The Lich (character)

The Lich (formerly known as the Lich King and referred to as Sweet Pig Trunks in his baby form, or just Sweet P for short) is a powerful undead being and a major antagonist in Adventure Time.

His first appearance is in "His Hero" where the hero Billy casts him down. He was imprisoned in the ancient tree in the Candy Kingdom, but escapes and plays a significant role in "Mortal Folly," "Mortal Recoil," "Jake the Dog," and "Finn the Human." The Lich goes on to kill Prismo and releases the criminals in the Crystal Citadel in "Wake Up" and "Escape from the Citadel." However, by the end of the latter episode, the Lich is thought to have turned into harmless baby that is adopted by Tree Trunks and Mr. Pig and renamed "Sweet P."

As of "Gold Stars," it is revealed that the Lich's evil is still contained within Sweet P, and can take over when Sweet P is threatened and emotionally charged. Sweet P does not realize the evil lurking inside him, attributing his blackouts and dreams of being the Lich to being 'just a dream.'

Sweet P also possesses the potential to use the Lich's powers as indicated when Sweet P shows his victims another dimension, and there is limited use of his power when the Lich's death breath does not kill the victims (as it had done before with Prismo).

Appearance
Before his change, the Lich wore a helm with curled horns, one of which has broken off. However, being struck down by Billy, both of his horns were intact, so it is possible that it got broken off around that time. He also had intact horns in Princess Bubblegum's vision. The Lich was also dressed in a large, loose robe with multiple layers and a large cape that was severely torn at its end.

Physically, the Lich was also remarkably large. In the flashback in "His Hero," the Lich was shown to rival Billy in size. The arms of the Lich were bare bones with various decayed tissues, and his skeletal hands burned with an eerie fire when casting spells. His face was defined by horrific green lights as pupils peering out of his empty eye sockets, and pale undead skin was pulled tight against his nose-less skull. His skin was frayed away from his lips revealing a wicked and perpetual grin.

Abilities
Aside from his immortality, the Lich has a medley of unholy powers. The most commonly used is his ability to summon green flame-like energy around his hands and fire it at his opponents. Also, while possessing Princess Bubblegum, he demonstrates pyrokinesis when he sets her room on fire with his mind.

The Lich also seems to exude an aura of death and rot around him. Whether this is done consciously is unknown, but living creatures and objects have been seen to rot and die as they come in contact with him or his general presence. This is shown when trees died as the Lich passed through a forest, and when he crossed Iceberg Lake, fish died in his path. In addition, the Lich can breath a black, lethal gas as seen in "Escape from the Citadel" when he kills Prismo.

In addition to his deadly magic, it was revealed that the Lich has the power to control people's minds, either through telepathy or spoken commands. The Lich's influence was so great that he posed a threat to anyone nearby, even while he was still trapped in the Candy Castle. Moreover, he has the ability to possess other people, as seen when he possessed Princess Bubblegum. The Lich is also able to utlilize necromancy, as seen when he controls the corpses in his lair to attack Finn and Jake.

The Lich also possesses great physical abilities as he was able to quickly dodge Finn's energy attack with Billy's gauntlet. Later, he easily caught Finn's punch bare handed and shattered the gauntlet into pieces. In addition, the Lich is also very mobile as he possess the ability to fly.

The Lich sustains his massive strength by drinking from his Well of Power, a noxious, magic pool of glowing green liquid located in the depths of his lair. After he had possessed Princess Bubblegum, he substituted his original well with a mixture of toxic chemicals such as gasoline, lighter fluid, bleach, and plutonium that he (appearing as the Princess) ordered Finn to retrieve.

While his power is truly a force to be reckoned with, the Lich has a few known vulnerabilities. His main weakness is the Gauntlet of the Hero, a magical weapon previously owned by Billy that fires intense energy blasts. This weakness is now moot as the Lich destroyed the gauntlet with ease when he grabbed Finn's arm and caused the gauntlet to disintegrate. Another item able to work against the Lich is the sweater Princess Bubblegum gave to Finn. Imbued with the power of "liking someone a lot," the sweater protected Finn from the Lich's flames and was later used as a weapon. With it, Finn was able to attack the Lich by assaulting his head and eyes with the sweater, causing his body collapse into dust and force his essence to have to find a new host. However, the sweater does not seem to affect the Lich when he is possessing Princess Bubblegum. The Lich is also unable to control a person's mind if he/she is wearing a certain type of magical jewelry. While generally impervious to physical attack, traditional methods may have some limited effect on the Lich, as seen in the flashback where Billy cast him down with a kick to the face.

Personality
The Lich is driven by a rather single-minded goal to destroy all life and appears to show little interest in anything that does not further his ambitions towards this dark end. He also has an apparent hatred for all living things, as Princess Bubblegum said that his only desire was to destroy life, and his wish to Prismo was "for the extinction of all life." Given that the Lich is likely the direct product of a mutagenic doomsday weapon unleashed during the Mushroom War, it may explain why his sole purpose appears to be the destruction of life. It has been said that he brings sadness everywhere he goes.

He is viciously cunning and quick to learn from his mistakes. He methodically targets people and things that have proven a problem for him in the past by either destroying them outright such as in the case of the Gauntlet of the Hero or using them as pawns to further his own agenda in the case of Billy to manipulate Finn. As shown in "The Lich," he is highly skilled at deception, as he was able to fool Finn and Jake into helping him while disguised as Billy. At the end of the episode, he tauntingly thanks Finn for opening the portal for him. He is a quick thinker, pretending to be horrified when Finn tried to smash the Enchiridion, even though that would cause the portal to open.

The Lich is rather taciturn and speaks only in brief statements. Because he seldom speaks, his words carry great gravity. An example would be when the Lich calls Ice King "a weak fool." This could be because nearly anyone that came near him wore a protective gem in "Mortal Folly" and was weakened in "Mortal Recoil." In the episode "The Lich," he was able to talk freely with Finn and Jake. In spite of his intractability, he is visibly shocked when Finn survives his fire attack, and he laughs heartily when Finn attacks him with the sweater provided by Princess Bubblegum. He was also visibly confused when Jake altered his wish. He has only raised his voice once, when Finn asked the possessed Princess Bubblegum if everything was all right.

The Lich's most notable flaw is his arrogance and his single-minded nature. In each case his defeat has been at the hands of opponents towards whom he was derisively dismissive. He laughed at Finn's attempts to stop him and shrugged off the Ice King as a fool yet it was through the combined efforts of these two individuals that he was dealt a crushing defeat and forced to possess the body of a lowly snail to escape at the end of "Mortal Recoil." After regaining his strength the Lich manipulates Finn into opening a portal into the heart of the multiverse. Once again he falls prey to his arrogant and single-minded nature when he ignores Jake grabbing onto him with a dismissive grunt and continues onward towards his final goal rather than dealing with the two stow away heroes he is dragging into the portal with him. This oversight later proves to be the undoing of his masterful plan, leaving him stranded in Prismo's time room with his one wish already spent thanks to the two meddling heroes and some friendly help from Prismo.

After turning into a humanoid in "Escape From the Citadel," he loses his old personality and gains a new, infantile one. He seems harmless and does what most infants do, such as playing with toys. In addition, he is kinder and tries to be more considerate of others. As of "Gold Stars," the Lich is still revealed to be trapped inside of Sweet P and Sweet P is almost his own person now.

Princess Bubblegum
When the Lich possesses Princess Bubblegum, she has pale blue/gray skin, dirty bubblegum pink hair, black eyes with green pupils and speaks with a frail voice. In "Mortal Recoil" she asks Finn to bring toxic chemicals to her (he did not know what their purpose was), which she consumes to turn into a giant monster. Finn manages to destroy the monster with the Ice King's help, and the Candy Kingdom's doctors manage to save the uncorrupted parts of Princess Bubblegum, transforming her into her younger form.


 * One could note that the form Princess Bubblegum takes while possessed looks strikingly similar to the evil Lub Glubs of the Beautopia episode.

Waving Snail


The Snail is used by the Lich in "Mortal Folly" to free himself from his amber prison. The Lich does so by taking control of the Snail's mind and making him break open the prison. After the events of "Mortal Recoil" the Lich returns to the Snail's body. During Seasons 3 and 4, the Snail continues to appear in every episode in possessed form. In "In Your Footsteps," the Bear gives the possessed Snail the Enchiridion.



Billy
During the end of the fourth season, the Lich appears to Finn while disguised as Billy. Using his appearance as Finn's hero, the Lich manipulates Finn and Jake into gathering the gems of power needed to activate the Enchiridion. The events surrounding how the Lich assumed Billy's identity remained ambiguous until the Season 5 season premiere where it was mentioned by Prismo that the Lich was in fact wearing Billy's dead body as a macabre disguise. Upon meeting Finn and Jake, Prismo offhandedly refers to the Lich as "a ghost wearing a dead guy" not realizing the dead guy in question was a former friend of theirs.

Farmworld Jake
Shortly after Farmworld Jake comes in contact with the pool of green goo created by the Mushroom Bomb, he began to mutate into a Lich/Dog hybrid.

Sweet P
In "Escape From the Citadel," he is turned into an oversized, humanoid baby when Finn splashes him with the Citadel Guardian's blood and is abandoned on Tree Trunks and Mr. Pig's doorstep, who choose to adopt him and name him Sweet P. He seemingly has no memory of previously being the Lich. However, in "Gold Stars," Sweet P dreams about the Lich and temporarily becomes possessed by the Lich himself to ward off King of Ooo and Toronto. However, he quickly goes back to his innocent self.

Original pitch
He was first alluded to in the early series pitch, and was the only other character described in those documents in addition to the main six: Finn, Jake, Princess Bubblegum, Lady Rainicorn, Ice King, and Marceline. The pitch document states in all caps, "THE LICH KING IS NOT FUNNY," and states that the Lich had been imprisoned within his castle (although this was later contradicted in "Mortal Folly"). According to the pitch document, he uses a legion of undead skeletal knights to aid in his battles. Initially, the Lich was designed to have a more flattened, simplified look with larger eyes, upward-pointing horns and a different crown and robe.

Origin
Although the exact origin of the Lich is ambiguous, it is likely that he was the result of detonating the Mushroom Bomb (one of the last weapons dropped during the Mushroom War and the likely cause of the unnatural creatures of Ooo, such as Candy People, Sign Zombies, etc). When Finn wishes that the Lich never existed, he prevents the Mushroom Bomb from ever going off, thus creating the Farmworld alternate dimension. In the Farmworld dimension, Simon Petrikov (previous form of The Ice King) prevents the Mushroom Bomb from going off, sacrificing himself in the process and sending the world into a 400 year long Ice Age. After this Ice Age, life continued un-mutated for approximately 600 years, and characters such as Farmworld Finn were created.

The suggestion that the Lich is more of a mutation rather than a magical being is further supported in "Jake the Dog." When Farmworld Marceline and Farmworld Jake fell into the Lich's well, Marceline became a skeleton and Jake transformed into a version of the Lich itself. So the Lich's body was likely created when someone or something made contact with the Lich's well, but it also means it turns the host's abilities into his own. So this is why Farmworld Jake only attacked Farmworld Finn with its bare hands, not with magic spells or anything else, with the same applying to Billy. It is unknown if the Lich's body seen in "Mortal Folly" was his original body, or one he stole.

However, due to Prismo's statement that Lich-possessed Billy was "a ghost wearing a dead guy," coupled with the fact that Farmworld Jake was transformed into a Lich-like monster when mutated, it is possible that only the Lich's former body was created by the Mushroom War and was possessed by the Lich, who had existed before. This is backed up by the fact that the Lich survived his destruction at the hands of Finn as a ghost (which then possessed Princess Bubblegum, the snail, and eventually Billy). From this, it can be said that his overall powers and abilities may differ based on what he uses as a host, but this remains to be clarified.

The episode "Evergreen" suggests that The Lich may have originally been the comet of that time in some shape or form, judging by its greenish glow and "horns," as well as Evergreen's statement of the comet apparently wanting nothing else than to destroy all life on the planet. This may suggest that the mushroom bomb simply gave him a physical body or a consciousness rather than outright created him.

Comics
The Lich somehow escapes the Snail's body by going into the Bag of Holding. The Lich begins to suck up all of Ooo into bag with the intention of throwing it into the sun. However, Finn and Jake caused a tear in the bag from the inside and, with help from Desert Princess, Ice King, Princess Bubblegum and Marceline, they were able to rip the bag open and free the planet. The Lich, however, ended up getting pulled towards the sun himself.

It is revealed in Issue 18 that when Ice King and Hunson Abadeer were making their dungeon, The Lich showed up and knocked them both out and built his own part of the dungeon called "Lich Land" where he left a part of himself to continue on. It trapped whoever went in there in a fantasy while the Echo and it's minions escape to destroy the world. When Finn, Jake and Ice King went to Lich Land, the Echo invaded their memories and put them in a fantasy world where it tried too kill them and break their minds and morale, especially Ice King's. However, they were able to defeat the Echo and put an end to the Lich once and for all.

Quotes

 * See The Lich (character)/Quotes

Trivia

 * The Lich is still referred to by his old name, Lich King, in various official episode summaries and clip descriptions on Cartoon Network's site, indicating that the name change may have been done very late in production.
 * In fantasy fiction, a is a powerful magician who has transformed himself into an undead creature to achieve immortality.
 * The Lich is the first world threat that Finn and Jake have dealt with, the second being Flame Princess and the third being Gunter.
 * The Lich was redesigned at least once; the creators felt that his original design was not scary enough.
 * The Lich's final design is similar to that of the Horned King from the 1985 Disney film The Black Cauldron, which is an adaptation of 's series of novels .
 * Pendleton Ward originally wanted to cast as the Lich.
 * In France/Belgium, there was a translation problem with Lich King's name. During his appearance in "His Hero," he is called "Le Roi sangsue," which translates to "Leech King." This also occurred in the Portuguese translation. The Lich's name was translated as "Rei Lagarto," which translates to "King Lizard."
 * In "The Lich," when Jake asks the Lich (disguised as Billy) how many gems were left, he told him without speaking. This could be because the Lich could not talk to Jake since he was holding the power gems.
 * Despite being undead, he can apparently eat, as seen in "The Lich" when he was disguised as Billy.
 * In all of his appearances after "King Worm" (not including the Snail) the Lich's face is noticeably less detailed than it was in "Mortal Folly/Recoil."
 * When the Lich originally appeared he had 2 full horns, later one of his horns is broken.
 * Peppermint Butler seems to be capable of sensing the Lich's presence.
 * The Echo of the Lich is similar in nature to a lich's in common myth. The phylactery, like the Echo, is used to store away a part of the Lich to ensure his survival.
 * In the official Adventure Time Encyclopaedia, Hunson Abadeer admits the Lich is his only real rival, stating that, while he finds the Lich "pathetic," the fact that the Lich is capable of destroying all of Ooo causes Hunson to take their rivalry seriously and that, had Finn not defeated him, he would have taken matters into his own hands. (Note: This was written before the episode "The Lich" was made.)

Appearances in other media

 * The Lich is a playable character in Adventure Time Battle Party.
 * On CartoonNetwork.com, you can set your profile picture as the original Lich.

Major appearances

 * "Mortal Folly"
 * "Mortal Recoil"
 * "The Lich"
 * "Finn the Human"
 * "Jake the Dog"
 * "Wake Up"
 * "Escape from the Citadel"
 * "Gold Stars"

Minor appearances

 * "His Hero" (in flashback; debut)
 * "In Your Footsteps" (in the possessed snail)
 * "King Worm" (dream cameo character)
 * Every episode in seasons 3 and 4 (as the snail)
 * I Remember You (a pop-up near the end)
 * "Billy's Bucket List" (in Finn's memory)
 * "Is That You?" (flashback from "Wake Up")
 * "Jake The Brick" (cameo)
 * "The Cooler"

Mentioned

 * "Goliad"