Post-Apocalyptic Ooo

I'm a fan of this animated children's show on Cartoon Network called Adventure Time. The show is about a 13 year-old adventurer named Finn and his stretchy dog companion named Jake. Most episodes revolve around these two going off and having adventures with the many inhabitants of the mysterious land they live in known as Ooo.

The creator of the show, Pendleton Ward, has been confirmed to have said that Ooo is a post-apocalyptic world. In a few episodes the fact is hinted at and so I took it upon myself to do a little research on this and what I found was quite interesting.

A major (but only subtly shown) theme within the show is the Great Mushroom War. As the name suggests with the word "Mushroom" (referring to mushroom clouds) this was a nuclear war. In the very first seconds of the shows opening theme you'll see a couple nuclear bombs lodged into the ground as well many many many pieces of destroyed modern day technology casually strewn about the world in almost every episode. In fact, in one episode there is a brief scene where the Earth can be seen from space and appears to be missing a gigantic chunk which provides further evidence of nuclear warfare.

Some have also said that the strange beings that live in Ooo are results of nuclear fallout which is why there are so many mutants, hybrids and odd creatures. Its seems as though there in little recollection of this war though which suggests it was long, long ago. Some distorted things from before the war though, like modified technology and strange words (Glob, Gob, Grod, and Grob are all different ways of saying God) as well as different governments like democracy and anarchy remain however.

In one episode Finn and Jake must retrieve a specific memory from their 1000 year-old vampire friend Marceline and delve into her mind to find it. In one memory she is seen as a child in a raggedy dress surrounded by grey land, rubble and debris. This suggests that the Mushroom War was sometime during her childhood and that if anyone to remember much of it, it'd be her.

While some aspects of Ooo's strange history are not reveled or are in the process of being inserted into episodes, apparently a few things have been cut by the studio. While Adventure Time isn't as creepy as I'm making it sound there are some oddly philosophical seeming episodes sprinkled in with the lighthearted adventures. I think that Ward and the other creators of the show may have some interesting underlying messages to their show, but other than that its just a really cute and entertaining cartoon.