25 Shows Like Adventure Time You Should Watch Next

"Adventure Time," Pendleton Ward's fantasy-comedy-adventure series about the teenage human hero Finn and his magical shapeshifting dog brother Jake fighting evil in the post-apocalyptic Land of Ooo, might be the defining animated series of the 2010s. Nickelodeon rejected the initial pilot, allowing Cartoon Network to take the show and turn it into a cultural phenomenon. Premiering in 2010 and running for 283 episodes through 2018, "Adventure Time" initially grabbed audiences via its wild imagination and outrageous sense of humor and kept them invested with its detailed world-building and, at times, profoundly emotional storytelling. It subsequently received four "Distant Lands" specials and a "Fionna and Cake" spinoff series on HBO Max.

Beyond that, the crew of "Adventure Time" have gone on to develop many other successful shows. In addition, many other series have either drawn inspiration from the style of "Adventure Time" or taken advantage of the new ground the series broke for American all-ages animation. For all its innovations, however, "Adventure Time" didn't come from nowhere. It drew inspiration from many series throughout animation and television history. Both the shows "Adventure Time" inspired and those it was inspired by are absolutely worth seeking out for anyone who loves Finn and Jake's totally mathematical adventures. The fun will never end!

"Bravest Warriors" is the other series created by Pendleton Ward. Unlike "Adventure Time" and "The Midnight Gospel" however, Ward was not involved with the production of the series beyond its original 2009 pilot for Nickelodeon. Breehn Burns, Will McRobb, and Chris Viscardi developed the pilot into a streaming series for Frederator's Cartoon Hangover channel on YouTube and VRV. It ran for four seasons from 2012 to 2018, with Canadian studio Nelvana taking over production for the fourth season.

This sci-fi comedy follows four teen heroes (Chris, Beth, Danny, and Wallow) who save alien worlds through the power of their emotions. Slightly edgier than "Adventure Time," the series has a similar combination of random absurdist humor and serialized storytelling. The series' most popular character wasn't any of the Bravest Warriors themselves but rather the supporting character Catbug, an adorable cat-ladybug hybrid voiced by child actor Sam Lavagnino, who Deadline reports has his own spinoff series in development.

Rebecca Sugar was a storyboarder on "Adventure Time" for Seasons 2-5, credited on many of the show's most memorable episodes. They were instrumental in developing the character of Marceline the Vampire Queen, as noted by the Los Angeles Times, helping to establish her tragic past with Simon Petrikov and her relationship with Princess Bubblegum. Sugars' own series, "Steven Universe," ran from 2013-2020 and built upon much of what made their work on "Adventure Time" great.

Like "Adventure Time," "Steven Universe" starts as a lighthearted comedy before going in more serious dramatic directions. Sugar plotted out the arcs and backstories of "Steven Universe" in advance, resulting in a show that rewards repeat viewing with its extensive foreshadowing. The show broke massive ground for LGBTQ+ representation in children's animation with multiple relationships between the female-presenting Crystal Gem aliens. "Steven Universe" wrapped up its initial storyline within five seasons, followed by a TV movie and the epilogue series "Steven Universe Future."

Ian Jones-Quartey was a storyboard supervisor and revisionist on "Adventure Time" and an executive producer on "Steven Universe" before creating his own series, "OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes." Initially a pilot titled "Lakewood Plaza Turbo" in 2013, Cartoon Network experimented with releasing video games and shorts featuring the characters before launching the series proper in 2017. The show was originally intended for a streaming debut, but delays in the launch of HBO Max prevented this from happening and ultimately led to the show's cancelation.

"OK K.O.!" is set in a world where everyone has superpowers, though power levels vary dramatically. The main character, K.O., is an optimistic but not particularly powerful kid who works in a bodega alongside the alien Radicles and the ninja Enid. This is a cartoon that loves being a cartoon, with zany animation and clever meta-comedy. "Adventure Time" fans will especially want to check out the episode "Crossover Nexus," where characters from "Adventure Time" and almost every other Cartoon Network Original make cameos.

Elizabeth Ito was a storyboard artist for "Adventure Time" Season 1 and returned as a supervising director in Season 5. Her pilot "Welcome to My Life" was unfortunately passed on by Cartoon Network despite its viral popularity, but she got the chance to apply her style of naturalistic dialogue and mixed-media animation to "City of Ghosts," which was released in six episodes on Netflix in 2021.

"City of Ghosts" is about a group of four kids making documentaries about investigating various hauntings around Los Angeles. Each episode explores a different aspect of the city's rich multicultural history, something both kids and adults can learn something from. It's closer to a PBS Kids show than to "Adventure Time," but fans of the latter will appreciate its artistry. Pendleton Ward co-wrote and co-directed Episode 5, "Bob and Nancy." Disappointingly, a second season appears unlikely, as Ito has said the series likely wouldn't have been greenlit at all under Netflix Animation's current management.

Arguably the best of the various guest-directed episodes of "Adventure Time" was Season 6's "Food Chain," which was helmed by Masaaki Yuasa. One of the most artistically inventive directors in the world of anime, Yuasa has directed series ranging from the sports drama "Ping Pong: The Animation" to the ultraviolent action series "Devilman: Crybaby." Of his television anime, the closest in tone to "Adventure Time" is "Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!"

A 12-episode adaptation of the manga by Sumito Owara, "Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!" is about three passionate high school girls setting out to produce their own anime. With a great sense of humor and plentiful flights of fancy into the girls' imaginations, it's a celebration of what the animation medium is capable of. Even if you're not a regular anime watcher, "Eizouken" is so enjoyable that critics from both The New York Times and The New Yorker listed it as one of the best TV shows of 2020.

The 20-episode 2021 Netflix series "Centaurworld," created by Megan Nicole Dong, plays like an apotheosis of all the major trends in American all-ages animation throughout the preceding decade. Like the Land of Ooo in "Adventure Time," Centaurworld is a colorful land full of wacky characters that hides some incredibly dark secrets underneath its random meme-ready exterior. The main character, Horse, is transported to Centaurworld while fighting a war in her anime-style universe. Much of the conflict and humor of the series stems from Horse not fitting in with her new herd.

"Centaurworld" is also a full-blown musical with multiple songs in every episode, certain to appeal to fans of "Steven Universe," "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic," and Disney musicals. It might be one of the rare cartoons to exceed "Adventure Time" in sheer trippiness. Strange as it gets, it manages to tell an emotionally powerful story with an immensely satisfying finale.

While "Adventure Time" and "Regular Show" were reinvigorating Cartoon Network, Disney's coolest cartoon in the mid-2010s was "Gravity Falls," created by Alex Hirsch. Playing like a family-friendly cross between "The Simpsons" and "The X Files," "Gravity Falls" followed twin siblings Dipper and Mabel Pines as they spent one strange summer with their great uncle, or Grunkle, Stan in the mysterious town of Gravity Falls, Oregon. As with many contemporaries of "Adventure Time," it started as an episodic comedy series before gradually building up to a complicated ongoing narrative.

Switching networks from The Disney Channel to Disney XD midway through its run, "Gravity Falls" experienced many lengthy hiatuses; its two seasons took four years to air from 2012-2016. Fortunately, each half-hour gave viewers plenty to talk about and analyze, with tons of hidden jokes and coded clues for those clever enough to seek them out. Hirsch ended the show on his terms, with the epic "Weirdmageddon" three-parter.

Another defining Cartoon Network show of the 2010s, "The Amazing World of Gumball" stands out for its multi-layered comedy and bold mixed-media animation style, which combines 2D, 3D, puppets, and live-action elements. The wide cast of characters, led by the troublemaking 12-year-old cat Gumball and his naive 10-year-old pet goldfish-turned-adopted brother Darwin, are all based on various cartoon ideas that series creator Ben Bocquelet had previously pitched and had rejected from other studios.

Running for 252 episodes over six seasons from 2011 to 2019, "The Amazing World of Gumball" has the fourth-highest episode count of any Cartoon Network series, behind only "Teen Titans Go!" "Adventure Time," and "Regular Show." Unlike "Regular Show" and "Adventure Time," which mostly disappeared from the network's schedule after they ended, "The Amazing World of Gumball" is still shown regularly in reruns. A feature film and a spin-off series have both been announced for Cartoon Network and HBO Max.

Which of the Cartoon Network original series made in the decades before "Adventure Time" is the closest match to the sensibility of Pendleton Ward's influential hit? The obvious antecedent of "The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack" aside, the closest spiritual predecessor to "Adventure Time" might be "Courage the Cowardly Dog."

"Courage the Cowardly Dog" was created by John R. Dilworth and based on the Oscar-nominated short film "The Chicken From Outer Space." The show is about an easily frightened canine who nonetheless must protect his elderly owners, Muriel and Eustace, from all sorts of otherworldly terrors in the Middle of Nowhere. Compared to the other late '90s Cartoon Network series, "Courage the Cowardly Dog" was significantly scarier than its peers and had more moments of earnest sweetness, which are both qualities that "Adventure Time" would later demonstrate. The show's thin-line art style is also a closer match to "Adventure Time" than to the retro thick-lined design of its Cartoon Network contemporaries.

While various "Adventure Time" alums have gone on to make such anime-inspired series as "Steven Universe" and "Bee and PuppyCat," "Adventure Time" itself typically didn't draw particularly heavily from Japanese anime for inspiration. Anime, however, is a vast medium, and there are certainly anime out there that should appeal to "Adventure Time" fans. "One Piece," which Rebecca Sugar told TheWrap they were obsessed with growing up, has many the same qualities that make "Adventure Time" great.

"One Piece" is based on Eiichiro Oda's hit manga in Weekly Shonen Jump and has been running for over a thousand episodes since 1999. The series revolves around a crew of pirates, led by the rubber-bodied boy Monkey D. Luffy, as they sail the seven seas in search of the legendary One Piece treasure. Its wacky characters and cartoony designs eschew any sense of realism, but even with all this gleeful silliness, the action gets intense, and the story's personal and political drama is taken seriously. The length of both the manga and anime can be intimidating for newcomers, but even if you can't commit to the full binge, "Adventure Time" fans will still find a lot to like in "One Piece."

For many adults watching "Adventure Time" for the first time, one of the most instantly noticeable things about the show is that Jake the Dog sounds a lot like Bender Bending Rodriguez, the lovably immoral robot from Matt Groening's sci-fi cartoon "Futurama." Jake and Bender are both voiced by John DiMaggio, who made both of these very distinct characters his own.

"Adventure Time" had fun with this "Futurama" connection in the Season 6 episode "Everything's Jake," where Billy West played various characters inside Jake's body using the voices of three of his "Futurama" characters: Philip J. Fry, Professor Farnsworth, and Zapp Brannigan. Finn and Jake also cameoed in the "Futurama" Season 7 episode "Leela and the Genestalk." It makes sense both shows' crews shared an appreciation for each other. After all, "Futurama" did a lot of the same things for adult animation as "Adventure Time" did for kids' animation by using a comedic pastiche to build an intricate mythology with characters who can make viewers both laugh and cry within the same episode.

The idea of entertainment ostensibly for children being written with an adult audience in mind isn't anything new, with examples ranging from the complex math jokes in Lewis Caroll's "Alice" books to the Cold War satire in "Rocky and Bullwinkle." "Pee-wee's Playhouse," however, is by far one of the most influential TV shows in regards to the rise of such "kidult" entertainment from the late '80s onward. Paul Reubens' Pee-wee Herman character was created for the stage as an adult parody of kids' shows but somehow got a Saturday morning program of his own from 1986 to 1990.

In "Pee-wee's Playhouse," absolutely any object could be a sentient character, a predecessor to the whimsical absurdities of such extremes of anthropomorphism like Embryo Princess and Bounce-House Princess in "Adventure Time." Like "Adventure Time," it was able to present good-natured entertainment and positive messages to kids while also offering plenty of innuendo for adult viewers to pick up on. Pendleton Ward cited the dramatic build-up of the "Pee-wee's Playhouse" opening theme as an influence on the "Adventure Time" theme song during an interview with Art of the Title.