Actually, it's not quite Adventure Time as we know it. It's the pilot for Adventure Time, made in 2006, four years before the first episode proper aired. It was written and storyboarded entirely by Pendleton Ward, the creator of Adventure Time.
Despite Ward's status as the show's creator and showrunner, we haven't really talked too much about him or what precisely his take on Adventure Time is, basically because he wasn't directly involved in storyboarding the first two episodes of the show. The pilot, however, is all Ward, and does a lot to demonstrate Ward's unique take on the show, which truly is different from that of everyone else he brings on board. To do this, let's compare and contrast the pilot with the first two episodes.
One aspect shared by the two Muto/Ito episodes we've seen so far is their heavy grounding in settings. Slumber Party Panic explores the Candy Kingdom and its denizens in great detail; Trouble in Lumpy Space does the same with Lumpy Space. Both stories draw a lot from the inherent character of their settings - the innocent foolishness of the Candy People is integral to the first story's plot, much as the fact that Lumpy Space is a grotesque version of a teen dramedy is integral to the second episode's.
Ward is not particularly interested in settings in the pilot for Adventure Time. The majority of the landscapes are rolling, grassy hills with little in the way of specific character, and the Ice Kingdom seems mostly to just be where the Ice King lives, not a setting the episode is particularly rooted in. Instead, Ward is largely interested in plot and character, albeit in very specific ways.
The episode's plot is an incredibly basic one - a princess is kidnapped by an evil wizard, and a hero saves this damsel in distress. All of this is played very straight, with the exception of our two main characters, Pen and Jake. Pen and Jake are agents of chaos that interrupt the typical fantasy melodrama. For example, the Ice King, a very typical fantasy villain, speaks here in a very overwrought and cod-medieval way, saying stuff like "foul and noisome whelp! You've not seen the last of my wintery fangs!" Pen and Jake, on the other hand, continuously refer to one another as "bro" and "dude," while speaking in a heavily stylized way that could be roughly described as 2006 informal.
The influence is very easy to put together with a little outside information. Pendleton Ward is an enormous fan of Dungeons and Dragons and can be quoted as saying "when I'm writing an episode it feels like I'm playing D&D with the characters." Combine this with the fact that, in the pilot, the protagonist is named Pen, the literal first name of the person writing the show, and it's clear that Pen Ward sees Adventure Time (or at least the 2006 version) as a fantasy playground to mess around in, including all the archetypes like evil wizards and kidnapped princesses.
This is important to note, given that stuff like gender politics and typical fantasy roles will later become very important to Adventure Time. It is not yet important here. The pilot may inherit the sexist damsel-in-distress plotline from the fantasy paperbacks that are a clear influence on both Ward and Dungeons and Dragons, but the episode doesn't do anything to critique the idea of the hapless, kidnapped woman who is totally without power. Slumber Party Panic, however, instantly scraps this idea altogether, showing Princess Bubblegum as a scientist first and a monarch second.
However, it's equally telling to look at the important aspects that are retained from this pilot in the TV show itself. The show is not at all afraid to take a few seconds out of its very short running time to show Pen and Jake doing a little dance, or to show Jake discussing viola playing with Lady Rainicorn while Pen fights the Ice King, or to bring in a lost Fire Elemental demanding directions to the sun.
It's this very inclination towards off-topic goofiness that is at the heart and soul of what Adventure Time is doing in its first season. Next time: Prisoners of Love.
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