Pendleton Ward hasn’t been much in the public eye since stepping away from Adventure Time in the early 2010s, but the beloved animator is making his return in a way that feels distinctly true to his creative roots—and his love of video games.
Ward is reuniting with three of his most talented Adventure Time collaborators for The Elephant, a new animated special consisting of three interconnected shorts premiering on Adult Swim on December 19. Joining him are Rebecca Sugar (Steven Universe), Ian Jones-Quartey (OK K.O.! Let’s Be Heroes), and Patrick McHale (Over the Garden Wall)—a creative dream team that represents some of the most influential voices in modern animation.
When Gaming Meets Animation
Ward’s segment of The Elephant is packed with video game references that will delight anyone who grew up with a controller in their hands. The animation frequently shifts styles to evoke the look and feel of classic side-scrolling adventures, and at one point viewers watch a character attempting to navigate a challenging 2D dungeon while simultaneously engaged in a high-speed car chase. It’s the kind of playful absurdity that made Adventure Time such a phenomenon.
When asked about the inspiration behind weaving so many gaming elements into his work, Ward’s initial response is refreshingly straightforward: “Just for fun.” But he elaborates on the specific influence that shaped some of the visual choices.
“I don’t play Super Smash Brothers, but other people that were involved do, and so that inspired the flashes when the characters are falling off the platformer,” Ward explained in an interview with Polygon.
It’s a fascinating admission that highlights how creative collaboration works—Ward may not personally engage with Nintendo’s iconic fighting game, but he was open to incorporating the aesthetic and mechanics that resonated with his team members.
A Different Kind of Gamer
Ward’s relationship with video games is unconventional, particularly for someone who incorporates so much gaming culture into his work. He freely admits that he avoids fighting games and anything that creates too much stress.
“Anything with too much tension makes me feel too much tension, and then I stop playing it,” Ward says. “I need to relax when I’m playing. I’m a casual gamer.”
His preferred style of play is less about following intended paths and more about discovering ways to bend or break the game’s rules entirely. Ward describes spending an hour in Skyrim attempting to climb mountains the game doesn’t want you to climb, carefully maneuvering along vertices and exploiting collision detection until he reaches the summit—only to glitch through the terrain and fall inside the mountain itself.
“That’s a game for me. That’s what I enjoy doing,” he says. “Hurting other people in games is not my goal generally.”
It’s an approach that mirrors Ward’s creative philosophy as a whole: finding joy in unexpected places, pushing against boundaries, and embracing chaos rather than resisting it.
The Game That Keeps Giving
When discussing what he’s currently playing, Ward returns to a consistent favorite: Noita, an indie roguelike platformer that launched in 2019. The game’s defining feature is that every single pixel has its own physics properties and can be destroyed, exploded, or set ablaze, creating an unpredictable environment where one careless spell can incinerate an entire level.
“I go back to Noita a lot,” Ward says. “It’s one of the very few games where when you die, inevitably, it rips a big laugh out of you because the events that led to the death are so extreme. The contrast is so intense that it always makes me go ‘Ah hahahaha!’ It rips this laugh out of me.”
The appeal goes beyond the comedic deaths, though. Noita features procedurally-generated levels and an incredibly deep system of secrets that keeps players discovering new elements even years after release. For Ward, this depth represents exactly the kind of game experience he wishes he’d had as a child.
“It goes really deep,” he explains. “I wish I had Noita when I was a little kid because the depth to the secrets in it are infinite.”
Six years after its release, Ward continues finding reasons to return to Noita’s chaotic pixel-based world, which speaks to both the game’s design and Ward’s appreciation for experiences that reward exploration and experimentation over traditional skill mastery.
A Collaborative Return
The Elephant represents more than just Ward’s return to television animation—it’s a reunion of artists who helped define a particular era of animated storytelling. Each of the four creators who cut their teeth on Adventure Time went on to develop their own distinctive voices and successful projects, making this collaboration particularly special for fans who have followed their individual journeys.
The special will air as a single, uninterrupted experience without commercial breaks, allowing viewers to fully immerse themselves in the connected worlds these creators have built. It’s the kind of artistic freedom that Adult Swim has long provided to animation’s most experimental voices.
When and Where to Watch
The Elephant premieres on Adult Swim on December 19 at 11 p.m. Eastern Time. For those who prefer streaming or miss the broadcast, the special will be available on HBO Max starting December 20.
For fans who have been waiting to see what Ward would do next after his relatively quiet years following Adventure Time, The Elephant promises to deliver the creativity, weirdness, and gaming-inspired imagination that made his work so memorable in the first place.
Watch the trailer for The Elephant here:
