The Real You

Synopsis
Finn, who has to give a speech at Princess Bubblegum's science barbecue, seeks a quick fix to make himself smarter. However, he does so by buying a pair of glasses with very strange effects.

Plot
Finn and Jake are headed to the Candy Kingdom castle, where Princess Bubblegum is holding her science barbecue. They're carrying a gift Finn made for her: a Scale Model of The Candy Kingdom made from his own spit bubbles. Jake teases that Finn wants to trade spit with Princess Bubblegum, which embarrasses him. Outside her castle, PB is setting up a stage and lighting the grill with Flambo. Finn presents his gift to her, but when she closes her eyes, she sneezes, popping the bubble sculpture. However, Princess Bubblegum thinks the pink tray it was on is actually the gift and gladly accepts it. Chet and Peppermint Butler get into an argument over who will get to be grillmeister, and accidentally knock over the grill. Finn jumps in to save the day, putting out the fire by stabbing some meat and throwing it over the flame. Impressed by his heroic actions, the princess asks him to be a speaker at her barbecue.

Finn fears that he isn't smart enough to impress the princess, so he and Jake go to the library to get smarter. After trying to read books about figs and pigs, they quickly grow bored and distracted and start dancing and hollering, which causes Turtle Princess to kick them out. They then seek out Nerd Worms who run a Worm College in an old rotten apple. Finn and Jake try to sneak into a worm class. Finn disguisses his finger as a worm and gives the name of "Wormy McSquirmy." The teacher says he's on the list of students but he hasn't shown up for a single class, which makes the worms angry and starts a fight. After getting out of Academia, Jake suggests the easy way out: magic. They visit Choose Goose's magical shack, where he offers to give them the Glasses of Nerdicon in exchange for being entertained. Finn entertains him with a finger puppet dance, and puts on the glasses. Finn's old perception of reality is shattered, as he instantly becomes a genius and understands the nature of space and the universe. At the barbecue, Finn presents the Bubble Creator. He shows everyone a two dimensional bubble, telling them is casts a one dimensional shadow. He then presents a three dimensional bubble, telling them it casts a two dimensional shadow. And he finally shows them a fourth dimensional bubble which resembles a tesseract, it cast a three dimensional shadow beyond comprehension, causing time and space to later collapse and become a black hole. Finn then tells Bubblegum that he got smart by putting on the glasses, which she asks to take them off because she needs the real Finn. She takes them off, and Finn sees the black hole. He goes to destroy it, but the Bubble Creator flies toward him, and he stabs it, destroying it. But, it turns his sword into a fourth dimensional sword. He then gets an idea, and lets himself get sucked in. Once he's in, the black hole explodes, and Finn comes flying out with no sword. Bubblegum then sobs over his shoulder telling him that her barbecue turned into a fiasco, but everyone cheers. She then catches Finn's list he wrote down when he had the glasses on and learns that Finn intended to "Win the heart of the Princess." When confronted about this, Finn explains how he wrote all that when he wore the glasses. Bubblegum then kisses him on the cheek, which causes him to pant heavily, and faint. When he does that, she starts to giggle. The episode then ends.

Major characters

 * Finn
 * Jake
 * Princess Bubblegum

Minor characters

 * Choose Goose
 * Flambo
 * Turtle Princess
 * Chet
 * Peppermint Butler
 * Pupil Worms
 * Science Guys
 * Dr. Dextrose
 * Snail
 * Tree People (cameo)

Mentioned

 * Werewolf Queen

Trivia

 * While setting the grill, Princess Bubblegum's T-shirt has a rainicorn on it.
 * The coal used by Princess Bubblegum has an image of a person holding a red flag and bull, and is branded Coalé. This is a play on "Olé," a Spanish expression used to cheer that is commonly associated with bullfighting.
 * After the black hole was destroyed, one of the computers shouts, "I know nothing!" in the background.
 * Tree Trunks' house can be seen briefly in the background of the scene when Finn and Jake are approaching the Nerd Worms' class room.
 * During the zoom scenes, a full view of Earth is shown for the first time. The same image appears on Rebecca Sugar's promotional art for the episode.
 * In the top rail of the library chairs there are carved images of an owl with purple gem eyes.
 * In the Nerd Worm's classroom there was a calendar in the month of "Avril", which is French for "April."
 * Finn's trademark gold sword was destroyed in this episode.
 * After Finn says he is going to write a bulleted list, the Adventure Time Logo appears in the scene; however, each word is prefaced by a bullet-point and the sword is replaced by a number three pencil.
 * In this episode Princess Bubblegum calls Finn "Finny" for the first and only time in the series.
 * The worm professor's binder has a picture of a slice of pizza and the number 6181986 on the back of it.

Cultural references

 * The zoom scenes were inspired by the 1968 documentary short film Powers of Ten, which demonstrates the relative scale of objects in the universe.
 * The worms' "Theoretical Fightonomics" class discusses who would win in a fight between Friedrich Nietzsche's Übermensch (also called "Superman") and Mandroid, an apparent reference to comic book nerds' enjoyment of discussing "Who would win?" scenarios.
 * The four-dimensional bubble resembles a tesseract, a projection of a four-dimensional hypercube.
 * The bubble is a 3D computer graphic object rendered in its wire-frame mode.
 * When Finn says "We are all born to die," he is referring to the body's method of handling death or near-death experiences, particularly the theory that the brain produces the hallucinogenic compound Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) in near-death situations, as Finn himself explains in the episode.

Errors

 * In this episode, Jake had a hard time whistling, but in the episode "The Jiggler" he whistled along with the song "Baby" perfectly.

Production notes

 * This episode was previously titled "Born to Die" and "The Smartering."

Videos
"The Real You" Animatic|Animatic