Finn and Jake meet Billy, their role model. However, Billy has given up on fighting evil, and tries to convince them to help people non-violently.
Tropes:
- Armed Legs: When Finn fixes a lady's shoe while acting as a cobbler, he uses a "magic nail" that gives the shoe weapons.
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Played with; Billy's song lists his accomplishments as including slaying an evil ocean, casting down the Lich, saving a fair damsel from the evil Fire Count, and fighting a bear. Though it was apparently a giant, flying bear that Billy fought.
- Bears Are Bad News: Billy FOUGHT A BEAR. A mountain-sized, flying bear. Just as great a feat as slaying an ocean or casting down the Lich.
- Bragging Theme Tune: Billy's song:
- Early-Installment Weirdness: The Lich King would later be called just The Lich.
- The Knights Who Say "Squee!": Finn and Jake admire Billy and see him as an inspiration, with Jake outright admitting he has a secret crush on him. At the end of the episode, after they restore his faith in heroism, he declares them his heroes and they fanboy out so hard he gets really uncomfortable and kicks them out of his cave.
- Heroic Fatigue: Billy, Ooo's former greatest hero, became too cynical and jaded to see the point in fighting evil.
- Innocuously Important Episode: Most of the episode is about Finn and Jake misguidedly attempting to help people without resorting to violence, but it also is the introductory episode of two characters very important to the show's story: Billy the hero and the Lich.
- Literal Metaphor: After being inspired by Finn, Billy tells him "It's as if your words are filling a void in my very being..." Then he adds "Wanna watch?", and parts his beard to show he means this literally.
- Logic Bomb: Subverted for Laughs. Finn's issues with pacifism are resolved when an old lady tells him to not take advice from old people, which means he no longer needs to be a pacifist since it was Billy, an old person, who told him to avoid violence. The fact that this advice also came from an old person is ignored despite the blatant contradiction.
- Pacifism Backfire: Finn and Jake's attempts to solve problems non-violently only cause more problems for people, mostly due to Finn non-consensually giving people unhelpful body modifications.
- Precursor Heroes: Billy was Ooo's greatest hero in his youth, just as Finn is now.
- Similar Squad: Billy, when compared to Finn. His main adversary was the Fire Count, from whom he rescued a Cotton Candy Princess, and he had a magical dog.
- Violence Really Is the Answer: The end of the episode has Finn realizing that he can't deal with certain problems (such as a giant threatening to eat an old woman) nonviolently. He defeats the giant and rescues the old woman.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Played for Laughs. When Finn uses one of his magic nails, he mentions how many he has left, which implies that he'll use them all by the end of the episode. He does not, and the lack of closure is a gag in and of itself.
