All the Times Adventure Time Crushed Our Hearts

Maybe there’s a silver lining to “Adventure Time” ending. After all, it regularly destroys our emotions by luring us in with cutesy surreal animation and then sucker-punching us with a surprisingly tragic storyline or backstory. If it’s not around anymore, maybe we won’t have to suffer so much!

But at least we’ll always have these quietly devastating moments to look back on fondly once the show has crumbled into nothingness. Let’s take a look back at the moments that Adventure Time crushed our hearts.

When you learn the Ice King’s origins for the first time.

Remember when we all thought The Ice King was just a comically creepy dude who kidnapped princesses, and then it turned out that he was actually once a nice, intelligent human man driven insane by grief and loneliness and a magical ice-crown? And that he survived a terrible apocalyptic nuclear war only to linger on forever as a shadow of his former self?

When Finn didn’t know how to handle his feelings towards Princess Bubblegum.

With lyrics like “It feels like there’s a hole inside my body,” Finn’s depressed song about Princess Bubblegum not returning his affections is sad enough as it is — but then Jake convinces the Flame Princess into giving up her entire world to marry Finn, using the same melody as Finn’s sad song. Finn does end up liking her, but Flame Princess definitely isn’t happy about being used.

When we realize we’re all Finn and ignore our repressed memories

There are too many things that I can’t handle. I feel ya, Finn. I feel ya.

When Finn calls out Princess Bubblegum for leading him on.

Princess Bubblegum starts to suggest that she might have feelings for Finn that she can’t act on and he frustratedly shuts her down. This scene is just too. Real.

When we found out that Marceline and the Ice King had a past.

A season after we found out about Simon Petrikov, it was revealed that Marceline the Vampire Queen knew him back in the day before he went full-on Ice King — and that he didn’t remember her. If you’ve ever had an older family member suffer from dementia or Alzheimers, this episode will hit you right in your guts and then drag you around by them.

Yeah because knowing that Simon was Marceline’s friend in the post-apocalyptic wasteland that is Earth isn’t bad enough — we actually have to see him trying to protect her without using his Ice King powers and slipping deeper into insanity.

When We Realized We’re not the only ones who feel Lonely

Cue ugly crying now. *Sobs Uncontrollably*

AMO’s entire existence.

AMO only appears in one episode, the two-part “The More You Moe, The Moe You Know”. But he’s one of the most memorable characters of season 7 so far because his story is so deeply sad. AMO was the robot designer Moe’s botched attempt at creating a bot that can experience love. However, Moe quickly realized that he made a fatal error with AMO — he made him capable of receiving love, but not giving it. So Moe built BMO, everyone’s favorite, who is designed to give love to others.

This only compounded AMO’s obsessive jealousy and drove him to destroy dozens of MOs and attempt to destroy BMO. This last attempt ends in AMO’s tragic demise. Nothing’s sadder than a character who desperately needs to be loved, but whose programming keeps him from getting it. Well, nothing except these last three characters…

The episode where the Ice King reunites with his lost love.

The Ice King is briefly transformed back into Simon and is able to win his fiancée Betty back through the use of time travel, but has to put the crown back on and forget all about her again so he doesn’t die — and the worst part is, he’d rather die. This is made even sadder by the fact that Betty is also granted magical powers in her quest to cure Simon, so now she’s gone insane too.

When Simon leaves Marcy all alone.

Okay, but… seriously. Can they just rename the show “Simon and Marceline conspire together to make you cry?” BECAUSE THAT WOULD BE A WAY MORE ACCURATE TITLE.