.
  "Holy stuff!"
  "What the jug is that?
  "Dump that mess!''
  "Math this..."
• Perma-Shave: Played for Laughs/explained in "All's Well That Rats Swell", as BMO plucks any growing facial hair out (to keep him looking forever young) before he wakes up.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Despite being just a boy, he's a full-fledged adventurer who can hold his own in most fights. He's even been known to put the hurt on beings many times his size and experience, especially when properly motivated.
• Pretty Boy: His Gaia Online Alternate Universe self is this in the Adventure Time themed chance item, while his FusionFall self is a winsome Gonk.
• Psychic Static: Even mentally he's a small erratic target. Especially mentally.
• Psychoactive Powers: The grass sword responds to Finn's wishes and could modify itself to suit them if necessary. The flower remnant growing from the stump of his right arm does so as well. From levitating large objects to forming a shapeshifting psychic limb, it does whatever it can to grant its masters wishes.
• Pungeon Master: He loves to drop puns.
  "I'm weddy for the wedding!"
  (pushing a zombie into the ground) "You're grounded, mister!"
  (blasting a pig with ice cream) "FREEZE TO MEET YOU!!"
• Raised by Wolves: They were magic talking dogs, and they were as intelligent as humans. "Boom Boom Mountain" reveals Finn was orphaned as a baby and taken in by Jake's parents. Jake is explicitly his big brother.
• Reincarnation: In "The Vault", Finn is revealed to have lived several past lives, including the ghost woman haunting him, who was a mercenary named Shoko. "The Comet" reveals that Finn was originally the blue Catalyst Comet, and has been reincarnating on Earth since it first crashed there, starting as a humble butterfly. "Come Along With Me" suggests he'll be given yet another life as a hyperactive tomcat named Shermy—complete with a descendent of Jake for a companion.
• Reincarnation Friendship: It's shown that several of Finn's current relationships have spanned across multiple lifetimes in one way or another. His prior life Shoko had a companion in the form of a white tiger, a past incarnation of Jake's, and developed a close bond with Princess Bubblegum before Shoko's death, something that triggers Past-Life Memories in Finn prompting him to return the amulet Shoko stole. His future incarnation, Shermy, is close to one of Jake and Lady Rainicorn's descendants, Beth, who just so happens to also be Jake's reincarnation.
• Revenge Before Reason: In the aftermath of the incident with his Dad, Finn comes to dislike all of his replacement arms and contemplates getting revenge on his Dad for the loss of his right arm. The flower coming out of Finn's remaining right arm grants his wish by giving him a phantom limb made out of pure telekinetic energy that allows him to move objects with his mind. Using this arm, he builds a tower to space with the intention of finding his Dad to rip off his arm as revenge for the loss of his own right arm. Princess Bubblegum notes that this plan is ridiculous and dangerous, but Finn continues it anyway.
• Rhymes on a Dime: Has made up songs on the spot on several occasions, just for the heck of it. With his singing voice the effect is pretty rad.
• Samaritan Syndrome:
  • In "Memories of Boom-Boom Mountain", Finn reveals his underlying drive to help everyone and everything with their problems because when he was a baby, he once went 'boom-boom' on a leaf and got stuck to it, and went unaided for hours until Jake's parents found him (and eventually adopted him). Finn helps people because someone helped him once.
  • Subverted on at least one occasion, where he mentions that he probably should help the Ice King, but he's too inexperienced and has no clue how to deal with the Ice King's issues. So he beats him up.
• Screaming Warrior: Goes into this anytime he's in a fight.
• Screams Like a Little Girl: On occasion, usually when he's startled.
• She Is Not My Girlfriend: Regarding Princess Bubblegum. Jake even calls her his ex at one point.
  • He does the same thing with Huntress Wizard, though compare the two ways he puts it several years apart.
• Shipper on Deck: In "All the Little People", Finn finds sentient miniature AT characters and puts them all in crazy pairings. Even before this, he tells Jake that he thinks BMO and Ice King might make a good couple.
• Signature Headgear: The iconic white hat he wears almost all the time, even while sleeping. He apparently skinned a bear to make it. As a baby.
  Finn: My... hat... is... AWESOME!!!
• Singing Voice Dissonance: Throughout the series, he sings with an auto-tuned voice that supposedly comes from a tiny computer he swallowed at some earlier point. Subverted in 'What Was Missing', where he sings a heartfelt song to (and about) his True Companions Jake, Bubblegum and Marceline.
  • The Auto-tune singing returns in the Season 6 finale, though it appears to be a mix of this and his normal singing.
• The Sleepless: Invokes it at least with the line "Justice never sleeps!" He does sleep regularly.
• Species Surname: He's known as Finn the Human, mostly because dogs apparently don't have real surnames and he's the only pure human in all of Ooo, so he really is the human. It's eventually revealed his real surname is Mertens.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: With Flame Princess as of "Hot to the Touch". Finn cannot touch her without getting hurt.
• Stepford Smiler: He has his tendencies, placing traumatic memories "in the vault". After Jake's death, he tries to help a depressed Simon by punching the issues away. Even after he dies in "Together Again", Finn admits to Jake that he was never able to get over his death and secretly waited for his own so he can reunite with him, even though he did live a good life.
• Stock Shōnen Hero: Deconstructed. At the series' start, Finn was a simple-minded yet righteous Kid Hero who lived to right wrongs and go on dangerous adventures. The problems started when he slowly came to see the Graying Morality of the world around him, and his impulsiveness bit him in the buns as he entered adolescence, leading him to make some really dumb moves and miss out on two Love Interests. While he's never stopped being a hero and fighting evil, he's a lot more of a mature Mellow Fellow, a sharp contrast to the early days when he was well known for his proud declaration of "I'll slay anything that's evil, that's my deal!"
• Summon Magic: It takes him many hours to summon his spirit animals in "Still", but at least he gets a whole bunch of them and they're rather badass, for their species. Hunson is quicker to summon, but his allegiance remains in doubt.
• Super Spit: Finn is able to hack loogies across a yard's length, and in "The Real You", he was able to create a full-scale model of the Candy Kingdom entirely out of his saliva.
• Tagalong Kid: In "What Was Missing", Finn admits that he fears the others see him this way. An odd example, as he's arguably more proactive and competent than nearly everyone else in Ooo most of the time.
  Finn: Do you look down on me 'cuz I'm younger?
• Token Human: Occasionally a plot point.
• Too Kinky to Torture: Displayed prominently in "Jake Suit." In that episode, Jake is sick of Finn using him as a battle suit and seriously hurting him, so he does the same to Finn to get him to admit that it sucks. Unfortunately, even non-conventional forms of torture (getting Finn to read a boring book, embarrass himself in front of his girlfriend's family, etc.) prove ineffective, and when Jake decides to make Finn jump in a volcano, he's completely freaked out when Finn actually begs him to go through with it; as soon as Jake backs out, Finn uses Jake as a suit once again and jumps headfirst into the volcano for the hell of it.
• Traumatic Haircut: Once had the side of his hair forcibly shaved off. He bemoans that his “style” is ruined. And in the next time he’s seen without his hat, he is shown to be bald, so he can redo his style.
• True Companions: With Jake, emphasized by both family bonds and loyalty, and with Bubblegum to a slightly lesser extent. As characterization has developed, he may possibly also have this with Marceline, given how highly she regards friendship. All of them take some steps towards becoming True Companions in "What Was Missing", though with Jake being the Wild Card, and Marceline and PB not getting along very well, it takes some considerable effort on Finn's part.
• Tritagonist: While still a main character he’s demoted to this in the Stakes miniseries with Marceline taking his place as the protagonist.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: For all his heroic deeds, he likewise seems to have a habit of unknowingly causing just as many disasters. Up to reviving the Lich, being an indirect cause to Lincoln's death, giving the Lich what he needed to (nearly) take over the world, heck even trying to wish away the Lich wound up backfiring.
• Vengeance Feels Empty: When Finn finally reaches his destination in "The Tower," he meets his dad and punches him out, only to realize that he can't bring himself to go through with tearing his arm off. Princess Bubblegum reveals that she dressed up as Finn's dad in order to let him relieve his stress regarding his personal issues with his Dad. Observing his expression she notes that his revenge probably didn't make him feel all that better. Finn agrees, and the next time he meets Martin, he's less angry than he is incredulous at how many levels in Jerkass the guy takes every day.
• Vocal Evolution: In earlier seasons, his voice was much higher. As his voice actor went through puberty, his voice lowered, mirroring the series' gradual Cerebus Syndrome and Finn's growth in maturity.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Finn's fear of the ocean, although he does get over this by the end of Season 5's "Billy's Bucket List", thanks to help from the Grass Sword. (He has a few others, but they are rare or unlikely to occur.)
• We Are as Mayflies: Inverted - it's strongly implied that his canine adoptive family ages in dog years.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: He can only carry on if he knows his dad cares for him, as seen in "Dad's Dungeon". Eventually averted in the case of Finn's actual dad. Despite being initially devastated that Martin apparently didn't care about him, by "The Visitor", Finn realizes he's better off without a deadbeat like his dad.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Delivers one to Bubblegum in "What Have You Done?" when she has the Ice King imprisoned despite him not doing anything wrong. Turns out she intended to beat pained cries out of him. True, it was to cure the Candy Kingdom of a plague he accidentally started, but it's still a bad thing to do because she wanted him to beat the Ice King up for nothing and her lack of communication. Finn and Jake call her out on it and she does seem to get a What Have I Done moment as a result.
  • Also, in "Frost & Fire", where Finn tricks Flame Princess and Ice King into fighting using her own private issues against her. Ice King even flat out states to Finn, "You blew it."
• When All You Have Is a Hammer…: His response to the black hole he created?
  PB: You blew it, Finn! With this! [Shows bubble-blowing device]
  Finn: Then I'll kill it with this!
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: He's terrified of the ocean and only the ocean—not rivers, lakes, or puddles. He is also afraid of the body of water in question only if he consciously knows it's the ocean or not. Eventually it's revealed that this fear probably stems from him almost drowning in it as a newborn while stuck on a raft with his dad.
  • He's also scared of clowns. He especially hates the Clown Nurses.
• Wise Beyond Their Years: Even at only 12 years old, Finn was a street-smart young boy with an ace in fighting off villains with fantasy swords and saving princesses.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: After putting on the Glasses of Nerdicon. Possibly subverted as he knew how everything would proceed, including the madness and subsequent removal of the glasses.
  • Any time he gets any sort of artifact of power it will quickly be taken away from him. ("Wizard", "Daddy's Little Monster", etc.)
• Would Hit a Girl: Finn would hit anything. Except a princess. He's very uncomfortable punching princesses. However, that's not to say he's above hitting females in general. Just ask Marceline (who he punched in the face in "Evicted") and Me-Mow (who he bashed with a rock). He was also willing to fight Patience st. Pim (even if he never got a chance to).
• You Can't Fight Fate: In every alternate universe shown so far, some event happens that makes Finn lose an arm. As of "Escape from the Citadel", Main!Finn lost his as well.
• Zany Scheme: One day he may be the master of these. Other days he gets egg on his face (or Marceline's kitchen floor). Simply lifting Tree Trunks is insufficient—instead he has to out on thick layers of makeup first. And so on. Except for those times that he's Crazy Enough to Work it, or lumpified.

Jake the Dog

Jacob "Jake" the Dog, Sr./Jake the Dog

"Fine, it's fine. Everything's gonna be fine. It's fine!"

Voiced by: John DiMaggio

Finn's chummy, shape-shifting bulldog friend (not pet) and foster-brother. He is more laid back than Finn, but also enjoys adventure. He sometimes gives Finn brotherly advice, but it is not often helpful.

---

• Animalistic Abomination: While he's introduced as a dog with stretching and shapeshifting powers, his parents were ordinary dogs. It turns out he was spawned from a bump that appeared on his father Joshua's head after he was bitten by a shapeshifting monster.
• Ambiguously Bi: While Jake is unambiguously attracted to Lady Rainicorn, more than a few of his comments to guys have hinted at attraction that is more than just platonic, outright declaring love a couple of times such as when he blatantly admits to having a secret crush on Billy and the fact that he occasionally dates Cinnamon Bun while shapeshifting and putting on a bow to be his "girlfriend". There's also his very strong attachment to Prismo, and more than a few comments shared between the two can be seen as romantic crushing or platonic confessions.
• Ambiguously Jewish: His picture in the Xmas special suggests this.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Part of what his powers entail, the other being shape-shifting.
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: "Power Animal" deals with how this affects Jake; he wants to find Finn, but keeps getting distracted.
  Jake: (giving his sandwich to BMO) Take my sammich, BMO. I'm gonna look for... (looks at the ground, gasps) A dancing bug!
• Badass Adorable: He's a shape-shifting dog who's super flexible and makes the cutest faces.
• Beta Couple: Becomes part of one with Lady Rainicorn.
• Beware the Silly Ones: He's for the most part a pretty lackadaisical and apathetic guy who likes a great meal, sleeping, jokes, and fun times with his friends and loved ones. He's also a shape-shifting part-alien Animalistic Abomination and Reformed Criminal who can be insanely dangerous when provoked and has no problems with killing threats. For example, when Finn broke his videogame console as punishment for ignoring training, his response was to declare he was going to break every bone in Finn's body and tried to do just that.
• Big Brother Instinct: Played with. He's not as physically protective as most examples of this trope, but he is very tuned into Finn’s emotional well-being, and hurting his little brother’s feelings is the surest way to get on Jake’s bad side. He even claims to have a “Finn sense” that tells him when Finn is about to cry, and the angriest we ever see him is when he’s ripping a new one into Princess Bubblegum for breaking Finn’s heart. The last season even suggests that he denies his own emotional well-being and processing of trauma in order to put on a brave face for Finn and protect him.
• Big Brother Mentor: Sometimes acts as one to Finn.
• Big Eater: When given a choice of weapons, he chooses sandwich over sword.
• Big Friendly Dog: Sometimes he's big but he's always friendly.
• The Big Guy: Given that he's a Sizeshifter, he definitely qualifies.
• Big Little Brother: He might be slightly younger or the same age as Finn (he was a puppy when Finn was a toddler), but he's clearly taken the big brother role, along with being his general protector.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: His shapeshifting powers could easily allow him to defeat most enemies if he used them strategically, but he's far too lazy to learn to use them to their fullest.
• Brought Down to Normal: Brought on by a witch. Jake turns out to be completely useless without his powers.
• Brutal Honesty: Jake is not known for his tact or patience so he tends to blurt out whatever he's thinking.
• Bus Crash: It's heavily implied in Obsidian, and later confirmed in the Fionna and Cake series that he died some time after Come Along With Me. The exact circumstances of his death remain a mystery.
• Canine Companion: Or rather, canine best buddy. Do not call him Finn's pet.
• Chaotic Good: In-universe-assigned alignment in the comic series.
• Characterization Marches On: Early episodes painted him as the more Neutral Good reasonable half of the duo, before settling on making him a Chaotic Good Jerk with a Heart of Gold.
• Cloud Cuckoolander: He can be fairly odd at times, to say the least.
• Collector of the Strange: In "The Jiggler" he reveals he has a mint condition eyepatch collection. It's never mentioned again.
• The Corrupter: He sometimes tries to convince Finn to commit morally questionable deeds and even murder when it suits him.
• Covert Pervert: It's implied throughout the series that Jake and Lady Rainicorn are a pretty dirty couple when not on-screen. They ran naked together through a farmer's property, and Rainicorn asked him to make a "tape" for her, which he did.
• Dark and Troubled Past: In "Apple Thief", Jake says he knows the darker side of the Candy Kingdom. He used to be a criminal who stole purses and hawked stolen bicycles which could explain his actions in "City of Thieves". A later episode actually shows that he was a criminal mastermind who managed to get out of the business (because he realized it was wrong).
• Dented Iron: Jake is incredibly powerful when he really gets his mind on something, but as the series progresses his age starts to catch up to him. By the later seasons, Jake is noticeably slowing down and far less capable, and while he survives the finale, later content strongly implied that he passes away not too long afterward.
• Depending on the Writer:
  • Like Finn, Jake's morals can shift from episode to episode, though he's always on the good side of the scale.
  • Similarly, how mature Jake is can really shift from episode to episode, there are times when he seems more worldly and knowledgeable than his brother, and there are times when Jake is much less mature or reasonable than Finn.
• Deuteragonist: It's "Adventure Time with Finn and Jake" after all.
• Disappeared Dad: He has better intentions than most of the Adventure Time fathers, and he really does love and miss his kids, but "Ocarina" framed this approach as not a good thing.
  • It's implied that since his puppies matured into adulthood faster than he thought they would (to the point that he's actually younger than them), he's under the impression that they really don't need him anymore; unlike Finn a growing boy who definitely needs him. Or it could be Jake just being Jake.
• Distaff Counterpart: Cake.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: It's not clear when or how, but Jake passed away some time after the series' end, made apparent by both "Obsidian" and Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake.
• Early Installment Character-Design Difference; Early in Adventure Time, Jake was rather skinny with a square-shaped body, long jowls, and large ears. As the series progressed, he gained weight and a rounder body shape, and his jowls and ears shrunk.
• Even the Guys Want Him: Prismo and Tiffany both seem to really like Jake. There's also the bellhop in the Seeing Red graphic novel.
• Evil Laugh: In "My Two Favorite People", Jake pulls this off surprisingly well.
• Exotic Eye Designs: His eyes have black sclera and large white pupils taking up most of the space.
• Explosive Breeder: By the time of Ooo's future, Jake and Lady's pups have exploded into a gigantic Kingdom called the Pup Kingdom, ruled by Jake's tyrannical immortal God-Emperor grandson, Gibbon. The Kingdom has a space elevator and is implied to have offworld colonies and has totally driven the Candy Kingdom into hiding in the Prizeball Guardians. Finn and Jake's successors Shermy and Princess Beth fight against Gibbon's empire to free the magic stolen from Jake's other descendants.
• Fatal Flaw: His inability to pay attention or focus on a task often acts as a hindrance for both himself and Finn, particularly in "Morituri Te Salutamus" and "Power Animal".
• Female Feline, Male Mutt: His gender-bent counterpart is a cat.
• Fetish: Jake has a weird interest in boots, for some reason.
  • In "Freak City", Jake tells Finn he always wanted to be a big foot, and that Finn will understand when he's older.
  • In "Blood Under the Skin" he seemed to really like dressing in lady armor.
• Furry Reminder: Exhibits canine-like behavior once in a while (i. e. barking).
  • In "The Gut Grinder", he admits that he likes to stick his nose in poop due to there being a lot of interesting smells in it.
• Gasshole: Often farts and makes fart jokes, usually for fun.
• Guest Fighter: DLC skin for Kor in Brawlhalla.
• Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal: Jake appears to be completely naked, but it's revealed in an episode that he's actually wearing pants. Spun by pixies. They're just invisible.
• Heel–Face Turn: Off-screen one. Jake apparently led a gang of criminals in the past.
• Heroes Prefer Swords: Yes, he has a sword he sometimes uses. Why he needs it, no one knows.
• Heroic Comedic Sociopath: Borders on this. Sometimes he's caring, and sometimes he can be quite an asshole, holding off on helping Finn (when he really needs it too) just to suit his own needs (but he usually ends up saving the day). Takes this to eleven in "Furniture and Meat."
• Idiot Ball: While Jake is more or less defined as wise but not smart, there are various episodes where Jake firmly grasps the ball and does extremely impulsive, reckless, or idiotic things without any real explanation given. It seems like he's just dumb, but it is established in the series that he was a successful criminal mastermind capable of pulling off heists. Though this seems to ensure he doesn't use his Story-Breaker Power to solve the plot.
• Interspecies Romance: With Lady Rainicorn. At one point, he's afraid to meet her parents lest they should display Fantastic Racism towards him (there was a war between the two species not so long ago), but it turns out her parents are crazy about dogs since a dog saved her father's life during the war.
• Incredible Shrinking Man: He can shift his size, and is capable of making himself smaller than normal.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: The latter part is typically far more obvious than is usual for the trope, but he'll pull out the Jerk occasionally.
• Kryptonite Factor: Belly-rubs. They render him almost catatonic with pleasure and in extreme cases prone to suggestibility.
• The Lancer: To Finn, given that he's his best friend and all.
• Large Ham: He's voiced by John DiMaggio, whose forte is Large Ham characters.
• Laughing at Your Own Jokes: He cracks himself up so hard when he teaches a couple of nymphs how to carry a joke, he passes out. However, that last part happens after the scene cuts in the middle of his laughing.
• Lazy Bum: He is Brilliant, but Lazy, after all. This is most prominent when he doesn't have his powers.
• Like Father, Unlike Son: In contrast to his serious-minded son, Kim Kil Whan.
• Mellow Fellow: Every bit as laid back as Finn is Hot-Blooded, to the point where he accepted his apparently incoming death after his "croak dream". By his own admission, he doesn't care about much of anything and simply takes life as it is. This actually becomes a Fatal Flaw in the Elements arc where his lazy and passive personality becomes so overwhelming he almost lets himself and Finn die. In "Together Again," it's this generally relaxed attitude and lack of any real desire that causes him to ascend to the 50th Dead World, which is essentially nirvana.
• Mr. Imagination: In "Rainy Day Daydream", it manifests as Reality Warper powers. Outside of that episode, it's more subtle, but he often does consult with figments of his imagination, daydream, or otherwise let his imagination run away from him.
• Mundane Utility: Will use his powers in any way that seems useful.
• Mundane Wish: His first choice will always be a sandwich. It appears this is because the idea of wishing for something important terrifies him. Indeed, when Prismo explains to him how he has to make an important wish and word it just right; because worlds will end, babies won't be born, and life hangs in the balance, he throws up. Fortunately, Prismo walks him through word by word what he should wish for.
• The Napoleon: Small, but very aggressive.
• Nice Guy: When he's not being a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, he's normally very friendly and easygoing.
• Non-Human Humanoid Hybrid: Margaret isn't his biological mother. Jake was born from a lump on Joshua's head that formed after he was bitten by an Eldritch Abomination, and it's highly implied that this is the origin of his strechy powers.
• Non-Human Sidekick: Not actually all that odd, given the setting.
• Not Quite Back to Normal: At the end of the Elements miniseries, the World-Healing Wave awakens his full alien shapeshifter heritage, though he doesn't seem to initially notice.
• Nuclear Mutant: In the alternate universe featured in "Jake the Dog", the radiation of the first Mushroom War bomb turns him into the Lich.
• Official Couple: He and Lady Rainicorn. He's dead set on eventually starting a family with her, and as of "Jake the Dad", the two have kids.
• Older Sidekick: Finn started the series at 12 years old and Jake is 28 (this is in "magical dog years" though, and it turns out they were actually born around the same time).
• One of the Kids: Somewhat. He's old for a dog, but he acts a lot like the Kid Hero (eventually childish-acting Teen Hero) Finn.
• Out of Focus: As the show delved deeper into other character's relationships, Jake took a noticeable drop in plot importance as the seasons went on, examining less on Jake and more on Finn himself, tellingly, while Finn would have many adventures that didn't involve/focus on Jake despite being present. Most damningly, a lot of the more important characters have some personal connection to Finn, but not so much to his brother.
• Pals with Jesus: While Prismo falls more into Reality Warper than Physical God, the trope sort of applies. He befriends both Prismo and Cosmic Owl by the end of the Season 5 premiere episode. It benefits Jake greatly because Prismo goes out of his way to help Jake word out his wish to screw the Lich over. He even invites Jake to drop by any time.
• Papa Wolf: He often acts like a father figure to Finn. He is usually very lazy and indifferent about most things, but when something serious happens to his younger companion, you better not be around. He can sense when Finn is about to cry, calling it a "mother-daughter thing" (which is rather ironic, since he and Finn are both male). He's also generally protective of Finn.
  • His "The Reason You Suck" Speech he made to Princess Bubblegum in "Burning Low":
    Jake: (...) YOU HEARTLESS MONSTER! Do you have any idea how much he's CRIED OVER YOU?! (...)
  • He later tries to be this to his own children, but he ends up veering into being overprotective instead.
• Parental Neglect: Played with in an extremely depressing way. Jake is initially a devoted father who gives up adventuring with Finn to be with his family and dotes on the pups to the point of being overprotective. However, being half-Rainicorn, they grow to adulthood within a few days. While this initially comes off as Negative Continuity, later episodes featuring his family make it clear that the moments we see are the only moments Jake has spent with his children since their birth, to the point where he hasn't spoken to two of them. He seems to be under the impression that they don't need him anymore (like real animals are with their young), but some such as Kim Kil Whan are quite resentful of Jake for choosing adventuring over his family. Although "Apple Wedding" suggests that he's depressed that he never got the chance to raise them properly, and the fact that technically they are actually older than him is something he can't cope with.
• Real Men Cook: If there's cooking to be done, he's usually the one to do it. He's also exceptionally talented at it.
• Reality Warper: Using his imagination. Though only for one episode, and for no explained reason.
• Reformed Criminal: He once ran a gang of bank robbers who were quite successful when he was younger, but he left the life behind. He pulls his gang back together in "One Last Job".
• Rhymes on a Dime: He seems to enjoy a good rhyme. He once forced Finn to communicate via rhyme during "Ocean of Fear".
• Rubber Man: Has stretching powers that could give Mr. Fantastic a run for his money.
• Running on All Fours: Well, yeah, he's a dog. He usually goes around on his hind legs, but he'll go on all fours if he needs to go fast or if Finn is riding him.
• Serious Business: Whenever he makes sandwiches, burritos... well, anything with lots of ingredients, let's just say he becomes attached to his creations like an overprotective mom.
• Shapeshifter Baggage: While Jake sometimes merely stretches or compresses his body, there are also times when he seems to be outright altering his mass. In multiple episodes, he shrinks himself down, which also makes him lighter and easier to carry. The other way around, in "Jake vs. Me-Mow", he counteracts Me-Mow's poison by making his liver larger, which also makes it more effective at filtering toxins.
• Shapeshifter Weapon: His arms can turn into anything, such as swords, hammers, and even giant weights.
• Shapeshifting Sound: He makes a sound like rubber stretching whenever he shapeshifts.
• Sizeshifter: He has stretching powers and can turn himself bigger or smaller than usual.
• Shipper on Deck: Or at least loves to needle Finn about his crush on Princess Bubblegum. He also looked very pleased when Finn and Flame Princess hugged... And he also got quite excited when he thought PB was jealous. Most likely Jake approves of any sort of relationship Finn has with a girl, so long as Finn's happy with it.
• The Slacker: He'd rather go with the flow sometimes.
• Sore Loser: Well, at least when it comes to Card Wars. He grows out of this in "Daddy-Daughter Card Wars", with the help of his daughter Charlie.
• Spanner in the Works: Jake has trouble sticking to any of Finn's plans.
• Spider-Sense: Jake has the ability to sense when Finn is about to cry.
• Story-Breaker Power: Many Finn-centric episodes would actually be solved in two seconds by having Jake around, so his Brilliant, but Lazy personality is used to allow Finn to fly solo and rely on his wits instead, and explain why Jake isn't there (to the point where a couple of episodes actually have Jake shrink down and ride Finn so he can see how it all turns out.)
• Superpowerful Genetics: "Joshua and Margaret Investigations" reveals that he inherited his powers from a monster that implanted an egg sac in Joshua's head.
• Super-Strength: Jake seems to have this as a Required Secondary Power to his stretchy powers.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Ice cream. Also sandwiches.
• Uncertain Doom: Post-main series content strongly implies that Jake passed away not too long after the finale, which is in line with the fact that he was getting on his years by the end of the series. While "Together Again" shows him outright dead, this over 70 years later, at the end of Finn's life as well (and showing more or less the entire mortal cast dead too), leaving it unclear just when he died. Not helping is "Obsidian" and the Fionna and Cake series once again very strongly implying that he is gone by showing both Finn and Prismo deeply grieving but never even stated it outright, nevermind explaining if he passed of natural causes or if it was violent.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: He can shift when he wants to, but he has a limit that makes him super tired if exceeded.
• Wacky Parent, Serious Child: The wacky parent to most of the kids, but especially the very serious Kim Wil Whan. Even T.V. is more grounded than Jake.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: He used to have a great fear of vampires, especially Marceline.
• The Worf Effect: His powers are extremely versatile, but he's too lazy to use them to their fullest. When facing high-tier threats such as the Lich, he usually gets knocked out pretty quickly.
• You Can't Fight Fate: Jake is a very firm believer in this, to the point where he repeatedly attempted to rush to his death due to a supposedly prophetic dream he had.

Princess Bubblegum

Princess Bonnibel "Bonnie" Bubblegum/Princess Bubblegum

"Hurry, sweet citizens..."

Voiced by: Paige Moss (2006 pilot), Hynden Walch (the series), Isabella Acres (13 years old; from "Mortal Recoil" until "Too Young"; "Hero Heart" via archived audio), Livvy Stubenrauch (Young; in "Bonnibel Bubblegum")

The young-looking princess and current ruler of the Candy Kingdom. She cares deeply about her citizens. She's also a giant nerd, said to engage in "every branch of geekdom", but not (as far as we can tell) in the Cosplay Otaku Girl way— she's more of a math and science whiz. She's also a hybrid of human DNA and bubblegum DNA (which Finn finds a-TRACTT-ive~!), despite bubblegum not having DNA, hence her name. She's close friends with Finn, who seems to have a crush on her (however much he tries to deny it), but she brusquely refuses any romantic advances. She finds Jake funny and charming, and has a complicated relationship with Marceline. Although she looks sweet, and is, in general, rather nice, she is actually quite quick to anger, and her wrath is best avoided. She also speaks German, apparently. The second season reveals her first name is Bonnibel, and her true age has also been revealed: 827.

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• Action Girl: If the beatdown she gave Ricardio is anything go by, she definitely qualifies. And just to make sure it sticks, the chase and knife fight in "Wizard City".
• Affectionate Nickname: Finn sometimes calls her "Peebles", among others. "Bonnie" is a pretty big one as only her closest friends are the ones who call her by her first name to begin with, let alone a nickname based off it.
• The Ageless: In "The Suitor," PB's suitors say they have been waiting for centuries. In the flashback of "Earth & Water" (fifteen years ago), PB still looks the same age. It's eventually revealed that she's over 800 years old.
• Alliterative Name: Her proper name (thus far spoken only by Marceline) is Bonnibel Bubblegum.
• Ambiguously Bi: At this point, her Big Damn Kiss with Marceline is a well-known moment,. There's some subtext with Shoko. The ambiguity comes from her lack of attraction to males: rejecting Finn (under-aged/mortal) Braco (a third generation professional suitor who's hopelessly In Love with Love), Ice King, and Ricardio (both stalkers with a crush). However, there's her former boyfriend, Mr. Creampuff, whom she tried bringing Back from the Dead in the first episode, but he was made for her specifically as a boyfriend, although she does keep it going with him for a while at least There's also her seeming immunity to Broco's love curse— only for it to be revealed that she did have some feelings for him at the end, the fact that they were not nearly as strong as say, Peppermint Butler's is notable.
• Amicable Exes: She tries to revive her ex-boyfriend Mr. Creampuff in the first episode, so there's likely no negative feelings on her side even considering he was made by Gumbald to distract her from his plans.
• Anthropomorphic Food: Her body is actually a mass of gum. In "Princess Monster Wife", we get to see a cross-section of her head, and she has no physical brain. This is in contrast with Turtle Princess, where we can actually see her brain. See Blob Monster below.
• Anti-Hero: She shows sign of this as early as Season 1 when dealing with the Duke of Nuts, but it becomes much more evident as the show goes on. She does whatever she has to for the Candy Kingdom, but her devotion to being the best ruler possible makes her distrustful and emotionally cold, and she sometimes makes very morally dubious choices for what she considers the greater good, or engaging in sneaky political maneuvering. It's been revealed that she constantly spies on the entire world, including her most loyal allies and servants.
• Badass Adorable: Aww, look, how quirky and cute- Wait, is she firing lasers? AWESOME!
• Badass Bookworm: She has singlehandedly created a formula to reverse death itself with no side effects! Aside from being a skilled scientist, she's also surprisingly skilled in hand to hand combat, being strong enough to tear Ricardio's limbs off with her bare hands.
• Benevolent Dictator: She has complete control and power over her candy citizens, having created them herself. However, the show mostly depicts her as being a genuinely caring, if often authoritarian, ruler.
• Better as Friends: With Finn. After various ups and down, Finn also settles for just being happy being friends with her.
  • On the other hand, "King Worm" and "The Lich" imply that Finn still harbors romantic feeling for Princess Bubblegum. Hinted further when Finn was dealing with depression over the loss of his arm in "Breezy" and it's the sight of her (along with what would be his next sword) that fills him with a loving warm feeling that causes his flower arm to sprout into a tree and getting his arm back. Further still, his happy place as shown in "Hero Heart" is himself with Princess Bubblegum or rather her younger self, showing he clearly still cares about her beyond platonically.
  • Then there's the fact how Finn is an emotional crutch for Princess Bubblegum and the uniqueness of their relationship. It ends up being Played With since while they are Better as Friends for the sake of allowing Bonnibel to run her kingdom and Finn being a hero, it's evident that the emotional aspects remain complicated.
• Betty and Veronica: The Archie to Finn's Betty and Marceline's Veronica.
  • She also is the Betty to Flame Princess's Veronica for Finn's Archie.
• Beware the Nice Ones: As sweet as she is, to invoke her wrath would be inadvisable. Ricardio learned that the hard way.
• Big Bad Ensemble: Temporarily served as the main antagonist of the Elements miniseries along with Betty and Patience St. Pim.
• Big Good: She serves as the main authority figure of the series and is usually the one who provides Finn and Jake with their missions.
  • Later episodes imply that she has been helping rebuild society in Ooo after the Great Mushroom War.
• Big Brother Is Watching: She has extensive surveillance network throughout Ooo, reaching even neighboring kingdoms. At the end of "The Cooler" she takes it down, reminiscent of the scene from The Dark Knight where Lucius Fox destroyed their surveillance network.
• Blob Monster: The pink goo in "Simon & Marcy" can easily be seen as proto-Bubblegum, but the creators confirmed that such pink goo in one of the games is Bubblegum's parents. In "Bonnie and Neddy", it's revealed that she was originally part of a massive wad of gum that she refers to as "the Mother Gum"; she eventually broke away from it and over time she grew into what she is now.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Toes the line. Some of her experiments don't exactly seem all that humane or safe, for example, but it seems her priorities are too long-term to show in 11 minutes a week.
  • There are things that can be guessed at. She is centuries old, but she has explicitly stated that she's not immortal. Considering she's also The Ageless, she may very well not be certain of how long her lifespan really is. Between that, how often she and/or the Candy Kingdom are in danger, and how incredibly high-maintenance the candy people are, it's not really surprising how desperate PB is to have either a competent successor or a way to stave off/undo death as soon as possible.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Her quirks don't show too much, given the setting.
• Broken Bird: Not quite as bad as Marcy, but trauma over being possessed by the Lich is what drove her to create Goliad, she's a workaholic who emotionally detaches herself from problems, and the stress of being a No Respect Girl ruler can get to her, as well being the subject of several dogged nice guys' scary affections.
  • The season six finale sees her realize how much of a jerk she was to the candy people on top of losing her throne (aka her one purpose in life) to the King of Ooo.
  • "Bad Timing" reveals that she keeps cyanide pills in case her castle is attacked, and the events of the episode drive her to drink at the end.
  • "Something Big" implies that she's repressed so many negative emotions in order to keep herself and the kingdom going, that she's a walking well of raw emotional power, and a prime target for Maja.
• Celibate Hero: Of the "Love is a Distraction" variety. Finn, Ice King, Ricardio, Braco, and a throng of other suitors have all tried to woo her at one point, but she all turned them down in favor of ruling over her kingdom properly. It's also heavily implied that the reason she and Marceline originally broke up years before the series started was because she needed to focus on the growing Candy Kingdom.
  • Nearly subverted in the episode "Too Young". She clearly is indulging her time being a younger girl free of the responsibilities of running the Candy Kingdom. She spends much of the episode having fun with Finn and their time together is saturated with Ship Tease. In fact, in Candy Prison, Bonnibel notes that she wishes to remain young with the heavy implications of her growing up alongside Finn in a not-so-platonic way. However, she chooses to become her older age (namely because Lemongrab's rule of Candy Kingdom is tearing the place to pieces.) though her way of growing up invovles sharing a kiss with Finn.
  • This is finally subverted in "Come Along With Me" where her renewed relationship with Marceline was confirmed. However, this also came with PB befriending her Aunt Lollie and thus being able to have someone to share power with.
• The Chains of Commanding: PB occasionally expresses that she'd be relieved to abandon the responsibilities of her position, the problem being that there's no one capable enough to take over for her. "Too Young" was the first prominent example of her revealing this; she would've been more than happy to remain as a younger lady (and spending time with Finn).
• Character Development: In "The Cooler", she gets a What the Hell, Hero? speech from Flame Princess and after admitting she doesn't want to be considered a bad person, she stops her Sinister Surveillance. In "The Pajama War" and later episodes of season six, as difficult as it is for her, she's also trying to mellow out and not be so controlling. After losing the throne, she realizes just how neglectful and controlling she was to her subjects and has started to mellow out more. During "Come Along With Me" when she almost started a war against her Uncle Gumbald after he returned to normal, she is out into a nightmare where both of them swap places and she experiences how Gumbald, Lolly and Chicle could still think like normal, but were unable to express it due to the dum-dum juice and finally apologized to Gumbald for taking away his kingdom due to not thinking about how he felt.
• Cheerful Child: Due to a plot-relevant age-down, she was physically 13, and cute as a button to boot.
• Cool Crown: It can even protect her from the Lich's mind control. She stopped wearing it when she lost the Candy Kingdom's throne to the King of Ooo, but she got it back after regaining her position.
• Crazy-Prepared: In "Lady & Peebles" she tells Rainicorn that she has calculated every possible disaster and has brought everything they would need. And also implanted a GPS tracker in Finn's ear at some point in the past.
• Create Your Own Villain: Her creations have a bad habit of turning against her:
  • Goliad went power mad and has to be trapped in a psychic battle with another sphinx.
  • Lemongrab became a dangerous dictator, who had to be rebuilt to make himself stable.
  • And the biggest of all is her "Uncle" Gumbald. He's just as smart as she is — but infinitely more dangerous and with zero morals.
• Cute and Psycho: She can be a bit crazy sometimes, but she's still ultimately on the side of good.
• Cute Monster Girl: She's a very humanoid Candy Person, with most of the others looking like sweets or cakes with faces and limbs.
• Damsel in Distress: She was captured by the Ice King in the pilot, and being his 'number one', is targeted by him on a frequent basis.
  • During the climax of Ricardio's debut episode, he has her held hostage, leading Finn, Jake, and Ice King to come save her.
• Damsel out of Distress:
  • She's only kidnapped by the Ice King when she doesn't have effective countermeasures on hand. When she does, she often out-and-out attacks him successfully (with a tranq gun in "The Glitch", apparently working his pinky over in "Wizards Only, Fools"...).
  • She finds herself in trouble with Ricardio in "Lady & Peebles", but she manages to beat him up this time, and it wasn't even close.
• Deuteragonist: She is the secondary focus of the Stakes miniseries not only having a big role in Marceline’s character development, but also due to the King of Ooo arc being resolved in the miniseries as well. Same goes for the "Obsidian" special, with it going into Marceline and Bubblegum's history.
• Demonic Possession: The Lich pulls this off on her, ultimately leading to her being shattered in the fight against Finn and the Ice King and put back together, but since some pieces were missing she came back younger, as old as Finn to be exact.
• Doing In the Wizard: Even though the magic and such in Ooo was implied to be something else, even early on in the show, she's the only one to openly debunk it.
• Dude Magnet: She has Finn and Ice King (and Marceline) vying for her affections, along with all the wizards competing for her kiss in "Wizard Battle" and all the suitors in "The Suitor" (which reveals that at least one Candy Kingdom family have been trying to court her for generations). Lumpy Space Princess points this out in "Bad Timing" and is furious, because while LSP tries to be this PB succeeds without any apparent effort, and isn't interested in any of them.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: She gets plenty of worship and romantic attention, but not a whole lot of respect. Comes to a head in "Apple Wedding", where everyone immediately views the King Of Ooo, a complete fraud, as having more authority than her and she rages so much that she nearly ruins the whole wedding.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: PB was a lot sillier in the first few seasons of the show and carefree, even attending talent shows and relaxing with her fellow citizens compared to the Workaholic she would become. She also isn't against magic, as she volunteers to kiss the winner in "Wizard Battle"^note On the mouth!, which goes against both her Flat-Earth Atheist views against magic and her Celibate Hero status.
• Elemental Embodiment: She is the embodiment of Candy, one of Ooo's four elements, the others being Fire, Ice, and Slime. She learns in "Elemental" that she can shoot candy out of her hands.
• Emperor Scientist: She's the ruler of Ooo whose power seems to be from the fact that she made most of her candy subjects. (And can make replacements, if necessary.)
• Evil Tower of Ominousness: She becomes the "Terrible Tower" in the Elements arc, turning into a giant bubblegum tower who turns people into candy with her presence alone.
• Face–Heel Turn: Came dangerously close to turning into a full-on Big Bad at several points in Seasons 5 and 6. Fortunately, she was reined in by Flame Princess in "The Cooler".
  • Temporarily under went this when she became a pure candy Elemental. Thankfully she was restored back to her normal self at the end of the Elements miniseries.
  • She almost went through one again during the final season when she almost started a war with her Uncle Gumbald in an aggressive manner until Finn forced both of them into a nightmare where they were eventually forced to swap places with each other and experience what the other went through. She was finally reigned in when Bubblegum ended up realizing how her relatives could still think like before after being doused with dum-dum juice, but were forced to act stupid and unable to properly express what they really thought. After waking up, she immediately apologized to Gumbald for taking away his kingdom.
• Failure Is the Only Option: Bubblegum makes it clear that she would gladly give up being ruler of the Candy Kingdom because of how demanding the job is. Unfortunately when she has actually stepped down she is shown as lost and longing for it back, both because she has already devoted almost the entirety of her life to it and because her successors are inadequate. So she either keeps at a job she doesn't want or finds herself without purpose.
• Flat-Earth Atheist: She can be very dismissive of magic, considering it an ignorant term for the use of scientific principles that its users simply don't understand, despite the extremely bizarre nature of Ooo making her skepticism seem arbitrary to everyone else. It should be noted that it's less she doesn't believe magic isn't real, but rather everything called magic is just a subset of science, and goes so far as to call out what scientific principles are being used when she sees magic in action. This is in spite of the fact that one of her friends is a half-vampire/half-demon who is the daughter of a demon lord, one of her associates is a ghost princess, Death is an actual character in the show, and multiple afterlives (called "Dead Worlds") are stated by ghosts and Death to exist. She is implied to have lost this skepticism at the end of "Wizards Only, Fools" when she saw the cold spell in action. Strangely, she didn't have this open skepticism and hostility towards magic earlier in the show, having a fairly cordial relationship with the wizards and even agreeing to give a kiss to the wizard who won a magic competition in "Wizard Battle". She even used a magical incantation to turn dough into a loaf of bread in "Five Short Graybles."
• First-Name Basis: At least some people like Finn have started calling her Bonnie after she lost her throne to the King of Ooo. Finn and Marceline continued to do this after she regained it.
• Food-Based Superpowers: Princess Bubblegum is a "Candy Elemental" and has the power to generate and fire jawbreakers as weapons. She just doesn't use the power because she scorns magic and favors science.
• For Science!: She does most of her exploits for science when it's not diplomacy or just hanging out.
• Foreshadowing: The very first episode hints at her being Really 700 Years Old: Finn refers to PB's first subject of her revival potion as Old Man Creampuff, following it up with the fact they used to date. Given the fact PB isn't into a Dirty Old Man like the Ice King, it's pretty clear she's much older than she says.
• Fountain of Youth: Got de-aged to 13, briefly. Otherwise, she either ages slowly or not at all.
• Giant Poofy Sleeves: On her 'princess' dresses.
• Girly Girl with a Tomboy Streak: She's a Proper Lady who presents herself as a Princess Classic and always wears pink. However, she's also a gifted Emperor Scientist and a Ruling Princess who can be quite ruthless and calculating in the interests of her realm.
• Given Name Reveal: "Go With Me" Marceline reveals that her first name is Bonnibel, and is the only character to refer to her as such until Season 7 where Finn occasionally calls her such as well.
• Gratuitous German: Uses it fairly often in "What Have You Done?", and a few others. She sometimes breaks into it when surprised or worried.
• Growing Up Sucks: She tells Finn that she would rather stay 13 than turn 18 again and have to deal with the responsibilities that come with being an adult ruler.
• Guest Fighter: She's a DLC skin for Lord Vraxx in Brawlhalla
• Heel Realization:
  • After Season Five ramped up her less than desirable traits, Season Six had her realize the error of her ways, with Season Seven being her redemption.
  • During "Come Along With Me" when she wanted to wage war on her Uncle Gumbald, she has another one in a nightmare when learned that her uncle and other relatives could actually still think intelligently when they were doused by the dum-dum juice, but we're unable to properly express themselves and were forced to act stupid because of it. When she goes though the experience herself, Bubblegum begins crying at what she forced them to go through and immediately apologized to Gumbald after waking up for taking away his kingdom.
• Hidden Depths: While she normally has difficulty using her candy powers, her fully awakened candy elemental form is able to easily overpower Flame Princess' army, turns Flame Princess into a candy person, and begins turning people and objects in the other kingdoms into candy as well. This implies that she is actually the strongest of the four elementals and only has trouble with her powers because her rational mind is a poor match for using magic.
• Hollywood Science: In general, she pulls this off quite nicely. It's taken to a whole new level in "Five Short Graybles" when she uses centrifugal force, growth and shrink serums a la Alice in Wonderland, Two Beings, One Body teleportation of a jellyfish and a balloon, White Magic with a Black Magic feel, Frickin' Laser Beams, molecular fabrication, karate, a baseball bat and levitation. All to make a sandwich. Keep in mind that this was "the most perfect sandwich to ever exist, or will exist in the confines of space-time".
• How Do I Shot Web?: In "Jelly Beans Have Power" she is shown to have difficulty using her powers intuitively like the other elementals, initially causing her to be limited to a weak jelly bean projectile. She is eventually able to get past this block by thinking through the chemical formulations of different kinds of candy, but she still lacks experience and inadvertently injures several candy subjects in the aftermath. This causes her to largely ignore her magic after that point and fall back on technology most of the time.
• Hypocritical Heartwarming: As much of a schmuck as Lemongrab is, he's still her schmuck, darn it!
• I Didn't Mean to Turn You On: She is clearly aware of Finn's infatuation with her since the beginning, but only wishes to have a courtly albeit casual friendship with him. However, after the first battle with the Lich resulted in her becoming 13 years old (physically and mentally), she becomes much more openly affectionate to her hero. Her first action was to embrace him affectionately and the next episode we see them together, she indulges in spending plenty of time with him while being a Cheerful Child, hinting that she is being much more open wih her wants and desires, up to wanting to remain 13 with the implications of growing up alongside Finn. However, she dismisses these moments as "that was five years ago" when she turns back to normal of 18. Then there's this moment from "Burning Low", where she thinks Jake listened to her about Flame Princess, but Jake interpreted it differently and told Finn she's jealous. Then there's this line (referring to how Finn being with FP is dangerous because the intense emotions could cause FP's power to go out of control), but Finn (and the audience) understandably interprets this differently:
  Princess Bubblegum: Finn, sometimes you want someone and you want to kiss them, and be with them. But you can't, because responsibility demands sacrifice.
  Finn: What are you trying to say?!
  Princess Bubblegum: I'm trying to say that you're a hero, Finn. You're my hero.
  • After the episode, it appears that she does not have any romantic feelings for Finn. However, her tendency to put the kingdom above her own desires or that of her friends along with her own secretative nature and bottling up her feelings mean it is difficult to guage her honesty. Them being Better as Friends is for her since it allows her to properly rule her kingdom and based on her word choice, let Finn be the hero Ooo needs him to be. Seems to become rather moot by the end though.
• I Did What I Had to Do: Bonnibel has been forced to take actions that she's regretted for the greater good. Shown clearly in "Burning Low" when she is nearly forced to allow Finn and Flame Princess to suffocate to prevent the latter from destroying the world.
  • Season 5 throws a lot of this her way. She almost always has a good (or at least plausible) reason for everything she does, but she's not above making sacrifices.
  • This excuse is turned on its head in "The Cooler" where Bonnibel nearly dooms the Fire Kingdom based off the idea the Sleeping Fire Giants might pose a problem later, with Flame Princess chewing her out that this isn't a matter of PB doing it for the sake of her people as much as she simply a bad person. This shakes PB to her core, having never considered herself as such, and stops her Sinister Surveillance and her acts against the Flame Kingdom in general.
• Idiot Ball: Shares this with Peppermint Butler in Stakes as somehow both of them saw no real issue in having the recently blinded Peppermint Butler dispose of Vampire King's vampiric essence. Unsurprisingly he almost immediately sets off a chain of events that results in the raw essence being unleashed.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Or, Candytarian in this case. It's a downplayed case as she never eats an entire candy citizen and it only happens a couple times, but Princess Bubblegum has been shown to eat parts of her candy citizens when stressed if they're too close, which is pretty disturbing considering that she chose to create them from candy in the first place.
• Immortality Bisexuality: Bubblegum had a romantic relationship with fellow immortal Marceline in the past, which they rekindle by the series finale.
• Incompatible Orientation: Ambiguous. With an Unwanted Harem of men (both Good, Evil and Neutral) pining for her affections, the only person who's affections she openly reciprocates is Marceline. Whether or not she's attracted to men is up to debate.
• Inelegant Blubbering: Bonnibel is not attractive when she cries. When Finn agrees to help her cure her subjects of Freezer Burn Flu, the happiness plus the stress of having her entire kingdom sick nearly makes her burst into tears. Bulging, tear filled eyes, loud sobbing.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: After she sends Lumpy Space Princess back to a form before she met her true love (who was accidentally erased from existence), she sighs and pours herself a glass of root beer.
• Insufferable Genius: Pops up from time to time, in the sense that the intelligence gap between her and just about everyone else in the area is wide enough to cause problems. It's been present since "Slumber Party Panic", but really only hits a boil in "Wizards Only, Fool" - they wouldn't have had to leave the hospital if she'd just played along with Starchy's need for a 'magic' cure.
• Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: Did this to the Ice King in "Wizards Only, Fools."
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Subverted in "Rattleballs" when she makes it look like she destroyed Rattleballs.
  • Comes close to it in "The Cooler" when she attempts to destroy the Fire Kingdom's sleeping fire giants, but has a Heel Realization thanks to Flame Princess and backs off from the slope as a result.
• Kick the Dog: One of her lowest moments is conspiring with the Ice King against the Fire Kingdom and cooling its core while getting most of the sleeping fire giants destroyed in order to ensure that they would not be used against the Candy Kingdom, ignoring the fact Flame Princess legitimately had no intention to act against the other kingdoms and this action could doom the entire kingdom. Phoebe rightfully calls her out on this.
• Last-Name Basis: No one (apart from Marceline and Finn) calls her Bonnibel.
• Lawful Good: In-Universe-assigned alignment in the comic series.
• Living Emotional Crutch: She is this to her brother, Neddy, a candy dragon. Unlike his sister, he is very sensitive, docile and is quite fearful of the outside world (implied to be a result of his first experience of living is pain). As such, she is the only person who can comfort him and who he feels comfortable with for the most part.
  • It is heavily implied that Finn serves as this to her as well. Her relatonship with him is unique, being one of her true bonds beyond her maternal figures toward the Candy citizens and said bond possesses a close intimacy surpassing PB's friendship with her fellow princesses with the only other bond being close being with Lady Rainicorn. She relies on him heavily and thinks highly of him. At the same time, she is the one dictating the terms of their bond, at least in the sense of it remaining platonic for the sake of her duties. She also is willing to be secretative with him on a fair bit of matters. Ultimately, she does very care about him alot, including his emotional well-being.
• Mad Scientist: Some episodes seem to indicate that she's not exactly quite right in the head. Add that and the fact that her scientific exploits (case in point: Lemongrab) tend to go wrong half the time, and we get this. In "The Lich", Finn and Jake find her working late into the night creating tiny candy people who farm in a tiny candy sandbox. Then she cuts off one's limbs with a scissor and attaches them to another (which they don't seem to mind much), for no stated reason.
• Mama Bear: She acts this way towards Lemongrab in "You Made Me!", and is in general willing to go to extreme lengths for the sake of the Candy citizens.
• Meaningful Name: Her first name is Bonnibel, which means "beautiful girl". Which makes sense considering she was Finn's crush from Seasons 1-3 and is the main princess the Ice King targets. It also sounds very similar to "bonbon," the French word for "candy."
• Mini-Mecha: Seems to be wearing one in "Wizards Only, Fools". What's odd is that it only covers her upper torso and follows her arms' movements, leaving her legs fully exposed (with the undersuit she's wearing possibly acting as Powered Armor, though there's nothing for or against this). It's unclear why exactly she felt the need to wear it, though she likely came directly from getting the Ice King to reveal the Wizard City password - Rorschach-style by the sound of it.
• Modest Royalty: During her off-hours, she's generally very content to hang out with Finn and Jake on their adventures wearing clothing much more simple than you'd expect for royalty, with the exception of keeping her crown.
• More Dakka: Whenever there is a pressing need for her to save her kingdom/friends through direct action, Peebles will do so with as much force as she can reasonably pull together. Note that she already has a laser-firing joystick-controlled swan bigger than she is - she had at least two guns in "Lady & Peebles", one of which was roughly equivalent to a grenade launcher.
• Motherly Scientist: Played with; she mainly comes across as a Mad Scientist, and as a result initially had a rather strained relationship with Lemongrab, who she considered to be a failed experiment. Later on, she tries to be more motherly towards Goliad, but when Goliad goes mad with power and attempts to take over the Candy Kingdom PB has no choice but to abandon that attitude in order to stop her. However, she's slowly improving her relationship with Lemongrab, and he even calls her "Mother Princess." She treats the Lemongrabs the way a frustrated but patient mom would treat her annoying "special needs" children, and calls them "boys" affectionately. She even says something along the lines of "I need to keep a closer eye on these two, so they won't get into any more trouble. " As of "Too Old" and "Lemonhope Part 1 and 2", how well this applies to the way she views the Lemongrabs is questionable.
• Mr. Vice Guy: Or vice girl in this case. Most of the time, Bubblegum is a sweet-natured, kind girl. Unfortunately, she's layered with deep-suited trauma, dishonest tendencies and her insistence in trying to bring order to Ooo.
• Ms. Exposition: Often. Unfortunately, she tends to explain things from a broader perspective than necessary - "Burning Low" would have been a lot shorter if she'd given Finn the same explanation she finally gave Jake, for example.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • "Nemesis" strongly implies that her I Did What I Had to Do tendencies are freaking even her out, as she's awkward when asked about the rattleballs robots, and she thinks she's the evil one Peace Master is looking for. She's not, it's Peppermint Butler.
  • After being put in a nightmare by Finn with her Uncle Gumbald during "Come Along With Me", both of them are forced to swap places with each other and experience what the other went through. While Gumbald experiences Bubblegum's issues with The Chains of Commanding, she experiences how he could still think intelligently after being doused with dum-dum juice, but could only act stupid and was unable to express how he truly felt at the time. After realizing this, she begins to cry and immediately apologized to him for taking away his kingdom after they both wake up.
• Necessarily Evil: Hynden Walch describes her as a "selflessly evil" character, since she wants to do good and stabilize the land of Ooo, but unfortunately her methods of doing so border on dictatorship. Following "The Cooler", she has begun to move away from this. During the final season, she almost starts a war against her Uncle Gumbald in an increasingly aggressive manner. After experiencing what he went through after being doused by dum-dum juice however, she realized how cruel her actions were and immediately apologized for taking away his kingdom in the past.
• Nerds Are Sexy: Again, at least according to Finn. Even if he doesn't admit it.
  • Although he lampshades it himself.
• The Noseless: Like most people in Ooo, she lacks a visible nose.
• No Respect Girl: She was the one who created the Candy Kingdom and the majority of the candy people, so is angry when the King Of Ooo waltzes in out of nowhere, is proven to be a fraud and her subjects would still rather obey him than her just because he has a higher title.
• No-Sell: Ultimately subverted. In "The Suitor," a demon makes Braco ugly in exchange for becoming a love magnet, and it seems to work as Pep-But is immediately infatuated with him (although given he's something of a Nightmare Fetishist, it could also be Braco's appearance that made him attracted to him). She still doesn't display any notable affection for him. That is, until after he leaves, tenderly whisper "My love" as he goes into the distance.
• Not So Above It All: With a little coaxing from Finn and Jake, even she finds the antics of the Banana Guards chasing the Jameses funny.
• Obliviously Evil: When Bubblegum was overrun by her Elemental powers and became a pure candy Elemental she began turning everyone she could into idiotic candy zombies, but did not realize what harm she was doing to them at the time, and actually thought that everyone was happier that way.
• Odd Name Out: She's the only princess in the series whose name doesn't follow the "(Descriptive Noun) Princess" formula. (There's also Princess Business, but she's only mentioned, never shown.)
• Official Couple: With Marceline as of "Come Along with Me".
• Out-of-Character Moment: Bubblegum is usually a Damsel out of Distress, saving herself or at least angry that she's in peril. Which is why it's weird in James II where she's just standing in the same place scared when Zombie!James menaces her, thus letting the other James save her and prove himself.
• Parasol of Prettiness: She holds a pink and purple one in the beginning of "Incendium", accentuating both her femininity and royal status.
• Pet the Dog: Although she has done many unscrupulous things in her life, in "Come Along With Me", she ordered her Banana Guards to run for their lives from the Monstrosity that GOLB created, clearly cementing her as empathetic.
• Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: She does a lot of princess-ing in the main series, but in "Obsidian" and Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake she's only really shown living with Marceline as opposed to ruling the Candy Kingdom. Given she now shares power with Aunt Lolly, it's not like she's leaving the kingdom in incapable hands.
• Plague Doctor: When the plague accidentally caused by the Ice King was afflicting the Candy Kingdom, she is seen in this outfit.
• Plot-Relevant Age-Up: In "Too Young", she has to become eighteen again to regain the throne from Earl Lemongrab.
• Potty Emergency: Happens to Princess Bubblegum at the beginning of "Trouble in Lumpy Space". "I should not have drank that much tea!"
• Pride: A major Fatal Flaw of hers. She's so adamant that magic isn't anything special that she refuses to pretend to use magic on Starchy to make him feel better. So she's forced to go to Wizard City and drag Finn and Jake along. The Grand Master Wizard offers them forgiveness for trespassing, so long as PB says that "wizards rule." Of course, she refuses and degrades and derides their beliefs about magic, and thus gets herself, Finn, Jake, and Abracadaniel thrown in Wizard Prison.
• Pretty Princess Powerhouse: Princess Bubblegum is prim, proper, poised, very pink and also one of the best defenses that her kingdom has. She also singlehandedly defeated Ricardio, even when he hurts Lady Rainicorn. Even Finn, her champion, occasionally needs her to bail him out of trouble.
• Princess Classic: Mostly an Affectionate Parody of the trope, but is often played straight. She is prim, proper, poised, is frequently a Damsel in Distress, and loves pink.
• Princesses Prefer Pink: Note that she does have other outfits, several of which aren't very pink - the ones she wears as Princess are all pink-ish.
• Pure Is Not Good: She is sweet, kind, friendly, and has a strong sense of justice. Precisely, that is the reason why her methods of justice are morally questionable or dictatorial.
• Really 700 Years Old:
  • She's at least 300. In the game Adventure Time: Explore the Dungeon Because I DON'T KNOW!, she tells the Ice King that she's 827 years old.
  • In "The Suitor", it's revealed PB's various suitors have been waiting to court her for hundreds of years.
  • It's been demonstrated via flashback that scales back centuries (and finally outright acknowledged by Finn) as of "The Vault".
    Finn: PB, you are like a bazillion years old! You're not freaking 19! What the heck?!
    PB: (embarrassed) Hahaha...
    Finn: Weirdo.
• Realpolitik: Has been steadily getting more willing to keep tabs on everyone, and is willing to directly sabotage other kingdoms (particularly the Fire Kingdom) to maintain peace. However, she also emphasizes using peaceful means first, only stepping up to more violent methods when those have failed.
• Rose-Haired Sweetie: Her hair is pink (as is her whole body), and she's a sweet princess (most of the time).
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: May actually be the most active of all the Princesses in Ooo. Not that the bar is set terribly high; the only other princesses who seem to do anything other than "exist" are Turtle Princess, who is a librarian, Lumpy Space Princess, who is basically a hobo and occasionally picks up odd jobs (like being an "adventure secretary"/"writer" in "Gotcha!"). The only other princess with a decent track record of doing stuff is Fire Princess, who threatened Candy Kingdom, adventured with Finn, and usurped her father and turned Fire Kingdom's Card-Carrying Villain nature around. Also deconstructed as she often burdens herself with too much to do and she feels crushed by her responsibilities.
• Rubber Woman: Far more downplayed than Jake, but in "Have You Seen The Muffin Mess", when the plague cuts off her arm, she can stretch her bubblegum self into a new one with fingers.
• Sanity Slippage: PB gets more and more... stressed... over the course of the series. Hints about it are first shown in "The Duke" when Finn accidentally hits her with a bottle that turns her skin green and makes her hair fall out causes PB to go... well, nuts.
  Princess Bubblegum: Bring [the Duke of Nuts] to justice! (suddenly maniacal) The justice of a cold dungeon! (cackles insanely)
• Science Hero: Bubblegum's scientific intellect has gotten Finn, Jake, herself, and the whole kingdom out of trouble at times - even if it was her scientific exploits that got them into trouble in the first place.
• Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: Experimenting on living creatures? Creating new life from your friend's DNA without asking? Preemptively destroying other kingdom's forces? Dictating her subject's lives to the point of who marries who? Hating someone for eating pudding? Sending your hero off to beat the snot out someone for the greater good? Don't worry, it's fine. It doesn't really matter how questionable her activities are, because Princess Bubblegum is the sole ruler of the Candy Kingdom. She gets to do what she wants, no matter how morally questionable. Though she is sometimes persuaded by her friends to stop certain behaviors, there's nothing making her do anything. Starting with season 6 however, she eventually begins to realize that she is causing more harm than good and starts toning this down.
• Sherlock Scan: Bubblegum is shown to have this ability in "Sky Witch".
• Sinister Surveillance: She admits that she spies on everybody in "The Cooler", and doesn't find it to be an issue that people are disturbed by this. By the end of the episode, she seems to get the hint, and unplugs her entire secret surveillance system and locks up the door.
• The Smart Girl: She's very skilled when it comes to scientific matters.
• Sociopathic Hero: Rebecca Sugar described her as a sociopath, though clarified that she wasn't a literal example and more a case of someone trying to be like one, suppressing emotions and empathy for what they perceive to be the greater good. Starting with Season Six, she's started to change upon realizing how unhealthy this way of living is.
• Sophisticated as Hell: She provides shades of this, shifting from words like "shall" and "beseech" and phrases like "You seem genuinely penitent" to words like "hun" and "ah-ight" and phrases like "You'd better not freakin' tell anyone!" and "Mondo momma brains!" and "ballblamburglerber".
• Sour Supporter: Spends most of "Wizards Only, Fool" like this. As she's clearly having to go considerably out of her way (both physically and philosophically) to satisfy a request from one of her subjects, it makes sense.
• Spear Counterpart: Prince Gumball.
• Stereotype Flip: Of Princess Classic. She's so pink she's bubblegum, with a modest pink dress and long hair as her default look, but she's actually a Broken Bird workaholic who'll protect her kingdom no matter what the cost and keeps cyanide pills in her meeting room.
• Surrounded by Idiots: Most of her subjects are pretty dumb. Turns out she made them that way to ensure their loyalty, and also because they appear to be a lot happier as such. Whenever they become intelligent rational beings, they tend to be treacherous jerkasses. However, this eventually bites her during the season 6 finale when the King of Ooo easily manipulates them to turn against her and elect him as their ruler instead. When she attempts to call them out on it however, she sees them smiling, blissfully unaware of what they done with her realizing that she made them too stupid as well as how she treated them. After experiencing what Gumbald, Lolly and Chicle went through after being doused with dum-dum juice in a nightmare, she begins crying as she realized how cruel she actually was to them and immediately apologized to Gumbald after waking up.
• Teen Genius: Subverted; early on her age is given as 18, and she's one of the smartest beings in Ooo. It then turns out she's actually far older.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Girly Girl to Marceline's Tomboy, with appropriate consequences to Marceline's dating advice for Finn. (The show makes it clear that Bubblegum is fully capable of doing 'tomboy' things, and the trope as it is applies primarily to their preferences.)
• Took a Level in Badass:
  • She saves Finn and Jake at the end of "Dungeon" by swooping in on her magic flying swan, controlling a joystick to make it shoot lasers from its mouth.
  • In "What Have You Done?" Princess Bubblegum was about to beat the stuffing out of Ice King... using pink Power Fists.
  • In "Lady & Peebles",she rips Ricardio apart with her bare hands and beats him to a pulp with his own severed limbs that he made for himself.
  • "Reign of Gunthers" solidifies her badass status as she is seen for the first time with a sword and battle attire.
• Tough Leader Façade: She's composed and has the well-being of her kingdom as her foremost concern. However, it's been shown to be detrimental to her emotional well-being and mental health. She desires time and time again to be free of the mask and it left her isolated. It's implied that it's what cost her first relationship with Marceline and why she ultimately never ended up with Finn.
• Treehouse of Fun: Her castle is built around a tree.
• Unfit for Greatness: Half the time she calls on Finn, it's to make up for her own oversights. Understandably, a lot of this is due to how thinly stretched she is as top scientist and best living diplomat in Ooo, in addition to running the Candy Kingdom part time with little help better than Cinnamon Bun.
• Unlimited Wardrobe: At least fifteen outfits besides her stock pink dress.
• Universally Beloved Leader: Her subjects would do nearly anything for her (up to and including donating parts of themselves to her) and she returns that devotion.
  • It seems a large part of this is because she views the majority of the candy people as small children who require constant supervision. Honestly, given their actions, she's not that far off. The fact that she literally created them adds to this.
  • However, this seems to wane in later seasons, where we see some of her subjects resent her Big Brother ways, culminating in electing King of Ooo as their new ruler. Luckily she eventually wins her throne back by Season 7.
• Unscrupulous Hero: Don't let first impressions fool you: she's willing to stoop pretty low in various situations.
• Unwanted Harem: There was a point that Finn, Ice King and Ricardio all had crushes on her. She's not comfortable with their romantic pursuits (with the exception of Finn, where there are hints her feelings for him are not entirely platonic.)
  • She literally has a harem of suitors waiting to date her as seen in "The Suitor". She makes it clear that she wants to focus on her studies and doesn't date. Because of this, some of the suitors have been waiting hundreds of years.
• Well, Excuse Me, Princess!: Marceline kinda implied this regarding her relationship with Princess Bubblegum in her song in "What Was Missing". "Sorry I don't treat you like a goddess", indeed.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: She means well overall, but is willing to pull drastic action if she believes it will aid her citizens. It says something when her own voice actress describes her as a "selflessly evil" kind of character. Flame Princess calls her out on this in "The Cooler".
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Considers her subjects expendable, as she can make more. She has prevented Finn from sacrificing himself and allowed a candy subject to do so because of this specifically.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: In the Elements miniseries, Patience transforming her into a pure Candy elemental makes her into a giant, perpetually cheerful tower of bubblegum who forcibly transforms people into constantly happy candy elementals.
• You Do NOT Want To Know: Finn, Jake, and Marceline all agree it is best not to know what PB is up to in her lab.

BMO

BMO

"Who wants to play video games?"

Voiced by: Niki Yang

BMO, pronounced Beemo, is Finn and Jake's cute Animate Inanimate Video Game system. A bit of a rebel and with a tendency to get lost in his imagination, Beemo sometimes enjoys turning up his volume too loud and running out of batteries during a game. Speaks with a Korean accent, and looks like cross between a Game Boy, Macintosh and a Vectrex. Was built by pre-Mushroom War robotics engineer Moseph Maestro Giovanni to be a companion and best friend to the son he never had and eventually sent into the world by said inventor to "Be More" and find a family.

---

• Adaptational Badass: Downplayed in the Pirates of the Enchiridion video game, while BMO's arsenal in that game is best suited for being a Support Party Member, she's still tough enough to keep up with Finn, Jake, and Marceline in fighting alongside them, something that would be difficult for them to pull off in the show.
• Ambiguous Gender: Typically referred to as a "he", but was referred to as "M'lady" by Finn in the season 3 premiere. However, he called himself a boy in "Five Short Graybles". And in "Five More Short Graybles" her alter ego claimed to be a "real baby girl". The version of him seen in the Fionna and Cake stories looks exactly the same, so that's no help either.
  • In the Pixel Princesses comic BMO wishes to become a princess and is eventually made an honorary one — and the Grand Finale reveals that in the far future they have become the legendary King of Ooo.
  • The WonderCon Q&A panel confirmed that BMO is genderfluid, and both male and female pronouns apply.
  • In the Munchkin Adventure Time card game, every character has a card with two sides, depicting the normal character and gender-bent Fionna and Cake counterpart (as in Munchkin, your character's STARTING gender is the same as your own). While BMO's card has two sides and two different pictures, no gender can be derived from them, and the card outright states that BMO ignores any gender-related stuff in the game.
• Animate Inanimate Object: He's a living video game console.
• Become a Real Boy: Or he wants to, anyway.
• Breakout Character: Went from a fairly minor character in the first couple of seasons, to being a main character in his own right with several A Day in the Limelight episodes.
• Cassandra Truth: When Jake tells BMO not to mention any of his past life of crime to Finn in "One Last Job", BMO manages to forget keeping it a secret from him. Finn dismisses it as BMO being over-actively imaginative anyway.
• Character Development: While developed initially as a comedic character to play off of Finn and Jake, BMO has grown to be a very complex character, particularly in his A Day in the Limelight episodes. His association with minor episodic characters is often actions of brutality, love, matronly care, or despair.
  • In "James Baxter the Horse," BMO sings about being pregnant, and carrying around an egg. A butterfly knocks the egg out of BMO's grasp, it shatters on the ground, and BMO starts crying.
• Characterization Marches On: BMO was first treated like a sentient video game console that happened to live with Finn and Jake for the sake of entertainment, but as they got extended focus, they essentially were considered to be their own person and Finn and Jake grew extremely attached to them as a result, viewing them as a child.
• Cloud Cuckoolander: BMO has a bizarre imagination and can get completely lost in it when left alone.
• Covert Pervert: She watches two slugs make out in "Slow Love".
• Cute Machine: Lampshaded by Marceline in "Evicted!".
  Marceline: "I'm invested in this very cute video game!"
• A Day in the Limelight: "BMO Noire", "BMO Lost", "Be More", and "The More You Moe, The Moe You Know"
• Do-Anything Robot: BMO can serve whatever function is convenient for the plot. For instance, one time he edited and played back a home movie with a custom background song.
  • And sometimes subverted, like the "ghost-detecting machine" in "The Creeps".
  Bubblegum: So, who's the ghost, BMO?
  BMO: Oh, um... I don't have ghost-detecting equipment. I just like taking nice pictures.
• Eating Machine: BMO's very fond of hot chocolate despite not actually having a mouth. BMO can't actually eat anything, but tries anyway.
• Future Badass: In the last few episodes it's stated that sometime in the future BMO becomes a legendary ruler of all of Ooo for a period of time before retiring to live atop a mountain.
• Grew Beyond Their Programming: Mo built and programmed him to "Be More" then just an average robot
• Heart Is an Awesome Power: BMO's main purpose is to give love. Most of the time this means that she's not very helpful in a fight. However, it makes BMO the Hope Bringer in the final battle with GOLB, allowing him to turn the tide when virtually every major character was about to perish.
• Informed Flaw: Claims to not have not feel pain or emotions, but very clearly reacts to pain and displays emotions freely.
• Jerkass to One: While pretty much every character gets along well with BMO, BMO doesn't like NEPTR that much, outright admitting in "Skyhooks" that he does not see him as an equal.
• Magic from Technology or Magitek: No further explanation is given as to how a video game came to life and gained consciousness, which leads to fan speculation.
  • Eventually is revealed to be a unique robot built by the MO robotics company programmed to "Be More"
• Malaproper: Especially in "BMO Noire".
  BMO: "I feel like I was hit with a Dracula by King Kong".
• Massive Numbered Siblings: While unique, BMO's creator made a large number of other Mos, who recognize BMO as family.
• Meaningful Name: Mo revealed BMO is short for Be More.
• Mirror Monologue: Only in the graybles... usually.
• Mr. Imagination: Takes it to really bizarre heights.
• No Biological Sex: Since BMO's a robot, he isn't programmed with sex protocols.
• Papa Wolf: Ultimately, when they turn the tide of the GOLB battle in the finale:
  BMO: It's okay, Jake. You always try to protect me and Finn, but sometimes we are going to get hurt. How about today, you let me be the papa?
• Phantom Zone: It's only ever been seen in one episode so far.
• Protectorate: Jake orders BMO to watch over a distraught Finn while he heads off to the Flame Kingdom. BMO's reacting a little too enthusiastically is par for the course.
  BMO: If anyone tries to hurt Finn, I will kill them!
  Jake: ...Okay, good.
• Retraux: Crosses over into this, as BMO displays pixellated graphics and plays 8-bit music.
• Split Personality: Football may or may not be this to BMO.
• Spoiled Brat: Fitting of his child-like behavior, BMO can act like a rotten child who will cry or freak out because he can't get what he wants. However, this is downplayed, as BMO is mostly well-behaved.
• Talking Appliance Sidekick: More of a supporting character than "sidekick" but it still counts.
• Tagalong Kid: While certainly not a kid in the conventional sense, he's often treated like a rebellious child by Finn and Jake, particularly in "Slow Love". This may qualify as Hypocritical Humor, given that Finn is a Kid Hero and Jake acts like One of the Kids.
• Time Abyss: BMO actually predates the "Mushroom Wars". By the end of the series, in the Shermy and Beth scenes (set 1000 years in the future), he's the only character we recognize who hasn't changed.
• Tin Man: In "Donny", BMO states how as a machine she can not feel pain or emotion but states that she very much hates Donny.

Marceline the Vampire Queen

Marceline Abadeer/Marceline the Vampire Queen

"Dang, man, I didn't think you'd ever catch on!"

^{Click here to see her as a 7-year-old}

^{Click here to see her as Marshmaline the Campfire Queen}

Voiced by: Olivia Olson, Ava Acres (Young Marceline, show-only), Audrey Bennett (Young Marceline, "Obsidian")

The queen of the vampires (by default as she killed all the other vampires, including the king). Known to be extremely unempathetic but never cruel, simply doing whatever she pleases even at the expense of others. Was alive at the time of the apocalyptic 'mushroom war'.

Usually decked out in punk-rock apparel. She generally tries to be cool and rather unfeeling, she harbors a very broken spirit due to loneliness in living forever, among other things. Whenever her more sensitive or emotional side is shown, she gets angry. She and fellow immortal Ice King also share a long and painful history together, and she spends much of her time finding and moving into new houses to avoid him, until the events of "I Remember You".

---

• Absent Animal Companion: Marceline has a pet poodle named Shwabl, who's been her companion since before she was turned into a vampire. The book "The Enchiridion & Marcy's Super Secret Scrapbook" reveals that when she turned, she accidentally sucked the pink out of Shwabl's fur and nearly killed him, but was able to bring him back as a half-ghost thanks to a spell from the Enchiridion. In the show however, Schwabl only appears in the background at her house in a handful of episodes.
• Action Girl: She can definitely handle herself in wild situations. Although her lazy side makes it so she doesn't get to show it off much.
• Affably Evil: When she was an antagonist (which lasted for about one episode, not counting her trickery in "Henchman"); since then she's settled into a more neutral type of personality with a general Lack of Empathy, being more Affably Amoral than anything.
• Affectionate Nickname: Finn and Jake sometimes call her "Marcie". Ash calls her "Mar-mar".
• All-Powerful Bystander: As one of the most powerful creatures in Ooo, she could easily defeat almost any other character in the show, especially if she started eating souls and stealing powers, but she prefers to either stand back and watch, or simply ignore everything. Justified, As after spending centuries traversing the Land of Ooo, Marceline had become rather cynical and does not believe much will change in the end even if she did help.
• Always a Bigger Fish: To the vampires. In a more literal twist on this trope, this isn't due to Marceline being significantly more powerful than the vampires, but because she devours them just as they devour humans, and more effectively for that matter since Marceline devours their entire physical forms and even get their powers.
• Amazon Chaser: Shows very obvious signs of attraction to Susan Strong in the Islands mini-series, as well as telling Princess Bubblegum that she "always looks great after fighting monsters" at the end of "Obsidian".
• And Then John Was a Zombie: She used to hunt vampires, even dedicating herself to wiping them all out, but was turned while taking down the Vampire King and his minions.
• Anti Anti Christ: It's suggested because her father is evil incarnate and a Satanic Archetype.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Does this all the time, but thus far never in her Cute Monster Girl look; she prefers scaling herself up into monstrous forms for combat purposes. See One-Winged Angel below.
• Author Avatar: For Rebecca Sugar. She's a bisexual musician with a sensitive and soulful heart.
• Bare Midriffs Are Feminine: In the Stakes miniseries.
• Bat Out of Hell: Frequently turns into an odd-looking bat when she wants to hide, and she has a giant version that she assumed in her first appearance. She also begins transforming into this state when extremely hungry.
• Betty and Veronica: She's the chaotic, black-haired Veronica to Finn's sweetheart and blonde Betty for Princess Bubblegum's Archie.
• Blessed with Suck: Her regeneration powers are shown in "Simon Petrikov" to make tattoos a difficult prospect, as her skin heals over them.
• Broken Bird: She's had a very harsh life, been betrayed by a lot of people, and scared people away out of fear of it happening again.
• Brought Down to Badass: When her vampire essence was removed, she reverted back into a half-demon with soul-stealing abilities.
• Cannibalism Superpower: She got her wide variety of powers by eating the souls of other vampires who previously possessed them.
• Chaotic Neutral: In-universe-assigned alignment in the comic series.
• Characterization Marches On: Goes from being antagonistic to a Heroic Neutral.
• Combat Sadomasochist: A minor case.
  "Yeah, it hurts, but I kinda like it. It reminds me of when I'd scrape my knees up as a kid, and my mom would patch me up. You know what I'm sayin'?"
• Combo Platter Powers: Has a large and varied set of abilities and an ability to easily get more.
• Companion Cube: Her childhood teddy bear, Hambo, mainly because it was given to her by her father figure and best friend Simon Petrikov. It was sold to Maja the Sky Witch by her abusive boyfriend Ash, causing them to break up. She reclaims it in the episode "Sky Witch", only to lose it again in an effort to help Simon say goodbye to his lost love in "Betty".
• Connected All Along:
  • She was close to the Ice King as a little girl when he was still in mid-transformation as Simon Petrikov; he acted as a father figure to her while journeying in the post-apocalyptic wastes, and he's the one who gave her Hambo.
  • While not outright said in the series, it's heavily implied in various episodes and confirmed by the creators that she and Princess Bubblegum used to date in the past, and they renew their relationship in the series finale.
  • She used to live in the Tree House where Finn and Jake now live. A flashback in the Stakes miniseries shows that she befriended and protected a group of human survivors who would go on to colonize The Islands, the archipelago where Finn was originally born.
• Consistent Clothing Style: She favors a dark, muted color palette (greys, blacks, dark blues, with purples or red accents), denim, and either boots or sneakers.
• Cool Big Sis: She occasionally acts like this toward Finn.
• Creepy Child: As a child. She once spoke to her teddy bear as she was fixing it: "I'm hurting you because I love you." What really drives it home is that she's completely unfazed by the Scenery Gorn that the Mushroom War has brought.
• Creepy Good: She may be an ally, but Finn and Jake are still terrified of her.
• Cute Little Fangs: Though it's fairly clear that her entire mouth is full of sharp teeth.
• Cute Monster Girl: She's even referred to as "that sexy vampire lady" in her debut episode.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Sure, she's a Vampire Queen responsible for kicking Finn and Jake out of their house (although she does return it), but for the most part she just wants to jam on her axe and record albums with friends.
• Daywalking Vampire: Direct sunlight can still burn or even kill Marceline, but things as minor as a shaded hat or sunscreen can protect her. Her Healing Factor can also quickly reverse minor damage from the sun, which isn't surprising considering the vamp she got the power from could totally ignore sunlight.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: As the series progresses, Marceline becomes more open towards her friends.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • In "Evicted!" Marceline is far more antagonistic than the rest of the series paints her out to be, even before she Took a Level in Kindness or Took a Level in Jerkass. She willing to kill Finn and Jake, she fully bites down and nearly drains Jake of all his blood and threatened to do so to Finn moments earlier, and might very well done so had she not changed her mind at the last minute. This level of aggressiveness is shown nowhere else in the show, as even people who did much more to her got off with lesser punishments, even in flashbacks.
  • In the same episode, she both slaps Finn's butt and kisses him on the cheek and causes him to blush, not only does Marceline not do anything like this again and voices a desire of being Better as Friends, she's never this openly teasing to either of her on-screen partners who one would think would get this treatment.
• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: Refer to her page image. And yes, she can get really creepy when she wants.
• Et Tu, Brute?: Almost everybody Marceline has ever loved has either betrayed her and/or abandoned her. Following her mother's death who she believed abandoned her, she was raised by the Ice King, who became a father figure to her during the early years of the apocalypse, but he too has to abandon her out of fear he's too dangerous and mentally unstable to be around her. After that, communication with her birth father is infrequent and often results in him hurting her feelings. Later, her boyfriend steals and sells her stuffed bear, the only memento she had of her days with Simon. Finally, she had a major and public fallout with Princess Bubblegum while they were dating. As a result, she has a tendency to bottle up her emotions and drive others away before they can get close to her.
• Evil Is Petty: Kicking Jake and Finn out of their treehouse because it originally belonged to her was at the very least understandable, her appearing to kick Finn and Jake out of her cave just as they were settling in was already over the line. Attempting to steal Jake because Finn finds comfort in him and then attempting to kill Finn AND Jake due to stopping her attempted theft? That's truly petty.
• Extremely Protective Child: Marceline is quite protective of her Parental Substitute Simon Petrikov/Ice King, and he's one of the few characters that can bring out her softer side. In the Stakes miniseries, the Empress angers Marcy by insulting Simon, and she angrily exclaims "That's the last time you toy with his heart!" before staking the vamp through the heart.
• Fallen Hero: The Stakes mini-series reveals her to be this. She used to be as heroic as Finn, and dedicated her life to protecting humanity from the vampires. However, after all the trauma she has experienced (and her immortality making her realize the ciclical nature of history), she has become too jaded to care about other people.
• Fanservice Pack: The outfits she wore in the later episodes tended to be a little more revealing.
• Felony Misdemeanor: By itself, her dad eating her fries would seem this, but with a little closer look it serves as another indication that her father never took her thoughts or feelings into consideration and that taking something that belonged to her, which at this point happened to be something completely trivial, was the final straw.
  (singing) "Daddy, do you even love me? Well, I wish you would show it because I wouldn't know it. What kind of dad eats his daughter's fries, and won't look her in the eyes? There were tears there. If you saw them would you even care?"
  • Then we find out he ate those fries in the aftermath of the apocalypse where Marceline was scrounging around for anything edible. He's a deathless immortal, she was a starving teenager.
• Flight: Her most used power. It's fairly rare to see her actually touch the ground.
• Friendless Background: In "Memory of a Memory" we see a flashback of her as a child, describing her stuffed animal Hambo as her only friend; in "Marceline's Closet" she writes a song to the same effect. We later discover that she did have an Intergenerational Friendship growing up with Simon, who gave her Hambo, but that didn't end well.
• Friendly Neighborhood Vampire: Depends how she sees you. She can be your best friend or worst enemy.
• Fur and Loathing: The dress she wears in "Henchman" is made from a Whywolf. "Marceline's Closet" shows that she also has a large fur-lined coat, with the head and claws built into it.
• Giant Flyer: Again, see One-Winged Angel.
• Girl with Psycho Weapon: If she doesn't want to kill you with her powers of vampirism, she could use her demonic axe bass.
• God Save Us from the Queen!: Played With. She's the Vampire Queen, and she can be unpleasant but is nice mostly.
• Goth Girls Know Magic: She's a Perky Goth with a punk rock style, and has supernatural powers as a vampire and demon.
• Half-Human Hybrid: She's a cambion (half human, half demon) who later became vampirized, giving her a unique set of abilities.
• Heel–Face Turn: In her original appearance, she comes in the middle of the night and kicks Finn and Jake out of their own house, leaving them out in the open trying to find a place to live. When they finally do find a place, it just so happens to have been Marceline's... and so she almost kills Finn and Jake, but in the end, gives them their house back because she forgot how much she liked the cave. In her second appearance, Finn and Jake still consider her an enemy. Finn unwillingly becomes her accomplice in her many dark deeds that all turn out Double Subverted. The last scene shows that Finn and Marceline have gained some trust for each other. In her third appearance, Finn is hanging out at her house playing music with her and they spend the entire episode together, trying to get her soul-sucking father back into the Nightosphere.
• Heroic Neutral: She's far and away the most powerful ally that Finn and Jake have, but is very difficult to motivate into helping solve a problem due to her general apathy. And in some situations, she's either outclassed by the threat (facing her father) or some supernatural rule prevents her from doing much.
• Human-Demon Hybrid: She is the child of a demon lord and a human woman, who subsequently got turned into a vampire.
• I Just Want to Have Friends: Strongly implied. In "What Was Missing", the Door Lord didn't actually steal anything from her, she just wanted to hang out with her friends and gets intensely embarrassed when this is pointed out. In "Memory of A Memory", it's shown that she was a borderline Extreme Doormat when it came to her abusive boyfriend Ash until he sold her only fond childhood treasure for an entirely pointless reason.
  • If you don't take it as an expression of Les Yay, Marceline's song to Bubblegum can be considered an expression of this; she doesn't even remember why Bubblegum is angry at her and feels she shouldn't have to apologize but implies she still wants to.
  • She outright admits that she hides tears because she has no friends in "Marceline's Closet". And in "I Remember You", she desperately cries while unsuccessfully trying to make Ice King remember his life as Simon and their old friendship.
• I'm a Monster: The episode "Go With Me" indicated Marceline occasionally feels this way about herself, likely due to her semi-demonic heritage.
  Marceline: Oh, Yeah? No one would want to go to the movies with... (turns into giant tentacle monster) this!
  • This gets further explored in the special "Obsidian", thanks to a series of flashbacks that explain how Marceline came to view herself as a monster. After using her demonic soul-sucking powers to save her mother from a mutated wolf, she believed that she scared her mother away after she told her to leave (in reality, Marceline's mother tricked her into doing so, so she wouldn't see her dying). During a conversation with her imaginary friends, she convinced herself that, the reason why everyone was afraid of her, was because she wanted them to.
• Immortal Immaturity: She's been around for at least a thousand years, but she's really not too much more mature than Finn himself is. At times, he's even more mature than her. She acknowledges this in Stakes, and thinks she can only move on with her life if she starts aging, and that sentiment is defied, acknowledging that being immortal had nothing to do with her immaturity, and starts maturing emotionally.
• Immortality Begins at Twenty: Zig-zagged. If she were never bitten, her demon ancestry would have just made her Long-Lived, with her aging being slowed after hitting adolescence. She only fully stopped aging when she became a vampire, with the fact that she was physically in her late teens/early twenties at the time just being a coincidence.
• Immortality Bisexuality: The series finale reveals that not only did Marceline and Bubblegum have previous romantic history, but also has them rekindling the relationship.
• Important Haircut: Signifying her depression and wanting to grow up, Stakes cuts her hair short.
• Instrument of Murder: She turned the family axe into a bass guitar.
• Invisibility: Uses it to sneak in on Ice King's Fionna and Cake reading session in "Bad Little Boy", and for cheap laughs in "Heat Signature". (It's apparently a vampire power... but she's in the midst of messing with Finn and Jake when she says so.) Given her personality, it's not surprising that she doesn't use it often.
• Intergenerational Friendship: Had one with Simon Petrikov during the aftermath of the Mushroom War. Has one with Finn and Jake.
• It Amused Me: This is her reason for everything she does, Jerkassy or not.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
  • Seemed to be a straight-up Jerkass in her introduction episode (in the "House Hunting" song, she sang that she was "1000 years old and just lost track of her moral code"). "Henchman" would then reveal that she's actually a pretty cool chick who simply enjoys screwing with people but never actually aims to hurt them, and by the end of the episode she and Finn strike up a friendship.
  • By "Heat Signature" even Jake has warmed up to her, with that same episode also providing a good example of this; she pranks Finn and Jake into believing that they're vampires and fools them into doing various embarrassing things, but draws the line at her old ghost gang brutally kicking them for no reason and goes berserk when Finn and Jake are tricked into nearly jumping to their deaths.
• "Just Joking" Justification: During her more dickheaded early days in the show, she leads Finn on a massive mind-scarring prank day as her minion. However, he takes it in good stride when he finds out.
• The Lad-ette: Clearly demonstrated (in a kid-friendly way) through her willingness to fight everyone and everything, in the same way that Finn does. Not to mention several episodes clearly demonstrate her lack of appreciation for hygiene, whether it be her picking her nose, not washing her hands, or remarking that her armpits stink.
• Last of Her Kind:
  • Although the non-canon comics show other vampires, the show eventually establishes her as the last vampire on Earth. It's revealed that she killed all of the others in order to protect what remained of humanity, and the last one made her into a vampire in the instant he was dying.
  • For much of the series, Marceline could also be considered the last living member of Pre-Mushroom War Humanity, or at least the only one who actually remembers what humanity was like. Though, this is Averted after Simon regains his memories and other Pre-Mushroom War humans are brought to Ooo like Betty Grof and Patience St. Pim.
• Lead Bassist: Marceline's bass often accompanies her when she sings, making her a Type B.
• Lesbian Vampire: While not a lesbian per se (she's actually bisexual), she ends up in a relationship with PB in the series finale.
• Like Brother and Sister: With Finn. "Go With Me" confirms that neither of them has feelings for each other that way.
• Living Forever Is Awesome: Of the two immortal characters, she's the one that has the most fun. Subverted in Stakes, when she believes her lack of aging is keeping her from solving her personal problems, and tries to get it taken away. She then accepts that her lack of aging is not preventing her from solving her personal problems, and it was her own mentality keeping her from addressing them.
• Long-Lived: Originally; the Farmworld version reveals that as a half-demon, her lifespan is well over 1000 years naturally, but without the added bonus of vampirism, her body and magic will vastly deteriorate into old age.
• Looks Like Orlok: When she gets too hungry, as seen in "Red Starved". She also makes her nose look more bat-like when she wants to pick it.
• Master of None: In regards to the various vampire abilities she has acquired. While Marceline has used all of the powers she's acquired to some degree, she doesn't seem to be capable of some of the more extreme feats that the other vampires displayed, most notably The Moon's Nigh-Invulnerability and sunlight-nullifying Healing Factor, or the Vampire King's more impressive telekinetic abilities.
• Morality Pet: Even a thousand years later, Simon/Ice King still cares about her, even if he can't remember why, and she's notably one of the few characters he's actually cared about when he believed they were hurt.
• Ms. Fanservice: Lampshaded/Discussed in the "House Hunting" song in "Evicted!".
  “You know you should have stayed and fought that sexy vampire lady”.
• Mundane Utility: She uses her powers whenever convenient.
• Necromancer: "Corpses buried in mud that's black, from death I command you to come BACK!" She did it to throw a party.
• Nightmare Face: Marceline can do this voluntarily and to great effect. In "Henchman", she just does it for the reaction on Jake's face, as he is still afraid of vampires. The Adventure Time Team's portion of the Frederator blog has a small collection of the faces she made throughout the episode.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: She was already a demon/human hybrid before becoming a vampire.
• Noble Demon:
  • Noted by Finn in her second episode, she releases him from being her minion as it's "not as fun when they realize it."
  • She and Lumpy Space Princess raise havoc in Breakfast Princess' place, stealing her things, vandalizing the castle, and assaulting the guards, but they do draw the line at killing them, being visibly relieved when the guy they pushed through a high improvised window landed in something soft.
• The Noseless: Like the other humanoids. Though she can morph a nose when she wants to smell something or pick it. This carries over to the Farmworld, where she appears to be the only denizen without one.
• Not a Date: Goes to watch a movie with Finn in "Go With Me", with both insisting it's not a date.
• Not So Stoic: Under her cool and trickster-like demeanor lies a sensitive girl who will cry easily if the right buttons are pushed. (Pissing her off is still a no-no.)
• Odd Friendship: With Finn, which doubles as an extreme form of an Intergenerational Friendship. Later on, she's befriended Jake (though she likes to scare him) and appears to have had one with Bubblegum in the past, though Finn seems to have helped her and Bubblegum patch things up.
• Official Couple: With Princess Bubblegum as of "Come Along with Me".
• One-Winged Angel: She often employs this in a serious fight (or when she's trying to scare people), and one of the most memorable is a giant, bat-like creature.
  • In the finale, when she briefly thinks that Bubblegum was killed, she takes on the Vampire King's giant cloud ram form.
• Our Demons Are Different: She is a half-demon, with the demon half from her father's side. Apparently, it's responsible for her unique anatomy, such as the white skin, the fangs, and the pointy ears, since she only became a vampire when she was a teenager, and young Marceline already had said traits. It also doesn't influence her morality much.
• Our Vampires Are Different: Marceline claims that she sometimes drinks blood, but only because it's red, and she mainly "eats" shades of red, and sleeps in a normal bed instead of a coffin. Other vampires could just eat red, but they didn't want to which is why she killed them before even becoming a vampire herself. Sunlight and garlic aren't instantly fatal, but they still hurt like a mother. As long as she takes precautions not to be struck directly by sunlight (generally by wearing a sunhat or, more often, a parasol), she can be active at any time of day. All of her abilities come from vampirism except the soul-sucking power that lets her absorb those powers from other vampires. There's also the fact that she was a Half-Human Hybrid with her dad being a demon, being that being a cambion vampire makes her unique.
• Out of Focus: Does not receive as much screen time in season 6 compared to previous seasons, having only one episode featured on her ("Princess Day") along with a couple of minor appearances. Previous seasons feature her at least twice per season. Season 7 reversed this and gave her much more screen time including the eight-part miniseries Stakes.
• Overly-Long Tongue: Either when she's shapeshifting or not, Marceline has a pretty long tongue, probably most evident by her little counterpart in All the little people, where her tongue is almost as long as Peppermint Butler's entire body.
• The Performer King: Marceline is often referenced as "Marceline the Vampire Queen" and is usually found writing songs and performing them publicly on her bass. While she is no queen to vampires (having exterminated all of the other vampires centuries prior), her father is the Ruler of the Nightosphere, so the trope still technically applies.
• The Pig-Pen: She generally couldn't care less about her personal hygiene, picking her nose, not washing her hands after using the bathroom, and commenting that her armpits stink.
• Pointy Ears: Comes from being half-demon, assuming her father is an appropriate representation of demons.
• The Quincy Punk: Slightly; she's a wild and reckless sort of person, but Ooo in general doesn't seem to find her particularly dangerous. She seems to like the aesthetic more than anything.
• Really 700 Years Old: She's an immortal half-demon vampire who is a thousand years old at the start of the series, with her childhood (where she was just half-demon) taking place during the events of the Mushroom War.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Does this when she gets upset. Usually an extremely bad sign for whomever made her upset.
• Sad Clown: Unfortunately she sings from the soul and gets upset when she notices she's let her defenses down.
  Marceline: How can- anyone relate to me? When they cannot see what I see- My vampire eyes see... only blood red- skies. Blood-red skies make tears inside that I always hide.
• Sense Freak: When she briefly became mortal again, she gorged herself on non-red food.
• Sole Survivor: For much of the show, Marceline could be considered the last remaining member of Pre-Mushroom War Humanity, or at least the only one left who remembers anything about them. This becomes Averted once Simon is freed from the Crown and other Pre-Mushroom War humans like Betty and Patience come to Ooo or are revived.
• Sour Outside, Sad Inside: She drives people away out of fear of being abandoned and betrayed again.
• Spear Counterpart: Marshall Lee. However, because his only characterization came from when Marceline was telling a Fionna and Cake story - that is, she's describing him and how he would act - he ends up coming off to the viewer as a self-deprecating parody of her.
• Sudden Anatomy: In "Marceline's Closet," she grows a pair of bat-like nostrils when trying to sniff out Finn and Jake.
• Superpower Lottery: She has an enormous list of supernatural abilities. Though, it wasn't so much a lottery, as she had to earn every single one of her various vampiric powers.
• Tank-Top Tomboy: Over half her costumes have involved tank tops, and she has all the tomboy characteristics.
• Telekinesis: Briefly uses some on Finn in "Henchman", curling his arms so he can't interfere with her pranking. It's unclear if it's a demon or vampire power, but the affected object glows red.
• Tender Tomboyishness, Foul Femininity: She's a vampire rock star who acts like a gentle Cool Big Sis towards Finn and Jake while Princess Bubblegum, the pink-haired monarch of the Candy Kingdom, frequently threatens people with violence.
• Tentacled Terror: She has the ability to turn into a giant tentacle monster. She did it in order to dissuade Finn from asking her out before realizing that he wasn't interested in a date.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: The Tomboy to Princess Bubblegum's Girly Girl.
• Tomboy with a Girly Streak: She does wear dresses and fairly pretty blouses on occasion.
• Took a Level in Kindness: While she started out as an antagonistic Troll, Marceline would become notably more considerate and friendly over time. She would later show genuine concern and even go out of her way to save Finn, Jake, and Bubblegum in a few situations.
• Troll: Finds a lot of joy in screwing with people in general and Finn in particular, though she seems to draw her limits at actual physical harm, at least lately.
• Tsundere: Shows quite a few signs of being one to her friends in general, and very strongly suggested to be one in "What Was Missing".
• The Undead: She is a vampire, after all.
• Unlimited Wardrobe: How many outfits has she worn now? Notably, since she had a different outfit for each of her appearances, she was the first character to avert Limited Wardrobe. Considering that she's over a thousand years old, it's probably not that weird to see her having many clothes.
• Unscrupulous Hero: She sometimes saves the day only because she wants to, and screwing with an evil person like herself is more fun than screwing mortals over.
• Vampire Hickey: Marceline has two noticeable bite marks on her neck, giving the indication that she was turned sometime in the past. The Stakes mini-series eventually reveals in a flashback, to when she was just a common cambrion half-demon (human mother, demon father), that this was from the vampire king who bit and turned her just as she was staking him. In the present day of the story, when she regains the last of his vampire power, the vampire essence puts the marks back on her neck as she's absorbing the power.
• Vampire Hunter: She used to hunt vampires to keep her human friend (later friends) safe. She personally would have wiped them out if not for the last one turning her as he died.
• Vampire Monarch: Specifically, she's the Vampire Queen. There aren't any other vampires left to rule over (she refuses to turn anyone as she rarely drinks blood, instead getting by draining out the color red from objects), but her presence at the meeting of Ooo royalty suggests that her position is at least somewhat meaningful.
• Vegetarian Vampire: She'll drink blood if she's desperate, but she mostly just drains the color from red objects. Sometimes the objects are fine afterward, sometimes they seem shriveled up.
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: Thinking GOLB's abomination murdered Bubblegum, she cries her name before turning into Vampire King's cloudy form and nearly tearing it to shreds.
• Visual Pun: Her bass is an axe.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: Has a habit of going from her cute normal form to very grotesque monster forms and back again at the drop of a hat. Her second episode really plays this up.
• Weakened by the Light: Though, oddly, only by direct sunlight. She'd be just fine on a sunny day with as little as a large hat or parasol, though she does mention that it is painful in a very minor way. It appears to burn quite severely - barely a second's exposure results in a bunch of painful-looking boils (that she can heal away, but still).
• "Well Done, Daughter!" Girl: She wishes for the approval and attention of her neglectful father, as she isn't secure if he even loves her. He does, but is not good at showing it.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: Marceline has occasionally griped about this, with this serving as the catalyst for the Stakes miniseries. However, her big complaint is less about being long-lived and more about the eternal youth, as her vampire nature has trapped her in a state of arrested development, mentally unable to truly mature as a person due to being physically in her late teens forever.
  Marceline: (singing) They don't know what it's like to live forever and forget who they even are...
• Wound That Will Not Heal: She has two bite marks on her neck from the bite that turned her. They go away when her vampirism is removed.
• You Kill It, You Bought It: She became the Vampire Queen by killing the Vampire King.
• Your Soul Is Mine!: She inherited the ability to suck out a person's soul from her father. Besides a longer lifespan, she's said it's the only special ability she has from being half-demon.

Ice King

Simon Petrikov/Ice King

^{Click here to see him as Simon Petrikov.}

Voiced by: John Kassir (2006 pilot), Tom Kenny (the series)

An unruly monarch from the Ice Kingdom. Once a close friend or even a father figure of Marceline's, he's spent years pestering her. She says that she tolerates his presence because she loves him unconditionally, and remains one of the few characters to bestow compassion upon him to date. In truth, these are but the remnants of a pre-apocalypse professor of archaeology and antique enthusiast once named Simon Petrikov, before he was driven insane and transformed by the arcane forces of ice and snow within a crown he bought. The subsequent bouts of madness estranged him from his beloved fiance, Betty, and his nickname for her, "princess", was warped by time and insanity into his compulsion to kidnap and marry princesses in the present-day Land of Ooo.

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See his page here.

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