Characters / Adventure Time: Ice King

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• Abhorrent Admirer: The Ice King kidnaps princesses and forces them into marrying him against their will. And on a more platonic level, he wants to be friends with Finn and Jake. His loneliness and tragic backstory make him sympathetic, but he forces princesses into marriage, which to him means keeping them locked up, and his very stalkerish towards Finn and Jake seals his status as an adversary for quite some time.
• Achievements in Ignorance: His coexistence with Gunter in his sealed penguin form for centuries has made him want to be like him. When Gunter obtains his crown in his original form, he becomes a copy of his most positive aspects thus preventing Orgalorg (Destroyer of Worlds) from resurfacing in the future.
• Achilles' Heel:
  • If the magic crown isn't worn on his head, it will render the Ice King completely incapable of using his ice magic.
  • He uses his long beard for Flight, so shaving it completely grounds him as seen in "Loyalty to the King".
  • Since the magic crown is powered by magic jewels, it's extremely vulnerable to anything that can disrupt magic, like Bella Noche's Anti-Magic.
  • Since the magic crown is made with "phantasmal circuitry", it can be vulnerable to being hacked, such as Betty's magic-based A.I. in "Broke His Crown".
• Adipose Rex: Subverted. While he looks extremely stout, it's actually just an optical illusion caused by his beard and abnormally puffy robe. In "What is Life?", he is revealed to be extremely skinny, bordering on emaciation, but with an abnormally large chest. In "I Remember You", he's fattened up to typically normal proportions, but he only lifts his robe to specifically talk about how he's been working out for his chest. And by "A Glitch is a Glitch," he's back to skinny.
• Affably Evil: So much so that it's honestly kinda hard to even call him evil at all, he's mostly just really whacked in the head. Even at his worst, he is genuinely pretty amicable, polite, and even downright friendly at times, having rather genuinely normal and friendly conversations with his captured prisoners and sorta just casually hanging out with the heroes every once and a while to the point that he treats Finn and Jake like they're just chill friends of his. He's even shown many times in the show that he just wants to be friends with the heroes!
• The Ageless: He is immortal in terms of aging; despite his appearance as an old man, it does not actually reflect him getting older as it's merely a reflection of what the original Wishing Crown's wish was.
• Aggressive Submissive: Ice King is kidnapping princesses, attempting to make moves on them, and even forcing them to marry him. At the same time however, it is shown that he very much enjoys it when the princesses happen to demand things of him, or even beat him up and humiliate him. This is most prominently displayed in his interactions with the Empress and Princess Bubblegum. He even confesses to enjoying being tied up in cords, much to the dismay of Marceline.
• Amulet of Concentrated Awesome: If he loses his crown, he loses all his powers. Seems he needed to keep it on his person (if not actually wear it) as Simon, in order to stay alive.
• Amulet of Dependency: The Ice Crown. It's the reason he's been able to stay alive so long.
  "This magic keeps me alive, but it's making me crazy. And I need to save you. But, who's going to save me?"
• And Now You Must Marry Me: His entire purpose in life. He just wants to be Happily Married! Obviously, kidnapping princesses and marrying them by force is the only way to make that beautiful dream happen!
• And Show It to You: It turns out that Ricardio is the result of Ice King accidentally doing this to himself as the result of a botched spell.
• Anti-Villain: Somewhere between Type II and Type IV. He usually has no idea what he's doing is wrong, but is just too crazy to notice due to his crown.
• Apocalyptic Log: A series of videotapes show him going from a normal man named Simon to the Ice King he is now.
• Apologetic Attacker: Somewhat. In the episode "I Remember You", his notes (which he mistakes for lyrics) are, to put simply, him apologizing in advance for what he does.
  This magic keeps me alive
  But it's making me crazy
  And I need to save you
  But who's going to save me?
  Please forgive me for whatever I do
  When I don't remember you
• Arch-Enemy: Zigzagged with Finn: while he's certainly Finn's most frequently-encountered foe by far, there's very little hate or fear between them: Finn considers the Ice King little more than a nuisance, and Ice King actually considers Finn a friend.
• Artifact of Doom: In "Holly Jolly Secrets", the Ice Crown is revealed to be the cause of the Ice King's insanity and why he's the way he is. Also appears to have its own will, which it tries to impose on its wearer.
• Attack Its Weak Point: Whenever trying to defeat the Ice King, the best bet is to knock his crown off his head.
  • The Ice King, asking for it:
  Ice King: FOOL! Your powers are no match for my magical crown!
  (Jake knocks off the crown.)
  Ice King: MY POWERS!
• Ax-Crazy: His homicidally dangerous and mentally unstable behavior is mostly due to his insanity and dementia thanks to the influence of his crown, with the Ice King being too insane to even know what he's really doing.
• Backstory Horror: A surprisingly sinister revelation in the last few minutes of the lighthearted "Holly Jolly Secrets" simultaneously plays for drama the Laughably Evil and Cloudcuckoolander tropes he so happily personified. The transformation of a perfectly normal human being into a deranged cartoon character was chilling, to say the least. Later episodes show that the process was slow and painful, supposedly driving away his fiancée Betty and leaving a young Marceline out of fear he will hurt her through sheer insanity.
• Badass Bookworm: He was definitely this. In Betty, within minutes of awakening, he knocks out Ash in one punch because he needs to use his flying carpet. He also manages to whip up a machine that opens a time portal in the time it takes Marceline, Finn, and Jake to get to the Ice Kingdom. (Although it's possible he was working on it during his previous periods of sanity.)
• Bad Santa: He's a routine princess kidnapper and general nuisance, and he ended up being the central figure of a yearly tradition in wintertime devoted to feeling sorry for him.
• Barefoot Loon: He's always barefoot and is quite possibly the craziest character in the show.
• Beat Still, My Heart: Ricardio used to be the heart of the Ice King, brought to life by a spell gone awry. He makes a second appearance much later on, setting up a Womb Level-like lair and replacing his limbs with muscular arms and legs...but still leaving his body exposed.
• Big Bad: In season 1, he can be considered one of the main antagonists of the show, constantly stealing princesses so he can marry them. After that, he generally becomes a Harmless Villain, with The Lich taking over as the show's Big Bad. However, he worsens sometimes.
• Blank White Eyes: A side effect of the crown, they're his Wizard Eyes, allowing him to see the strange beings of the Spirit Realm, which probably took a toll on his sanity. He had them ever since he first put the crown on, although Fionna and Cake would revise it so that Simon's always looked this way.
• Blessed with Suck: As we learn in "Holly Jolly Secrets", his ice powers helped him survive the nuclear winter, but at the cost of his sanity and humanity, and he outlived the only woman he ever loved. Or so he thought...
• Blow You Away: He commands arctic winds to chill and freeze things and it seems to accompany his flying.
• Blue Means Cold: The Ice King has blue skin, wears a blue muumuu, and has ice powers.
• Body Horror:
  • He temporarily removed his own heart. And gave it life as Ricardio. On another note, during the process that turned him into the Ice King, his skin turned pale blue, and appeared frostbitten when his body temperature had dropped to only 80 degrees (F). Presumably, he got even colder, as he's fine going barefoot in the snow.
  • In "Lady and Peebles" Ricardio makes a body for himself using tissue and broken bones he pilfered from the Ice King. While still inside the Ice King's body.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: As is revealed over the course of the series, his crown is the source of all his power, granting him extended life and control over the forces of nuclear winter, but destroys his connection with reality.
• Butt-Monkey: Ice King is very unlucky, constantly either getting hurt or having something bad happen to him.
• By the Eyes of the Blind: The crown gave him the ability to hear and see spirits.
• Cast from Sanity: The more Simon Petrikov uses the Ice Crown, the more he loses his mind and becomes dependent on it. The key moment where he lost most of his sanity and became the Ice King (or rather an "Evergreen copy") happened when he used it to protect Marceline from a group of radioactive zombies.
• Casual Kink: He very clearly enjoys Princess Bubblegum beating him up, and he's admitted he likes being tied up in cords.
• Cerebus Retcon: Everything about his crazy and erratic behavior gets very depressing when it's revealed he used to be a normal man who was driven insane by the Ice Crown's power.
• Characterization Marches On: Was a more traditional villain in the original short, being much more of a threat (actually physically engaging Finn/Pen, for one) and playing typical villain tropes like Evil Laugh and Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness straight. There was scarcely a hint of the harmless Cloudcuckoolander he would become in the series.
  • He's also unusually nasty by later standards in "When Wedding Bells Thaw", in which he comes close to mind-controlling Old Lady Princess into marrying him.
  • And then we found out about his past, making him a Tragic Villain...
• Chick Magnet: Ice King gets a taste of this when he turns into the Nice King.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Ice King has odd plans, odd mannerisms, and generally doesn't make sense. However, he turns out to be a rather horrifying deconstruction of this trope. His strange behavior actually stems from having had his mind warped and his memory erased by an Artifact of Doom. The process was slow and extremely painful, destroying his relationships with his fiancée and surrogate daughter, and it's implied that most of his actions are a subconscious attempt to replace them. By the time the main series takes place, he's barely a shadow of his old self and is miserable due to his inability to form normal relationships. And, it's implied that without the mental remnants of his old self restraining him, he would be just a violent madman rather than an ineffectual Cloud Cuckoo Lander. When this control occasionally slips, he is much more disturbing.
  • It's Played for Drama during a flashback episode that shows Simon Petrikov was terrified of losing his mind. The Ice King is less than a shadow of the dignified antiquarian he once was, no longer caring that he's gone insane. "I Remember You" suggests that he's not even aware that he's even gone insane, even with the truth from his own words being sung right in front of him. However, it's kind of implied that Simon was already a bit of a Cloudcuckoolander, he just wasn't insane. For example, he compares being the Ice King to "living with eternal diaper butt".
• Continuity Nod: After his backstory is revealed, several characters refer to the Ice King by his real first name.
  • In "Beyond This Earthly Realm.
  Finn: Ice King? Ice King! Where'd you go, Simon?
  • And again in "Lady & Peebles".
  Ricardio: Silence, Simon!
  • And in "I Remember You":
  Marceline: You don't remember anything, do you, Simon?!
• Cool Old Guy: Sort of. He has a wacky sense of humor, plays on a drum kit, and has a bunch of ninja stuff.
• The Corruption: In "Simon & Marcy", it's shown that Simon is able to resist the crown's influence when he's not actually wearing it, but dangerous circumstances force him to use its power more often than not. Eventually, he becomes the Ice King permanently.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Despite being an extremely out-there old man, Ice King has shown that he can be extremely efficient with his magic when the situation calls for it.
• Crown of Power: His crown is the source of his power over ice, and is also the source of his insanity, as before the crown corrupted him, he was a normal, sane human being.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Much like Lemongrab, he has had one of the most depressing pasts of any character on the show, stretching back an entire millennium to when he was a perfectly normal, happy young man. He survived the Mushroom War and the post-apocalyptic ruins of the world, and became a temporary guardian to a young girl, but lost it all along the way to insanity and senility.
• A Day in the Limelight: "Hitman", "Princess Monster Bride", "Party's Over Isla de Señorita", and "Friends Forever" give him more focus compared to other episodes. "Holly Jolly Secrets" also involves his origin story, among other things.
• De-power: In the finale, as a side effect of being inside GOLB, Ice King gets reverted back to Simon, and unlike in "Betty", it sticks.
• Death of Personality: After the finale of Adventure Time, the Ice King persona is officially no more as Simon is finally freed from the crown's curse.
• Deity of Human Origin: Through the Crown, Simon ends up becoming what is essentially a pseudo-Ice Elemental, being a flawed copy of a prior Ice Elemental Evergreen.
• Desperately Craves Affection: His surface-level motivation for wanting to kidnap a Princess - he just wants to be loved. The heart of the matter, though, is considerably more complex and spoiler-laden.
• Determinator: Ice King doesn't give up easily on much. He carried it over from his former self Simon Petrikov, who fought long and hard to try and keep his sanity, and while we know he eventually loses the battle, seeing him trying, and succeeding, at holding onto his mind while using the power of the crown while singing the saddest rendition of the theme song to Cheers ever is amazing.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Ice King manages to defeat Party God with a cunning trick of freezing a cloud to knock him out. Simon even states that with the Ice Crown he could deal with Scarab and the Winter King demonstrating this by freezing him with solid ice.
• Dirty Old Man: Justified, sort of; he goes after young princesses because his lost love Betty was young when he last saw her, and his own immortality and insanity began when he was young (albeit artificially aged). Unjustified with him wanting to date Fionna. Granted, he doesn't seem to think he's old. Moreover, he won't go after princesses under 18, as seen in "Mortal Recoil" when he has no interest in Bubblegum when she's reverted to a 13-year-old.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: The Ice King frequently kidnaps, drugs, or outright mind controls women so that he can force them to "marry" him. The way he tries to justify his actions is even very similar to typical lines used by real-life rapists and abusers.
  • His backstory involving the ice crown's corruption of his mind is uncomfortably familiar to anyone who has watched a grandparent or other loved one slowly succumb to Dementia, such as Alzheimer's. The episode "I Remember You" twists the knife as Marceline tries all she can to break through to his former self. She doesn't.
  • It also in some ways resembles a drug addiction, with Simon "needing" it and it giving him special abilities, but making him behave strangely, hallucinate, and do awful things to his loved ones and then not remember it later.
  • His "Wizard Eyes" are also reminiscent of schizophrenia, with him seeing crazy things that no one else can see. However, these things are later revealed to be the very real and very creepy denizens of the Spirit Realm.
• Elderly Immortal: He's over a thousand years old, although he looked much younger when he found the crown that gave him his immortality. His elderly appearance is also a side effect of the crown, as the crown slowly turns its wearer into Evergreen clones; If he completes his transformation at the same time Marceline is turned into a vampire, Simon's biological age would have stayed at 57. As Distant Lands shows, he retains his youth however, he is no older than when he first put on the crown.
• Enemy Mine: Finn and Jake teamed up with the Ice King to stop the Lich-possessed Princess Bubblegum after she went One-Winged Angel.
  • He does this again in a short heralding in the third season, he seems to enjoy it, even though the duo bluntly told him to commit a Heroic Sacrifice in the process.
  • This may have been his motivation in "The Cooler", given how badly the Ice Kingdom was affected by just Flame Princess.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • The Ice King will kidnap unwilling princesses left and right and try to make one of them his bride, but he loses interest in Princess Bubblegum when she turns into a thirteen-year-old. He's creepy, but he's not THAT creepy.
  • In "Hitman", he also draws the line when Scorcher tries to kill Finn and Jake instead of literally hitting them.
• Evil Is Deathly Cold: Downplayed and eventually subverted. Ice King is an ice wizard who starts as a recurrent villain who kidnaps princesses, but he's more insane than evil as there's rarely any malice behind his actions. He also becomes a very sympathetic and tragic figure once his backstory is revealed.
• Evil Old Folks: Played With. He's certainly old and a chaotic villain, but he's more insane than anything.
• Evil Overlord: Has the spiky crown, Faceless Goons (Penguins, Yeti, and Type I Snowlems), magic, etc. Every typical aspect of the trope is present, so it is of course totally subverted. He isn't really "evil" for one, and it's often more like he just has the biggest house in the Ice Kingdom.
• Evil Plan: Kidnapping princesses because the ice crown drove him insane.
• Expy: The idea for him came from the characteristics of Dr. Two-Brains from WordGirl. They're both "evil" older men voiced by Tom Kenny who started out as intellectuals who got their minds messed with by an outside force that gave them an obsession for something in the process. They also both used to have a mentor relationship with a heroine from their respective shows that still resurfaces from time to time.
• Fallen Hero: Though not completely fallen, since some part of mind is still fighting the Crown (it's just buried so deep that not even he is aware of it). He later returns to normal by the time of "Come Along With Me" thanks to Betty, however.
• Fan Disservice: The writers seem to try to slip in as many upskirt shots of the Ice King as possible. You better get used to the sight of that shriveled blue body and dirty toilet-paper-looking underwear. He's also shown to have a big butt, but at the same time it's attached to a creepy and wrinkly old man.
• Fisher King: Might be the case with the ice kingdom as snow started to fall around him in the tapes in Holly Jolly Secrets part 2
• Flight: He can fly via his beard.
• Foil: Ice King and Scorcher. The Scorcher's fire powers and competency contrast with Ice King's ice powers and incompetency.
• The Fog of Ages: He's been alive since before the Mushroom War, but has only the vaguest memory of times before the series. He can't even remember his own name, let alone his former life.
• Forgot About His Powers: This happens to Ice King in "Princess Potluck" when he wonders how he can magically crash the potluck. Then he remembers that he can use ice magic (which he seldom uses for evil anymore).
  Ice King: Oh, lovable, forgetful me!
• Frankenstein's Monster: Princess Monster Wife, built by the Ice King by taking various random body parts from all of the other princesses.
• Freudian Excuse: His desire to kidnap princesses is revealed to be a degenerated desire to see his fiancé Betty again. Whom he referred to as "his princess".
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Became this in Season 5. The others invite him to things and put up with his annoying behavior out of pity. Marceline seems to be the only one who genuinely likes him, and even then it takes her a while to want him around her again, as up until "I Remember You" it was difficult for her to even be in the same room with the guy. It seems that doing so brought back... unpleasant memories for her.
• Friendly Enemy: He's on friendlier terms with the protagonists from Season 3 onwards. Noted to not usually be a "serious threat" in Season 4. From Earth & Water to the end of Play Date he lived with Finn and Jake while his kingdom was rebuilt.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: He was just a normal human with aspirations to become a certified and respected antiquarian, until he found the crown.
• Future Loser: Mushroom War era Simon was a certified Badass. Ice King, not so much.
• Gag Nose: Somewhat odd, given he didn't have one as a human. Later episodes revealed that the first wearer of the Ice Crown, Gunther, grew one because of what he thought of Evergreen at the time, implying that it happens to everyone who wears the crown.
• Hair Wings: The Ice King uses his beard like a pair of small wings to fly. He of course loses this ability when he shaves it in "Loyalty to the King".
• Hallucinations: He sees crazy things (later revealed to be the very real and very creepy denizens of the spirit realm) with his "Wizard Eyes" all the time.
• Happy Place: Ice King's Imagination Zone.
  NEPTR: Sleep well, Poppy, in your imagination zone filled with beautiful princesses.
• Harmless Freezing: This applies anytime he freezes something living, which is a little weird given his insanity.
  • It's established that, when he was still oscillating between Simon and the Ice King, he wasn't always so lenient - we see him unnecessarily freeze a deer to death by asphyxiation. He's noticeably holding back in the present day, though whether he does so consciously or not is debatable.
• Heel–Face Turn: He stops being a villain from Season 3 onwards. He sometimes causes problems, but almost never has any malice to it. It later reached a point where Finn and Jake would have no problem with him hanging out with them
• Her Code Name Was "Mary Sue": Writes himself as one in the "Fionna and Cake" universe. He saves Fionna and Cake from Dr. Prince just by reasoning with him, and the duo automatically adores him and becomes best friends with him for no good reason.
• Hidden Depths: Has more than the rest of the cast combined, thanks to his age and hobbies.
  • Turns out, he can survive on a desert island (actually Island Lady) without using his crown at all. (It's not too surprising when you know his history, but that he can call it up at all comes out of left field...)
• Hypnotize the Captive: Ice King does this in "When Wedding Bells Thaw" to get a princess to marry him.
• I Just Want to Be Loved: All he really wants is to have people who keep him company and care about him, as he said so himself in "I Remember You".
• I Just Want to Have Friends: While he started out just kidnapping princesses, as the series goes on, it becomes abundantly clear that he's incredibly lonely and he just wants someone to like him. This is especially seen in how he regularly tries to hang out with Finn and Jake, despite their rocky relationship.
• I Was Quite the Looker: Simon was relatively handsome; at least enough to be depicted with the same Generic Cuteness as most other characters (as opposed to Ice King's Gonk big nose and aged appearance).
• An Ice Person: His crown provides him with amazing control over ice and snow.
• Ignored Epiphany: When he gets knocked out while fighting Finn, the Cosmic Owl appears and attempts to tell him he's insane. His response is to call the Cosmic Owl a big nerd, after which he is tickled into consciousness by penguins.
• Immortality Begins at 20: A variation; the crown artificially aged Simon rapidly, but thereafter he doesn't seem to have changed much over the course of the hundreds of years he's been alive. When he's freed from being the Ice King forever, he reverts back to the age he first put the crown on.
• Immortality Inducer: The crown has kept him alive for a very long time. Unfortunately, it's also driven him insane and No Immortal Inertia is in effect.
• Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: He generally comes across this way, to the point that it is often hard to consider him a real villain, or even an Anti-Villain. The impression is helped by an apparent unwillingness to take the gloves off unless his life is on the line (something only forced by the Party God and Flame Princess, to date), and even then he holds back some.
• Informed Attribute: Played for Laughs. Ice King frequently claims he has muscles, pecs, and abs, but he's scrawny and skinny underneath his robes, it's just another sign of his delusions.
• The Insomniac: He's implied to have sleep problems in "The Eyes".
• Interspecies Friendship: Gunter the penguin is probably his best friend.
• It's All About Me: With his lack of sanity, Ice King has a penchant for causing others misery in the pursuit of his own happiness. His constant kidnapping of princesses is the most obvious, and taking their body parts to make his own is an escalation of this, and he has stalked and paralyzed Finn and Jake to figure out how to be happy from them. His overall situation might not be his fault, but his psychotic actions and disregard for the misery he causes ensure his regular beatdowns from Finn and Jake are more than deserved.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: The Ice King, particularly after he Took a Level in Kindness. Despite being temperamental and a bit self-centered, he's ultimately a lonely man looking for love who is Not Evil, Just Misunderstood and a Tragic Villain. His actions are extreme, but his goals don't involve anything completely evil.
• Kamehame Hadoken: When fighting Flame Princess the third time in "Frost & Fire", Ice King shoots a powerful ice beam called "Ice Extense".
• Large Ham: Simon can be see hamming it up a little to keep Marceline's spirits up as well.
• Lean and Mean: Subverted. While his large robe gives him the appearance of a large man, he is actually exceptionally skinny (to the point of emaciation) most of the time. However, Ice King is more of an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain than evil.
• Like a Son to Me: Daughter in this case. Simon considers Marceline to be like a daughter.
• Limited Wardrobe: The Ice King always wears the same thing, a blue muumuu.
• Literal-Minded: Hires a hitman against Finn and Jake, thinking he is literally going to hit them, not kill them!
• Logical Weakness: He can't use his powers properly in high temperatures.
• Loss of Identity: Due to his insanity, he can't even remember who he once was. He's aware that he has a "tragic backstory", but in "I Remember You" he never seems to make the connection that the "lyrics" he wrote are really just his journal, and in "Simon and Marcy" he apparently never realizes that "Simon" in the story Marceline is telling is him (or, for that matter, that "Marcy" is her).
• Love Hungry: In "I Remember You" he quite literally yells "Love me! Love me! Love me!"

• Magical Barefooter: He is an ice wizard and he never wears any footwear.
• Maker of Monsters:
  • One of the abilities granted by the Ice Crown is the capacity to create any imaginable creature made of ice and snow as example: Snowlems, Iceclops, Ice Bulls, etc...
  • Princess Monster Wife, is a grotesque Frankenstein's Monster-like being created by Ice King to be his wife with stolen princess parts.
• The Men First: When Flame Princess destroys the Ice Kingdom, the Ice King pleads with Finn to save Gunther. Subverted immediately afterward ... as Finn runs off to do so, Ice King can be heard in the background clarifying: "... I meant after you save me."
• Moment of Lucidity: In the episode "Betty", Ice King is turned back into Simon Petrikov by Bella Noche, restoring his sanity. However, Simon is slowly dying without the crown's power keeping him alive and so they must get the crown's magic back to him before then, much to the dismay of Simon, who says wearing the crown again is like living with eternal diaper rash.
• Mood-Swinger: Another part of what makes the Ice King so dangerous is that he is liable to dramatically and drastically change moods in the drop of a hat, one moment he could be polite and happy and the next he could be horribly sad or violently angry.
• Morality Pet: Ironically, he's one to none other than Gunter, who's actually Orgalorg, an Eldritch Abomination who loves to destroy planets. It's what seems to cause Gunter to wish to become the Ice Thing rather than attaining his original form again.
• Neutral Evil: In-universe-assigned alignment in the comic series. He's really either True if not Chaotic Neutral.
• Ninja: He has a collection of ice kunai, shurikens, and a book on ice-themed ninjutsu.
• No Immortal Inertia: As revealed in "Betty". When the Ice Crown is depowered, Simon is revealed to be dying because, as he puts it, "I'm old." However, when he finally is freed from the crown's influence for good, he's shown to be biologically reverted back to the age that he first put on the crown at, meaning this is averted. He begins aging normally again afterwards.
• No Social Skills: He was a once-ordinary man driven mad by a cursed magical crown. Now he's an ill-tempered, senile hermit who lives alone in his palace of ice with only penguins for companions, which has rather put a damper on his social skills.
• Nothing but Skin and Bones: The Ice King is actually very skinny under his robe, though he sometimes works out and consequently buffs up a little.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: There's a trend of following every episode where he's deeply tragic with an episode that reminds the audience that he's dangerous. After "Holly Jolly Secrets" comes "Princess Monster Wife", where he mutilates the princesses to create his own, and after "Simon and Marcy" comes "A Glitch Is A Glitch", where he creates a computer virus to delete everybody except him and Princess Bubblegum.
• Obliviously Evil: Despite being a serial kidnapper, Ice King rarely means harm to anyone. He's just lonely and kidnaps princesses to have some company while being too insane to realize how much trouble he's causing for everyone around him.
• Odd Friendship: The Ice King develops a friendship with BMO in later seasons, where they're both shown to be play-pretending to be in a submarine.
• Out-of-Clothes Experience: The Ice King has one when he's knocked unconscious. Mercifully, his beard inexplicably becomes longer to cover him.
• Person of Mass Destruction: On the tapes chronicling Simon's descent into Ice Wizardry, it is shown that the initial transformation was accompanied by the rapid formation of an extremely violent blizzard. It's also possible that this is instead the result of a nuclear winter, presumably from the "Mushroom War," though that would be quite a coincidence.
  • Muddying the waters even further, the alternate universe shows that the crown can, without a live host, freeze the entire world for 400 years. The aforementioned blizzard was likely a subconscious reflection of that. However, Ice King himself never consciously uses his powers this way.
  • While the Ice Kingdom currently covers only a small part of Ooo centered on his cave, there are fjords and what appear to be moraine islands around the entire island.
  • His dandruff is toxic enough to cause a nigh-lethal pandemic.
  • He is capable of depowering the Fire Kingdom's heat source if necessary.
• Mystical White Hair: As Simon, he was a brunette, but the forces of the Ice Crown that ended up corrupting him caused a white patch to appear in his hair that soon enveloped his entire head (along with causing him to grow a matching beard).
• Physical God: The Farmworld and Vampireworld timelines reveal that the magic of the Ice Crown can manipulate humidity on a planetary scale.
• Planet of Steves: All The Ice King's penguins are named Gunther or at least something similar. Turns out to be the name of the Crown's first owner; the Ice King gives that name to anyone he cares about since it mimics Gunther's desire for love, applying it to Marceline at one point during an early bout of madness.
• Power Dyes Your Hair: He had brown hair as Simon. His hair turned white as a side effect of the Ice Crown turning him into the Ice King. His hair goes back to being brown after he's turned back to normal.
• Powerful, but Incompetent: Believe it or not, Ice King is incredibly powerful. He's powerful enough to fight an Elemental that's his exact opposite and manage a draw despite Flame Princess's elemental advantage, he has complete manipulation of ice and snow, being able to mold it any way he pleases, he's also got access to any number of potions and magic artifacts to use as he pleases. However, due to his insanity and also being a bit of a dunce, Ice King's application of his powers tends to be simplistic, short sighted, or he straight up doesn't think of how use his immense power. Truth be told, he's posed far more of a threat when he isn't trying to be harmful than when he is.
• Prehensile Hair: A secondary power granted by the crown. He can fly with his beard, and he's got no way of flying without it.
• Pre-Insanity Reveal: The Ice King was a historian named Simon Petrikov until he put on the Ice Crown, which gave him ice powers and immortality but made him slowly lose his mind. This has been a real source of sadness throughout the series.
• Psycho Serum: The Ice King's magic crown is sort of like this. Gives you tremendous magical powers of ice & snow, makes you immortal at least in the sense that you don't age normally... also it turns you blue, makes your nose and beard grow, and slowly drives you insane.
• Rapid Hair Growth: The Ice King has lost his beard three times: shaved off in "Loyalty to the King" (Finn did glue it back on, but presumably he didn't keep it like that), blasted off in "Mystery Dungeon," and a Hair Reboot in "Betty." In each instance he was back to full beardiness in his next appearance (the third instance being in seconds, no less). The Ice King's beard growth is justified because it is a result of his crown which causes his beard to grow and skin to turn pale blue and cold as he loses himself in its powers (as shown in "Simon and Marcy")
• Really Seven Hundred Years Old: He was a part of pre-fall mankind so this makes him the oldest member of the regular cast. In "Simon and Marcy", set 996 years earlier, he mentions he is 47, making him 1043.
• Redemption Promotion: While he hasn't completely pulled a Heel–Face Turn yet, he is far more effective when helping Finn and Jake than fighting them. He even froze the Lich solid after everything else had failed to beat him.
• Rule 63: In-universe, he's the creator of the Fionna and Cake world. He initially refers to it as fan fiction, but later on appears to believe - or be trying to, anyway - that they exist somewhere. And he was right - he was actually getting the ideas from the actual Fionna and Cake universe, which Prismo deposited inside his head to hide it, since he wasn't supposed to have made it in the first place.
• Sanity Slippage: The crown causes this to happen to him, progressively warping him into the Ice King. Being harassed 24/7 by the spirits in his castle (that only he can see, thanks to his wizard eyes) probably hasn't helped any, either.
• Saying Sound Effects Out Loud: Likes to vocalize the "Zap!" sound his ice powers make.
  Ice King: ZAP!!
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: When Princess Bubblegum emerges from her operation as a thirteen-year-old in "Mortal Recoil" Ice King immediately loses all interest and flies out the nearest window.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Displays this trait a few times in the original short ("FOUL AND NOISOME WHELP!"). It's all but gone by the start of the actual series.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: His backstory's littered with them. In "Simon and Marcy", it was shown that at some point he began to have control over the crown and keep a hold of his sense of self, and the flashback ends on a hopeful note. This turned out to not be the case. In addition to that, the flashback shows him trying to save Marceline from her fever but ends with the miracle cure of him feeding her chicken soup, being deluded enough to think that's all he needed to do (and providing the first hint of his intense psychoses) - though, between Marceline's biology and the fact that she was telling this story, the truth isn't totally clear.
• Shock and Awe: Uses blue lightning a lot ("Zap"), though it usually just freezes stuff.
• Silver Fox: Thinks he's this, though at most he's Ugly Cute. He seemed to count mid-corruption though if the Empress is any indication.
  • The Ice King himself however doesn't seem to think so- he's too embarrassed to let others find out that he used to wear glasses.
  • The glasses get mentioned again, The Empress (a vampire whom he has an unelaborated history with) tells Marceline:
    Empress: He used to have more of a Silver Fox thing going on, with his hair and his cute glasses.
• The So-Called Coward: While he's been shown to be easily horrified by Eldritch Abominations, and the creators stated that he'd run from The Lich, he actually assisted Finn against him willingly to save Princess Bubblegum.
• The Sociopath: The Cosmic Owl straight-up tells the Ice King he's a sociopath.
• Squishy Wizard: Gets easily smacked down by Finn every time the two come into direct physical contact.
• Stalker with a Crush: He frequently stalks and kidnaps princesses he takes a fancy to.
• Stalker Without a Crush: On top of princesses, he often stalks Finn and Jake.
• Starter Villain Stays: Sort of; he was never that villainous and semi-reforms into an Anti-Hero, but he was the first actual villain we see Finn fight both in the main series and in the original pilot. Thanks to his frenemy dynamic with Finn and Jake and importance to the series' growing lore he remains an important character long after he's no longer considered a villain.
• Start of Darkness: The episodes "I Remember You" and "Simon and Marcy" for the Ice King.
• Summon Bigger Fish: In "Hitman", The Ice King hires a hitman to literally hit Finn and Jake for grounding him. However, when Ice King is told that the hitman would actually kill Finn and Jake, and is unable to call him off, he hires a hit-hitman to take out the first hitman. Surprisingly, this results in a Curb-Stomp Battle with the first hitman easily killing the hit-hitman, making this a subverted trope.
• Survival Mantra: When Simon put on the crown to protect Marceline, he used the theme from Cheers to keep himself sane. Though eventually, he loses what's left of his sanity. Also, a particularly tragic example as they could've used any sitcom theme song, but the theme to Cheers specifically is about wanting to go to a place where you have friends who understand your problems, on top of the well-known "where everybody knows your name" line. Poor guy.
• Take Over the World: He tries to take over the world in "Loyalty to the King".
• This Loser Is You: The Ice King at the end of "Fionna and Cake" is supposed to resemble shippers and fan fic writers in general. All done in good fun, of course.
• Token Evil Teammate: Starting with Season 3, when he becomes more sympathetic and other, more villainous villains start showing up. This is especially prevalent when the other characters start including him more.
• Took a Level in Kindness: In "Hitman" when he saved Finn and Jake's lives three times. As a whole, from Season 3 onward, Ice King acts less antagonistic towards others. It would get to the point where the other characters would grow to tolerate him enough to let him hang out with them.
• Tragic Ice Character: In "Holly Jolly Secrets" it's revealed that he was an archaeologist named Simon Petrikov who found the crown in northern Scandinavia, and putting it on made him age rapidly and made his heart cold, also causing him to go insane and lose the love of his life. Even 1,000 years after the incident, he's a pathetically lonely and mentally unstable old man who desires friendship and love.
• Tragic Villain: In a pre-apocalypse Earth, an intelligent, mild-mannered antique dealer named Simon Petrikov procured an ancient magic Scandinavian crown. After putting it on in jest, the Crown seized his mind and began altering his body, giving him power over ice. The process and the constant specters and visions drove him utterly, completely mad, into his present state. The Ice King no longer seems to understand what's happened to him.
• Tritagonist: Of the Elements miniseries and arguably of the entire show, as his true identity as Simon is one of the most important storylines in the show.
• Unskilled, but Strong: His insanity makes him dumber than a post and unable to defend himself against true threats, but as "Frost & Fire" proved, he is way more powerful than he seems.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom:
  • In "Mortal Folly", his pestering of Finn and Jake for their approval to court Princess Bubblegum ruins their best shot at destroying the Lich, who after regaining his power via the Well of Power, destroys the Gauntlet once used to destroy him that Finn himself was about to use. After the Lich is destroyed, the Ice King screws up again by dropping the Princess into the well, which results in the latter being possessed by the Lich, and later, being reduced to a 13-year-old after pieces of her are still missing. This results in the Earl of Lemongrab appearing to assume a tyrannical rule over the Candy Kingdom, which forces Bubblegum to return to her 18-year-old form and blow off Finn, eventually leading to Finn meeting Flame Princess. Whew. At least the Lemongrab part lasted only one episode.
  • He has also been revealed to be the original discoverer of the Enchiridion, a book which holds great importance to The Lich.
  • He is also responsible for Finn losing his demon sword after summoning Kee-oth and getting Jake kidnapped.
• Villainous Rescue:
  • Assists Finn and Jake against The Lich to save Princess Bubblegum.
  • Saves Finn and Jake's lives thrice in "Hitman".
• Walking Spoiler: It's hard to talk about the Ice King without spoiling his backstory or important aspects of the story's backstory, especially in later seasons where it's brought up more often.
• Was Once a Man: He used to be a (human) artifact collector named Simon Petrikov, then he started wearing his crown, which drove him insane and gave him powers over ice.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Losing his beard leaves him flightless and losing his crown removes all his powers. He is also unable to use his ice powers in high-temperature environments (along the lines of a steam room or sauna), though can apparently still fly in tropical ones.
• What Does She See in Him?: A Platonic example. He was once a close friend or even a father figure of Marceline's, yet he's spent years pestering her. She says that she tolerates his presence because she loves him unconditionally, and remains one of the few characters to bestow compassion upon him to date.
• White Hair, Black Heart: Downplayed. He has white hair and is a major antagonist, especially early on, but he comes off as more Chaotic Stupid than evil.
• Willfully Weak: The Ice Crown gives him enough power to freeze an entire planet for centuries and create entire armies of snow creatures, but he almost never uses anything close to his full potential. Presumably, whatever remains of Simon keeps his deranged self from tapping into his full powers - we see him cut loose twice in the present day, and both times his life was on the line.
• Wistful Amnesia: He may not remember, or be capable of being reminded, of his past, but on some level he still remembers enough to drive him to kidnap princesses out of a desire for Betty, and bug Marceline out of the knowledge that she's important to him, even if he can't remember why.
  • Simon reveals this may work both ways. When his sanity was restored in "Betty" he describes his memories of the Ice King as dream-like impressions.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: He used to be an antique merchant who found an Artifact of Doom that gave him immense magical power and immortality... but also slowly drove him to become a demented, miserable sociopath who only has the vaguest memories from his past life.
• Wizard Beard: He's an ice wizard with a long white beard. He uses it to fly.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: The Ice King is crazy, but mostly, he's just lonely. Just try not to feel bad for him when NEPTR chooses Finn over him. Especially after the revelation that he used to be normal until he tried an antique crown that resulted in a loss of sanity, along with gradually gaining supernatural ice powers and becoming unsightly, leading to his present self.
• Yandere: He likes princesses and usually kidnaps them in a messed up attempt to win their affection.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: Ice King at the end of "The Eyes:"
  Ice King: I'm... still not happy.
• You Need to Get Laid: Ice King, but not for lack of trying. It might be one of the reasons why he's a big nerd. The creators admit it is true.
• Younger Than They Look: Initially, the crown aged him faster among other things, looking like an old man despite being in his forties. Though once it was complete he stopped aging and is MUCH older than he looks.
• Your Tomcat Is Pregnant: The Ice King apparently lacks the capacity to differentiate between one penguin and the next, so they're all Gunter, further complicating the issue. When attempting to determine the gender of this particular Gunter, he tries looking at the penguin's general crotchular area, which doesn't do him much good (look up "cloaca" sometime).

Simon Petrikov

^{Click here to see Simon in Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake.}

Making your way in the world today takes everything you got.
Taking a break from all your worries sure would help a lot.
Wouldn't it be nice to get away,
Where everybody knows your name?

A professor of archaeology and antique enthusiast who was driven insane and transformed by the arcane forces of ice and snow within a crown he bought. Once a close friend or even a father figure of Marceline's, he's spent years pestering her. She says that she tolerates his presence because she loves him unconditionally, and remains one of the few characters to bestow compassion upon him to date. In truth, these are but the remnants of a pre-apocalypse professor of archaeology and antique enthusiast once named Simon Petrikov, before he was driven insane and transformed by the arcane forces of ice and snow within a crown he bought. The subsequent bouts of madness estranged him from his beloved fiancée, Betty, and his nickname for her, "princess", was warped by time and insanity into his compulsion to kidnap and marry princesses in the present-day Land of Ooo.

• 11th-Hour Ranger: Simon comes back to his senses for good when Golb's invasion turned off his crown, leading him to assist Finn and Jake in the finale.
• Afraid of Their Own Strength: As he kept needing to use ice magic to protect himself and Marceline from a post-apocalyptic world, Simon eventually realized the crown was steadily making him dangerous for Marceline, causing him to leave her.
• Age-Gap Romance: Implied with Betty. Fionna and Cake reveals that Simon was already an established Antiquarian Professor who gave lectures and published books when he first met Betty, who was a graduate student, implying that there was an age gap between them.
• Aggressive Submissive: Implied. While Simon does not make any comments about it, the fact that it's only Ice King that displays huge amounts of submissiveness to others (especially to Princess Bubblegum) heavily hints that this is an aspect of his personality now unfiltered. The closest we get to this from Simon directly is in Fionna and Cake where he runs to meet up with Betty to convince her to come with him, but then it is only shown that Betty makes a lot of decisions for them both, whereas he simply accepts things as they come.
• All Take and No Give: Season 1 of Fionna and Cake shows that Simon's relationship with Betty had shades of this. While they genuinely loved each other, Simon's passive behavior caused him to enable Betty's self-sacrificing tendencies when it came to supporting him. This led to Betty neglecting and abandoning her own career aspirations to support his antiquarian work while letting him take all the credit. It's still downplayed since Simon never actually forced Betty to do anything she didn't want to do for him, but wasn't assertive enough to insist that Betty should want some success for herself instead of only being satisfied with helping him become successful. At the end, Simon realizes and acknowledges that he and Betty were never equals, as she was too dependent on him, and he wasn't aware enough to stop Betty from giving up everything for him, but both recognize their love was real before finally moving on.
• Ambiguously Brown: Simon is dark-skinned, though his surname is Russian.
• AM/FM Characterization: The theme from Cheers plays an important role in his characterization as an everyman who just wants a normal life with the people he cares about. Most significantly, he sings it while using the crown to hold onto his sanity when he protects Marceline from mutants. It also plays as he does his morning routine in "Simon Petrikov".
• And I Must Scream: Simon slowly and consciously loses his sanity as he transforms into the Ice King. By the end of the process, he can no longer remember his former life and is rendered deformed, chronically depressed, and immortal. And somewhere deep within the ball of insanity that is Ice King, Simon's aware of what he is... or at least when he went back to normal, he was aware. And terrified of becoming Ice King again.
• Ascended Extra: While Ice King was always an important character in Adventure Time, Simon, as himself, did not receive nearly as much screen time and was always a side character. In Fionna and Cake, Simon is one of the main characters, with much of the story centering around his struggles with grief and depression.
• Be Careful What You Wish For:
  • Flashbacks to Simon's old life show he researched many magical artifacts as an antiquarian, but was largely ridiculed for thinking magical artifacts actually exist(ed). By the time of Fionna and Cake, he actually does live in a world where magical artifacts are a dime a dozen, but he feels no better for it because he still doesn't belong. Indeed, his research into magical artifacts is now disregarded for the opposite reason: they're so commonplace now, nobody cares.
  • In the past, he longed for his work and research to be recognized, and now practically everyone in Ooo knows who Simon/Ice King is.
• Brainy Brunette: He was a professor of archaeology and antiquarian, and his natural hair color is brown.
• Butt-Monkey: In Fionna and Cake, characters keep summarizing his situation as "a really fun wizard turned into a really sad guy", not realizing the blow it deals to Simon's already fragile self-esteem, making him feel he was better off being Ice King. He also gets into embarrassing situations like being summoned to the Time Room while naked. And even in the past, before becoming Ice King, he's prone to getting Amusing Injuries.
• The Cavalry Arrives Late: In Obsidian, after learning that Marceline was being targeted by assassins, he brings Finn and Bronwyn to the Glass Kingdom to help her fend off the attackers... only to have come in after the threat was already resolved. At the very least, they get to enjoy the victory celebrations.
• Cerebus Retcon: At first, the scene where Simon was dressed as the Ice King and staring straight into Marceline's freezer in "Obsidian" is treated as comical. But Fionna and Cake makes it clear in retrospect that it's a symptom of Simon's inner struggle of wanting to become Ice King again.
• Cool Teacher: In the episode "The Hare and The Sprout", Simon takes this approach.
• Daddy Had a Good Reason for Abandoning You: While not Marceline's actual father, Simon was the closest thing she had to a parent when she was seven. However, he ended up leaving her when he realized he was too far gone and too dangerous to be around her without endangering her life. His goal was to come back when he had cured himself, and to his credit, he did make sure Hunson would take care of her for a time. But considering what Hunson is like, this was not a particularly good long-term plan.
• Death of Personality: Wearing the Ice Crown resulted in him gradually losing his mind, causing him to lose his memories, identity, and personality, becoming the completely insane Ice King. Attempts at getting Ice King to remember himself are generally in vain, much to Marceline's and Betty's dismay.
• Death Seeker:
  • When he is temporarily reverted to his normal self, Simon would rather die than go back to being the Ice King. Betty talks him out of it, saying that she will find him a cure.
  • He becomes a metaphorical case in Fionna and Cake. Finding his life as the last human survivor of the Mushroom War to be meaningless, he decides to seek out the Ice Crown to become Ice King so he can sacrifice himself for Fionna and Cake, thinking that will finally give him a purpose. Luckily, GOLBetty intervened before he could go through with it.
• De-power: After being returned to his original self by GOLB's power and losing the Ice Crown, Simon loses his ice magic and goes back to being the normal human he originally was. Unfortunately, he comes to feel more alienated than ever because now he's a completely ordinary person in a crazy, magic world.
• Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: After reverting to himself, Simon falls into a depression, seeing his life as meaningless after all he has endured and finding he cannot relate to anyone as the last human survivor of the Mushroom War. As a result, when he finds out Fionna's world is in danger and cannot be magical if he is not Ice King, Simon sets off to find the Ice Crown so he can finally give his life purpose as a sacrifice. Luckily, GOLBetty intervenes before he can go through with it.
• Deuteragonist: Season 1 of Fionna and Cake has Fionna as the protagonist, but the story is Simon's journey as much as it is Fionna's. Simon coming to terms with his past as Ice King and the loss of Betty is one of the main emotional cores of the series.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: In Season 1 of Fionna and Cake, Simon falls into a depression and begins seriously contemplating wearing the Ice Crown again, believing life was better when he was too out of it to feel sad about things. His arc altogether resembles a former addict struggling against relapse.
  • Considering the Death of Personality that the crown inflicts, it can also be likened to someone being so depressed that they become suicidal, with Simon willing to erase his own mind in part due to his sorrow.
• Doppelgänger Gets Same Sentiment: Simon is terrified of the kind of person the native Marceline of Vampireworld became, going so far as to wonder what happened to make her like that, and Fionna suggests that she never knew the native Simon, which leads him to realize how much his upbringing impacted his version of Marceline.
• Drowning My Sorrows: In "Prismo the Wishmaster", while depressed about the loss of Betty and feeling out of place at Ooo, Simon drinks a lot of beer in the Time Room. It's also shown earlier that he's a regular at Dirt Beer Guy's bar, who is familiar enough with Simon that he remembers his "usual" drink.
• Due to the Dead: He brings an orange to Choose Goose's gravestone in Fionna and Cake Season 2, and awkwardly mentions how there's nothing that rhymes with orange.
• Dying as Yourself: When the Ice Crown's magic is temporarily removed, reverting him to Simon Petrikov and revoking his immortality, Simon is at peace with dying while he's still sane. Unfortunately for him, Betty won't let it happen.
• Earn Your Happy Ending:
  • At the end of "Come Along With Me", Simon is completely freed from the corrupting influence of the Ice Crown and can live out the rest of his life in peace.
  • In the (non-canon) Marcy and Simon comic, he gets Betty back thanks to Hunson inadvertently using his soul-sucking powers to separate Betty from GOLB and managing to knock it out and leave it stuck in the dimension Betty took it to. This finally allows the two lovers to be reunited.
  • At the end of Fionna and Cake season 1, though Simon is forced to once again part with Betty, he can see his life still matters and comes to terms with his loss, taking steps to deal with his depression and finally enjoying the second chance Betty gave him.
• Epic Fail: In "Simon and Marcy", he tries to use a motorbike to travel to a destroyed town quickly to find chicken soup for the young Marceline. But given that he had never driven a motorbike before, Simon only sent it moving forward, and it crashed into a destroyed building.
• Excessive Mourning: Even though Simon recovers his sanity, losing Betty for good throws him into such a deep depression that he tries to go back to being the Ice King so he can escape from his lonely new reality.
• Face Death with Dignity: All three times he believes he's about to die^note First when his body is too dependent on the magic of the crown to live, secondly when GOLB eats and attempts to digest him, Finn and Betty, and finally when it appears that GOLBetty is about to eat him Simon just accepts it calmly and with grace, but each time he survives due to one circumstance or the other.
• Fatal Flaw: In Simon's case, regarding his loss of Betty, slight self-centredness. While Simon is a Nice Guy and a good partner to Betty Grof, he wasn't a very considerable person towards her, as the first season of Fionna and Cake shows his past. Oftentimes, he simply goes with the flow while Betty continues to put off her own career aspirations before dropping them altogether to support Simon's antiquarian work. Realizing this unequal aspect in their relationship is what causes Simon to realize this, and ultimately, he chooses to let her go.
• Fisher King: Since Prismo hid Fionna and Cake's world inside his head, his brain warps said world to match. When he's a wizard with a magical brain, it's nearly identical to Ooo, but when he's Simon Petrikov, everything becomes a mimicry of the 20th-century life he yearns to have again. Simon believes he can turn Fionna and Cake's universe back to normal by regaining the curse, but he also views that the only requirement is his brain being magical, as he's willing to accept the Winter King's sanity-retaining variant of the curse.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: After he's permanently freed from the ice crown, it's revealed that after spending years in modern-day Ooo, he feels out of place in a world that has changed so much, along with the only other people he feels he could relate to being either fused with a god like Betty or having fully adapted to the current world like Marceline. After accepting, he must make the best of the second chance Betty gave him; however, he grows out of his feelings of displacement and starts living his best life.
• Going Commando: In "Prismo the Wishmaster", after being summoned naked to the Time Room, Prismo only gives Simon the Ice King's blue muumuu to cover himself, but doesn't give him any underwear.
• Grand Theft Me: Simon reaches GOLBetty and sadly admits he believes his life is meaningless and goes to wear the Ice Crown for Fionna and Cake. However, in what amounts to an attempt at talking him down, GOLBetty transfers Simon's consciousness into Shermy's body, subsequently allowing the antiquarian to learn about Betty's own self-sacrificial tendencies during their relationship and realize his own life still has value. Meanwhile, Shermy is briefly left a prisoner in his own mind, but he quickly bounces back from it.
• Happy Ending Override: Simon is freed from the ice crown's corruption and is free to live the rest of his life in peace by the end. Or at least until years later in Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake where he's arguably more miserable than ever. Yes, he's sane again and more approachable, but now he's the only pre-mushroom-war human left in a world of magical madness. Instead of being a respected professor, he's pretty much a living museum exhibit that answers questions about the 20th century. He feels like a living fossil compared to the other humans; he can never see Betty again due to her becoming the new GOLB, and he's actually starting to miss being Ice King. He may have been insane, but at least he was happy. However, this is how Simon sees it, and it's only when he goes on his life-changing adventures with Fionna and Cake, in addition to being able to have closure with Betty herself, that he's able to appreciate his life and see a therapist to help with his lingering issues.
• Hearing Voices: The insane variation; caused by his crown. That's not figurative, by the way - the crown is established as actually talking/whispering to its user.
• Heroic Sacrifice: In Fionna and Cake season 1, Simon decides to become Ice King once again to save Fionna and Cake's world and return it to its magical state, knowing that doing so will mean losing his mind and identity by default. At the end, however, this is subverted when Fionna refuses to let Simon give up his sanity to make her world magical, deciding they're both better off living as normal people.
• Heroic Willpower: The season 5 premiere implies that a normal person would fall into complete insanity in a few hours while wearing the crown, and freeze the world. Not only was Simon able to retain his sanity for long periods of time in between bouts of insanity, but even 1000 years later, as the insane Ice King, he still has not fallen to the crown's influence enough to try to do it. He may be repressing the worst of the crown, or it may even have ''given up".
• Hero of Another Story: During the aftermath of the Mushroom War, Simon faced many dangers as he did his best to protect a young Marceline from the post-apocalyptic world they were living in. Later episodes reveal how much of an impact their actions had on the creation of Ooo.
• An Ice Person: Before he fully became Ice King, Simon was routinely forced to wear the Ice Crown to use its power over ice in self-defence, with this having been the only source of protection for him and Marceline.
• I Just Want to Be Badass: He decides to seek out the means to become the Ice King again to protect Fionna and Cake's universe from Scarab and restore the magic.
• Inconsistent Coloring: When Simon first appeared in "Holly Jolly Secrets Part II", a picture of him with Betty shows that he had black eyes like almost everyone else in the show, with the implication that they became white as a result of the Ice Crown changing him, like when Betty's eyes became white after she became a wizard. The Fionna and Cake episode "Jerry", which shows flashbacks of Simon's life before he ever found the Ice Crown, shows that they were always white.
• Inconvenient Summons: In "Prismo the Wishmaster", Prismo teleports Simon to the Time Room when he's taking a shower, leaving him naked in front of Fionna and Cake.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: Simon immediately dives for Prismo's booze the moment he realizes the whole Fionna and Cake reality was Real After All.
• Intergenerational Friendship: Simon is friends with Marceline, Finn, and Fionna. He's several decades older than them, biologically, and chronologically, he's several hundred years older than Finn and Fionna.
• Irony:
  • He was an antiquarian in the Pre-Mushroom War world and works as a Living Relic in a 20th-century museum display at the start of Fionna and Cake.
  • As detailed in Be Careful What You Wish For above, Simon's new environment in the modern-day Ooo essentially normalizes his belief in the existence of magical artifacts, but it actually leaves him feeling alienated.
• Jerkass Realization: Downplayed. Simon remembers that, when he went to catch Betty before she left for Australia, he ended up convincing her to stay with him to follow his dreams. He is then sad to realize he should have gone with Betty to be supportive of her dreams, and the two agree that there were better choices they could have made, though they don't regret their relationship.
• Jerkass to One: Simon develops a notable hatred of Choose Goose. He has no issue using him as a magic battery for his ritual attempts, and completely loses it when his future counterpart, Pawn Swan, appears while he's trying to find another crown.
• Last of His Kind: While he is not the last human, not even on Ooo, he is the only known "modern" human from before the Mushroom War (and possibly the only un-mutated one). His mundane background clashes with Finn and the Founders' humans' "future human" lifestyle, and he feels alone and isolated until he meets the real Fionna, whose universe was rendered mundane by Simon's own loss of magic.
• Lifesaving Misfortune: The Vampire World timeline makes it clear that becoming the bearer of the Ice Crown saved his life from the vampires' blood hunt after the Great Mushroom War. The immortality granted by the Ice Crown also allowed him to create Stable Time Loop, which allowed him to save Betty from the Mushroom War and its consequences by transporting her 1000 years into the future.
• Living Relic: Invoked in Fionna and Cake. As the only pre-mutated human left in Ooo, Simon set himself up as a museum piece in the "20th century man in his natural habitat" exhibit that serves as his house. Of course, he's also deeply miserable since he's unable to relate to the current "modern" humans.
• Meaningful Name: Simon is derived from the Hebrew name "Shimon", which means "He who listens". "Petri" means frozen.
• Morality Chain: His presence and influence in Marceline's life are what kept her from turning to full-on villainy while they were trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. In a timeline where Simon died during the Mushroom War, Marceline was adopted by the Vampire King instead and became a bloodthirsty monster that terrifies Simon.
• Mortality Ensues: Losing the Ice Crown results in him losing his immortality as well. In Fionna & Cake, taking place several years after the original series finale, he has clearly aged after being reverted back to Simon.
• Moving Beyond Bereavement: Simon's character arc in Fionna and Cake season 1 is mainly about him accepting that he must live on without Betty, as her fusing with GOLB has left him separated from her forever. After spending most of the series trying to become Ice King again, his last meeting with GOLBetty gives him the closure he needed to let go of Betty. Simon then realizes he has the right to live as himself, and his current self is valuable even though he doesn't have Betty or magic.
• Muggle with a Degree in Magic: In the episode "The Hare And The Sprout", Simon became a teacher at the Wizard City's school, where he teaches the subject focused on magical artifacts.
• Nice Guy: Simon is a kind, soft-spoken man who loved his fiancée deeply and took good care of Marceline when she was a little girl, despite the end of the world making such an act hard, along with his Sanity Slippage. In general, he's pretty kind to everyone and willing to own up to any mistakes he makes.
• Noodle Incident:
  • He's mentioned to have at least met the Empress and been enslaved by her at some point in the past, but the details are never laid out in full.
  • Similarly, how he was able to summon Hunson and get him to Simon's request without sucking out his soul is only mentioned once and not expanded on.
• Obnoxious In-Laws: Inverted. After regaining his sanity, Simon, Bonnie, and Turtle Princess seem to get along well.
• Official Couple: With Betty. They were engaged until he got hold of the Ice Crown, and Betty went missing, since he didn't know she traveled to the future. Sadly, they're forced apart again when Betty fuses herself with GOLB in order to save the world. By the first Season Finale of Fionna and Cake, Simon and Betty share their final goodbyes and move on, having accepted that Betty can't return to normal and Simon has to live his own life without her.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: He somehow made it to Prismo's room on his own during the end scenes of Come Along With Me, without using the Enchiridion as a portal. How he did this is never touched upon, not even in Fionna and Cake.
• Older Than He Looks: Simon is in his 30s-40s when he first put on the crown, and Fionna and Cake shows that he has resumed aging normally since removing the crown, thus he is physically around 60, but still looks considerably younger than his real age of 1058.
• Old Shame: Simon doesn't look back on writing "Fionna and Cake" in a positive way, as he thinks they were mere delusions from his insane state as the Ice King. He gets annoyed when a little fangirl asks him to sign her "Fionna and Cake" book, and he throws the book into a trash can instead. He's shocked when Prismo reveals Fionna and Cake are from an actual Alternate Universe that he hid inside the Ice King's mind.
• Papa Wolf: Simon used the Ice Crown's power to protect little Marceline during the post-apocalyptic era that followed the Mushroom War. Sadly, this sped up the process of him going insane, and he eventually had to leave Marceline to protect her from himself.
• Parental Substitute:
  • Simon initially was the sole guardian of Marceline when she was orphaned in the Mushroom War, and she has more feelings about him as a father than she does Hunson.
  • In season 2 of "Fionna and Cake", he seems to have taken on a fatherly role with Fionna as well, calling her for life updates and to give advice. It is later invoked by Ice Thing, who calls him 'Daddy.'
• Parents as People: Simon acted as a surrogate father for a young Marceline. Though he genuinely cared about her, Simon struggled to provide for the two of them as he was only a human in a post-apocalyptic world, and frequently had to rely on the Ice Crown, which eroded his sanity.
• Precision F-Strike: Downplayed as he doesn’t really use any of the harsher swear words; however, it is notable as Simon really only swears twice in Fionna and Cake, and he only does so once out of frustration when Fionna mistakes his doctorate for a medical one.
  Simon: I’m an antiquarian, damn it.
• Properly Paranoid: As he feels himself losing his mind entirely, he makes the hard decision to abandon Marceline in fear that he might hurt her effectively. Considering what he does as the Ice King and how Ice King initially misinterprets Marceline's kindness as romantic feelings for him, he had very good reason to leave when he did.
• Retcon: When he first appears in his video detailing his experiences with the crown, Simon specifically says he was not a believer in magical artifacts until he put on the Wishing Crown for the first time as a joke, but later details of his life show that he was ridiculed due to his belief in them. Then again, it's possible that the crown's insanity-inducing magic was already messing with his memories.
• Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl: The Savvy Guy to Betty's Energetic Girl. Simon was meek and cautious, while Betty was an enthusiastic Thrill Seeker.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Downplayed. It is implied that Simon, despite his lack of magic, is still allowed entry to Wizard City.
• Screw the Rules, It's the Apocalypse!: Downplayed. In the episode "Simon & Marcy", he broke a shop window to try to get soup.
• Secretly Selfish: While Simon is a good person who means well, he has a bit of a selfish streak to him that he remains ignorant to: When he regains his sanity thanks to Bella Noche, he does his damnedest to say bye to Betty, but adds on the idea that he forgives her for moving onto whomever she wants, even though he can see her distraught and worrying about Simon going insane at that moment.
  • Fionna and Cake shows that he also took Betty's efforts to support him for granted, but when he becomes aware of this part of himself, he becomes incredibly remorseful for his actions, acknowledging he should have done more to support her in turn.
• Shower of Angst: In "Prismo the Wishmaster", Simon takes a shower after he fails to summon GOLB/Betty twice.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Obtaining the Ice Crown and harnessing its power triggers a series of events across multiple alternative timelines that determine the fate of Ooo.
  • In the Farm World timeline, Simon performed a Heroic Sacrifice to prevent the final bomb from being dropped in the Mushroom War, which would have given the Lich a physical form and created the magical land of Ooo.
  • In the Vampire World timeline, he never used the Ice Crown, which later got him killed, and the crown was later found by the Vampire King, who used it to conquer Ooo.
  • In the main timeline and Winter World timeline, Simon raising Marceline led her to protect the remnants of humanity from vampires to the point that she is the only vampire left.
• Soul-Sucking Retail Job: While not exactly retail, Simon's job as a Living Relic and museum curator at the start of Fionna and Cake clearly doesn't help his mood in the slightest and leaves him perpetually depressed and unfulfilled.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: With Betty. They were passionately in love, but they were tragically separated when Simon started going insane because of the Ice Crown. He thought Betty abandoned him, but she actually traveled to the future. When Betty finds him again, he's now the Ice King, who is too far gone to recognize Betty, and they can't rekindle their old relationship in his insane state. Betty tried everything she thought could revert Ice King to Simon, but nothing worked. In the end, Ice King is turned back to Simon inside of GOLB, but Betty has to sacrifice herself to keep Simon safe from GOLB by merging with the entity, forcing her and Simon apart, now forever.
• Teacher/Student Romance: A much older example. Fionna and Cake reveals that Simon was already an established Antiquarian Professor who gave lectures and published books when he first met Betty, who was a graduate student. While this implies that there was an age gap between them, Betty is already an adult when they start dating.
• That Man Is Dead: After trying for some time to cope with his situation by imitating the Ice King, Simon stops identifying himself as having been the Ice King and gets unnerved when people refer to him as such or credit him as having made the "Fionna and Cake" books. However, he does think it'd be easier if he were Ice King again, since he wouldn't have to deal with the dissonance anymore.
• There Are No Therapists: Subverted. Worrying he'll relapse into depression even after having an epiphany that his life still matters, Simon starts going to Minerva for therapy sessions.
• They Called Me Mad!: In the episode "Jerry", it is revealed that the only person who supported his research into magical artifacts was Betty.
• Took a Level in Cynic: He was originally a meek, but fairly idealistic guy who wanted to prove the existence of mystical relics despite the ridicule he garnered. After reverting to himself from the Ice King and losing Betty a second time, he becomes incredibly depressed and wonders what he's even living for anymore.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: He got a lot more embittered and grouchy in the time between the Distant Lands episode "Obsidian" and the beginning of Fionna and Cake, due to the realization catching up to him that there's no one left in the entire world for him to relate to and he's seemingly just spinning the wheel as a Living Relic until he dies in addition to his repeated failures to save (or at the very least, contact) Betty. When a little girl asks him to autograph her Fionna and Cake book, he gets mad and throws it in a trash bin instead. This is all justified as Simon's mentality shows clear signs of depression, self-deprecation and even suicidal ideation culminating in a jaded mindset and short temper. He mellows back out at the end of the season after he finds more reasons to keep living and starts getting therapy.
• Trauma Button: After he regains his sanity, ice becomes a very sore subject for him, even if it's just served in a drink, as shown in Fionna and Cake season 1.
• Trauma Conga Line: His backstory is one long list of tragedies. He is an antiquarian who was ridiculed by the scientific community for believing in the existence of Magic artifacts until he bonds and later falls in love with Betty, the only person who did look up to him and helped him find the Enchiridion, ends up going berserk from putting on a crown he didn't know was cursed, driving the woman he loved away (she actually went to the future), and having to raise a little girl in fear of losing his mind before giving her away to protect her all while the end of the world is happening around him. It's a wonder he was able to stay sane as long as he did, much less against a crown making him crazy. His list of traumas increases in the first season of Fionna and Cake, as watching Betty sacrifice herself for him and feeling unable to fit into Ooo has left him so depressed that he's perfectly willing to become Ice King again just to forget all the pain he has been through.
• Villainesses Want Heroes: The Empress states she used to see the appeal of Simon before he fully became the Ice King, stating he was a Silver Fox and that he was happier as her slave. The details of the situation are never elaborated on.
• Walking Spoiler: He's Ice King's real identity, so it's impossible to say anything about Simon without mentioning that.
• Weak, but Skilled: Simon may not have access to all of the powers the Crown gives him, but he is much more competent than his icy counterpart.
• Worth Living For: In the episode "Cheers," Betty and Simon make peace regarding their relationship. Simon begins to take advantage of the second chance in life that Betty gave him.