Simon & Marcy

Synopsis
Marceline tells Finn and Jake about her and Ice King's past, 996 years ago.

Plot
The episode opens with Marceline, Finn, Jake, and the Ice King playing basketball at Marceline's house. Finn and Jake question Marceline on why she invited the Ice King, and she explains to them about her long history with the Ice King/Simon. The two request her to tell them about their past, as the Ice King comes back from getting water, agreeing.

She begins telling a story about the two of them (exactly) 996 years ago. It starts with 47 year old Simon and 7 year old 'Marcy' (Marceline) wandering through the empty ruins of human civilization, destroyed in the Great Mushroom War, searching for food. At the edge of the forest, they find a mail box but there is only a dead rat inside. Simon tries to keep Marcy's spirits up by joking around, remarking that the rat will be a cute new traveling partner. He discovers a VHS tape nearby on the ground, and suggests they "watch" it - without a VHS player or electricity, he literally stares at the tape, then jokes that it was a boring movie and says the book is better.

They then hear a rustle from the woods, and Simon puts his crown on to protect them, even though Marcy is clearly afraid of what the crown does to him. Simon reassures her and says he has to to keep her safe. Once Simon puts the crown on his head, its magic makes Simon forget himself. Marcy begs Simon to take off the crown. Simon mistakenly calls Marcy "Gunter" and tells her to play in the snow as he generates snowflakes to cover her. Simon has no control of himself as he blasts the deer with ice anyway. Marcy throws a snowball to knock Simon's crown off. It takes a little while for the effects from the crown to wear off, and this worries Marcy. She then makes Simon promise never to put it on again. Marcy doesn't know what the animal is, and Simon explains that it is a deer. Marcy wonders that if the deer was alive in the woods, maybe other things have survived the war out there as well. Her comment underscores just how empty the wasteland is, with the pair not even knowing if other beings are alive despite months of wandering in the ruins. Simon pauses and ponders the question, but honestly doesn't know.

At the end of the day, Simon sets up camp for the two of them. The deer he froze in ice has solved their food problem for the moment, and Simon cooks it over their campfire. He tries to make her laugh by acting out an episode of "Cheers" for her through a broken television. Marceline has a good laugh, but then begins to cough, making Simon realize she has a low fever. He tells her to sleep to preserve her strength.

Simon decides that Marcy needs chicken soup, and remembers that he saw a "Soupery" shop in a town they recently passed. Not wanting Marcy to walk all that way, he finds an abandoned motorcycle, but loses control when he tries to ride it, and they bail out before it crashes into a wall and explodes. Still not wanting Marcy to walk all the way, she rides on a wheeled chair that he pushes all the way into town. He sings and human beatboxes along the way to cheer up Marcy. Since the door to the soup shop was locked, Simon breaks a window to get into the soup shop, though he warns Marcy that vandalism is wrong. This action shows that despite their current predicament, Simon still wants Marcy to know basic morals. The shelves of the soup shop are all empty (except for some soup-themed novelty gift cards). Just then, Marcy looks in the security mirror in the end of the aisle, and notices something, shambling along in the next aisle. Simon peers over the shelves and is shocked to see some sort of weird mutant slime-creature. Alerted to their presence, it advances towards them, but Simon knocks the creature out by smashing its face in with his crown, and they flee.

Later, Simon and Marcy quest deeper into an abandoned city, by walking through a large concrete storm-drain. Marcy seems worse, but Simon notices a food truck abandoned on a broken bridge that passes over the storm-drain up ahead. They climb up, only to see it's a clam truck called, "The Clambulance." A frustrated Simon asks Marcy to cover her ears as he "curses" and kicks the truck. Suddenly, slime creatures emerge from inside. Simon then pushes the truck off of the bridge with the slime creatures on it, but the the truck's siren starts going off after it crashes into the ground. This attracts a horde of the slime creatures, who chase Simon and Marcy to a dead end in an alleyway. Simon is forced to put his crown on, and tries to stay normal by singing Gary Portnoy's "Where Everybody Knows Your Name" (the theme from "Cheers") repeatedly, and after knocking all of the creatures out, takes his crown off. However, this time, most effects of the crown don't go away (his beard is the only thing that shrinks back to its normal length). Chicken soup and a can opener then fall from a pink substance clinging to the side of a building. Upon closer inspection, it appears to have a face, which smiles at Simon. He then uses the soup to cure Marcy. Marcy tells Simon she loves him and hugs him. Simon then says "I love you ... Gunter."

The episode then goes back to the present. Marceline finishes the story, by saying that she gets better, and she and Simon live happily ever after. He then tells her to keep telling "these chumps" stories while he scores more baskets, proving he has no recollection of the events himself. The episode ends with Marceline, Finn, and Jake smiling at the Ice King being happy.

Major characters

 * Ice King (Simon)
 * Marceline

Minor characters

 * Finn
 * Jake
 * Snail

Songs

 * "Where Everybody Knows Your Name"
 * The Soup Hunting Song

Trivia

 * Marceline is seven years old and Simon is forty-seven in the flashback in this episode meaning that their current ages would be 1003 and 1043 respectively. This would also mean that Marceline was exactly 1000 and Ice King was exactly 1040 at the start of the series.
 * The dried river they are walking through shortly before coming across the "Clambulance" greatly resembles the Los Angeles River.
 * Simon calls Marceline "Gunter" with the crown on. Later, toward the end of the flashback, he does this again with the crown off. This is an indication that Simon has fallen deeper into his transformation into the Ice King.
 * The Chinese characters 水 ("water") and 人生 ("human life") appear on a bottle inside the first car Marcy hides in. This could also be interpreted as japanese Kanji . In addition to this, in the upper-right-hand corner of the broken television, the Japanese characters such as テレビ ("television") can be found.
 * The overcast skies seen throughout the episode are likely a result of Nuclear winter.
 * Simon has drumsticks in his backpack, hinting that he already knew how to play the drums.
 * By the Clambulance when Simon looks down to find a radiated creature below the truck, the registration plate of the truck says "CLAM 1" "The Wut-Wut state."
 * A photo of a mushroom cloud can be seen in the mailbox at the begining of the episode.

Cultural references

 * Ice King sang the song "Where Everybody Knows Your Name," the theme song for the television show "Cheers." He likewise calls out for Norm, a character on the show, and re-enacts an episode.
 * After singing the Cheers theme song the first time, Simon said "Filmed before a live studio audience," a quote commonly used by announcers of live television shows, most notably in Cheers itself.
 * The red car that Simon puts young Marceline in is a 1971 Nissan Skyline GT-R (KPGC10) "Hakosuka". A brief shot shows the "R" badge on the side and an even briefer shot shows the "R" badge from the front. It is interesting to note that the car is left-hand drive, whereas the real car is actually right hand drive.

Episode connections

 * Ice King and Marceline were revealed to have known each other from hundreds of years ago in "I Remember You."
 * This episode was first aired as a two-part special with the previous episode, "I Remember You," similar to "Bad Little Boy" originally airing with "Fionna and Cake."
 * Marcy said to Simon "Your songs are so good" is kind of a reference when Ice King said "Marceline's songs are so good" as heard in "I Remember You".
 * Simon says "Ice winds, BLOW!" while freezing the deer, which is what he said in "Hitman" when he stopped the fire Scorcher started on the tree fort.

Errors

 * When Simon was going to hit the monster with his crown, he was holding it backwards but when he hits it, he is holding it forward.
 * The drumstick in Simon's backpack with tape on it switches sides when Simon is talking to Marceline about wanting to carry her.
 * When Marceline is talking to Finn and says "He's very dear to my heart" her bite mark seems to be farther towards the back of her neck than usual.
 * When Marcy says "Simon you promised," Simon's crown is missing a gem.
 * Inside the soupery, when Simon said "We're getting out of here!," Marceline's and his reflections were not shown in the mirror.
 * After Simon had knocked down the creature inside the soupery, Marceline's sock was on her right foot, contrary to the rest of the episode, where it's on her left.
 * When Simon and Marceline were on their way to the bridge where the clambulance was, the remote she stepped on and the big crack on the wall that was seen when Simon carried her were not there.
 * The Japanese characters were not seen in the upper-right-hand corner of the broken television until Simon realized Marceline was sick.

Production notes

 * This is the final episode that Rebecca Sugar worked on before she left to create .
 * During the first airing of this episode, the title card (along with the opening credits) was never shown.
 * This episode was leaked before its airdate.

Storyline analysis

 * The mutagenic effects of the Mushroom Bomb/Mushroom War can be seen in the appearance of creatures oozing green slime from open pores throughout their bodies.
 * Marceline now seems to feel more comfortable around Ice King since "I Remember You" (where she tells Ice King not to come around her) as this time she invited him to come over and also told Finn and Jake about their past.
 * The events of this episode's flashback seem to take place before the first memory in "Memory of a Memory" and after the flashback in "I Remember You." In the flashback of "I Remember You," Marceline is a toddler (as revealed by her model sheet), while in this episode's flashback, she is seven years old; more evidence of this is that her clothes in this episode seem to be slightly more ruined and tattered. She still appears smaller than herself in the first memory in "Memory of a Memory," and her clothes appear slightly less tattered.
 * The pink substance is possibly bubblegum, showing the origins of the candy people.