Adventure Time follows Finn, a human boy, and Jake, his shape-shifting dog brother, as they roam the Land of Ooo looking for adventure. At first it looks like a candy-coloured fantasy romp, with princesses, dungeons and talking food. Slowly the show reveals that Ooo is Earth, a thousand years after a nuclear catastrophe called the Mushroom War, and that many of its silliest characters carry real grief.
Pendleton Ward created the series for Cartoon Network, where it ran from 2010 to 2018. It was followed by four Distant Lands specials (2020–2021) and the spin-off series Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake (2023). Over that run, the cast grew huge. This guide covers the main characters in depth, then the princesses, villains, spin-off characters and an A–Z list of the rest.
- Creator
- Pendleton Ward
- Network
- Cartoon Network
- Run
- 2010–2018
- Follow-ups
- Distant Lands (2020–21), Fionna and Cake (2023)
- Setting
- The Land of Ooo
The main characters
Finn and Jake share a treehouse with BMO, and their closest friends are the rulers of Ooo's kingdoms. Most episodes are built around one of these relationships.
Finn the Human
Hero of Ooo
Finn starts the series as a twelve-year-old boy who loves fighting evil, rescuing princesses and yelling about it. He's brave, impulsive and good-hearted. Over eight years of episodes he grows up for real: he goes through heartbreak, loses an arm, meets the father who abandoned him and learns that being a hero is not the same as being good. His growth is a large part of why the show is remembered as more than a kids' cartoon.
- Voice
- Jeremy Shada
Jake the Dog
Finn's adoptive brother
Jake is a magical dog who can stretch, shrink and reshape his body into almost anything. His parents adopted Finn as a baby, so the two are brothers. He's laid-back, lazy and full of strange advice that sometimes turns out to be wise. He has a long relationship with Lady Rainicorn, with whom he has five puppies, and he's the show's quiet argument that you don't have to have everything figured out to be happy.
- Voice
- John DiMaggio
Princess Bubblegum
Ruler of the Candy Kingdom
Princess Bubblegum, also known as Bonnibel, is a scientist who created most of her candy citizens. She's brilliant, kind and also controlling. She spies on her people for their safety and makes ethically shaky decisions without much hesitation. The show lets her be both a hero and a cautionary tale about benevolent authority, and her history with Marceline gives her a softer side.
- Voice
- Hynden Walch
Marceline the Vampire Queen
Half-demon vampire · Musician
Marceline is a thousand-year-old half-demon vampire who plays an axe-bass and drains the colour red from things instead of drinking blood. She acts cool and detached, but her backstory is full of loss: a demon father who neglects her, a childhood surviving the end of the world, and Simon, the man who raised her before the crown took his mind. Her songs are some of the show's most personal moments.
- Voice
- Olivia Olson
Ice King
Ruler of the Ice Kingdom
The Ice King is a lonely wizard who kidnaps princesses because he desperately wants a wife. Early on he's a pest. Then the show reveals he was once Simon Petrikov, a gentle scholar whose magic crown slowly destroyed his mind. Old video diaries Simon recorded, and his memory of caring for a young Marceline, turn the joke into a tragedy. He's still funny; it just hurts more.
- Voice
- Tom Kenny
BMO
Living game console
BMO (pronounced "Beemo") is a small living video game console who lives with Finn and Jake. BMO plays elaborate games of pretend, talks to their reflection and treats being a console as just one part of their identity. Some of the show's most experimental episodes centre on BMO, and the first Distant Lands special puts them in the lead.
- Voice
- Niki Yang
Princesses, royalty and friends
Ooo is a patchwork of kingdoms, each ruled by a princess, and many of them become recurring characters. Finn's friendships and romances with them shape a lot of the series.
Flame Princess
Ruler of the Fire Kingdom
Flame Princess is an elemental of fire whose emotions are literally dangerous; she was locked away as a child because her father feared her. She becomes Finn's first real girlfriend, and their break-up is one of the turning points of his adolescence. She later takes the throne and rules her kingdom with a commitment to honesty.
- Voice
- Jessica DiCicco
Lumpy Space Princess
Princess of Lumpy Space
LSP is a floating purple cloud with a dramatic teenage personality, endless self-absorption and a voice that's half whine, half valley-girl. She runs away from home and lives in the woods for a while, purely out of stubbornness. She's mostly comic relief, and very good at it.
- Voice
- Pendleton Ward
Lady Rainicorn
Jake's partner
Lady Rainicorn is a rainbow-unicorn hybrid who speaks Korean and flies through the air like a ribbon. She's Jake's long-term partner and mother of their five puppies. She's calmer than Jake and often the grown-up in the room.
- Voice
- Niki Yang
Peppermint Butler
Bubblegum's butler
Peppermint Butler is a small, polite peppermint candy who serves the princess. He also dabbles in dark magic and has friends in the underworld, which the show reveals with a perfectly straight face.
- Voice
- Steve Little
Tree Trunks
Elderly elephant
Tree Trunks is a tiny, sweet-natured elephant who bakes apple pies and sometimes gets dragged into Finn and Jake's adventures, with very mixed results. She's one of the show's earliest recurring characters.
- Voice
- Polly Lou Livingston
Earl of Lemongrab
Earl of the Lemon Kingdom
Lemongrab is a shrill, sour lemon man created by Bubblegum in a failed experiment. He's furious about everything and screams that things are "unacceptable". His later storyline, in which he rules a kingdom of lemon people, gets genuinely unsettling.
- Voice
- Justin Roiland
Gunter
The Ice King's penguin
Gunter is the Ice King's favourite penguin, one of many he calls by the same name. Gunter seems to be an ordinary penguin, but the show has fun suggesting there's much more to him, and the later seasons pay that off.
- Voice
- Tom Kenny
Fern
Finn's grass double
Fern is a copy of Finn made of grass, born from the events of the late seasons. He's caught between feeling like a fake and wanting a life of his own, and his story becomes one of the final season's emotional threads.
Villains and antagonists
Adventure Time's villains range from goofy to cosmic. The scariest ones tend to be tied to the world's past, or to the things its heroes have lost.
The Lich
Embodiment of death
The Lich is an ancient undead sorcerer who wants to end all life. He first appears in season one and returns several times, each time more frightening. He's the show's purest evil, with no tragic backstory and no joke to soften him. That's why his episodes hit so hard in a series that usually sympathises with its villains.
- Voice
- Ron Perlman
Hunson Abadeer
Lord of the Nightosphere
Hunson is Marceline's father and ruler of the Nightosphere, a chaotic underworld. He sucks out souls with his mouth and is mostly oblivious to how much he's hurt his daughter. Their episodes are about neglect played as comedy, and when he finally shows he cares, it lands.
- Voice
- Martin Olson
Magic Man
Trickster wizard
Magic Man is a cruel prankster wizard who enjoys making people miserable. The show later reveals why: a loss that broke him, connected to a character who matters a great deal to his future. It's one of several villain stories that end up being about grief.
- Voice
- Tom Kenny
Martin Mertens
Finn's father
Martin is the human father Finn spent years wondering about. When they finally meet, he's a selfish con man who abandons Finn again. The reunion is deliberately disappointing, and it shapes Finn's grown-up sense of who he wants to be.
GOLB
God of chaos
GOLB is a vast, ancient deity of chaos and the threat in the series finale. It's less a character than a force, and the way the finale deals with it brings several long-running stories to a close.
Fionna and Cake
Fionna the Human and Cake the Cat began as gender-swapped versions of Finn and Jake, starring in fan fiction written by the Ice King. They appeared in a few original-series episodes before getting their own series on Max in 2023, aimed at an older audience.
Fionna Campbell
Lead of the spin-off
In the 2023 series Fionna is a young adult stuck in a dead-end life in a world without magic. She wants something more meaningful, and when magic returns she gets her chance. The series is about whether a life invented by someone else can still be your own.
- Voice
- Madeleine Martin
Cake the Cat
Fionna's best friend
Cake is Fionna's stretchy, impulsive cat, the counterpart to Jake. She's more hot-headed and dramatic than him, and she's fiercely protective of Fionna.
- Voice
- Roz Ryan
Simon Petrikov
The former Ice King
Freed from the crown by the end of the original show, Simon is struggling to live as a man again. The spin-off pairs him with Fionna and Cake and makes his grief and depression a central part of the story.
- Voice
- Tom Kenny
Adventure Time voice cast
| Character | Voice actor | Also known for |
|---|---|---|
| Finn the Human | Jeremy Shada | Voltron: Legendary Defender |
| Jake the Dog | John DiMaggio | Bender in Futurama |
| Princess Bubblegum | Hynden Walch | Starfire in Teen Titans |
| Marceline | Olivia Olson | Love Actually, Phineas and Ferb |
| Ice King, Simon, Gunter | Tom Kenny | SpongeBob SquarePants |
| BMO, Lady Rainicorn | Niki Yang | Candy in Gravity Falls |
| Lumpy Space Princess | Pendleton Ward | Series creator |
| Flame Princess | Jessica DiCicco | Voice work |
| The Lich | Ron Perlman | Hellboy, Slade in Teen Titans |
| Hunson Abadeer | Martin Olson | Writer; Olivia Olson's father |
| Earl of Lemongrab | Justin Roiland | Voice work |
| Fionna | Madeleine Martin | Californication |
| Cake | Roz Ryan | Hercules (Disney) |
Several of these actors overlap with other shows on this site: Hynden Walch and Ron Perlman are both in Teen Titans, and Tom Kenny is the voice of SpongeBob.
All Adventure Time character names A–Z
B–C
- Betty Grof — Simon's fiancée
- BMO — living console
- Cake the Cat — Fionna's friend
- Cinnamon Bun — Candy Kingdom
E–F
- Earl of Lemongrab — Lemon Kingdom
- Fern — grass Finn
- Finn the Human — hero
- Fionna Campbell — spin-off lead
- Flame Princess — Fire Kingdom
G–I
- GOLB — god of chaos
- Gunter — penguin
- Hunson Abadeer — Lord of the Nightosphere
- Huntress Wizard — forest wizard
- Ice King — Ice Kingdom
J–L
- Jake the Dog — hero
- Jermaine — Jake's brother
- Lady Rainicorn — Jake's partner
- The Lich — villain
- Lumpy Space Princess — Lumpy Space
M–P
- Magic Man — trickster
- Marceline — Vampire Queen
- Martin Mertens — Finn's father
- Peppermint Butler — butler
- Princess Bubblegum — Candy Kingdom
- Prismo — wish granter
S–T
- Simon Petrikov — the man behind the Ice King
- Susan Strong — hidden human
- Tree Trunks — elephant
What the characters are really about
Adventure Time is about growing up in the ruins of someone else's mistakes. Nearly every major character is living with something that happened before they were in control:
- Finn learns that heroics can't fix everything, and that the people you look up to, including parents, can let you down.
- Simon and Marceline are a story about a caretaker who forgets the child he saved, and the child who never forgets him.
- Princess Bubblegum shows how good intentions turn into control when you're the only one who knows best.
- Jake is the counterweight: the character who accepts change and loss and keeps going.
Its influence on later animation is hard to overstate. Rebecca Sugar worked on Adventure Time before creating Steven Universe, and the show's mix of silliness and sadness runs through Gravity Falls and The Owl House. For more Cartoon Network characters, see our network guide, or read about long-form character development.
Where to start
- Seasons 1–2 — short, episodic and silly. Good for getting to know the cast; the lore starts creeping in at the end of season two.
- Seasons 3–6 — the show's strongest stretch for many fans, with the big reveals about Simon, Marceline and Finn's past.
- Later seasons — more serial, building to the 2018 finale, "Come Along with Me".
- Distant Lands (2020–21) — four hour-long specials: "BMO", "Obsidian", "Wizard City" and "Together Again".
- Fionna and Cake (2023) — best watched after the main series, since it leans on Simon's arc.
Frequently asked questions
Who are the main Adventure Time characters?
Finn the Human and Jake the Dog are the leads. The core supporting cast is Princess Bubblegum, Marceline the Vampire Queen, the Ice King, BMO, Lumpy Space Princess and Flame Princess. The Lich is the show's biggest recurring villain.
Who is the Ice King really?
He was once Simon Petrikov, a human antiquities expert who put on a magic crown before the Mushroom War. The crown gave him ice powers and slowly erased his memory and sanity. He looked after a young Marceline in the ruined world before he forgot who he was.
Is Finn the last human?
For much of the show Finn believes he is, and it's a big part of his loneliness. Later seasons reveal other humans exist, including his father Martin and a hidden community of humans on an island, which drives one of the final story arcs.
Who voices Finn and Jake?
Jeremy Shada voices Finn, and John DiMaggio voices Jake. Tom Kenny voices the Ice King, Hynden Walch voices Princess Bubblegum, Olivia Olson voices Marceline and Niki Yang voices BMO.
Are Princess Bubblegum and Marceline a couple?
Yes. The series hinted at a long, complicated history between them for years and confirmed it in the 2018 finale. The Distant Lands special "Obsidian" explores their relationship directly.
What is Fionna and Cake?
Fionna and Cake started as gender-swapped versions of Finn and Jake in the Ice King's fan fiction. They got their own adult-leaning spin-off series on Max in 2023, which reveals their world is a real alternate universe and pairs them with Simon Petrikov.