Princess Bubblegum is concerned over her mortality and reveals her newly-designated successor to Finn and Jake. Their attempts to train Goliad, however, go horribly awry.
"Goliad" contains examples of:
- Aesop Amnesia: Princess Bubblegum creating a potential replacement for herself after her previous attempt with Lemongrab went badly. It did not go well. Fairly justifiable, since Bubblegum all but says she's been extremely rattled ever since the Lich nearly killed her, which explains why she overlooks certain lessons for the sake of ensuring her kingdom's future.
- Body Horror: The candy kids and then the mind-controlled candy people forcing themselves into Jake's body, and Jake vomiting them up later when he tries to talk, are all pretty gruesome.
- Call-Back: Finn's Psychic Static includes a reappearance of Baby Finn's Boastful Rap from "Memory of a Memory".
- Chekhov's Gun: When talking about how she created Goliad, Princess Bubblegum picks a hair off of Finn's head. She later uses it to make the second candy sphinx Stormo to combat Goliad.
- Evil Brit: Goliad has the voice of a small child with an English accent, and ends up going mad with power.
- Exhaustion-Induced Idiocy: After over 80 hours with no sleep, Bubblegum is rather loopy and spacey. It unfortunately leads to her entrusting Goliad's education to Finn and Jake, who are not exactly the best candidates for such an important job.
- Fighting Your Friend: Goliad controls all the candy people and uses them to attack Finn and Jake.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Stormo locks himself in an eternal psychic duel with Goliad, knowing it's the only way to stop her.
- Makes Just as Much Sense in Context: Peppermint Butler erupting out of the ground at the beginning of the episode to summon Finn and Jake to meet Princess Bubblegum is simply bizarre, and never explained.
- Might Makes Right: Goliad ends up adopting this position due to Finn's and Jake's unfortunate examples and possibly her essential personality.
- Mind-Control Eyes: Finn's eyes turn into black circles with white centres when Goliad takes over.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In trying to get Goliad to be more sociable they take her to a candy daycare where the kids are very unruly. Jake gets fed up and scares the kids into behaving.
When Goliad imitates him and turns
Drill Sergeant Nasty when Finn tells her to lead the kids over an assault course, Finn tells her that she needs to stay calm and use her brain to lead the kids, which she unfortunately interprets as "mind control".
Goliad: Alright, listen up! You kids better stop dunking around and get on that ramp! You're gonna mess up Goliad! I'm Don Juan Cherry Temp— Cherry Tempo! It's my way or the highway, Glob-globbit!
