Adventure Time was a cartoon like no other. Masterfully blending its unique humor with surreal situations, vulnerable characters, and increasingly existential episodes, this series reached spaces and heights unheard of within Cartoon Network's ranks.
At its core is a wide and diverse cast of quirky characters, all who entrance the audience with their odd balancing act of fantastical cuteness and deeply human honesty. It is with the latter that this list explores one of Adventure Time's most defining traits. Today, let's run down a few of the most relatable quotes from the beloved cartoon.
10 "You're letting your brain dial turn your fear volume up." - Finn the Human
As odd as his turn of phrase might be, Finn really knows how to cut down to the point, even to surprising degrees of vivid imagery. Often when great stress or worry comes across a person, their brain innately sends the rest of the body to survival mode, turning up all the survival instincts from the brain to the feet.
While natural, it's still healthy to know that the panic button is not always the best option, despite it being the natural go-to for the ol' brain dial.
9 "Listen, when I look at you, my brain goes all stupid, and I just wanna hug you and sit on the couch and play BMO with you!" - Finn
Less vivid and more shockingly direct, Finn is articulating the base reactions of a modern generation of lovers and bleeding hearts. It's just amazing to see how fundamental an understanding that Finn has with his own limitations, as he just straight-up admits that, while he has no idea what's going on with his body, he at least knows that he likes a person.
After that, his desires immediately go towards simple yet intimate bonding. Finn's not exactly a pickup artist, but he does know how to have a good time.
8 "Suckin' at something is the first step to being sorta good at something." - Jake the Dog
Sometimes, everyone just needs to hear this. It's no secret that people can be bad at things. However, it's not always for the best to assume that being bad at something just means that the thing isn't for them.
As Jake eloquently puts it, life is a process. One is not always going to immediately click with what they want. If things don't go off with an easy start, that just means a longer journey, not necessarily a full stop. "Suckin'" is not who someone is. It is who they are (as long as they keep trying and stuff).
7 "You're getting hung up on imaginary problems. You got to focus on what's real." - Jake
Show creator, Pendleton Ward, has admitted that a huge inspiration for Jake the Dog was the Dude from The Big Lebowski and his tendency for bad advice. And as accurate as that can seem sometimes, Jake's grasp of a mental hierarchy is something grounded in reality, a grounding that Finn really needs every now and then.
When Finn gets hung up on the idea that Flame Princess didn't like his joke, Jake brought down the hammer by telling him that those issues were just in his head. Sometimes, the worst problems are the imaginary ones.
6 "I have approximate knowledge of many things."-Demon Cat
While his role was fleeting, Demon Cat certainly made a memorable impression on the audience. Beyond just being one of the dangerous obstacles within another one of the series' dungeons, Demon Cat served up an incredible line that was, at one end, an explanation of his powers and, at another, a brutally honest examination of how everyone thinks.
Society isn't exactly made up of geniuses. At best, everyone kind of knows what's going but not really, and that plethora of knowledge is just enough to help people get by.
5 "Dating girls is like riding a bicycle. If you mess up, you could get really hurt forever or hurt someone you really care about." - Finn
This is one way to look at bikes. Much like Finn's other dating and relationship ideals, his mind immediately goes to the extremes here, as Finn, like other lovelorn teenagers, takes a very fatalistic approach to dating. Entering into a romantic social contract with someone does often feel like an entire tightrope act.
Missteps will almost certainly mean hurting oneself but a few too many could mean trouble for one's partner and, in the worst-case scenario, a lot of other people. It's kind of hard to make a relationship metaphor that doesn't involve people getting hurt.
4 "I'm really, really sorry, Finn, but I can't help you because my parents are horrible idiots." - Lumpy Space Princess
Whether fans would like to admit or not, we were all Lumpy Space Princess at some point in life. LSP is the extreme of valley girl culture; and while that often serves as an exaggerated caricature of what a teenage girl sounds like over the phone, LSP more often than not is like a purple, 2D mirror being shoved in people's faces.
Can anyone really say that they haven't exaggerated to LSP's degree or called their own parents "horrible idiots"?
3 "I just thought about my anxieties, and it's like my mind hand touched a hot memory stove." - Carol
Carol really didn't get enough screen time in this show. She is the epitome of anxious escapists within the series. Her entire being is a constant resistance to what reality entails.
As such, she is prone to a similar, if not much more impassioned and vivid, view of the mental landscape to Finn, and she's definitely more prone to delusion. In her constant fight against the changing state of the world, Carol gave the fans this gem perfectly exclaiming how anxieties can appear and feel to a person.
2 "Sometimes, I think there's a monster who lives in my stomach, and that's why I'm hungry all the time." - Jake
Though he likes to portray himself as a magical dog, Jake is kind of more like a gluttonous pig or a hipster black hole that only consumes artisan stars.
Throughout the series, Jake can often be found eating or making some lavish food, whether that means his ultimate sandwich, bacon pancakes, or Prismo's otherworldly pickles. He is the very definition of indulgence and decadence, and his statement above only sums up that endless hunger.
1 "Sometimes, you don't cry because you're afraid of real emotion." - Ice King
Ending this list is a heavy hitter of realness from the king of sadness himself, Ice King. While he was keeping Finn and Jake captive during the scene he said this, he did display his deep connection and understanding of who Finn and Jake really are and, by extension, who people really are.
Of his various creepy observations, he lays down an unfortunate, universal truth in the fact that people often don't cry out of fear for their own vulnerability or the greater reality of their feelings. Come on everyone. If that fact is obvious to Ice King, then things really need to change.