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Comic Book / Adventure Time

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Adventure Time is a comic book series by KaBOOM! Comics. The first 35 issues were written by Ryan North, after which Christopher Hastings took over. It is based on the animated series. The individual issues have shorter back-up stories by various creators, which are collected in the Sugary Shorts series of TPBs. In 2016 a separate series, Adventure Time Comics, was begun with similar shorts.

The comic ended after 75 issues in 2018, followed by a three part finale miniseries called Beginning of the End.

In July 2018, Cartoon Network and BOOM! Studios announced a 12-issue miniseries called Adventure Time: Season 11, taking place after the events of the show's Grand Finale "Come Along with Me". It released October 2018, but was Cut Short after only six issues.

On February 2024, Oni Press has acquired the rights to the comics from BOOM! Studios and announced a new comic book series set to be released in 2025. They're also going to re-release the original comic book series alongside the Fionna and Cake comic book in 2024.

See also Adventure Time: Marceline and the Scream Queens, Adventure Time with Fionna & Cake, and Adventure Time Graphic Novels.

This comic book series provides examples of:

  • A.I. Is a Crapshoot: In the computer virus arc, the evil virus Kewlboy is accidentally created by the combination of a "harmless" virus designed to improve computer games, and a military malware program designed to destroy computer systems.
  • Alternate Continuity: The comic series has introduced two key developments that may make it diverge from the cartoon—the Lich is thrown into the sun and the missing chunk of the planet is restored. Also, in the backup story of issue #11, we find out that in this continuity, Billy is still alive.
    • An alternate theory is that all the events of the comic book take place during the fourth season, since the characters and their relationships seem to follow that status quo (IE Finn and Flame Princess are still an Official Couple). (This was shot down in the bubblegum kudzu arc, where Lemongrab is clearly depicted as on his way to his monstrous state in "Too Old".)
    • This states that it is canon, and set during and/or after the show. The blog entry notes that there should only be small divergences due to little finicky last minute additions to the show. Given the two major divergences mentioned above, either this is Blatant Lies or there's a rather depressing amount of Status Quo Is God (if not Foregone Conclusion) for the next few seasons on the show (compared to the comic, anyway).
      • It is heavily implied that the Lich hasn't come around in a while in the comic. And the missing chunk isn't that big of a deal in the show, it's just kind of there.
      • The show creators, on the other hand, have explicitly stated that the comics are not canon and are never taken into consideration when making episodes of the show, with Adam Muto explicitly stating that "Season 11" is non-canon following its announcement.
  • Amusement Park of Doom: In issue #45. Yes, a funfair in the middle of a blasted zone full of nuclear waste and creepy monsters is not suspicious at all...
  • Arc Villain: In the comics' multi-issue arcs, the Lich and Kewlboy.
  • Armed with Canon: The comic keeps on throwing bones to Finn/Bubblegum shippers in ways that seem overtly designed to knock down the obstacles to the ship in the TV series. In two separate potential futures shown in the comics, Finn and Bubblegum are in a relationship. (In the first one, Bubblegum explicitly says that the age difference isn't so big now Finn's in his twenties. And in the second one, they're actually in a three-way marriage with Marceline to avoid upsetting the Bubblegum/Marceline shippers.)
  • Art Initiates Life: Desert Princess's specialty is making animated sand sculptures.
  • Art Shift: In Issue 11, Finn, Jake and Marceline go into BMO to play "Super Guts Punch 3", which is done in pixel art.
  • Assimilation Plot: The story in issues 21-24. It very nearly succeeds, too.
  • Babies Ever After: Issue 25 shows someone in the future finding Princess Bubblegum and Marceline's friendship amulets. Someone with grey skin, sharp teeth and bright pink hair. Wonder how that one happened.
  • Backstory Invader: The Gata arc plays this for real tragedy. Finn and Jake accidentally destroy a magic statue that Jake's father hid years before. When they get back to the Tree Fort, they find a teenage girl hero called Gata who everybody but them remembers as their foster-sister who's been part of their family all along. It turns out that Gata is a living portal created to allow an evil witch queen to escape back to Ooo from the hell-dimension that she was imprisoned in long ago. When Gata discovers this and the witch escapes, she deliberately turns herself back into a statue, and all of the events of the story are erased from history and forgotten.
  • Back to the Early Installment: In one early arc a time-traveling Finn and Jake pass through the pilot episode, where they see the pilot versions of themselves from a distance and lampshade/hand-wave the Early-Installment Weirdness.
  • Bad Future:
    • The time travel arc in issues 6-9, in which BMO has accidentally created evil robots that conquer all of Ooo.
    • The Mnemonoid arc, in which Ooo is laid waste by a war between the various elemental peoples, and Marceline is killed by the Mnemonoid, leaving Bubblegum a cynical shell.
  • Bag of Holding: The comic's first story involves the Lich using one in an attempt to suck up the entire planet. Then he'll toss the bag into the sun.
  • Barrier Maiden: Gata is a living portal to a hell dimension where an evil witch queen was imprisoned. She finally turns herself into a statue to block the portal.
  • Batman Can Breathe in Space: Justified; the comic notes that the gems allow Finn and Jake to breathe in space.
  • Bears Are Bad News: In issues 41-4, the King of Ooo tries to take over using an army of bear minions.
  • Bedmate Reveal: Issue 32 ends with Finn waking up next to Flame Princess after an attack by a memory-eating monster causes him to undergo a Time Skip.
  • Bedsheet Ghost: In issues 46-9, Jake disguises himself as one in Ghost-A-Rica, but discovers that they are considered grossly outdated and unfashionable.
  • Belated Happy Ending: The defeat of the abominations in "Dungeon Master" also strips Gata's mother of her powers and allows Gata to safely return to Ooo, although it doesn't appear that the other characters recover their memories of their previous times with her.
  • Better than a Bare Bulb: Pretty much everything gets viciously lampshaded either by the characters in the narrative or via notes in the margins.
  • Big "NO!": Delivered by Finn when he and Jake enter the magic bag.
  • Bizarro Universe: Adventure Tim's world in issue 5.
  • Bloodier and Gorier: There's some blood in this.
  • Blood-Splattered Warrior: Finn covered head-to-toe in giant fish innards after disembowelling Ice King's giant fish monster.
  • Bookcase Passage: Used by Peppermint Butler to hide the SWEETS headquarters.
  • Brain Uploading: Randall M. Byron, a pre-war computer programmer who brain uploaded himself to survive the Mushroom War.
  • Breaking the Fourth Wall: "Hynden, is that you?"
    Princess Bubblegum: No it's me Marceline.
  • Brick Joke: In Issue 27, PB calls Finn and Jake to help out with a ghost problem, except that they're not home because they are the ghosts (unintentionally) causing the problem (don't worry, they get better). So, PB is about to call her back-up choice, which Finn hopes isn't a couple of knock-offs named something like Flynn and Blake. It's actually a team like the Ghostbusters, but guess who shows up at the end of Issue 29, after the storyline is over?
  • Brother–Sister Incest: Finn ends up being attracted to Gata, but she's repulsed because she remembers growing up as his foster-sister.
  • Call-Back:
    • Finn's badass future version in the time travel arc is based on the future version of himself he saw/imagined at the beginning of "Mortal Folly".
    • In Issue 32, Jake turns out to still have a Lich minion hiding within him from his time in the Lich's Lotus-Eater Machine dungeon.
    • In Issue 34, far-future Finn and Bubblegum use one of the time machines from the time travel arc to return to Finn's first encounter with the Mnemonoid and defeat it.
    • In Issues 36-9, Jake retains the ability to make sandwiches due to a fragment remaining in his body from his ultimate sandwich from the TV episode "Time Sandwich".
    • In "Dungeon Master", the life essence created by the ghosts in #46-9 is used to extend Finn's lifespan.
  • Canon Foreigner: Desert Princess and Water Princess.
  • Carnivore Confusion: In "Marcelzine", Peppermint Butler likes to make and eat peppermint bark.
  • Chronic Hero Syndrome: Averted in #50, in which the Lich!Tree attempts to cause Finn to change history and screw up his timeline by behaving more "heroically" in his past lives. Finn is existentially cool and doesn't fall for it.
  • Contagious A.I.: The villainous Kewlboy.
  • Continuity Cavalcade: The wedding of Casey and IBB in #75 features cameo appearances by a host of earlier comics-original characters.
  • Continuity Nod:
    • In the third issue, Finn refers to advice given to him by Abraham Lincoln in the past on Mars, which is a hallucination he had in the cartoon's pilot.
    • The mysterious missing chunk of the planet is explored and filled in.
    • Issue 7 shows Bubblegum wearing her rock T-shirt from "What was Missing".
    • Issue 11 references the mess made the last time Finn and Jake tried going into BMO to play video games, in the episode "Guardians of Sunshine".
    • Issue 12 is a sequel to the TV episode "Wizard Battle", with many of the same wizards turning up. Plus Marceline's abusive ex-boyfriend Ash from "Memory of a Memory".
    • Issue 15 shows Lumpy Space Princess wearing a carrier bag as a dress, as in "Gotcha!".
    • In Issue 18, the treasure of Hunson Abadeer's branch of the dungeon turns out to be a moldy old pile of french fries, implied to be the same fries of Marceline's that he ate according to "It Came From the Nightosphere" and "Memory of a Memory".
    • In issues 18-19, Finn's Lotus-Eater Machine hallucination is the Farmworld from the TV episodes "Finn the Human"/"Jake the Dog".
    • Issue 19 has Jake's treasure from beating the whole dungeon be a mailman outfit, referring back to his childhood dream as revealed in "Princess Cookie".
    • In Issue 21, Princess Bubblegum calls back the events of "Slumber Party Panic" when she says the most the Gumball Guardians will do to trouble-makers is "make you to do their math homework".
    • Issue 28 features Anti-Ghost Princess, who is Ghost Princess from the same-titled episode back from the dead and busting Ghosts throughout Ooo.
    • In the same arc, BMO and Ice King getting on surprisingly well refers back to Finn's speculation, and the behaviour of their miniature versions, in "All the Little People".
    • In Issue 32, Marcelline's and PB's comic-strip exposition to Finn includes the Running Gag "buff baby" rhyme.
    • In Issues 46 and 49, the alternate universes visible in the mirrors include the Farmworld and one in which Finn is an eight-bit sprite as in "Guardians of Sunshine".
    • Finn's past lives in Issue 50 include Shoko, the comet, and the butterfly from "The Vault". Apparently Finn's alter ego from "Davey" was also inspired by a past life, and the Davey Johnson sequence includes Gunther the Penguin trying to sneak onto a space shuttle, a nod to his true identity in "Orgalorg".
    • In issue 66, Finn and Jake fight firebreathing versions of the Freak Deer from "No-One Can Hear You".
  • Cowboy Episode: The initial subworld in the first part of "BMOWorld" has a Western theme.
  • Cthulhumanoid: Gata has suckered tentacles instead of hair.
  • Deliberately Monochrome: Most of issue #74, after Magic Man steals Jake's inspiration.
  • Did I Just Say That Out Loud?: In issue #67, "Stanley" says that he has "crazy wizard vision", revealing that he's actually Ice King in disguise.
  • Didn't Think This Through: An arc has a crazy witch named Janice summon an eldritch abomination to cook Ooo and feed it to its people. Even if it didn't turn out to want to cook the people along with it, she still thought entirely cooking up the planet people live on would work out fine for them once they were done eating.
  • Dungeon Bypass: All the trouble in the Gata arc happens because Finn and Jake bypassed most of the dungeon, got bored listening to the recording of Joshua explaining to them how to get through it, and ended up doing precisely what they shouldn't have done.
  • Eldritch Abomination: The reality-warping creative goo in "BMOWorld", which has a name of unpronouncable alien symbols. It's soon revealed to be the primal elemental of Slime, allied with similarly eldritch elementals of Candy and Fire, who wish to cook and devour all of Ooo. They were betrayed by their peer who embodied Ice, whose corpse was used both to make the Moon and a sword capable of banishing them.
  • Engineered Public Confession: Used in issues 41-4 by Agent Double O Candy Bar to frame Finn and Jake, and then by Finn and Jake to reveal the King of Ooo's contempt for his bear minions.
  • Escaped from Hell: It turns out that Ghost/Warrior Princess came back to life out of pure heroic willpower.
  • Evil Chef: The Eldritch Abomination Arklothac in Issues 36-9 is an eldritch Evil Chef who wants to turn the whole of Ooo into a meal for his brethren.
  • Evil Gloating: The Lich is more verbose in this.
    • Kewlboy (formally Ewlbo) frequently does this.
  • Exact Words: In Issue 20, the Gumball Guardian goes berserk because Ice King mind-controlled it, and then tried to release it with the words "Go do whatever. Go nuts!".
  • Extra Parent Conception: Brief flash-forwards at the end of both "Carl the Gem" and "Marcelzine" introduce a mysterious young female barbarian hero (named in her second appearance as Penelope), who appears to have characteristics of Finn, Princess Bubblegum, AND Marceline. The Mnemonoid arc has a flash-forward in which it is hinted that in the future all three of them may be in a mutual relationship.
  • Fake-Out Fade-Out: At the beginning of Issue 3.
  • Fan Fic: In-universe, again by the Ice King, titled "Fionna and Cake meet Finn and Jake".
  • "Fantastic Voyage" Plot: In Issue 36-9, where Finn has to go inside Jake to retrieve a piece of crystallised magic sandwich to restore everyone's knowledge of how to make food.
  • Faux Affably Evil: The Mnemonoid is polite and chatty while completely screwing up Finn's life and killing Marceline.
  • Festering Fungus: In the Gata arc, Jake gets temporarily infected with one.
  • Fire and Brimstone Hell: The dimension that Gata is a portal to.
  • Flipping the Table: Finn does this when he gets frustrated in Issue 3.
    Finn: HOW! COME! WE! (table flip) KEEP NOT WINNING?!
    • Jake tries to do this in Issue 5, but fails to realize that Adventure Tim has nailed his kitchen table to the floor.
  • Fluffy the Terrible: In issue 69, one of Hunson's deathday presents to Marceline is Mr. Trots the soul-eating demon pony.
  • The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You:
    • In Issue 10 and the KaBOOM! Summer Blast Free Comic Book Day Edition reprint, Finn and Jake end up under the influence of the reader in a Gamebook story. All their methods of getting their free will back involve messing with the reader.
    • In the Mnemonoid arc, the Mnemonoid repeatedly addresses, menaces, and trolls the reader.
    • In Issue 40, Magic Man tries to manipulate the reader into making ambiguous wishes using a card-forcing maneuver.
  • Fun with Acronyms: In issue 41 Peppermint Butler conscripts Finn and Jake into SWEETS, "Secret Warriors Eliminating Enemies & other Tricky Situations".
    Jake: You came up with the word you wanted for the acronym before you figured out what it would mean, didn't ya?
  • Fusion Dance:
    • The second issue implies that Desert Princess is actually an amalgamation of various Candy citizens.
    • In the ghost arc, Finn, Jake, PB, and all the Candy Kingdom subjects combine into one huge ghost to beat up the Jerkass ghosts.
  • Future Badass: Seen in the Time Travel story arc in issues 6-9.
  • The Game Come to Life: The "BMOWorld" arc has all the characters sucked into a universe of computer games BMO created.
  • Gamebooks: "Choose Your Own Adventure Time" from Issue 10 and the KaBOOM! Summer Blast Free Comic Book Day Edition reprint.
  • Gilligan Cut: While Finn and Jake explore an abandoned military factory in issue 26, Finn remarks "I can't imagine a single thing our pals could be doing that's more interesting than exploring this crazy old dungeon!" Cue panels of Marceline fighting a dragon, Lumpy Space Princess fighting a robotic version of herself in space, and Princess Bubblegum... sitting in bed, reading a book.
  • Gone Horribly Wrong: The mind-controlling bubblegum monster turns out to be another of PB's attempts to create a successor.
  • Grand Finale: Issue 75 and the Beginning of the End miniseries.
  • Grievous Bottley Harm: PB attempts this on the Lich with a broken flask.
  • "Groundhog Day" Loop: In the first issue of the time travel arc, Jake uses the first time machine thousands of times to try to make his day perfect.
  • Handshake Substitute: The fist bump, which the comic notes there can not be enough of in any story, whether fiction or nonfiction.
  • Her Code Name Was "Mary Sue": Lumpy Space Princess's "original character" in her comic in "Marcelzine", the irresistible Laura Spencer Petersworth.
  • Hollywood Hacking: The visual conventions of Hollywood Hacking are exhaustively parodied in the computer virus arc.
  • Homage: Marceline's poster in issue 12 is a homage to the style of Alfonse Mucha.
  • Hopeless Auditionees: In the "Best Princess Ever" arc, Finn, playing the Genre Savvy audience member, says that there are always a couple of no-hoper contestants to get eliminated early - in this case Muscle Princess and Turtle Princess.
  • Humongous Mecha: Gata built one for BMO.
  • Hurl It into the Sun: The Lich's plan with the entire planet with the help of a Bag of Holding. He ends up being cast into the sun himself.
  • I Just Want to Be Special: The problems in "BMOWorld" turn out to be due to NEPTR doing a Deal with the Devil to create a world in which he is the hero.
  • I'm Not Here to Make Friends: In the "Best Princess Ever" arc, Breakfast Princess takes on this role.
  • Identical Grandson: Davey the space mission control person in "Dungeon Master" looks identical to Finn's disguise as an adult in the TV episode "Davey", and is later confirmed to be an earlier incarnation of Finn.
  • Improbable Antidote: Lemongrab's lemon bodily fluids turn out to be the only thing that can stop the mind-controlling bubblegum.
  • Inevitable Mutual Betrayal: In the "Best Princess Ever" arc, Flame Princess and Breakfast Princess agree to co-operate against the other players until all the rest have been knocked out. Breakfast Princess then tries to backstab Flame Princess earlier.
  • Lampshade Wearing: Lemongrab and his Lemon Camel are seen wearing lampshades after Jake's crazy party at the start of issue 7.
  • Late to the Tragedy: Finn and Jake in the bubblegum arc, because they didn't bother to listen to PB's message for over a day.
  • Laughing Mad: PB at the end of the bubblegum arc, when she realises that she needed Finn and Jake (but in this case, especially Jake) to save the day again.
  • Lawyer-Friendly Cameo: The Mnemonoid looks very like an illithid from Dungeons & Dragons.
  • Legion of Doom: Arklothac and the entity from BMOWorld return in "Dungeon Master".
  • Lethal Joke Item: In the first arc, the Lich demonstrates just how dangerous a Bag of Holding can be.
  • Life Drinker: The ghosts in #46-9 consume people's youth.
  • Lotus-Eater Machine:
    • What the Lich's dungeon does to Finn, Jake and Ice King.
    • How Finn defeats the eldritch goo in "BMOWorld", by trapping it in a small computer running an eight-bit art program.
  • Magic Pants: In the bubblegum arc, this happens to Marceline's red leggings when she shifts to giant bat monster form.
  • Making a Splash: Water Princess has this ability.
  • Me's a Crowd: In #70-3, this happens to Finn and Jake, and one-shot character Maggee.
  • Mind-Control Eyes: In the bubblegum arc, the characters under the bubblegum's control get pink eyes.
  • Monster Organ Trafficking: The BMOWorld arc concludes with the heroes tricking the eldritch goo of infinite energy and potential into an art program where it endlessly generates batteries for BMO so it can keep playing.
  • Mugged for Disguise: In the "Best Princess Ever" arc, Ice King kidnaps Hot Dog Princess and impersonates her in a Latex Perfection costume to enter the contest.
  • Mundane Utility: In one short, Finn and Jake try to get Marceline to suck all the red colour out of their clothes, after they get accidentally dyed in the wash. Marceline is angry and makes them do all her housework before she'll help them.
  • My Species Doth Protest Too Much: In #70-73, one of the Maggee duplicates is genuinely good and turns out to be the Maggee that Finn and Jake met first.
  • Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: In issue 40, Magic Man's crow volcano in the Tree Fort ends up preventing the Owlbear from killing the Fancy Egg Prince.
  • No Honor Among Thieves: The Mooks Finn and Jake hire to guard their dungeon steal all of the treasure.
  • No Man of Woman Born: The prophecy in "Dungeon Master" states that the true hero will "withstand great bodily loss without injury". It turns out that Penelope can lose her arm without being injured because it's already bionic.
  • No Time to Explain: Said by Finn when he and Jake appear out of nowhere in Issue 3, and then Princess Bubblegum says it's clear what's going on.
  • Ocular Gushers: How Water Princess uses her powers.
  • Opening Shout-Out:
    • The first issue opens with Finn and Jake filming the show's opening flight over Ooo, and then shows versions of the first two scenes of the credit sequence proper, with Jake jumping on Finn's head and Finn riding a stilt-legged Jake through mountains. The second issue again imitates the opening flight to show the damage the Lich has done to Ooo.
    • Inverted in Ryan North's final issue, number 35, which begins with Finn and Jake watching insects and challenging Marceline to write a song about them, referring to the show's end credits sequence.
  • Painting the Medium:
    • The Lich speaks with white text on a black speech balloon. Marceline speaks with yellow all-caps text on a magenta speech balloon when she's a monster.
    • In issue #45, most of the story happens first in the lower panels on the page, until the end of the comic when you turn it upside down and read the upper panels in the opposite direction.
  • Papa Wolf: When Peppermint Butler expresses an interest in experimenting on Jake Jr., Jake undergoes an attack of "Dad Rage" and threatens Pep But with "If you do, all of Ooo will be so delicately mint-scented from your tiny particles spread across the continent."
  • Pictorial Speech-Bubble: In issue 15, Magic Man curses Finn and Jake with being only able to use these to communicate.
  • Pillow Pistol: PB keeps a fire extinguisher full of jaw-breaker candy by her bed, in case she suddenly needs to fortify her bedroom.
  • Planet Eater: Arklothac, the primordial elemental of candy, who cooks up entire planets to feast.
  • Polyamory: In issue 32, a potential future Finn is in a three-way relationship with Bubblegum and Marceline.
  • P.O.V. Cam: "Adventure Me" is entirely seen through the eyes of an unidentified friend of Finn and Jake.
    • It's actually Princess Bubblegum in a disguise she got for her birthday.
  • The Power of Love: Destroys the Lich's illusions in issue 19, expressed through Finn and Jake rapping.
  • Rapid-Fire Typing: In the computer virus arc, Marceline has to explain to Finn and Jake that "hacking" does not mean typing random characters as fast as possible.
  • "Rashomon"-Style: Happens in "The Case of the Missing Thing", when Lumpy Space Princess orders everyone to tell her their memories of the previous evening to discover what happened to her head star.
  • Restricted Expanded Universe: Zig-Zagged with this Comic-Book Adaptation. Initially, the comic's writers tried to keep it in line with the show's mythos. As the show's writers were constantly tuning the details of their own worldbuilding, it was hard to play catch up and the comics' creators couldn't really do their own thing. Eventually, they just called it an Alternate Continuity and started playing with the world themselves, with the arc kickstarting this change ending in The Lich getting killed off in particular. As a result, the comic plots are not considered canon to the show's timeline.
  • The Reveal: "Adventure Me" from Issue 20 is from the point of view of an unknown friend of Finn and Jake, who turns out to be Princess Bubblegum.
  • Robot War: In issue 7, Finn and Jake accidentally travel into the future and find BMO accidentally started one.
  • Scrapbook Story: Issue 30, "Marcelzine", is in the form of a zine edited by Marceline, with comics supposedly created by various characters.
  • Sealed Evil in a Can: The evil computer virus Kewlboy was trapped in an old cartridge of a computer game called Super Guts Punch 3, until BMO found it and loaded it into hirself.
  • Ship Tease: Issue 8 makes it pretty clear how Ryan North feels about the twist at the end of "Too Young." Also counts as a subversion of Ship Sinking from the show, if the book is canon.
  • Shout-Out:
    • "We are doing this, bros!! We are making this happen!!"
    • Issue 1 shows a cross-section of the ground... including a fossilized T. rex about to stomp on a house. Considering that Ryan North writes the comic...
      • Also in the cross-section of the ground there are three prehistoric mammal skulls reminiscent of Manny, Sid, and Diego.
    • Issue 2 makes a shout out to Princess Bubblegum's voice actress, when Marceline mistakes PB for someone.
      Marceline: Huh what? Hynden, is that you?
      Princess Bubblegum: No it's me Marceline.
    • Adventure Tim is a shout out to the Alternate Universe of Farscape seen in the episodes "Unrealised Realities" and "Prayer", in which pairs of the regular characters somehow got combined into a single person.
    • In the time travel arc, the robots turning evil when they get wet is a Shout Out to Gremlins.
    • One of the time travel issues has a short back-up in which Bubblegum and BMO discuss various hazards of time travel, with explicit Shout Outs to Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, Ray Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder", and Larry Niven's "All The Myriad Ways".
    • Marceline's outfit in issues 11-2 includes a shop assistant's uniform shirt with a namebadge reading "Rose".
    • Issue 11 has a montage of scenes from Super Guts Punch 3 featuring references to Pitfall!, Q*bert, Super Mario Bros., Donkey Kong, and Excite Bike.
    • In Issue 20, Princess Bubblegum's adventuring suit is a black and green logo-free version of a classic Batgirl costume.
    • In Issue 21, Peppermint Butler tells a bunch of dignitaries here to see Princess Bubblegum that "The Princess is in another castle."
    • Issue 25's intro is a shout out to the writer's webcomic Dinosaur Comics. There's even a small caption on the bottom of the page that says: "I am enjoying these... these Dinosaur Comics. HOPEFULLY YOU ARE AS WELL?"
    • In Issue 26, the machine that turns Finn and Jake into ghosts resembles the machine from Casper that turns ghosts into people.
    • In Issue 33, when PB says "Let's do this", she assumes the pose from the famous WWII "We Can Do It!" Westinghouse staff motivational poster (often miscredited as "Rosie the Riveter").
    • Issues 41-44 are full of James Bond parodies.
    • In issues 46-49, the Governor of Ghost-A-Rica is a caricature of the Governor from The Walking Dead.
    • In issues 66-69, Finn's balloon race outfit is a Indiana Jones costume.
    • In issue 67, PB pulls a high-tech gun with "Say hello to my little friend!".
  • Signature Style: It's pretty obvious that Ryan North writes the first few arcs in the comic. Perhaps...super obvious?
  • Spin-Off: Several mini-series, beginning with Adventure Time: Marceline and the Scream Queens, which was announced after only two issues of the ongoing series had been published.
  • Split Personality: Adventure Tim is a fusion of Finn and Jake with two separate personalities.
  • The Story That Never Was: The "Dungeon Master" arc ends with its entire timeline being erased along with the abominations who are its villains.
  • Strange Minds Think Alike:
    • "AMAZING DRILL HANDS!!"
    • After the earth is restored, Desert Princess goes missing, and Jake tries to figure out where she went by imitating a princess and saying, "I'm the new princess in town! I'm super nice and everybody likes me!" Cut to the kidnapped Desert Princess, who is bewildered as to why Ice King would kidnap her because she's super nice and everybody likes her.
  • Stylistic Suck: The Ice King's new fanfiction is about as terrible as the last one.
  • Suddenly Always Knew That: Marceline's computer skills in the computer virus arc.
  • Surprise Party: The balloon race in #66-69 turns out to be an excuse by Hunson to throw Marceline a "Happy Deathday" party.
  • Swallowed Whole: Marceline does this to PB to protect her from the mind-controlling bubblegum. PB's response is "Oh my gosh, let's not do that again for a long time, okay?".
  • Talent Show: The "Best Princess Ever" arc has various Ooo princesses competing in a talent show.
  • Talking to Themself: Adventure Tim does this in two different text colours.
  • Technical Euphemism: In Issue 5, Adventure Tim calls the Mice King "evil". The Mice King objects to this and claims that he's just "chaotic neutral". Tim proceeds to show him a poster of all characters' morality alignments and the Mice King is designated under "neutral evil".
  • This Is a Drill: Finn and Jake's initial plan to escape the bag.
  • Time Skip: A memory-eating monster causes Finn to undergo a few of these in the "Mnemnoid" arc (issues #31-34).

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