Well, Cuphead and his pal Mugman,
They like to roll the dice.
By chance they came 'pon Devil's game,
And gosh, they paid the price, paid the price...
And now they're fighting for their lives
On a mission fraught with dread.
And if they proceed but don't succeed,
Well... the Devil will take their heads!
They like to roll the dice.
By chance they came 'pon Devil's game,
And gosh, they paid the price, paid the price...
And now they're fighting for their lives
On a mission fraught with dread.
And if they proceed but don't succeed,
Well... the Devil will take their heads!
—Opening Theme
Cuphead: Don't Deal with the Devil is a Run-and-Gun game developed by Studio MDHR for Xbox One, Windows PC, Steam, GOG.com, Macintosh, Nintendo Switch, and PlayStation 4.
The game was first conceptualized in 2010, initially announced in 2014, and released on September 29th, 2017 as an Xbox One and Windows exclusive. Microsoft partially funded the game's development, though because Studio MDHR is still an independent developer, Microsoft has allowed the game to be ported to competing platforms. The port for Macintosh computers released on October 18th, 2018. The Nintendo Switch port was released on April 19th, 2019. All versions received a 1.2 update in conjunction with the Switch release, which added localized text in eleven languages, new boss phases, the ability to play as Mugman in single player mode, and extra touches like new animations. Afterwards, it was released for the PlayStation 4 on July 28th, 2020.
Cuphead and his brother Mugman, who live in the enchanted Inkwell Isles, wind up on the wrong side of the tracks and come across the Devil's Casino. They go on a winning streak playing Craps and eventually gamble against the Devil himself. Though Mugman sees the danger and tries to warn his brother, Cuphead becomes blinded by easy riches. When the Devil bets all his treasure for their souls, Cuphead takes the bet... and loses. Just before the Devil claims their souls, the duo say they will do anything to keep their lives. The Devil, seeing an opportunity, spares them on the condition that they collect the Soul Contracts of other unfortunate characters who have lost to him. The journey of Cuphead and Mugman will see them travel through trippy environments and face off against equally-trippy opponents...
...and this happens for a good reason: the game is intended to mimic the art style and "feel" of a classic Max and Dave Fleischer cartoon. The developers hand-animated every character and effect in the game to achieve this look, and their devotion to their work shows in every frame. Microsoft's financial backing to the developers after the game's original 2014 reveal — a move that helped expand the game but also delayed it for another 3 years — certainly helped in that regard.
A downloadable expansion titled The Delicious Last Coursenote was announced in 2018; initially scheduled for a 2019 release date, it was pushed back to 2020, then delayed due to the COVID-19 Pandemic before eventually being released on June 30th, 2022. The downloadable content adds an extra island with additional bosses, a new story, and extra playable character in the formerly non-playable Legendary Chalice, now brought back to life as Ms. Chalice.
The Delicious Last Course entails the cups traveling to Inkwell Isle 4 to help the Legendary Chalice find a way to come back to life. At first, she gives them a special Astral Cookie that allows her to switch places with one of the cups, but that's only a temporary solution. She takes the brothers to the jolly Chef Saltbaker, the best baker in the land. Not only did he make the Astral Cookies, he's also been working on a recipe for the mystical Wondertart, which can grant whoever eats it control over the Astral Plane. It's up to Cuphead, Mugman, and Ms. Chalice to scour Inkwell Isle 4 for the necessary Wondertart ingredients so they can bring Ms. Chalice back to life for good.
The game has been followed by a number of different tie-ins in different media (including minor representation in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate). For more information on these, please refer to the Franchise page.
Some tropes are surely brewing! Ready? WALLOP!:
General examples
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- 100% Completion: Each file keeps a completion tracker. To get 100%, you have to beat every boss (any rank will do), clear all the run & gun and Mausoleum stages, and collect every coin, including those hidden on the overworld. Beating every boss on Expert adds an extra 100% on top of that. The DLC's completion is tracked separately, and only goes up to 100%; it still entails beating all the bosses (on both Normal and Expert) and collecting all the coins.
- Action Dress Rip: Exaggerated with Sally Stageplay, as she tears away her entire wedding dress before the start of her boss battle to reveal a second dress she's wearing underneath. This outfit then explodes at the end of the second phase to reveal that she's wearing a third outfit, her angel costume.
- Action Girl:
- Sally Stageplay, Cala Maria, Rumor Honeybottoms, Hilda Berg and Pirouletta fit into this.
- From Delicious Last Course, we have Ms. Chalice, Esther Winchester, the female members of the Howling Aces and Moonshine Mob, and the Queen from the court of the King of Games.
- Adaptational Early Appearance: Due to development of "The Delicious Last Course'' taking far longer than intended, Ms. Chalice, Chef Saltbaker, and Glumstone the Giant all appeared in the comics and novels years before showing up in the game.
- Afterlife Express: The Phantom Express gives this vibe, being inhabited by all manner of ghouls, such as a ghost and a giant skeleton. The Game-Over Man for the third section claims that the train's only for the dead.
- Air-Dashing: Both Cuphead and Mugman have the ability to dash in midair, propelling themselves forward after a jump or fall.
- Alliterative Name:
- Many of the bosses, including Cagney Carnation, Werner Werman, Sally Stageplay and Wally Warbles.
- Many of the boss fight scene names (Fiery Frolic, Pyramid Peril, Honeycomb Herald, etc.).
- All six run-and-gun level names.
- Alternate Monochrome Version: The reward for finishing the platformer levels of Cuphead in pacifist mode unlocks a black and white filter option for the game, as another homage to classic cartoons. This mode makes the game substantially harder to play, as it obscures the pink parry items.
- Ambidextrous Sprite: Averted with King Dice, since he has separate sprites for facing left and right in his boss fight; played straight with Beppi the Clown, since his face switches colors depending on which side he's facing in his first and third phases.
- Amicable Ants: Played with. The Moonshine Mob in The Delicious Last Course is a group of creepy crawlies (plus an anteater) who dress like gangsters from The Roaring '20s. They are opposed by a team of police officer ants who take shots at them throughout the fight. The Moonshine Mob acts very villainous, while the police ants seem more noble. The problem is that the ants' attacks can also hurt the player, so you have to watch out for them in addition to fighting the mob.
- Amusement Park of Doom: Both "Funfair Fever" and "Carnival Kerfuffle". "Funfair Fever" is a Run 'n' Gun level, while in "Carnival Kerfuffle", Beppi will use the amusement park attractions to his advantage. "Funhouse Frazzle" is likely set inside this as well.
- An Aesop:
- When you get yourself into trouble, it's up to you to put in your blood, sweat, and tears to get yourself out of trouble. Also, whenever you decide to gamble, it's important to know when to stop.
- The endings present another one: Don't condemn others for their sins, for you too are a sinner. Cuphead and Mugman handing over the soul contracts to the Devil rather than saving his debtors results in them becoming evil themselves and becoming loyal minions of the Devil, while saving them results in a happy ending where everyone is freed. Condemning the debtors does not make you the good guy, showing them mercy does.
- Anachronism Stew: Mortimer Freeze's snow monster turns into a refrigerator with top freezer. A model which wouldn't be introduced until the 1940s or in mass production until after World War Two.
- Animated Adaptation: The Cuphead Show! on Netflix is inspired by the game.
- Animate Inanimate Object: Keeping with the 1930s theme, practically all objects in the game have a face. Heck, the two protagonists of the game are cups with bodies.
- Animation Bump:
- Among the main game bosses, The Devil's second to fourth phases feature much more detailed animation than the rest of the game, with more elaborate shading bringing to mind Fantasia and its "Night on Bald Mountain" sequence rather than the more traditional rubberhose style.
- All of The Delicious Last Course's bosses have smoother and more refined animation than those of the base game, especially evident with the Victory Fakeout in "Bootlegger Boogie" and the Interface Screw in "Doggone Dogfight". Chef Saltbaker goes a step further than even the Devil — everything is moving in his fight, and the elaborate shading and surreal animation are reminiscent of the West Coast animation style made popular by Disney in the 1940s.
- Animation Evolution: Cuphead's hand-drawn animation was praised from the moment the game was first revealed, but the quality of the animation has only improved over time as the game has been updated. For example, in the original release of the game, some cutscenes were basically just slideshows, but they were later revised to be fully animated. The Delicious Last Course expansion features bosses that are animated even more fluidly than those in the base game. Notably, there are many large Background Bosses in the DLC, all of which have smooth, detailed movements that give them unique personalities. While most of the game is animated in the Inkblot Cartoon Style, the Final Boss of the DLC is animated in the more realistic "West Coast" style of animation.
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- During the Boss Bonanza with King Dice, one randomly-chosen miniboss in each set of three (i.e. every miniboss on one potential path you can take through the gauntlet) will give you an extra health point before the battle. A later patch also ensures that if players die to a miniboss while in co-op mode they'll be brought back at 1 HP should their partner win the battle, and that the Start Over square becomes inert after it's triggered the first time.
- As of The Delicious Last Course, if you spin in place three times on the overworld, you'll unlock the Game Djimmi, who grants you extra health until you beat any stage. This can be triggered up to three times before the end of the game, and an infinite number of times afterward.
- If you fight King Dice as Ms. Chalice, the heart cards will emit hearts above them so she'll have something to parry to avoid his attack.
- Anti Poop-Socking: The game delivers you a message to take a break in song form, delivered by the barbershop pole singers once you find the lost member. The name of the song? A Quick Break.
- Attack Its Weak Point: A few bosses require this. Cagney Carnation and Cala Maria take damage only on their heads, and the respective final phases of Ribby & Croaks and the Phantom Express take damage only after you parry them open.
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Many of the bosses practically tower over the two protagonists.
- Auto-Scrolling Level: Several instances:
- All of the airplane boss fights are autoscrolling, as well as some non-airplane bosses, which are Baroness Von Bon Bon's final phase in "Sugarland Shimmy", Grim Matchstick in "Fiery Frolic", Rumor Honeybottoms in "Honeycomb Herald", and the Phantom Express in "Railroad Wrath".
- The latter part of "Rugged Ridge" has you being chased by a giant à la the beginning of the Mecha-Dragon fight in Mega Man 2.
- One section in "Perilous Piers" has the player riding on an octopus that has an anchor on its head which you need to parry in order to make it to the end.
- Badass Bystander: You will often fight against those who help the bosses defending their souls and ingredients. Most notable are Dr. Khal who technically has no stakes in the fight but helps out his robot defending his soul, Willy Warbles who helps out his dad, and Captain Brineybeard's ship who, while also having no stakes, sends the captain flying and takes over the fight completely.
- Badass Normal:
- Captain Brineybeard doesn't transform at all, he fights you by summoning sea creatures. Then his boat transforms and punts him into the water, or cargo rooms.
- Dr. Kahl. For most of the fight, he pilots his robot without entering the battle personally, and even during the final phase, he sits back and laughs while the robot summons gemstones to fire at you.
- Sally Stageplay's pretty much the one boss in the game that doesn't involve some sort of oversized monster at all. She still manages to put up quite a fight.
- Werner Werman doesn't transform at all, he just uses his can tank and cat robot.
- The basic enemies in the Run n' Gun levels lack any transformation or special powers. But they are no less relentless than the bosses themselves.
- Bait-and-Switch: The name of "Doggone Dogfight" and its biplane map icon may trick players into thinking it's another airplane boss, but it's actually a standard platform shooter boss where you stand on a plane piloted by Canteen Hughes.
- Balloon of Doom: Beppi the Clown has a stretchy, balloon-like body, most noticeable with his bulbous head. In phase 2 of his battle, his body is attached to a giant helium pump, and his head inflates into a giant balloon tied to his body with a string. The pump also shoots out balloon dog heads that swarm the arena to attack you.
- Band Land: The second half of Funhouse Frazzle features oversized musical instruments, microphones, and phonographs in the background, in addition to anthropomorphic tubas that serve as enemies.
- Bash Brothers:
- Cuphead and Mugman are a literal example, since they actually are brothers, taking on all manner of monsters together with nothing but a Finger Gun and each other (along with magical charms, super arts, and occasionally airplanes).
- The frog brothers, Ribby and Croaks, who can fight the other pair of brothers in co-op.
- Battle Intro: Right before boss battles, Cuphead tightens his shorts, Mugman takes a sip from his own head, an announcer blurts out a snappy battle intro blurb, and the baddies taunt the duo, all while the only words ever needed show up. (The Mausoleum levels start out with the same preparations the boys make, but with a spooky announcer blurting out a creepy blurb (patched version), and no baddies taunting them.)Ready? WALLOP!
- Black Bead Eyes: When Cuphead and Mugman are on the world map.
- Bond One-Liner: The bosses' death quotes, many done in rhyme.
- Bookends:
- Minor gameplay example. One of the two bosses the player can choose at the beginning of the game, The Root Pack, has a part where the player fights an onion whose only attack is to cry damaging tears, some of which are pink and can be parried. The final phase of the Devil fight also has him crying damaging tears as his attack, which are also pink and can be parried.
- As the tutorial level shows you, dead players are represented by a soul with a pink heart, which can be parried to revive them. In the DLC, the final phase of Chef Saltbaker pits you against his heart, which occasionally turns pink and can be parried.
- The main game opens with a shot of a book opening by itself to give out exposition and ends with the same book closing itself.
- The credits theme for The Delicious Last Course begins with a reprise of "Don't Deal With the Devil", the title theme, now with modified lyrics about the plot of the DLC.
- Bootstrapped Theme: Inverted, surprisingly enough. "Junkyard Jive", the song that plays when fighting Dr. Kahl, may have originally been the main theme song of the game, given that a piano version of it serves as the theme for one of the game's earliest trailers.
- Boring, but Practical:
- A lot of players stick with the Peashooter (the first shot type you gain), since it has long range, is easy to aim, and does consistent damage.
- There's not really any reason to take off Chaser on the first island due to its "fire and forget" homing properties. It's consistently useful until the third island (when bosses begin to have both more health and phases involving more summoned enemies) and makes certain bosses like Grim Matchstick much easier.
- Smoke Bomb allows you to be invincible during your dash, which is practically necessary for later in the game due to how often you'll be dashing next to bosses in the first place. It is also extremely helpful for earning P-ratings on Run and Gun stages. It's essentially an optional dodge mechanic,note with the bonus being that the period that you're invulnerable for being plain as day — as long as you're invisible, you're invincible.
- Two of the power-ups are health upgrades (either one heart or two) at the cost of a tiny bit of power. While you won't get a health bonus if you were hit more than 3 times, people who don't care about high scores can increase their survivability with more health. The damage debuff is less relevant in the Run 'n' Gun levels, where most enemies don't have much health to begin with.
- Boss-Altering Consequence:
- When fighting The Root Pack, if you don't shoot Ollie Bulb (the onion), he'll happily leave, and the fight will move on to Chauncey Chantenay (the carrot) early. He'll have more HP than usual, and a radish will pop out of the ground to chase you throughout.
- If you shrink down while Djimmi the Great reads your mind, he'll create a much smaller puppet than he usually does and advance directly to his final phase, which will have additional HP and the puppet shooting at you throughout.
- When fighting Sally Stageplay, if you stand on the two cherub cutouts on either side of the stage in Phase 1, the chandelier in the background will fall. If the groom is under it when this happens, it will crush him and end the phase early. This changes both the play's story and some of the attacks in the next couple of phases.
- When fighting The Howling Aces, if you bring all four of the puppies' HP low without taking any of them out, their mother will round them up and enter a unique final phase where the five of them will attack with homing fire hydrants and pineapple grenades. This phase also lacks the Interface Screw that the regular final phase has.
- During King Dice's boss fight, he forces you to play a board game before facing him. The number you roll on the die determines which mini-bosses you fight. None of the mini-bosses in of themselves are required to beat King Dice himself, as with good timing, you may be able to skip some of them entirely.
- Boss Game: Most of the stages are boss fights against the Devil's many debtors (think the two Mega Man arcade games, Power Battle and Power Fighters), almost all of which have several phases. The developers went for a Guinness World Record of 30+ bosses for a Run-and-Gun game to beat the world record of 25 set by Alien Soldier Final count. It was originally intended to only be bosses, but fan feedback suggested that they add the run-n-gun levels to fill out the game a bit.
- Boss-Only Level: Naturally, the game has tons of these, with many boss fights being comparable to every battle in Senko no Ronde, but the clearest case goes to Inkwell Hell: an entire Boss Bonanza world that has the boss fights for King Dice and The Devil, and absolutely nothing else.
- Boss Remix:
- "The King's Court" is a more frantic and jazzy remix of "Die House".
- "Baking the Wondertart" is, among other things, a dramatic orchestral remix of Chef Saltbaker's leitmotif.
- Bottomless Pits: Present, but instead of being a One-Hit Kill, they do damage like anything else and then shoot the boys back up to solid ground. They even respect Mercy Invincibility.
- Brick Joke: In the intro, it's stated that they found The Devil's casino "on the wrong side of the tracks". In Inkwell Isle 3, you must fight the Phantom Express to get a level crossing to raise, allowing you to get to the casino, meaning that it's literally on the wrong side of the tracks.
- Bring It:
- Before fighting the cups, Croaks taunts them via moving his hand towards himself.
- The Knight in the King's Leap portion of the Delicious Last Course beckons you if you're staying too far away from him. In order to get him to attack and leave himself open, you have to stick close.
- Bullet Hell: The aerial battles have elements of this.
- Butt-Monkey:
- The majority of the bosses get this treatment to various degrees, but Wally Warbles has it the worst out of everyone; you destroy his house, force him to lose all his feathers, beat up his son while you're at it, then beat him up while two medic birds are carrying him on a stretcher, and finally, said medics are preparing to eat him after his defeat.
- Captain Brineybeard gets the short end of the stick as well. Unlike pretty much every other boss, the final phase of his own boss battle isn't even against him, but his ship, which turns into a narwhal and throws him into the ocean.
- Esther Winchester also gets this. She manages to suck herself into her own vacuum gun and process herself into a string of sausages, and then shortly after manages to also accidentally can herself.
- The Casino: The Devil himself runs one, and it's where the deal that kicks off the plot happens, as well as the location of the penultimate boss fight against King Dice. It even provides the trope image.
- Cast of Snowflakes: Everyone's unique in their own way. No two characters look alike.
- Checkpoint Starvation: The bosses and platformer "Run 'n Gun" levels have no checkpoints. Die once, and you must start all over again.
- Classic Cheat Code: If you want to redo the mausoleum fights without making a new save file, stand in front of them and hold down both triggers, or tab + backspace if playing with a keyboard, much like the hidden command to re-enter beaten castle levels in Super Mario World. This also works for the hidden boss fight in the DLC.
- Clipped-Wing Angel: A handful of bosses become weaker in their final phases rather than stronger:
- Goopy le Grande in his tombstone form has only one attack that is easy to dodge in contrast to his previous forms, that had two attacks: either punching or jumping all over the screen.
- Cagney Carnation turns monstrous and engulfs the ground in thorny vines, restricting you to the floating platforms, but only has two very telegraphed and easy to dodge attacks.
- Cala Maria loses her head and floats inside a cave, being only capable of shooting a petrifying gaze; only the environment can cause any real damage to the player.
- Sally Stageplay doesn't even bother attacking you in her final phase, instead letting her easily jumped-over parasol and some infrequently tossed roses from the audience do the fighting for her.
- Wally Warbles subverts this. He is hospitalized halfway through his boss fight and still fights you while being carried by two paramedic birds. You'd think he would have been weaker after losing all of his feathers, but nope: he is no less dangerous than before with attacks that are still hard to dodge. If he beats you there, he even taunts you about this.
- Most surprising of all, the Devil, as the base game's final boss, turns into this. He's reduced to crying tears in pain and frustration while the arena is reduced to a single platform under his face on which a single chip falls down. Said chip can be dodged without parrying, and these two attacks are the only ones he has at that point. That being said, he can still catch inexperienced players off-guard with these weak attacks, and only having a single platform to work with does complicate matters somewhat.
- Glumstone the Giant becomes easier as his fight progresses. His first phase has a lot of obstacles to worry about, such as the different projectiles he summons, the gnomes poking out to attack you, and the raising and lowering platforms. In phase 2, there's only the occasional gnome popping out and a bouncing ball on either side of the platform; a bit hectic, but not as tricky. In phase 3, your main concern is keeping the platforms you're standing on afloat, and besides that and a somewhat awkward movement pattern, you've pretty much already won.
- Against the Moonshine Mob, the mob boss snail attacks you after a Victory Fakeout. He goes down a lot faster than his minions and only has a single, easy-to-evade attack, with his only real advantage being the element of surprise.
- Colour-Coded for Your Convenience:
- Cuphead and Mugman have a "Parry" ability that allows them to swat bullets away, stun bosses, or revive your partner, but it only works on pink objects. However, it will work on any pink object you encounter even if the color seems incidental, like Baroness Von Bon Bon's peppermint wheels.
- Your bullets and characters are also color-coded. Cuphead, Mugman, and Ms. Chalice are respectively red, blue, and gold, and each bullet has its own unique color. Similarly, the bosses color-code their own bullets, especially the pink ones.
- The flags marking cleared levels and bosses are color-coded. Getting an A-minus rank or higher changes the red flagpole to gold, and clearing with any rank on Expert changes the silver cup emblazoned on the flag to gold (S ranks replace the cup entirely).
- Conspicuously Light Patch: On the world map, the backgrounds are painted with watercolors, while things you can interact with — like characters, stages, and shops — are ink-drawn. This is both for the player's benefit and to deliberately invoke the style of old cartoons, where cel-animated objects would stick out over the painted backgrounds.
- Continuing Is Painful: Not for game overs themselves, but for averting a game over. If you're playing in co-op mode, you can revive your dead partner by parrying their ghost. However, the downside is that your partner is revived at 1 HP, and they fly away faster each time they're downed.
- Conveyor Belt of Doom: During "All Bets Are Off," you fight Pip and Dot while standing on a spike-studded one that's trying to drag you backwards into a wall of spikes.
- Creator Cameo:
- Or "Creator Logo Cameo", actually: Throughout the game, StudioMDHR's name appears in the game's Storybook Opening (along with "The Moldenhauer Brothers [Chad and Jared]"), in the Game Over cards ("MDHR Inc. Death"), at the backstage curtain of Sally Stageplay's boss battle ("MDHR Asbestos Safety Curtain"), and in two pictures in each of the memory match cards (one of them being "StudioMDHR. Made in Canada").
- Just before Hilda Berg transforms into a constellation, she mouths the word "Coleman", in reference to her animator, Joseph Coleman. She was supposed to specifically say "Coleman," but the voice clip ended up going unused.
- Creator Provincialism: While the Inkwell Isles are a fictional location, The Delicious Last Course includes a sneaky reference. One of Glumstone the Giant's attacks has him signal for a gaggle of geese, which are specifically black geese, a subspecies that's indigenous to Canada, the homeland for the game's creators.
- Credits Gag: According to the launch trailer, the game came out in 1930.note Played with in an earlier trailer, where the game was said to come out in 1936... plus 80 years.
- Creepy Circus Music: The song "
Coin-Op Bop" from the soundtrack (the song was written for a minigame that was cut from the final game) is a fast-paced tune that sounds like it was played on a fairground organ. The song starts out cheerful, but eventually switches to a minor key, and then gets faster and much more frantic in tone. - Cymbal-Banging Monkey: One of King Dice's bosses in the dice maze, Mr. Chimes, is this.
- Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Playing as Ms. Chalice has a lot of upsides, but also can really mess with your rhythm, between parrying being on a completely different button that also moves you forward, and her double-jump being necessary to ascend up platforms that Cuphead and Mugman can handle with a single jump.
- Darker and Edgier: Downplayed, but The Delicious Last Course, while having a much more light-hearted reason for fighting bosses, leans a lot more on Black Comedy tropes than the base game. This is most obvious when fighting Esther Winchester (who gets roasted alive, turned into living sausages, packaged up, and then seemingly killed off until returning alive in the epilogue) and the Rook in King's Leap (who must literally be fought by parrying the severed heads of his own victims back at him). The final boss goes into outright horror territory as well, being even more terrifying than the Devil was, and the horror elements here are not played for Black Comedy. The secret battle with the Dream Devil can be very unsettling too, as can the following music shift once you turn the Broken Relic into the Cursed Relic.
- Dark Reprise: The final boss theme of The Delicious Last Course, "Baking the Wondertart", is a frantic, ominous mashup of "The Delicious Last Course", "A Far Off Isle", "Caute Cave Mortem", and Chef Saltbaker and Ms. Chalice's leitmotifs.
- Deal with the Devil: A literal one sets off the whole events of the game. Cuphead and Mugman played a round of Craps against the Devil and lost. He agreed to spare them if they did his bidding by hunting down his other debtors.
- Decade-Themed Filter: The game was made entirely as a Retraux video game made in the early Golden Era of animation, in which designs, fashion and even filters remind this era with the first Mickey Mouse and Betty Boop cartoons. You can even unlock a filter reminiscent of two-strip Technicolor films, and a Deliberately Monochrome filter as well.
- Decapitation Presentation: During the final boss battle with the Devil, if you lose during his second phase and onwards, the taunting message that you get shows him holding the lifeless and decrepit heads of Cuphead and Mugman (that theme song at the beginning of the game wasn't kidding).
- Deliberately Monochrome: Getting a "P" rank on all the run-and-gun levels will net you a filter that turns the game monochrome. It actually makes things a bit tougher, since parryable objects are less easily distinguishable without their pink color.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: Many aspects of the game are intentionally outdated to reflect the values of the 1930s.note
- There's heavy emphasis on how gambling is sinful, most obviously in how the Devil himself runs a casino filled with damned souls playing their lives away. While gambling is still seen as harmful today, during the era this game is set in (when the Great Depression was in full swing and most people in the United States were forced into poverty), it was viewed with even greater criticism, and many cartoons pushed anti-gambling morals.
- In "Clip-Joint Calamity", one prominent fly in the background is smoking with a long cigarette stick. Nowadays, no self-respecting business would allow smoking indoors. But in the early-to-mid 20th century, smoking in public spaces was common. Likewise, cartoons would sometimes have characters smoke with no negative connotations, mainly due to the lack of public knowledge about the health risks. Mr. Wheezy, one of King Dice's minions, represents smoking as a vice, but only in the context of being related to gambling rather than the act itself.
- Sally Stageplay's show features an asbestos curtain. Asbestos is now seen as an environmental pollutant and major health hazard rather than a fire safety measure.
- The Moonshine Mob is a gang who's being persecuted by the police for bootlegging alcohol, as the game is set during the Prohibition, where brewing and trading alcohol was illegal in the United States.
- Dem Bones:
- The second phase of the fight with the Phantom Express features a giant conductor skeleton emerging from the train cars.
- One of the bosses in King Dice's gauntlet is a skeletal racing horse. His name is Phear Lap.
- The Devil's skeleton jumps into a hole after the first phase of his boss fight.
- Denial of Diagonal Attack: Averted — like in Contra, it's possible for you to attack diagonally.
- Deranged Animation: Just like the 1930s cartoons it references, the game's animations are very surreal and unrestricted by realistic physics.
- Developer's Foresight: The only way to die in the tutorial (or any area with no hazards, such as the Elder Kettle's house or the Die Houses) is to hack the game to allow friendly fire and kill yourself with a reflected projectile, but if you pull this off, there's a Game-Over Man death card with an empty portrait telling the player "You are not a warrior, you're a beginner." Since there's no way to view this in normal gameplay, most likely it was only implemented to keep the game from crashing in the event of a player finding some way to die there.
- Difficult, but Awesome:
- The Spread shot has the highest DPS out of all your weapons. But in addition to distributing its damage across five bullets, it's the only weapon to have a hard cap on its range. You have to get in close if you want to deal any damage with it.
- The Charge shot is the only weapon that isn't rapid-fire. If you're quick about charging, firing, and landing your shots, you'll deal more damage than you would with the Peashooter, but packing all of your potential damage into fewer shots means that missing becomes much more costly.
- The Lobber shot travels in an arc, as its projectiles are affected by gravity. And, not unlike a full-power Charge shot, it lowers your firing speed in exchange for greater projectile size & damage. While it's more difficult to land these attacks, doing so will get you a higher DPS than you would get with the Peashooter. Plus, since the projectiles all ultimately fall down, crafty players can use them to set traps for approaching enemies.
- The Smoke Bomb charm can be hard to get used to, as vanishing during your dash means it is much easier to miscalculate when & where the movement ends. Still, the momentary invincibility is more than worth it.
- Do Well, But Not Perfect: Parrying counts towards your final score, and bosses that only generate pink enemies/obstacles during certain phases of the fight might not have enough time to do so if you lower their health too quickly.
- The Dragon: King Dice, a sleazy-looking guy with a die for a head, is the Devil's right-hand man. He blocks Cuphead and Mugman's way until they've given him enough contracts. It turns out he made a bet with his boss behind your back, thinking you would never accomplish the feat before the deadline. And for good reason, because he's savvy enough to know that Cuphead and Mugman would ultimately replace him as the Devil's right-hand man. Show up with the contracts and he battles you.
- Dual Boss: One stage has you dealing with Ribby and Croaks, two frog bosses wearing boxing gloves.
- Dub Name Change: To emulate the dubbing convention of the '30s, most of the characters names are translated in foreign languages in an attempt to sound more local to those respective demographics, often changing the meaning and adding new puns. There's so much that it has it's own page.
- Easy-Mode Mockery:
- On top of skipping the final phase(s) of the bossesnote , a boss will not grant their contract when beaten in "Simple" (easy) difficulty. And you need all the contracts to pass through the Die Houses and properly start "All Bets Are Off", the penultimate level before The Devil; without them, King Dice will turn you away. Additionally, Simple difficulty is removed from the selection when facing either of the Inkwell Hell bosses.
- In a combination with Victory Fakeout, most of the bosses' death animations on Simple Mode merely cue the last phases (and accompanying One-Winged Angel transformations) in Regular Mode and up. Anyone who sticks to Simple is in for a nasty surprise the first time they play Regular...
- Easter Egg:
- If you use the Game Djimmi to double your health, then die on Djimmi the Great's final phase, his win quote changes to mock you for being unable to beat him even with his help.
- Only one player at a time can transform into Ms. Chalice. However, the game doesn't prevent both players from equipping the Astral Cookie at the same time. Instead, if both Cuphead & Mugman have it on them as they enter a fight, one is randomly selected to become Ms. Chalice, while the other plays out a unique animation where they fail to eat the cookie. On platformer-style stages, they accidentally drop it, but on flying stages, their plane steals & eats it!
- Eat the Camera: King Dice does this when you are about to face one of his casino bosses, complete with gulp.
- Elevator Action Sequence: "Rugged Ridge" has a funicular that goes down while enemies attack you.
- Equivalent Exchange: Chef Saltbaker's Astral Cookies work this way: They allow a spirit to come back to life and take physical form, however, the cookie-eater's spirit becomes a ghost in the spirit's place. Once the cookie wears off, the eater's body is restored just as he was before, albeit in the location the ghost was standing in.
- Everything Is an Instrument: Sally Stageplay's theme, "Dramatic Fanatic", utilizes the sound of someone tap dancing along with the regular instruments. There's even a tap dance solo!
- Everything Trying to Kill You: Swords, skulls, carrots, tears, question marks, bottle caps, sentient snacks, and so much more. One boss even dies mid-fight and gets an Instant Gravestone which then itself tries to kill you.
- Evil Debt Collector: The Devil hires Cuphead and Mugman to become his, and get back the contracts for the residents of Inkwell Isle's souls.
- Evil Laugh:
- Some of the bosses do this, particularly the human ones.
- Rather than taunt you with some sort of punny quip like most of the bosses at the Game Over screen, the last phase of Captain Brineybeard simply laughs at the player.
- EX Special Attack: By spending one card of your Super Meter, you can shoot a larger and more powerful version of your current weapon. However, if you have a full meter, the same button will instead activate your Super Art.
- Exact Words:
- The Devil says that if Cuphead & Mugman collect the souls of all the debtors, he "just might pardon" the two of them. If the fact that we're pointing to that quote under this trope didn't already give it away, and him being the Devil didn't give it away before that, notice that he never commits to doing it.
- In The Delicious Last Course, before the cups set off to get the ingredients for the Wondertart, Chef Saltbaker reminds them that "like any good bake, heart and soul is the secret ingredient!" Upon returning to him after gathering all of the ingredients on the list, you discover that the secret ingredient for the Wondertart is in fact an actual soul, which Saltbaker was just about to take from either Ms. Chalice or one of the brothers, initiating the final boss fight of the DLC.
- Excuse Plot: The creators of the game admit that the plot is just an excuse for the game's string of boss fights.
- Expressive Uvula: The final phase of the Captain Brineybeard boss fight involves his ship opening its mouth, sending the captain flying. The ship's weak spot is its uvula, which has an angry face which spits fire and an occasional energy beam.
- Extremely Short Timespan: The Devil gives the boys until "midnight tomorrow" to bring him the debtors' souls, meaning that within one very hectic day Cuphead & Mugman beat 17 bosses for their soul contracts, beat King Dice & his lackeys, and finally beat the Devil himself.
- Eye Beams: Grim Matchstick fires rings out of his eyes, and Chauncey of the Root Pack fires rings out of a third eye which opens solely for this purpose. Cala Maria shoots a petrification attack from her eyes, though in her case it's less a beam and more an instant screen-filling blast.
- Eyes Do Not Belong There: The Blind Specter on the Phantom Express has eyes in its hands and even fires out eyeballs from them.
- Eyelash Fluttering:
- Cala Maria's intro in "High Seas Hi-Jinx!" has her adjusting the octopus on her head and playfully batting her eyes with a xylophone "doink-doink!" before preparing to fight.
- In Pip and Dot's battle intro in "All Bets are Off," Dot looks up at Pip and bats her eyelashes (complete with xylophone tinkling sound) as Pip looks down and tips his hat to her.
F-M
- Faustian Rebellion: Refusing to hand over the contracts the Devil sent you out to get has you fighting him.
- Feathered Fiend: One of the bosses, Wally Warbles, is a giant bird in a birdhouse that uses Feather Flechettes as an attack.
- Fight Bell Hijinks: A bell sounds at the start and end of a boss battle, with the latter being accompanied by an exuberant cry of "KNOCKOUT!".
- Finger Gun:
- Cuphead and Mugman fire bullets by putting their fingers in a gun shape and "firing". Wally Warbles also does this by morphing his face into a white glove.
- Djimmi the Great also does a literal example when transforming into a puppet of Cuphead, with the tip of the finger opening up to reveal a cannon.
- Fire Purifies: In the good ending, Cuphead and Mugman toss the Soul Contracts into the fiery furnace to incinerate them (since the Soul Contracts indicate that the inhabitants of the Inkwell Isles lost their casino games against the Devil who until now owned their souls, though they skipped out on paying their deals to him and were deep in debt). In destroying the contracts in this way, the boys deliver the grateful inhabitants from eternal servitude to the Devil.
- Flash of Pain: Bosses briefly flash white when hit.
- Flunky Boss: A few of the bosses summon waves of minions, including Cagney Carnation, Hilda Berg, and Baroness von Bon Bon.
- Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Mugman was the one who tried to discourage Cuphead from gambling their souls for the Devil's loot, but Cuphead was so blinded by greed that he took the bet and lost.
- Forced Tutorial: Not really forced, but doing the tutorial is required if you want to get all the coins, as the one coin in the tutorial counts toward the total.
- Foreshadowing: Billboards for the Devil's Casino can be seen in the "Perilous Piers" Run-N-Gun stage.
- Foul Flower: One boss, Cagney Carnation, is an enormous flower. When Cuphead first encounters him, he gives him an innocent smile, but quickly switches to a wicked Slasher Smile just before the battle begins. Also, his stem has thorns, oddly enough. He looks absolutely demonic in his final phase. Also, the accompanying platforming section has sunflower-like monsters that parachute from the sky.
- Four-Fingered Hands: Most characters with hands have four fingers. The exceptions are Captain Brineybeard and Glumstone The Giant.
- Four Is Death: Fittingly enough, there are four worlds in Inkwell Isles, and the last one is Inkwell Hell, where The Devil is fought.
- The DLC introduces Inkwell Isle Four, which is overall more of a challenge than the prior three.
- Fun with Acronyms:
- The DLC expansion is called "The Delicious Last Course".
- The Nintendo Switch reveal trailer begins as a PSA from the Ministry of Drink and Health Regulation.
- Funny Background Event:
- If you take damage, use an EX move, or activate a Super Art in Werner Werman's boss fight, the ground shakes and everything jumps in the background, including the trophies and the thimble seats.
- Every time you hit Sally Stageplay in her fight, her husband in the background tugs on his hat in horror. If you take a hit, he'll briefly start cheering.
- The last part of Captain Brineybeard's fight involves his ship going One-Winged Angel... which causes the Captain to be amusingly flung upwards. A second or so after that, you can see him landing in the sea in the background.
- Fusion Dance: Used by Ribby and Croaks during the final phase of their fight, where one swallows the other and they turn into a huge slot machine.
- The Gambling Addict: Cuphead has a gambling problem, the Devil offering all the treasure in Hell if he wins was too tempting to pass up, and having lost ends up getting the protagonists into quite a mess.
- Gambling Ruins Lives: The entire plot of the game could have been avoided if Cuphead and Mugman stayed away from the Devil's casino.
- Gameplay and Story Segregation:
- In most, if not all, cases, any transformations the bosses go through are entirely contained in their boss battle. This includes size changes like the bosses being ginormous, or the cups themselves being tiny. This also leads to Unexplained Recoveries for some bosses, notably with characters such as Cala Maria and Esther Winchester.
- Game-Over Man: If you lose to a boss, you get a card with the image of said boss mocking you with a pun related to your defeat. To add insult to injury, it also shows how far along you were to defeating them as well. So if you were right on the verge of getting that last hit before you were taken out, well...
- Genre Throwback: Visually, to rubber-hose cartoons from the first half of the 20th century. Playwise, to
Nintendo Hard Run-and-Gun/Shoot 'em Up games like Contra, Parodius and Gunstar Heroes. - Giant Foot of Stomping: When you beat Mr. Wheezy, the giant cigar, King Dice, who had lit Mr. Wheezy with a lighter, will now bring his foot down on him and stamp him out.
- Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: A few of the bosses and background characters. One of the numerous bosses that you fight before taking on King Dice himself is a giant cigar. All of King Dice's bosses represent a different form of vice.
- Gorgeous Gorgon: During the second phase against Cala Maria, her eels suddenly shock her and turn her into a gorgon where her octopus hair eventually turns into a nest of snakes, and she starts using a petrifying gaze attack.
- Gratuitous Panning: "Baking the Wondertart", the final boss theme of The Delicious Last Course, features a double big band with one band hard-panned to the left and the other hard-panned to the right. This was inspired by the album First Time! The Count Meets the Duke, which did the exact same thing; Count Basie's band was hard-panned to the left and Duke Ellington's band was hard-panned to the right.
- Gravity Screw: You can reverse your gravity by parrying cards with two arrows pointing up and down in Funhouse Frazzle.
- Guide Dang It!: Unlocking the Divine Relic in The Delicious Last Course requires one hell of a walkthrough.Explanation (spoilers ahead!)
- Happy Circus Music:
- Inkwell Isle Two, which is an amusement park, has some jaunty orchestral music.
- The music for the circus level "Funfair Fever" is a light ragtime-esque tune on piano and flute.
- "Coin-Op Bop" was written for a minigame in the amusement park area. It sounds like it was played on a fairground organ, and it starts out quite upbeat. However, as the song goes on, it does get faster and eventually switches to a minor key, turning it into Creepy Circus Music.
- Inkwell Isle Two, which is an amusement park, has some jaunty orchestral music
- Have a Nice Death: Whenever you die, the bosses and enemies will give you a taunt that varies depending on what phase they're in.
- Head Swap: To keep gameplay balanced, Cuphead and Mugman are identical in terms of gameplay, having the same attacks and hitboxes; the only differences are the designs of their heads and color schemes. Miss Chalice is also functionally a head swap of the other two, though her animations are a bit more unique due to her more distinct appearance.
- He Knows About Timed Hits: After you complete the first Mausoleum, or buy something from the Emporium for the first time, Porkrind or the Legendary Chalice will explain that you need to equip your new items in the menu.
- A Hell of a Time: Hell's Casino looks like a classy joint full of wealthy supernatural entities. The ostentatious luxury and glamour is evident as you battle King Dice. Of course, then you consider that all the spirits here gambled their money and lives away. Lampshaded in the bad ending, where the Devil tells the player they will have one hell of a time. The final battle with the Devil is in fact "One Hell of a Time".
- Helpful Mook:
- One of the few mooks that won't hurt you is a trampoline in the Run'n Gun level Funfair Fever; it'll follow you around and let you bounce over obstacles.
- The octopus on Perilous Piers is this, helping you to get to the end of the stage by breaking rocks that are in the way as long as you keep parrying his head.
- During the Phantom Express fight, some of the winged jack-o-lanterns will move you out of harm's way if you let them. They also continuously drop Candy you can Parry, allowing you to gain your supers quickly.
- Hidden Track: On the soundtrack, there's a hidden song two minutes after the Closing Credits theme ends: a very unpleasant-sounding warm-up for every instrument in the band. In-game, this track plays if Cuphead and Mugman choose to become the Devil's servants.
- Holy Pipe Organ: "Joyous Promenade" is a beautiful, reverent tune that starts out on a church organ, then switches to brass, and eventually brings the organ and brass together. The tune plays when you equip the Divine Relic, which you get by beating enough bosses with the Cursed Relic, purging the relic of its evil.
- Horizontal Scrolling Shooter: There are a few stages where you're on a plane or a rail platform.
- Hornet Hole: "Honeycomb Herald" takes place in a giant beehive, where mindless worker bees attack as they hover by and a pool of bubbling honey is constantly rising. A bomb-planting bee cop and Rumor Honeybottoms, the queen bee intent on eating Cuphead, are the bosses.
- Hypnotic Eyes: All examples (so far) also fall under Eye Beams above.
- "I Am" Song: "Die House" is one for King Dice.
- Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: Simple fills in for Easy, shortening the battles but not yielding access to the last two bosses. Regular is the normal difficulty, granting access to all the levels and the ending. Expert Mode unlocks after completing the game, which serves as an equivalent to Turbo Mode from Devil May Cry, while also giving bosses a little more health and in some cases altering their attacks slightly.
- I Lied: You didn't actually think the Devil would keep his word, did you?
- Inconsistent Coloring: Some coloration is deliberately inconsistent, as part of the Inkblot Cartoon Style, as promotional material for black-and-white cartoon were often colored several different ways. Cuphead's and Mugman's gloves are white in most of the game, but yellow on the Results screens. The same applies to Ms. Chalice — her gloves are usually white, but her skirt is colored turquoise on the Results screen rather than its usual light blue. And the brothers' shoes are brown in-game, but match their shorts (red or blue) on the covers and promotional art.
- Infinity +1 Sword: The Divine Relic, which can only be purchased at Porkrind's if you have the DLC installed. What you have to do is probably, by far, the most challenging task that you've ever done in the game: First, you have to purchase it as the Broken Relic. Then, you have to defeat the secret boss, the Dream Devil, which turns it into the Cursed Relic. Equipping the Cursed Relic makes you a One-Hit-Point Wonder, along with your equipment randomly switching whenever you stop firing (though, to compensate for that, you receive charm buffs that cycle on a timer, which includes getting additional health from successful parries). Finally, you need to score 16 points by defeating bosses with the Cursed Relic equipped, which can either come from the DLC or the base game (Not counting the King's Leap bosses). Once you've done all of that hard work, the Cursed Relic finally turns into the Divine Relic, which allows you to freely switch between every weapon you have and activates the positive effect of every charm you have at the same time. Needless to say, every boss that you've fought before then will be a walk in the park with that Relic.
- Inkblot Cartoon Style: Its visuals and overall art style are a homage to old cartoons by Fleischer Studios and its contemporaries, and features characters drawn with wide eyes and mouths, round features, simple outfits, and white gloves. In motion, they all have Rubber-Hose Limbs and uses Briffits and Squeans. Several characters visually evoke characters from that era, such as Werner Werman looking very similar to Mortimer Mouse; some reference animation figures from that era, like Kahl being named for Milt Kahl. The animation was even all hand-drawn on cels!
- Instant Bandages: Some bosses receive bandages when they (or their phase) gets defeated. Examples include Werner Wermann.
- Instant Gravestone: After Goopy Le Grande's second phase is beaten, he gets crushed by his own tombstone suddenly appearing from offscreen. Said tombstone serves as his final form.
- Interface Spoiler: Bosses generally don't have separate health bars for the different parts of their fights, so it's possible during a given phase to do more than enough damage to move a boss to their next phase. And also to die before they can actually make the transition. As the Game Over card decides which form of the boss to display based on the amount of damage the boss has taken, in this case it will show the form the boss didn't get to transform into, which made no appearance in the fight you just had and which you might not yet have seen whatsoever.
- Jungle Jazz: "Floral Fury" is a Latin jazz-themed piece that serves as the battle theme for Cagney Carnation.
- Kaiserreich: Werner Werman of Murine Corps, who wears a Pickelhaube and speaks with an overly-exaggerated German accent in his taunts.
- Kaizo Trap: Averted; the instant you win a boss fight, all remaining enemies and hazards in the arena become incapable of damaging you, so there's no risk of your victory being taken away. However, this goes both ways; if you perish and then some of your in-flight shots finish off the boss, you still lose since you're the one who died first.
- Kill the Creditor:
- The denizens of Inkwell Isles are none too happy to see Cuphead and Mugman, now under the Devil's employ, arriving to take their contracts (and souls) away, so they initiate an all-out fight.
- Also subverted in the good ending for the player. The duo whale on the Devil until he breaks down in tears and surrenders. They then destroy all the contracts, freeing the grateful residents of Inkwell Isles, who throw their heroes a celebratory party.
- Killed Off for Real: Averted. While some of the bosses go down in ways which would seem difficult to recover from, most of them show up in the epilogue completely unharmed, with Word of God confirming that the others are okay as well. Bosses in the DLC end their own fights in equally gruesome ways, and all of them appear perfectly fine during the ending sequence.
- Konami Code: Getting the Bad Ending, then inputting this code on the main menu, plays an otherwise unused and creepier version of that tune that was mistaken as a form of Copy Protection.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: In Inkwell Isle Two, you find a trio of Barber Poles moping over the loss of their fourth member. Upon finding him, you will be treated to this little number.
- Leitmotif:
- The "Inkwell Theme", an ascending four note figure, can be found in much of the game's music, particularly the overworld themes. It mostly serves as a motif to represent Cuphead and Mugman themselves, and it's most audible at the start of "Inkwell Isle One".
- King Dice has "Die House", which is remixed into "The King's Court", and the Devil has "Admission to Perdition", which is remixed into "One Hell of a Time" for his second phase and "One Hell of a Dream" for the DLC's Dream Devil fight.
- While it's not a musical phrase, most of the game's songs are connected by their use of the minor twelve-bar blues chord progression.
- The Legendary Chalice, both as herself and Ms. Chalice, is associated heavily with xylophone and marimba.
- Chef Saltbaker has his self-titled theme, which is remixed as "Baking the Wondertart" for his boss theme and "A Chef's Coda" for the epilogue, among other uses.
- The "Inkwell Theme", an ascending four note figure, can be found in much of the game's music, particularly the overworld themes. It mostly serves as a motif to represent Cuphead and Mugman themselves, and it's most audible at the start of "Inkwell Isle One"
- Letting the Air out of the Band:
- The music abruptly stops when you die, accompanied by a Record Needle Scratch, and all that remains is a slow, muffled version of the tune in the background.
- "Dramatic Fanatic" ends with the music slowing in tempo and pitch until it reaches its conclusion.
- "Admission to Perdition" ends with the music descending into chaos as all of the instruments lose time and sputter into nothing.
- Level Ate: "Sugarland Shimmy" takes place in a land of sweets. It features a fight against Baroness von Bon Bon, the ruler of a living candy castle, and her many confection/pastry-based minions.
- Limit Break: Filling your energy meter allows you to use a powerful attack. These include a Wave-Motion Gun of moonshine, an Invincibility Power-Up, and a muscular ghost which floats around as he whales on the boss.
- Lonely Piano Piece: "The End" is ironically not happy, but heartwrenching. The piano piece that is accompanied by a snare drum plays over the first part of the end credits of the bad ending, followed by complete silence.
- Long Song, Short Scene:
- Most of the music tracks last far longer than the battles that accompany them. This is largely by design; as the songs are all live recordings that don't loop, the composer opted to have the music run longer than the gameplay rather than the other way around.
- The most notable example is King Dice's theme. It's one of the few tracks in the game with actual singing, it goes on for nearly two minutes, and the game only uses it for the small room in which King Dice speaks to you briefly to either let you pass or remind you of missing contracts, which can easily be over in about 20 seconds.
- The Elder Kettle's theme is another extreme example; it's one of the longest songs in the game at over five minutes, but only plays in the first room of the game, which you're unlikely to spend more than ten seconds in. It even has an unlockable piano variant alongside the other overworld themes, even though you have no reason to go back there by the time you unlock that option.
- Losing Your Head:
- Cuphead and Mugman do a special animation that includes removing their heads when getting super attacks.
- Baroness von Bon Bon removes and regrows her head several times, and in the game over screen, she's holding her severed head.
- Cala Maria turns to stone and detaches her head in the last phase of her fight.
- Beppi the Clown turns into a balloon and his head separates from his body in the second phase of his fight.
- King Dice's head bounces a bit when he hops up.
- The majority of the King of Games's subjects do this upon defeat. The Bishop even sends his head after you as his main attack.
- The Lost Woods: Forest Follies. Also where you battle Goopy Le Grande.
- Man-Eating Plant: Cagney Carnation creates these using seeds that he fires like a machine gun, in both ground and flying variations. Several much larger ones appear in Forest Follies, jumping up from bottomless pits to try to chomp on Cuphead.
- Mana Meter: Landing shots and parrying pink attacks allow you to stack up energy cards. note You can then either use one card for your bullets' extra ability, or save up five for your Limit Break.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: It's never quite explained if the Devil has some actual magical power to force others into slavery through deals and contracts (given how many debtors were able to run away with little to no consequences, and the fact that the boys can in the end refuse to honor their part of the deal, it seems he does not), or, as it is possibly hinted by the bad ending, it all boils to the Devil sending his goons to beat his debtors into submission (which the boys proved to be more than able to do, hence why the Devil offered for them to join him).
- Medium Blending:
- An interesting example comes from the fights against Djimmi the Great and Grim Matchstick, where there's constantly rotating models of Egyptian ruins and a medieval tower, respectively, in the background. Though it may seem out of place at first, it's actually a reference to Fleischer Studios' Tabletop process, where cels would be placed in front of a scale model to create elaborate 3D backgrounds. The DLC uses similar stop motion backgrounds for the Ms. Chalice tutorial, the King of Games' Castle, and the backdrop of the Dream Devil fight.
- As an homage to similar scenes in movies like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the opening and closing storybook cutscenes use a book prop that was created and filmed in real life.
- Another example occurs for the Switch version's trailer, a black-and-white ad by the Ministry of Drinks and Health Regulation that has Cuphead and Mugman come out of a bowl after the host pours milk in it.
- An interesting example comes from the fights against Djimmi the Great and Grim Matchstick, where there's constantly rotating models of Egyptian ruins and a medieval tower, respectively, in the background. Though it may seem out of place at first, it's actually a reference to Fleischer Studios' Tabletop process
- Mêlée à Trois: "Bootlegger Boogie" is a 3 way battle between the cups, the police, and Moonshine Mob.
- Memory Match Mini-Game: The puzzle miniboss Mr. Chimes starts off invulnerable, and there's a grid of cards in the background. You use your parry move to flip cards. If you flip two cards that don't match, then Mr. Chimes speeds up, but if you flip matching cards then he becomes vulnerable to your attacks. He switches back to invulnerability after you damage him enough, and the fight is designed so you have to match all the cards to do enough damage to beat him.
- Mentor Archetype: Cuphead and Mugman have a mentor in the form of a teapot named Elder Kettle. His relation to the two other than their caretaker is left unclear, but he gives them a magical potion that equips them with the skills they need to take on the Devil's other debtors.
- Mind Screw: the DLC's secret boss, which eerily, nebulously implies that there's Hidden Depths to the one boss you'd never expect to have them: the very Devil himself.
- Monstrous Scenery: The Tipsy Troop are fought on the table of humongous casino restaurant, where many giant demons and ghosts appear on background as "customers", befitting the nature of The Casino located in Hell.
- Multiple Endings: There is a good and bad ending based on whether or not the brothers agree to hand over the soul contracts to the Devil.
- Good Ending: Cuphead and Mugman beat the Devil and burn all the soul contracts, freeing all the bosses from their debts, and are praised as heroes.
- Bad Ending: Cuphead and Mugman hand over the contracts and become the Devil's servants.
- Mythology Gag: Beating every boss as Ms. Chalice will earn you a secret skin based on her appearance from the Cuphead novels (e.g., on the cover of Cuphead in Carnival Chaos) — her light yellow accents are changed to white, and her blue skirt is changed to gold.
N-Z
- New Game Plus: After beating the game once, Expert difficulty is unlocked, which gives the bosses more difficult attack patterns. Expert bosses go up to S rank rather than A+.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!: The entire plot is Cuphead's own fault; it was him getting greedy at the Devil's casino and ignoring Mugman's warning that led to the brothers becoming servants to the Devil. Given that the owner of the casino is the Devil, notorious for his deception skills in real-life religious mythology, it wouldn't be far-fetched to theorize that he had used supernatural means to rig the brothers' rolls all along.
- No Fair Cheating: With the HP-doubling Game Djimmi in effect, the highest ranking you can achieve on anything is B+, no exceptions. The Game Djimmi is also disabled on Expert difficulty.
- No Name Given: Several of the bosses' minions, such as Sally's husband, and Rumor's officer. More end up coming in the DLC, such as the names of the King of Games' Champions.
- Non-Human Head: The two protagonists of the game have cups for heads. Heck, one of them is naturally named Cuphead!
- King Dice is a man with a die for a head.
- There's also Ms. Chalice, who has a chalice for a head.
- Non-Ironic Clown: Naturally, there are a few in the amusement park-themed Inkwell Isle 2:
- A juggling clown NPC gives you a coin if you can perform a 4x combo with the parry move.
- The anthropomorphic barber poles that make up the barbershop quartet, who are glad to perform for Cuphead and Mugman, resemble clowns due to their white heads and red noses.
- Double subverted with Beppi the Clown. He's one of the game's bosses who made a Deal with the Devil in the past. But in the Good ending, when Cuphead and Mugman destroy the bosses' contracts, he joins the bosses in congratulating the two. Like the other bosses, he seems to be not that bad of a guy when he isn't fighting to save his soul.
- NPC Roadblock: King Dice acts as this, preventing Cuphead and Mugman from reaching the next area until they've completed the current one. Oddly, though amazingly, he has a Villain Song explicitly for this role.
- Obstructive Foreground: One reason it's considered a Nintendo Hard game.
- Ominous Latin Chanting: "Baking the Wondertart", the final boss theme of The Delicious Last Course, features a choir chanting "cave mortem, calix, poculum caput, olla hominum". Translated from Latin, it roughly means, "Beware of death, Chalice, Cuphead, and Mugman!"
- Ominous Pipe Organ: The Mausoleum stages combine organ and theremin music, fitting their haunted nature.
- One-Hit Kill: Averted. Anything that hurts Cuphead and Mugman does 1 HP of damage, gives Mercy Invincibility, and won't do damage when under invincibility, on all difficulty settings.
- One-Winged Angel: All of the bosses have multiple forms, but Hilda Berg takes the cake by turning into a gigantic moon.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
- In a game where most characters either have a perpetual smile or, less likely, perpetual frown (excluding when they're beaten of course), seeing the Devil change from a smile, to a frown, to outright crying as Cuphead/Mugman beat him down gives the final battle a dramatic vibe.
- Cuphead and Mugman normally strike a confident pose before they square off against a boss, but they instead panic when the Devil taunts them before his battle, showing how much of a threat he is compared to other foes. In the DLC, they and Ms. Chalice also react this way to Chef Saltbaker, once he reveals his true intentions and Ax-Crazy personality.
- Our Dragons Are Different: Grim Matchstick is a large green dragon with Eye Beams and the ability to spit fireballs.
- Our Mermaids Are Different: Cala Maria is a giant mermaid with an octopus for hair. When she takes enough damage, electric eels bite and shock her to the point that the tentacles of her octopus hair becomes snakes, turning her into a gorgon.
- Over 100% Completion: Completion for Expert mode is counted on top of your completion for Regular mode, so if you beat every boss on both difficulties, it'll go up to 200% complete. The DLC is tracked separately and split 50/50 for the two difficulties, meaning you can bring your total completion up to 200% + 100%.note
- Pacifist Run: The Run and Gun levels have the top secret "P Rank", only available if Cuphead and Mugman can get through it without shooting anything. Getting P Rank in all six run-and-gun levels unlocks black-and-white mode and vintage mode, which apply era-appropriate effects to the visuals and audio respectively.
- Parrying Bullets: Cuphead and Mugman can "parry slap" anything pink, from bullets to bricks and even each other's hearts, gaining energy, making the player jump higher, and/or doing other unique things (e.g., reviving a fallen partner or moving a level setpiece.)
- Patchwork Map: While the first three Inkwell Isles each have a consistent theme (grassy plains, amusement park, big city), Inkwell Isle 4 is more varied; it has a small town, a snowy mountain range, a haunted graveyard, an underground cave, and a western desert.
- The Pawns Go First:
- Baroness Von Bon Bon's fight is like this. The first three phases are each against one of her five minions, chosen at random (cupcake, waffle, jawbreaker, candy corn, gumball machine). Bon Bon herself only starts fighting during the third phase, firing a shotgun at you, and relies mostly on her living castle in the fourth and last one.
- In a more literal sense, the King's Leap tournament starts with the Pawns, who are the easiest of the champions to beat.
- Pie-Eyed: Most characters display this. It naturally comes with the territory when you're emulating early golden age animation. The gold coins also have this design.
- Pietà Plagiarism: In the Nintendo Switch and Patch 1.2 versions, during Sally Stageplay's third phase, the cardboard cutout of her husband (if you squished him via Falling Chandelier of Doom) parodies the Pieta by striking a pose similar to that of the "Rest" part of the Statue of the Gods in Final Fantasy VI (see Shout-Out).
- Pirate:
- Captain Brineybeard is a giant Brute Pirate, attacking you from atop his ship as he summons basically everything in the ocean to try and kill you. Oh, and the ship and its cargo are alive and trying to do that too.
- There's also a Pirate Girl on the overworld who advises you to use different weapons for different bosses.
- Platform Battle:
- Cagney Carnation's final form does have a floor, but it's covered in thorns, making it just as useless as a Bottomless Pit. You need to hop from platform to platform to avoid his attacks.
- Grim Matchstick's boss fight has you jump on moving cloud platforms in the air.
- Rumor Honeybottoms' boss fight is a Rise to the Challenge scenario where the giant hive's apartment balconies serve as platforms.
- The Devil's second and later forms take place in an arena with no floor and an ever-decreasing number of floating platforms.
- Glumstone the Giant has a rather similar fight to Cagney in that the platforms are only an option that can be used to dodge certain attacks. His final phase requires the cups to jump from skull to skull, lest they be damaged by Glumstone's digestive acid.
- Doggone Dogfight has you running from side to side on a plane to dodge the bosses' attacks. You control the plane's position by standing on it's sides.
- The final phase of Chef Saltbaker's battle has you jumping from platform to platform as they sink into a bottomless pit, whilst dodging and hitting his heart.
- For the dragonfly miniboss in Treetop Trouble, the boys jump from leaf to leaf being held up by friendly mosquitoes. The dragonfly breathes fire that can burn the platforms, making them unavailable until the mosquito for that leaf fetches another.
- The hot dog miniboss in Funfair Fever fires condiments at the boys, who must make their way across a series of platforms to get close enough and destroy it.
- Player Elimination: When a player dies during co-op play, their ghost will float up from wherever they died. The surviving player can parry their ghost to revive them, and the dead player is eliminated otherwise.
- Please, I Will Do Anything!: When Cuphead loses his and Mugman's souls in the casino, both brothers get on their knees and beg the Devil if there's anything they can do to save their souls. The Devil agrees to give them a chance, tasking them with collecting the soul contracts of everyone in debt to the Devil in exchange for their lives.
- Post-Defeat Explosion Chain: Bosses are wracked by repeated explosions after being defeated, although they aren't physically destroyed.
- Power Trio: As of The Delicious Last Course, Cuphead, Mugman, and Ms. Chalice form one as the three playable protagonists of the game.
- Pragmatic Adaptation:
- While the game otherwise sticks to emulating classic cartoons to a T, the developers made a conscious decision to avoid references to the racial caricatures that often appeared in the cartoons the game is based off of.
- While the animation runs at 24 FPS like the old cartoons it's based on, the actual game underneath the hood runs at 60 FPS, like most games of the modern era.
- Protagonist Title: The story revolves around two heroes, but only Cuphead gets top billing (most likely because he's the one that gets them both in trouble).
- Protection Mission: The mausoleum levels are this. If any ghosts reach the urn in the center of the screen, it's Game Over.
- Psycho Electric Eel: The second stage of Cala Maria's boss battle begins with two of these zapping/biting and turning her into a Gorgeous Gorgon. Loads of these eels proceed to help her until the final stage is triggered.
- Rabbit Magician: One of the members of King Dice's Court that can be fought with in the level "All Bets Are Off" is Hopus Pocus, a Hair-Raising Hare that attacks by conjuring up playing card symbols and rabbit skulls.
- Rank Inflation: You can achieve S-Ranks for defeating Expert bosses perfectly, and P-Ranks for a Pacifist Run, which in turn raises one's completion well over 100%.
- Record Needle Scratch: Get killed, and you hear one of these followed by a slower version of that area's background music.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: A very obvious example. Cuphead is the hot tempered, excited red oni while Mugman is the calmer, more careful blue oni. They even wear red and blue.
- Regional Riff: "Pyramid Peril", theme of Djimmi the Great, features a brief modified section of "The Streets of Cairo".
- Resourceful Rodent: Werner Werman fights by using a tank that's been made from various household junk (a tin can, rubber bands, and wood) and he was able to turn a bottlecap into a buzz saw.
- Retraux: The whole game is inspired by 1930s cartoons. There's even a grain filter and simulated 24 FPS frame-rate to complete the effect. It's taken further with two hidden visual filters: 2-strip (only red and blue hues) for getting many A-grades and then talking to the fork character in Inkwell Isle 3, and black-and-white for completing the pacifist runs.
- Rhymes on a Dime: Most of the death quotes, and some of the boss fight scene names that aren't alliterative (Botanic Panic, Dramatic Fanatic, Ruse of an Ooze, etc.).
- Ridiculous Repossession: The titular character and his brother Mugman end up being forced to become the repo men for the Devil after losing the bet in The Casino, and were ordered to repossess all soul contracts of those who made the Deal with the Devil. Said repossessions involve fighting said debtors, who are not surrendering their contracts without the fight, in a long chain of painfully difficult boss fights.
- Rise to the Challenge:
- "Honeycomb Herald" requires you to jump up from one platform to another to avoid the rising honey.
- The same occurs during Chef Saltbaker's fourth phase in "A Dish to Die For" from the Delicious Last Course.
- Roll-and-Move: The King Dice fight is a Boss Bonanza set up as an homage to the Gunstar Heroes Dice Palace, this time modeled after a craps game. In this case, the die is spinning in the air on its own, and you parry it to determine how it lands. (The die spins in a consistent pattern, at a consistent speed, so in this case rolling the desired number is a test of skill, not luck.) Depending on how well or poorly you roll, you fight as few as three or as many as nine minibosses before fighting King Dice himself.
- RPG Elements: You can collect money in platform stages, allowing you to buy special abilities, charms, bullets, or special attacks.
- Rubber-Hose Limbs: Being a very deliberate homage to the 1920s and 1930s era of cartoons, the animation is full of this. Characters have very fluid animations but not much in the way of distinct joints. There are often the implications of knees or elbows, but very little that follows the laws of anatomy.
- Run-and-Gun: The game's genre, of course, taking direct inspiration from Gunstar Heroes. Ironically, the actual Run and Gun gameplay levels were only added into the game after fans suggested it to fill the game out. The game was originally just going to be one boss after the next.
- Rule of Cool: Some of the bosses' transformations during a fight are really odd, such as the two frogs that turn into a slot machine. But the boss fights are so cool you don't care.
- Rule of Three: Get hit three times and your character bites it. Averted if you buy a health buddy charm that gives you one or two more hits at the cost of dealing less damage, and the characters can be saved if the surviving partner is quick enough to revive them; however, the window to revive them grows smaller the more deaths they accumulate.
- Scenery Porn: The 1930s cartoon aesthetics, the scenery, the visuals, the backgrounds... they're all just absolutely gorgeous.
- Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Defying this trope will lead to the game's Downer Ending. Playing it straight leads to the Golden Ending.
- Sdrawkcab Speech: Viewing the bad ending and returning to the title screen will cause the cheery quartet's audio to be played backwards.
- Sequel Hook: The end of the base game proclaims that "Cuphead and Mugman promised to never wander into trouble again... And they didn't — until the next time of course! But that's another story." Likewise, you hear King Dice's laughter after the credits. With the release of the DLC, it looks like we got to see what happened when Cuphead and Mugman wandered into trouble again...although despite what the former's laughter would suggest, neither King Dice nor the Devil are involved in the events of the DLC.
- Sequential Boss: Except for King Dice and his court and the King's Leap bosses, every boss has multiple stages to their fight, although the number of stages is reduced if you're on Simple Mode. In fact, there's enough examples that this game now needs its own page.
- Shaped Like Itself: Cuphead has a cup for a head. Mugman is a man whose mug is a mug. The duo is sometimes referred to as "mugs", a Stealth Pun on "mug" in the metaphorical sense of someone who's been foolishly taken advantage of.
- Shave and a Haircut: Played at the end of the track, "Winner Takes All".
- Sheathe Your Sword: An Easter Egg in "Botanic Panic!": Ollie Bulb (the onion in the second phase) won't actually attack unless you hit him first. If you leave him alone he'll simply leave the fight; instead, a radish pops out during the third phase to make up the difference. Similarly, you can do the same to the pups in Doggone Dogfight, although you still need to bring their health down low, and you'll fight an alternate third phase that lacks the normal phase's Interface Screw.
- Shoot the Dog: The whole game, really. In order to save their and everyone else's souls, Cuphead and Mugman have to play along with their deal with the Devil, roughing up every unfortunate person who ran up a debt with the fiend and collect their contracts. Even more pronounced in the Delicious Last Course, where you're roughing up random characters who just happen to have the items that Chef Saltbaker needs to make the Wondertart (especially the Howling Aces, who are literal dogs).
- Shout-Out: Listed on a separate page.
- Shown Their Work:
- You can tell that the team did their research on the style of old cartoons, right down to the color coordination. And lack of color consistency.
- One of the songs in the game's soundtrack, "Floral Fury", was based on Carmen Miranda's Carnival tunes that composer Kristofer Maddigan was listening to while he was in Brazil with his team of musicians.
- In real life, there were actual criminal gangs who robbed people like King Dice and the Devil did. They lured gullible people to gamble against them, then rigged the first matches so the victim would win... until the victories went to their head. Then, when the victim betted all of their money or anything just as important, the criminals would rig the game so they win instead and pretend they didn't just rob the other party.
- You can tell that the team did their research on the style of old cartoons, right down to the color coordination. And lack of
- Slapstick: The debtors and ingredient guardians encountered are both likely to receive Amusing Injuries as the cups rough them up. Additionally, The Delicious Last Course makes The Legendary Chalice playable as Ms. Chalice, so she's no longer immune to anything that might kill the cups.
- Sibling Yin-Yang: Somewhat shown. Mugman appears to be calmer and Cuphead appears to be more fiery. Shown in the start, and also shown in their different animations, especially the differences when each one drops the Astral Cookie.
- Smoke Out: An early specialty upgrade is a smoke bomb, which lets the boys turn their Dash move into a Flash Step, bypassing everything between its start and end points.
- Snake Says Stop: Cala Maria starts out as a stereotypical mermaid (albeit an absolutely enormous one), but she becomes more of a medusa-like figure for her second and third stages, with snakes growing out of her head and a petrification attack from her eyes.
- Spectrogram Spectacle: The secret reversed version of the title theme, accessible by inputting the Konami Code on the main menu after getting the bad ending, has sprites of the Devil visible if viewed as an audio spectrogram.
- Spike Balls of Doom: One of the enemies in Treetop Trouble shoots out spiky balls, some of them parryable.
- Spikes of Doom: Gnome hats in Glumstone the Giant act as spikes.
- Spread Shot: Cuphead and Mugman can use this as one of their weapons; it has a good spread but limited range. The DLC adds Converge, which has better range but worse spread. Several bosses in the game also utilize this kind of attack.
- Springs, Springs Everywhere: In Funfair Fever, there is a living trampoline that follows the player. In Murine Corps, Werner also shoots springboards.
- Standard Snippet:
- "Aviary Action", the boss theme for Wally Warbles, has a tiny section of Ride of the Valkyries around a third of the way through.
- "Railroad Wrath", the boss theme for the Phantom Express, is briefly blended with the opening notes of "Toccata and Fugue in D minor" about halfway through.
- "Ruse of an Ooze" begins with a standard introduction fanfare.
- Starter Villain: The residents of Inkwell Isle 1. They're tough (except for maybe the Root Pack), but not as tough as bosses get later on. While they get some pretty unusual transformations, most of their initial forms and phases are pretty simple.
- The Stinger: At the end of the credits, King Dice pops in for some parting words:King Dice: That's all there is. There isn't any more... or is there? Ha ha ha...
- Stealth Pun:
- Chauncey Chantenay of the Root Pack has a Third Eye he shoots laser beams from, referencing how carrots are good for eyesight.
- Rumor Honeybottoms attacks with a buzzsaw in her final phase. Also, what's a slang term for rumor? "The buzz".
- Just how did this mess begin in the first place? By making a Deal with the Devil. Why did the characters have to do this? Because they were mug punters.
- If you know how to activate it, Djimmi will gladly give you extra hearts. A Game Djimmi, if you will.
- Stop Poking Me!: If you keep talking to the newspaper-hawking cat in The Delicious Last Course, he'll eventually make fun of you by saying, "Extry! Extry! Troublesome Cups Bother Newsie!"
- Storybook Opening: The game opens with a live-action storybook cutscene explaining Cuphead's situation, and closes out the same way. (In the Good Ending, at least.)
- Stylistic Suck:
- The game even makes the same coloring mistakes as its inspirations.
- The music is deliberately lower quality in-game than on the soundtrack. The audio quality of certain voicelines (especially Porkrind's) is also purposely poor, the same level of quality as in older cartoons.
- The game even makes the same coloring mistakes as its inspirations.
- Sugar Bowl: The aptly-named Sugarland from "Sugarland Shimmy", as ruled over by Baroness Von Bon Bon.
- Take Your Time: Despite the Devil saying Cuphead must collect the soul contracts before the midnight of tomorrow, players can take much time as they want in the game. They can even have a rematch with the beaten debtors!
- Technical Pacifist: If it can even be called that. The Pacifist achievement requires you to get through the run-n-gun stages without shooting any enemies. Parrying, however, is perfectly fine, even if the objects you parry are actually alive and sentient. Even with the Whetstone, which allows you to basically axe even non-pink enemies to death.
- This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: The Lobber shot falls under this trope. It does decent damage, but its unique gimmick — falling downward like a bouncing ball instead of forward into the air — doesn't really help since many of the bosses are too high up to be affected by it, and the level of precision required to aim it often takes too long to set up. There's only one boss that it truly works well against: Grim Matchstick, since he spends the second and third phases of his fight at the bottom of the screen.
- Threatening Shark: Captain Brineybeard can summon one to attack you from behind during his fight.
- Throat-Slitting Gesture:
- During the beginning of her boss fight, Baroness Von Bon Bon runs her forefinger alongside her neck, complete with her briefly losing her head. She also has an unused icon◊ involving her making the same gesture.
- Cala Maria's first game over card has her sliding her index finger along her neck.
- During the beginning of her boss fight, Baroness Von Bon Bon runs her forefinger alongside her neck, complete with her briefly losing her head. She also has an unused icon
- To Be Lawful or Good: You can choose to honor the deal with the Devil, which is the lawful choice, or fight him and save all the debtors, which is the good choice.
- Token Human: Captain Brineybeard, Sally Stageplay, and Dr. Kahl are the only human bosses. Notably, none of them have transformations of their own (though Kahl has a giant robot and Brineybeard's ship turns into a monster). Baroness Von Bon Bon looks human, but can detach her head, throw it as a homing projectile and regrow it, and Hilda Berg starts off as Ambiguously Human before quickly inhaling and transforming into a blimp as the battle starts.
- Toon: Every character in the game is this as an homage to the animation from the Max and Dave Fleischer cartoons back in the 1930s.
- Tradesnark™: Multiple bits of the interface, like the equipment and pause menus, are copyrighted to "MDHR, Inc." circa 1930.
- Tree Trunk Tour: Treetop Trouble, complete with territorial bugs and birds.
- Truck Driver's Gear Change: Near the end of the Delicious Last course's title theme, the song modulates upward.
- Turns Red: Most of the bosses do this, changing their attack patterns and forms drastically as they take damage, usually with separate game over quotes for each form.
- Updated Re-release:
- The 1.2 patch (which is the launch version for Switch and PS4) has new features compared to the base game. You can now choose whether to play as Cuphead or Mugman in single player; the text is fully localized in 11 languages; the mid-story cutscenes are now fully animated rather than being still images as in the original game; there are some extra animations (such as new intro animations for the brothers, an animation for when the Legendary Chalice grants a Super Art, and a curtain call at the end of "Dramatic Fanatic"); and three of the bosses ("Botanic Panic", "Pyramid Peril", and "Dramatic Fanatic") have extra attack phases if certain conditions are met. To wit:
- "Botanic Panic": If you don't attack Ollie when you get to him, he'll leave of his own accord. But a radish named Horace Radiche will pop up alongside Chauncey, and attack you on the ground while you're dodging Chauncey's homing carrots and psychic blasts.
- "Pyramid Peril": If you stay shrunk when you reach the Cuppet phase in Djimmi's fight, he'll create a smaller puppet, which skips that phase entirely but adds an extra obstacle during his final phase.
- "Dramatic Fanatic": During the first phase of Sally's fight, there are some cherub props that can be reached by parrying off the kiss projectiles Sally blows at you. Stand on each of them until they click, and a background chandelier will crush the husband in the background to end the first act. The second act replaces the home setting with a nunnery, with a nun throwing rulers at you from the windows. The third act will now have a prop cutout of the husband alongside Sally, and one of the babies that would've dropped bottles on you in the second phase now appear here pushing out "fireballs" toward you to dodge along with the usual attacks. The final phase is largely the same, but now the nun appears in the curtain call instead of the husband.
- The Delicious Last Course also brought two free updates to the base game. A new ferryman character acts as a Warp Whistle between the Inkwell Isles (as well as Inkwell Isle 4 if the DLC is downloaded), and spinning in place three times on the overworld unlocks Game Djimmi, who doubles your health on lower difficulties.
- The 1.2 patch (which is the launch version for Switch and PS4) has new features compared to the base game. You can now choose whether to play as Cuphead or Mugman in single player; the text is fully localized in 11 languages; the mid-story cutscenes are now fully animated rather than being still images as in the original game; there are some extra animations (such as new intro animations for the brothers, an animation for when the Legendary Chalice grants a Super Art, and a curtain call at the end of "Dramatic Fanatic"); and three of the bosses ("Botanic Panic", "Pyramid Peril", and "Dramatic Fanatic") have extra attack phases if certain conditions are met. To wit:
- Unlockable Difficulty Levels: An "Expert" difficulty becomes available for all the levels after beating the game once.
- Uvula Escape Route:
- Played with. While at no point does it swallow you, the only way to do damage to Captain Brineybeard's ship in its final phase is to shoot its uvula.
- The same applies for when you're Swallowed Whole by Glumstone the Giant in The Delicious Last Course — while you're not freed immediately, you have to shoot his uvula to end the fight.
- Vague Hit Points: The bosses have Hit Points, technically, and if a battle is lost, the screen that's displayed shows the boss's Life Meter, but since you're supposed to hold down the fire button and focus on dodging attacks, the Life Meter is more meant as a record of how far the player got instead of acting as a useful in-combat piece of information.
- During combat proper, the Mana Meter at the bottom of the screen can serve as a makeshift tally of how much damage you're landing (though it tops out at five cards, and goes up and down with how many Super attacks you dish out).
- Variable Mix:
- As discussed in this interview, each music track has several different variations with unique solo sections, which are randomly selected each time you start a boss fight.
- Additionally, the songs themselves will play differently depending on the circumstances. Pausing the game or opening your inventory will muffle the music, using a Super Move will detune and speed it up, and dying will cause a Record Needle Scratch followed by the music slowing to a crawl.
- In the Devil's boss fight, the music transitions between two separate tunes depending on his phase — "Admission to Perdition" plays during the first phase, "One Hell of a Time" plays during the rest.
- "Baking the Wondertart", the final boss theme for The Delicious Last Course, also transitions between different sections depending on the boss's phase, though it's all part of the same tune.
- As discussed in this interview
- Victory Fakeout:
- A possibly-unintentional example with Goopy Le Grande. At the end of his second phase, he becomes dazed and gets squashed by his own gravestone which suddenly appears. As he is a candidate for being the first boss you fight, you may not know that a fight ends only when the announcer declares a knockout, and be quite unprepared for the gravestone to start moving & smash you into pieces.
- A definitely intentional one occurs against the Moonshine Mob. After you beat the anteater, a knockout is announced and a "Knockout" banner comes down from the top of the screen as the anteater collapses. Then the mob's boss, a snail, pops out from under the anteater's hat and blasts your likely stationary self with his megaphone. He even mocks you for forgetting about him, if he kills you. Adding to the trickery is that the Moonshine Mob is potentially the first boss you can fight in the DLC, so it's not difficult to mistake the decoy banner for part of some new DLC-exclusive customized endings to battles.
- Video Game Caring Potential:
- In Inkwell Isle II, you can help a trio of barbershop pole singers find their fourth member and be rewarded with a song.
- Introduced alongside the Switch version's release, when battling the Root Pack Gang, you can choose not to attack Ollie, who will sigh in relief after a few nervous moments and gladly leave. Horace Radiche will take his place and fight alongside Chauncey, making the end stage harder to play, but it takes less time for Ollie to disappear than it does to be attacked and defeated, giving speedrunners and S-graders a tangible incentive for their kindness.
- In the second phase of the Delicious Last Course's "Doggone Dogfight", you can opt to damage the four flying puppies just enough that their jetpacks start malfunctioning without actually shooting them down. Doing so will cause their mother's airship to take them into safety and lead to a different final phase that lacks the regular version's Interface Screw.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: In Dramatic Fanatic, standing on both of the cherubs during the first phase of the fight drops a chunk of scenery on Sally's husband and immediately transitions the fight to its second phase as she mourns him. Though, it's unclear how much of this and rest of the fight are just part of her play, and killing him also causes him to show up again and assist Sally in the third phase.
- Video Game Dashing: Cuphead and Mugman can both dash in any direction to get out of harm's way. They can also buy various upgrades to improve it, such as one that makes them invisible and invulnerable while dashing. Midair dashes (without or without the smoke-bomb) become downright mandatory in a lot of the later missions, since the base game has no Double Jump feature. Miss Chalice has a double jump, so her aerial dash has the function of parrying, while on the ground she has an invincible roll instead.
- Villain Song: "Die House" is sung by King Dice, The Dragon to the Devil, threatening Cuphead and Mugman and reminding them who's boss. It features many Creepy Jazz Music elements, such as a call-and-response segment, that bring to mind some of the haunting tunes by Cab Calloway, who was a big influence on the game's soundtrack."Don't mess with King Dice! (Don't mess with King Dice!)
Don't mess with me! (Don't mess with him!)" - Visual Pun: The game is chock-full of it.
- The bees in Rumor Honeybottoms' boss fight fly in front of cells with tiny office rooms inside. They're office drones, as well as literal "worker bees". A police officer, or in British slang a Bo-bee, attacks you during the first phase with self propelled bombs, which could be a reference to buzz-bombs, British slang for V-1 flying bombs. Rumor Honeybottoms also later attacks you with a buzz-saw. While in the form of a Bee-52 bomber.
- One of Wally Warbles' attacks in his final phase sees his head turn into a trash can and spit its contents at you. He's trash talking you.
- A blink-and-miss-it moment, but defeating Baroness Von Bon Bon's cupcake guard will make the cherry on top of him explode. It's a cherry bomb.
- The boss fight with the Howling Aces has you fight Ace Pilot dog people, while standing on an airplane. It's a dogfight.
- Voice Grunting: Elder Kettle and the few other characters who speak during gameplay utilize this.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: As another nod to the golden age's trend of having cartoon characters morph into inanimate objects as throwaway visual gags, various characters in this game do the same thing. This time around the trope is weaponized, ranging from Cagney Carnation turning his head into a machine gun to Rumor Honeybottoms morphing into a bomber plane to Beppi shapeshifting into an entire carousel.
- The Walls Are Closing In: If you stall in pursuing the Devil's skeleton down a hole (with the "GO" arrow pointing downward), the walls of fire will close in on you and push you in by burning force. Basically, they are fire walls!
- In a more subtle example of this, during the final phase of the fight against Chef Saltbaker, two salt pillars steadily close in on you, forcing you to finish off Chef Saltbaker's heart and finish the fight as quickly as possible.
- Warm-Up Boss: Goopy Le Grande and The Root Pack are the first two bosses available at the start, and both are pretty simple, with Goopy having only telegraphed melee attacks and The Root Pack having easy to dodge projectiles. Also, as the first shoot-em-up boss, Hilda Berg mostly serves to introduce you to the new mechanics. Much like a lot of the other early bosses, her attack tells are fairly easy to read, any gimmicks she throws out are not very difficult to manage. Even when she goes One-Winged Angel in her final phase, the bullet density is nowhere near as bad as the shoot-em-up bosses are later on.
- Wave-Motion Gun: Captain Brineybeard's ship unleashes one in its final phase.
- Wham Line: Near the end of The Delicious Last Course, if the ominous dungeon beneath the bakery and forboding music didn't give it away, Chef Saltbaker clearly spells out his true colors when you meet him inside the dungeon.Chef Saltbaker: A shame I never told you about the most important secret ingredient [to the Wondertart]... [moves aside to reveal the unused cup captured] ...A living soul! While you suckers were out doing my bidding, I nabbed your little friend here.
- Winged Soul Flies Off at Death:
- Cuphead and Mugman's death animation. In co-op, the surviving player can parry the soul to resurrect them, but they're only revived with 1 hit point, and the soul will float away faster after every subsequent death.
- Parodied during the fight with Sally Stageplay. After beating her second phase, her dress turns into an angel costume and she's pulled offscreen by a pulley.
- When dogfish get defeated during Captain Brineybeard's fight, their collars fly off in a similar fashion.
- Words Can Break My Bones:
- One of Hilda Berg's attacks consists of shouting the word "HA" at you.
- The tubas in the Funhouse Frazzle run-n-gun level attack by projecting a loud "BWAAAAA!!!"
- The Yankee Yippers of the Howling Aces attack you by firing the letters B, O, and W at you.
- "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: The credits of the DLC show what community service Chef Saltbaker had to go through with the other bosses — he had to grow berries with Glumstone and the gnomes, help the Moonshine Mob reform, brush the teeth of Mortimer's whale, serve spaghetti at Esther's saloon, repair Brigadier Bonegarde's plane, and play checkers with the King of Games.
- X-Ray Sparks: Cala Maria suffers this after defeating her first form, courtesy of Psycho Electric Eel bite.
- You Have Failed Me:
- King Dice crushes Wheezy under his foot if he loses to the cups.
- Implied right before the final battle: the Devil is happy the cups busted up the "good for nothing lackey" King Dice, so he probably intends to replace him with them.
- Your Soul Is Mine!:
- Unusually for this trope, Cuphead and Mugman don't need to directly collect any souls, only needing contracts granting ownership of a person's soul.
- In the DLC, Chef Saltbaker captures one of the cups' souls to use as the final ingredient for his Wondertart.
- Zodiac Motifs: Hilda Berg, a zeppelin boss on Isle One, has the ability to transform into cloud creatures all resembling Zodiac signs: Gemini, Taurus, and Sagittarius. An image of their respective constellations appear onscreen just before her transformations.
Tropes with their own pages
- A KNOCKOUT!
