The Real You

"The Real You" is the fifteenth episode in season two of Adventure Time.

Synopsis
Finn has to give a speech at Princess Bubblegum's science barbecue and 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 castle 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, PB 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. 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 start dancing and hollering, which causes Turtle Princess to kick them out. They then seek out Nerd Worms who run a college in an old rotten apple. Finn and Jake try to sneak into a worm class, but Finn gives the wrong fake name, 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, which collapses and becomes 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 goes to tell 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.

Characters

 * Finn
 * Jake
 * Princess Bubblegum
 * Choose Goose
 * Flambo
 * Turtle Princess
 * Chet
 * Peppermint Butler
 * Nerd Worms
 * Science Guys
 * Dr. Dextrose

Trivia

 * This episode was previously titled "Born to Die" and "The Smartering".
 * Tree Trunks's house can be seen briefly in the background of the scene when Finn and Jake are approaching the Nerd Worms' class room.
 * The sound effect Finn makes with his eyes in the library is the same sound effect Spongebob makes with his eyes.
 * During the zoom scenes, the full planet on which the Land of Ooo exists is seen for the first time. The planet (presumably Earth) has a huge crater which makes it look roughly like a waning crescent. The same image appears on Rebecca Sugar's promotional art for the episode.
 * As confirmed by storyboard artist Rebecca Sugar, the episode contains references to several real scientific and theoretical concepts:
 * The zoom in and out scenes were inspired by the 1968 documentary short film Powers of Ten, which demonstrates the relative scale of objects in the universe.
 * The four-dimensional bubble resembles a tesseract, a projection of a four-dimensional hypercube. Also, the four-dimensional bubble is a 3D computer graphic object rendered in its wireframe 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.
 * 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.
 * In response, the Nerd Worm Teacher says "Werewolf Queen, it's always Werewolf Queen" before announcing his diabolical plot to marry her and rule the world.
 * As elaborated upon by Rebecca Sugar, intelligent Finn composed the bulleted list knowing that his normal self would save the day, that it would produce a great conference, and that it would get Princess Bubblegum to like him in the end (though normal Finn is too oblivious to be aware of what he planned while he was smart).
 * In the top rail of the library chair there was a graven image of an owl with emerald eyes, possibly the Cosmic Owl.
 * The forest where Finn and Jake are Choose Goose is the same or similar to where they found the Magic Man.
 * In the Nerd Worm's classroom there was a calendar in the month of "Avril", which means April in French.
 * After someone said "That was the best conference ever!", another one says "I know nothing!"