Adventure Time

Pendleton Ward's Adventure Time started as a deceptively silly Cartoon Network series about a boy and his shapeshifting dog, then spent a decade revealing itself as one of the strangest, most emotionally serious works in modern animation. The post-apocalyptic Land of Ooo hides real grief under its candy colors, and the show's willingness to age its audience up is why it still gets argued about.

The franchise spreads that sensibility outward. The Distant Lands specials and the Fionna and Cake spinoff deepen the lore, the Finn and Jake games turn Ooo into something you can wander, and crossover brawlers like MultiVersus and LEGO Dimensions drop the characters into other worlds entirely. The comics carry the absurdist voice onto the page. It is a children's cartoon that quietly became a cult text.

The Adventure Time franchise spans 3 series, 2 books, 2 games in the CrossBinge catalog.