"Imaginary Resources" is the fourth part of the Adventure Time miniseries Islands and the twenty-third episode in the eighth season of Adventure Time. It is the two hundred and forty-eighth episode overall.[1]
Synopsis[]
Finn and Jake travel to a land where reality has been redesigned and improved.[1]
Plot[]
The episode begins with Finn and Jake riding on giant parrot on their way to another island in search of BMO and Susan. They shortly see the island. They arrive on the island. The scenery is made completely out of electric, metal, and other artificial resources. There also appears to be nobody there. This makes the event unsettling. They see a bunch of strange balls all over. Jake throws out dumb ideas on what they may be. Jake is also carrying a giant egg laid by the giant parrot inside of him.
Finn then hears BMO and has him and Jake go in the direction they hear it. BMO is located and is seen dancing with virtual reality goggles on. Finn and Jake excitingly greet it but BMO gives no response. Finn and Jake then put on virtual reality goggles themselves to see if they can speak to BMO.
They are then seen as stick figures being sucked into some computery thing and are being told "choose your avatar." They are then given avatars and are seen in some virtual world with other virtual people. Finn then plays around with the world but someone comes by and calls him a "system dump." Then several others come by and shame Finn. Finn and Jake are than being bullied by the virtual people. They requested to get the two out but BMO ends up coming by and kicks the bullies out. In the virtual world BMO appears as a giant, with a muscular humanoid body with its normal body on top as a head.
BMO then offers Finn and Jake to go to its dance club. Finn and Jake happily accept the offer. They shortly arrive there. So many there seem to know and like BMO despite its recent arrival. BMO takes Finn and Jake to its private room where only one other player is, Vinny. BMO then goes somewhere and leave Finn and Jake with Vinny. Vinny then shows the duo around the place. Finn then calls for BMO. BMO comes in and Finn asks if it knows where Susan is. BMO than searches Susan name on the web and is located. Finn then says to BMO they should get going but BMO said it wanted to stay in the virtual world forever. This worries Finn, so Jake exits the world to yank off BMO's goggles.
Jake then appears in the real world and takes off his own goggles. Jake touches BMO's goggles but gets shocked from it. Jake then questions how this is and "who's running the show." Then a tiny flying robot comes by and begins touches BMO. Jake follows the tiny robot into a structure. Jake then sees several robots opening up the balls which appear to be pods that have humans inside all wearing virtual reality goggles. The robots stretch the humans and give them water and food so the humans will never need to leave the virtual world.
The scene then cuts to the virtual world where Finn asks BMO why it doesn't want to come with them. BMO said it did want to come with but enjoyed the virtual world way too much to leave. Finn tells BMO the world is all fake but BMO responds with "whats real?" BMO then performs a dance which amused the other players. The world then goes black. This is because Jake turned off the entire system. This makes BMO cry. Finn tells Jake that he made BMO really upset. Not much later a human walks up to Jake then many humans, hundreds of humans walk by. They say the commands they use in the virtual world which just sound like nonsense in real life. The humans appear to be very angry at Jake for what he did. The humans are not very violent and are pretty skinny and weak overall. Enraged, Finn yells at Jake for turning the entire thing off. Jake then said that he saved the world. Despite this, Finn says to turn it back on, not just for his species but for BMO. BMO just touches one of the deactivated tiny robots and it starts working again. Than it walks to the others robots and they begin to fix the machine powering it all. Then all of the humans happily go back into their pods and put on the goggles, and re-enter the virtual world.
Jake apologizes to BMO for turning off the world. BMO says it could never stay there because it would miss Finn and Jake to much. Finn and BMO then step inside a pod that will take them to the next island. Jake cannot fit because the giant egg is still in him. Finn tells Jake to get rid of it. Jake denies him and a newborn parrot hatches at that moment. Jake then steps in and the tiny robots then move a tube to the pod and sends it off to the next island.
Characters[]
Major characters[]
Minor characters[]
Mentioned[]
- Susan Strong (pictured)
Music[]
- "Brb"
Trivia[]
- Susan has not appeared since the episode "Whipple the Happy Dragon," however she is mentioned again by Finn.
- When Finn and Jake put on their virtual reality headsets, the background colors are similar to the character introductions in the Theme Song.
- A lot of coding, computer, and gaming terms were used as part of the virtual reality human's language. The term "hitbox" is used in games to calculate when things will or won't collide with each other, when Finn bumped into a person. A "mod" was called, and is short for moderator, a user with more permissions and responsibilities, such as banning people. The term "get" was used as a verbal command to summon items for people in the game, similar to how it's used in coding as well.
- This is the second episode in Adventure Time that won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Short Form Animated Program, the first being "Jake The Brick."[3]
- When BMO searches for Susan in the virtual reality world, a version of Finn and Jake can be seen in the background.
- In this episode, Finn and Jake uses "him" and "son" to refer to BMO.
Episode connections[]
- BMO can be seen wearing eye patches, a connection to Jake's eye patch collection in "The Jiggler."
Cultural references[]
- This episode seems to reference various aspects of Vinesauce.
- The virtual reality simulation appears very similar to some of the abandoned MMOs/chat clients which have been showcased in a number of streams, such as Active Worlds and Worlds Exploration.
- The character Vinny is an obvious nod to Vinesauce's main and most popular streamer, Vinny.
- The baby parrot hatching from the egg inside Jake is likely an homage to the 1979 film Alien. By pure coincidence, earlier the same week that the episode aired, actor John Hurt, who played the astronaut that the alien burst out of in the aforementioned film passed away from pancreatic cancer on January 25, 2017.
- The humans in pods dependent on a virtual reality simulation seems to be an homage to The Matrix movie series. BMO even gives a similar speech to the one Morpheus does, when asked that the simulation isn't "real." Morpheus was explaining that fundamentally, humans perceive "reality" as electrical impulses from their sensory nerves that get interpreted by their brain - electrical impulses which can be easily simulated. BMO, in contrast, is defending the virtual simulation as "real," pointing out that people say the sky is "blue" because our eyes tell our brain that it is.
- Although the subtext of humanity playing a virtual reality game as a means to ignore the world collapsing around them matches the 2011 story Ready Player One more.
- Vinny is a caricature of comic Jimmy Durante, famous for his raspy voice, large nose, and catchphrase "Ha-cha-cha-cha."
- Vinny states that a skin costs "15 million cryptocoins," which is a reference to cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and dogecoin.
Production notes[]
- This is the fourth episode that aired during the seventh "AdventureBomb."
- This is the fourth episode of the Islands miniseries.
- This episode was released for digital download and DVD on January 24, 2017.
Errors[]
- When BMO searches for Susan in the island's chain brain frame it types in Susan. Susan is then located however this should not work because Susan's real name is revealed in the next episode to be Kara. Therefore, she should not be located when someone types in Susan.