Finn and Jake must fight gladiator ghosts in order to gain their freedom from the Fight King.
Tropes:
- Bait-and-Switch Comment: When Fight King tries to get him to slay Jake, Finn says that he can't kill his best friend... "Without a bigger sword!" Though this turns out to be a trick to get the Fight King to hand over his Soul Jar.
- BFS: The Fight King wields a massive golden sword.
- Blood Knight: Fight King obviously, but Finn gets way too much into fighting gladiators. Subverted as it turns out he's faking it.
- Bury Your Gays: Andy Ristaino, their character designer, has confirmed the innuendo that all the Ghost Gladiators were gay couples who were forced by the Fight King to kill each other.
- The Cameo: One of the female Ghost Gladiators is voiced by Grey DeLisle.
- Comically Missing the Point: Finn and Jake notice all the same-sex partners are holding hands, but think they're just really close friends.
- Covered with Scars: The Fight King is covered with scars and missing bits.
- Fate Worse than Death: It's heavily implied that the Fight King has imprisoned the fighter's spirits to fight in combat forever.
- Fighting Your Friend: The Fight King's key objective seems to be forcing best friends (or a bit more...) to fight to the death.
- Gladiator Games: The Fight King's arena is full of gladiator ghosts embroiled in near-constant combat.
- Gratuitous Latin: "Morituri Te Salutamus" ("We who are about to die salute you"). There are many other Latin phrases like "Et tu?" ("And you?") and "Eludere!" ("Parry!")
- Hoist by His Own Petard: The Fight King is killed by Finn breaking his BFS.
- "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Jake tries to snap Finn out of his bloodlust before he winds up killing him while trying to restrain him with his body.
- Load-Bearing Boss: The Fight King's amphitheater crumbles away after he's slain and the ghostly gladiators are set free.
- Meaningful Name: The Fight King wants others to fight for his amusement.
- Mood Dissonance: The Fight King is easily one of the most horrifying villains in the show, and the agony of his victims is not remotely played for laughs, but Finn and Jake do not react with horror as one would expect them to and view the entire thing as another wacky adventure.
- Noodle Incident: The episode opens with Finn and Jake rescuing some cute little hedgehog-like creatures from a giant hamburger monster, and Finn complains that it would have gone more smoothly if Jake had stuck to the plan.
- Our Ghosts Are Different: Some have more than one head and are prisoners of an eternal contest.
- Our Liches Are Different: The Fight King appears to be some kind of lich (but not the Lich) with his giant sword as his Soul Jar.
- Sanity Slippage: Finn goes more bloodthirsty as the fight goes on.
- Shout-Out: Many of the gladiator names:
- Romulus and Remus, to the legendary founders of Rome.
- Amazonia, Achillea, Priscus, Verus, Flamma, and Rutuba are all the names of real life Roman gladiators from various historical sources.
- Tetraides is a gladiator character from The Last Days of Pompeii, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton.
- Priscus's "Et tu, Verus", is of course a reference to the dying words of Julius Caesar in Shakespeare's play.
- Soul Jar: The Fight King's sword is this for the Fight King himself.
- Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Finn invokes this against the Fight King not even letting Jake know about his plan to trick the Fight King into giving him his sword.
- Win to Exit: Seemingly how the Fight King's colosseum works.
