I've decided to take a break from my weekly postings about episodes and characters to share some different conspiracy theories behind Adventure Time that you might not be aware of. The fact is, this show is deep. It's silly, and nonsensical at times, but the characters all have different stories and pasts that make your gut wretch and your heart ache. There are hidden messages and clues as to what's going on in the Land of Ooo and how it came about and I'm going to examine a few interesting concepts.
1. Finn's actually in a coma and everything existing in the Land of Ooo is a figment of his imagination
The theory insists that Finn lived a normal life on Earth, with a pet dog (without magical powers), named Jake. Finn was a lonely kid, without any friends and parents who neglected him. He had difficulty supporting himself through two jobs.
Finn considered Jake to be his only true and loyal friend, but he died of old age a few years later, leaving Finn wading in a hopeless depression. Seeing no other option, Finn turned to suicide and attempted to overdose. He fell into a deep coma which doctors feared he would never awaken from...and sadly, they were right. Finn never awakens from his coma; he remains stuck in a perpetual dream, a fantastical world of make belief of which Finn had always dreamed of.
Here, Jake and Finn go on crazy adventures in Candy Kingdom, fall in love, and fight evil.
Finn would remain in a coma until his dying days, adventuring with his dead dog.
It was forever, Adventure Time.
2. Finn's not the only human left on Earth
So, we know Adventure Time takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where humanity essentially destroyed itself through nuclear warfare...and it's said that Finn is the last remaining human on Earth...but what if he isn't? What if there are more humans still remaining on Earth, and Finn just hasn't discovered them yet.
After the bomb him, though most humans were dead, the remaining survivors sought refuge underground to protect themselves from diseases (mainly mutations) caused by the bomb. They went on with life underground while the surface world was changing exponentially and basically started an entire separate society.
In one of the episodes, Finn and Jake go underground and discover a whole tribe of what appears to be other people...though it is later revealed that they are all human-like fish mutants (they wear hats to conceal their gills). The only character who does not reveal gills is Susan Strong. We never see if she's a mutant or not. What if she is a human? That means Finn's not entirely alone in the universe. What does that mean for Adventure Time?
3. The Ice King is a metaphor for dementia
I haven't really touched on Ice King much yet, but he's one of the villain's in Adventure Time. He's a lonely, old man who abducts princesses in an attempt to fill his void. But he's got a pretty interesting past. It's revealed through several episodes that the Ice King lived before the apocalypse as a man named Simon Petrikov. He knew and took care of Marceline the Vampire Queen while war ensued in their city. He found a crown which granted him magical powers (he hated using the crown, but felt he needed to, to protect little Marceline from all of the monsters that arose from the nuclear bombs), though it also took over his brain and made him insane. In recent episodes he has no recollection of his past. He's the guy who pretty much saved Earth from being completely destroyed by the Mushroom Bomb (using his powers to freeze the bomb in mid flight so that it only blew up a chunk of the Earth).
After putting on the crown (representative of aging), he begins to show the common symptoms of dementia: memory loss and thought pattern loss, disorganized behaviour and lacking a sense of order, depression and sociopathic symptoms (loss of empathy, bursts of basic emotions like anger, lack of social cues), as well as paranoia and hallucinations.
The most common form of dementia is Alzheimer's disease, which explains the void he can't fill (losing his wife, Betty). It also explains Marceline's avoidance of The Ice King (she's coping with the grief of the person she once loved and lost).
Ice King doesn't remember who Marceline is
Maybe there's more to Adventure Time than we think...
Wow, I have watched an episode but I never realized it's deeper meaning. I saw it as just another cartoon but now I look back at it in a whole new light. It's interesting that even fiction can have a past.
ReplyDeleteAlzheimer's is a scary thing! I don't have any experience with it but my girlfriend's grandfather was in a nursing home and they didn't have his oxygen plugged in properly and had pretty severe brain damage. Now he doesn't know who his own children are! Someone's getting sued...
ReplyDeleteVery helpful blog! .Thank you so much. Merry Christmas Images
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