Cuphead/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


These things about Cuphead are subjective - not everyone will agree with all of them.

  • Alternative Character Interpretation:
    • Thanks to having no dialogue aside from a handful of game over quotes, the Debtors' personalities are rife for speculation. How many of them knowingly made their deals with the Devil? How many of them did so accidentally? Are they evil, or decent people trapped in a bad situation? And what did they hope to gain from their deals in the first place?
    • Did the Devil simply sit back and let Cuphead's greed screw himself and Mugman over, or did he rig his dice roll? After all, this is the Devil that we're talking about.
  • Anticlimax Boss: Zigzagged with the Devil's final phase. On one hand, you beat him so badly that he can't do anything other than cry his eyes out. On the other hand, his tears, the falling poker chips, and the single platform you shoot him from still make for quite a hostile environment. If you've got at least 2 HP left, you've basically been handed a victory on a silver platter and can tank a hit before beating him. But if you're one hit away from death, the risk of getting killed at the homestretch is still very real.
    • The same goes with the final phase of the DLC's final boss, Chef Saltbaker. He's even easier than the Devil since there are no obstacles to look out for besides his heart and the easily avoided bottomless pit. However, his first two phases make up for it by being so stupidly hard.
  • Author's Saving Throw: Disappointed Mugman fans were over the moon when the 1.2 patch made him a playable character. Before that, the only way you could play as him if you were player 2 in a co-op game.
  • Breather Boss: Interestingly, Inkwell Island 3's got a decent amount of these despite being the second-to-last major location in the game, probably as a way to balance out the presence of some of the game's hardest bosses. Werner Werman, Sally Stageplay, and Captain Brineybeard don't have much in the way of Bullet Hell, and employ attacks that are easier to read and react to than many midgame bosses. While they still put up a decent fight (and Brineybeard can be tricky if you struggle to keep his barrel out of the way), chances are you'll beat them with only a few deaths to your name, and it's not uncommon for new players to clear them on their first try.
    • A few of these also make up the ranks of King Dice's Court. Chips Bettigan, Mr. Wheezy, Pip and Dot, and Mangosteen are incredibly simplistic and easy bosses by default. And if you've got Smoke Bomb equipped, the moderately dangerous Hopus Pocus and Pirouetta become borderline Zero Effort Bosses.
    • Assuming you don't fight them first, the Moonshine Mob is a lot easier than the DLC's other bosses. Their attacks are fairly straightforward and the various bosses in the Mob often leave themselves open for your attacks. The Anteater is a lot more evasive, but that's nothing your Supers or the Crackshot can't handle.
    • The Howling Aces, who are encountered later no matter which boss you start with, are also far easier than the bosses you've likely fought to get to them. Many of the bulldog's attacks leave him wide open, and the puppies fire small, easily avoided projectiles as their only attack. The saluki's Interface Screw can mess you up since it's so unexpected, but even that looks scarier than it actually is since you don't need to move around much to dodge her dog bowls and lasers.
    • Sandwiched between the obnoxious Knight and tedious Rook in the Chess boss fights is the Bishop. Both he and his homing circlets can be dodged in your sleep, exposing his weakness is as easy as dashing through several easy-to-reach candles, and his whole body (technically head) can be parried once he's vulnerable, meaning you're very unlikely to accidentally hurt yourself while attacking him.
  • Catharsis Factor: Defeating a particularly annoying boss is always a cause for celebration. Not only does it feel great to clear what seemed like an impossible challenge, but you get the satisfying sight of your opponent broken and beaten down for your troubles.
  • Crosses The Line Twice: As of the 1.2 update, Sally Stageplay's fight has a secret, tougher path. How do you access it? By dropping stage lights on her cowering husband and killing him. It's every bit as messed up and heartbreaking as it is darkly hilarious.
  • Demonic Spiders:
    • The shrimps at the end of Perilous Pier attack in swarms, and fly at you in arcs that make it hard to shoot them down. Dodging isn't much easier because you don't have much room to move around on the head of the octopus you're riding, and the oyster behind you is constantly pelting you with attacks of its own. And if you're going for a P rank, killing them is not an option.
    • The stone lions in Rugged Ridge are one of the biggest obstacles you'll face if you're trying to get an A+ rank. Killing them isn't hard, but it is time consuming, and taking your time to kill every single lion you run into will cause you to miss the timeframe needed to get that perfect score. Ideally you want to avoid them, but their massive size makes it nearly impossible to safely jump over them or phase through them with Smoke Bomb without getting hit.
    • The ghostly jockeys in Phear Lap's boss fight. When you fly over them, they rocket into you insanely fast from below. They're easy to lose track of thanks to their small size and the stage's copious use of Interface Screw, but even without those factors taken into account, you need some seriously good reaction time to avoid them.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse:
    • King Dice, full stop. His catchy theme song, simplistic yet cool character design, and unique boss fight make him a very memorable foe, and it helps that he's one of very few opponents to have extensive dialogue to properly characterize him with.
    • Cagney Carnation was one of the very first bosses shown off during the game's prerelease period, and his cute yet creepy design made him something of a fandom darling near-instantly.
    • Grim Matchstick, for being one of the game's best examples of Badass Adorable. His tubby physique and shy demeanor make him lovable from the get-go, and his relentless fire attacks make him an opponent to be feared and respected. Frustrating as fighting him may be, he's far too much of a lovable cuddlebug for fans to hate.
    • Cala Maria. What's not to love about a gigantic, attractive flirt of a mermaid? Another point in her favor is her Adorkable reactions to things going badly over the course of her boss fight.
    • The unused Demon Bat boss shown off in the 2014 trailer has quite the fan-following thanks to its oddly cute and intimidating design. The same goes with fellow unused boss Jelly the Octopus, who's cute in a more traditional sense.
    • The Moonshine Mob in the DLC. Their amazingly fun boss fight and the unique concept behind it (a violent police sting that you get caught in the middle of), as well as the fake victory screen made an excellent first impression on many players who started with them. The lightbug and anteater are also very popular among the Furry Fandom.
    • While the Howling Aces are fairly well-liked due to being a bunch of lovable dogs, the saluki commander's popularity eclipses that of her men by a country mile. Blame it on her good looks and cool Lady of War demeanor.
  • Fanfic Fuel: As mentioned above, the motivations that led to the debtors making their own deal with the Devil are ripe for fanfic fodder.
  • Game Breaker:
    • The Smoke Bomb is practically the only charm you need, because the invincibility it grants you makes it a lifesaver against massive attacks that can otherwise only be dodged in certain specific ways.
    • The charms that give you extra hearts make it a lot easier to survive the game's Run 'n Gun stages and obtain that goddamned P Rank. While using them will weaken your attacks, it doesn't matter when you aren't allowed to kill anything to begin with.
    • The Charge Shot makes up for its low firing rate by packing a hell of a punch. And thanks to its focus on spaced-out bursts of high damage, you don't have to worry about constantly making sure you can keep a steady stream of firepower going while dodging and reacting to a boss' attacks like with other weapons. It was so powerful initially that it got hit with the nerf hammer, but it's still a formidable weapon even after its rebalancing.
    • Ms. Chalice takes most of the game's difficulty and snaps it over her knee. She's got a Swiss army knife's worth of overpowered abilities: an extra heart? A double jump? A dodge roll with invincibility frames on par with the Smoke Bomb? A parry dash that's far easier to pull off than the brothers' parry jump? She's got all of this, as well as a Super Art that gives her an extra heart every time you use it. While the game's toughest bosses are still going to be rough for her, she's still better off than Cuphead and Mugman.
  • Goddamned Boss: Not super prevalent since every boss can be beaten in under two minutes, but still present in the form of tricky opponents who can screw you out of a perfect score.
    • Goopy Le Grande telegraphs all of his attacks, but his massive size during his second phase makes it easy to accidentally crash into him when he jumps around. You won't be dying to him a lot, but you can expect plenty of resets when miscalculating a dodge results in you missing out on a "no damage" score.
    • Willy Warbles lacks his dad's aggressive Bullet Hell attack patterns, but his free-range movement and spinning egg shield still make him a tedious and annoying opponent. Trying to play it safe by keeping your distance can result in you running up the clock, but playing aggressively and slipping between his shield can easily result in you getting hit right back and messing with your "no damage" score.
    • Mr. Chimes is not a boss you want to run into while making your way down the game board towards King Dice, because his battle seems tailor-made to mess with your time score. It's not a proper boss fight, but instead a game of Memory where you can't hurt him unless you match a pair of cards, and his awkward movement makes it hard to consistently hit him while he's vulnerable.
    • The Lollipop Ghouls of the Phantom Express are hard to kill in a timely manner without EX/Super Move usage, because their dangerous lightning breath attack requires you to escape to the opposite side of the stage, and the little ghosts homing in on your from offscreen will eat attacks intended for them. The Head of the Train, on the other hand, can't even be hurt unless you manually expose its weakpoint. And the Head's constant movement, projectile spam, and said weakpoint's small size make killing it with anything other than the Chaser a real slog.
    • The Knight, Rook, and Queen are this if you don't consider them That One Boss. The Knight's massive health pool and aggression, the Rook's flood of projectiles getting in the way of his parriable heads, and the unreliable and heavily inaccurate cannons you have to fire at the Queen make them hard to hit, which can really drag out their fights.
  • Harsher in Hindsight: In the main game, Cuphead and Mugman are, in effect, fighting these bosses in order to take their souls. As bad as that may seem, The Cuphead Show suggests that losing your soul is a horrific experience for the victim, which makes the game's plot even darker than it is.
  • Memetic Badass: The tutorial stage, which is jokingly referred to as the hardest, most brutal challenge in the history of gaming thanks to one journalist's repeated failures to clear an easy jump.
  • Memetic Mutation:
    • Cuphead being the "Dark Souls of Run and Gun platformers" is a comparison often made by game journalists commenting on its difficulty. The absurdity of the comparison as well as Dark Souls comparisons being overdone in general has led to a lot of mockery and jokes at the expense of game journalists, as well as a surprising amount of crossover art, ultimately culminating in this beautifully rendered parody animation.
    • Speaking of Cuphead and game journalists, an infamous video of a journalist struggling to get past the game's tutorial stage proved to be ripe for meme fodder, with people uploading their own parodies such as this.
  • Memetic Sex God:
    • King Dice has got legions of fangirls thirsting over him, and having a dice for a head and a Louis Armstrong-sounding voice do nothing to detract from his appeal. In fact, that's partially why he's so popular. He's also got plenty of charisma and cuts a dashing figure in that suit of his.
    • On the female side of things, there's Cala Maria and Ms. Chalice. Being a sexy giant mermaid, Cala Maria's popularity goes without saying, but in the case of Ms. Chalice she's got a lot of Moe appeal going for her.
  • Most Annoying Sound:
    • Getting hit results in the jarringly loud and unpleasant sound of breaking porcelain. Already annoying in standard play, but it's downright infuriating when you're going for a perfect run.
    • Dr. Kahl's laughter. It's irritating, condescending, and once he starts he never stops! Once you finally defeat him, it'll haunt your dreams for weeks to come.
  • Most Wonderful Sound:
    • Parrying an attack creates a very satisfying smacking sound.
    • Winning a boss fight and hearing the announcer's excited declaration of "KNOCKOUT!" right when you land the final hit. Especially if it's a boss that's been kicking your ass until that point.
    • The triumphant "CUPHEAD!", "MUGMAN!", or "MS. CHALICE!" heard on the map when you clear a level.
  • Scrappy Mechanic: Simple mode. Defeating bosses with the difficulty set to Simple doesn't give you a Soul Contract. Since it seems like it wants to be more of a teaching tool so you can ease yourself into a tough boss fight, that's fair. But the big problem is that it isn't a good teaching tool, because the boss fights in Simple Mode are cut short! So ultimately, it doesn't really serve any kind of purpose and feels like it's there just to be there.
  • Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped: While you'll probably never visit a casino ran by the Devil himself, you can still learn a thing or two from Cuphead and Mugman's situation. Namely that gambling is a hell of a vice, and it can and will ruin your life if you let it a gambling addiction spiral out of control.
  • That One Attack:
    • Beppi the Clown's roller coaster and penguins mentioned in his That One Boss entry. Having to constantly jump around so the coaster and its passengers don't hurt you can cause you to crash right into a dog balloon or horseshoe, and those penguins are expert pitchers whose baseballs are tiny and easy to miss in the chaos of his boss fight.
    • Baroness Von Bon Bon's little jellybean soldiers are the unsung "heroes" of her boss fight. They're not aggressive, but their tiny size makes them easy to miss until you've suddenly ran into or jumped onto one while dodging an attack from one of the baroness' minions. Her bouncing head is also annoying if you aren't using the Roundabout, because it aggressively chases you down while you're already running from her living castle, and dodging it and attacking the Baroness who's behind you for the entirety of the final phase is an exercise in frustration.
    • Grim Matchstick's fire minions and fire bubbles. The minions leap at you with startling speed and accuracy, and if you pop the bubbles, several flames come shooting out in a tough-to-avoid pattern... in a fight that already combines Platform Hell with Advancing Boss of Doom!
    • Brineybeard's barrel. He's an easy boss for the most part, but that barrel is his fight's sole bastion of difficulty. It's constantly chasing you, tries to crush you once you're under it, and it can block attacks meant for Brineybeard and his ship. And if your positioning is off, you'll take unavoidable damage during the final phase because when you duck under the ship's beam attack, you're unable to move and are completely helpless if it starts making its way towards you...
    • The Phantom Express has two of these:
      • The Lollipop Ghouls' lightning breath. It's fast and covers almost the entire battlefield, and if you're too close to the attacking head, you simply won't be able to make it to the other end in time due to the slight cooldown between the parries needed to move the train cart you're riding on.
      • The Head of the Train's fireballs. Not only do they come out fast and in borderline Bullet Hell patterns, but they're easy to lose track of because of their small size and the battlefield's constant movement.
    • Hopus Pocus also has a few, depending on the Charm you equip:
      • His ring of rabbit skulls is a total non-issue with the Smoke Bomb equipped. But without it? Get ready to suffer. When the skulls trap you and move in for the kill, your only escape route is a single gap between the skulls. Sometimes it can spawn in a disadvantageous position that makes it stupidly hard to escape unscathed, but even when the RNG's feeling cooperative, the sheer speed which the skulls close in on you means that you can still get hit if your reaction time is even sort of off.
      • Without P. Sugar, it can be hard to get past the falling version of his card suits attack, because manually parrying pink objects from below is a very inconsistent and risky affair.
    • It's only appropriate that the Devil has a few, since he is the Final Boss and all.
      • The dragon attack. To dodge it, you have two options: get under the gap created by his coiling body, or run away to the edge of the screen. But both options present problems of their own. The "safe space" under the Devil's body shifts in position as he snakes across the screen, meaning you have to constantly move at a speed that's too fast for him to smack into you, but slow enough so you don't smack into him. And if you choose to run away, him pinning you against the side of the screen makes it very easy for you to get sniped by a demon minion running in from off-screen.
      • The fire spell. The Devil summons fireballs in one of three patterns, and each attack pattern results in several small, annoying projectiles flying around the screen. The six-flame version in particular is especially bad, because the flames home in on you while coming at you in random patterns.
      • The small flying minions in his second phase attack you in a wide, swooping arc that is ridiculously annoying to avoid. Even if you dodge them, they can very easily corral you into the path of a falling poker chip or the skull projectiles spat by the big demon minions on the sides of the battlefield. You can kill them, but it's very hard to do so since the Devil's weakpoint doubles as a protective barrier for them.
  • That One Boss: Cuphead is a tough game to begin with, but the second you step foot onto Inkwell Island 2, you start fighting some of the really dangerous debtors.
    • You fight Beppi the Clown on a rollercoaster track, and sadly, it isn't some generic setpiece. Once his second phase starts the coaster will start making its rounds across the track. And every time it drives by, you have to dodge the coaster itself, its dangerous passengers, and Beppi's attacks, which are onslaughts of vicious dog balloons and annoying horseshoe clusters. Thankfully, his transformation into a massive Merry-go-Round at the end of the fight means you now have platforms you can stand on to avoid the roller coaster... but guess what? Now he's got baseball-chucking penguins to hassle you with, and they've got quite the throwing arm!
    • There are many bosses who can seriously screw you with the RNG, and Baroness Von Bon Bon is one of the worst in that regard. The first three phases of her fight have her summon one of five food-themed minions, each with their own attack pattern. Not too bad at first, but as the fight progresses she starts throwing more obstacles into the mix: tiny jellybean soldiers that are easy to lose track of starting with phase 2, and then she'll grab a shotgun and start firing at you herself once phase 3 rolls along. The battlefield descends into chaos in a hurry, and minibosses like the erratic bouncing cupcake and projectile-spamming gumball machine are especially nightmarish once paired with the other obstacles. Her final phase is a lot less random, but it's instead a hellish balancing act between running away from her living castle, turning around and shooting at her, and avoiding her heat-seeking head after she tosses it at you.
    • If Hilda Berg and Djimmi the Great didn't teach you how to effectively use the aeroplane, Wally Warbles will serve as a nasty wakeup call. Bullet Hell is his specialty, and 3 out of 4 phases have you dodging overwhelming onslaughts of densely-packed projectiles while the big bird himself is very rarely left wide open for punishment.
    • Grim Matchstick's fight hits you with the unholy trinity of Platform Hell, Interface Screw, and Advancing Boss of Doom. You're constantly having to jump from cloud to cloud while fighting him, and they can be easy to miss thanks to the bright-colored background. And when you aren't getting hurt by losing track of the clouds and falling, you're getting smacked by his fire monsters' annoyingly accurate jump attacks or popping his fire bubbles and getting a face full of fireballs as a result. Oh, and if you didn't bring the Roundabout? Get ready for hell, because like with the Baroness, there comes a point where you have to constantly run away from him while fighting back. And unlike her, two thirds of his fight are like this.
    • And just in case you weren't sick of autoscrolling boss stages already, Rumor Honeybottoms is ready to make you cry! Her stage scrolls upward, forcing you to constantly scale a series of platforms while she pelts you with annoyingly large and chunky spells. Platform placement is also annoyingly random, meaning you can get screwed over if you're cornered by an attack and end up in a spot where you can't easily get to safety. But the worst part of this fight is easily the final phase, where she turns into a monstrous airplane. She sticks to the bottom of the stage once she transforms, where hitting her can be a true exercise in frustration depending on the shot types you've equipped. And both her attacks are obscenely annoying to dodge, with one being a pair of large, indestructible fists that home in on you, and the other being a sawblade attack that comes out fast with very little windup.
    • Dr. Kahl's robot is guaranteed to ruin your day. The first phase forces you to destroy several of the robot's body parts while dodging tons of annoying attacks, and the final phase has you dealing with Bullet Hell that puts Wally Warbles' to shame while trying to maneuver around electric gates that are trying to close you in. Even the easier second phase is annoying thanks to the homing missiles constantly flying in from offscreen.
    • Cala Maria. She's just as lousy with RNG abuse as the Baroness is, but what she lacks in miniboss summons she makes up for in freezing you in place by turning you into stone. Breaking out of it isn't hard, but there's still just enough time for you to get shot by an electric eel or crash into a wall while you're trying to shake the effects of your petrification off. And since her first phase pits you up against annoying enemies in unorthodox combinations, chances are you'll already be banged up once she starts pulling the petrification attacks out.
    • King Dice isn't that hard by himself, but to get to him, you have to fight at least three minibosses decided by the roll of a die. And the Tipsy Troupe, Phear Lap, and Mr. Chimes are opponents you do not want to cross paths with. The shot glass and whiskey bottle's lightning-quick booze attacks make up the brunt of the Tipsy Troupe's difficulty, Phear Lap combines Interface Screw with annoyingly fast enemy summons, and Mr. Chimes moves in an unorthodox pattern and can't even be hurt unless you keep winning a surprise Memory game.
    • Glumstone the Giant is one of the first DLC bosses that's available to fight, and players that start with him will be met with a nasty surprise as they're mobbed by his irritating Gnome flunkies and assaulted by a summoned flock of geese that take up the entire upper half of the screen. When he swallows you, you're now pitted against the hellish tag-team that is platforms suspended over a pool of stomach acid (that can sink into it) and mild Bullet Hell.
    • Esther Winchester easily ties with Dr. Kahl's robot in terms of being the worst plane boss. She's just as fond of Bullet Hell as he is, but her projectiles move in weird patterns such as her scattershot dynamite, snake oil, and steaks. And once she's been reduced to canned sausage, the horror isn't over because now you have to contend with two strings of sausages that constantly converge on your position, forcing you to avoid them by flying through the gaps in the sausages while also dodging the dense volleys of peppers that she'll spray at you.
    • As expected from the DLC's final boss, Chef Saltbaker is a nightmare and a half. You can't stop to think for even a second due to the obscene amount of attacks he's throwing at you, and it's easy to get cornered thanks to his many projectile's unique movement patterns. The first phase is especially bad about this since he's a total spaz who moves around a lot during his attacks, making it way harder to hit him than it should.
    • Among the Chess bosses are the Knight, Rook, and Queen. The Knight is an incredibly defensive foe whose weakpoint is rarely ever exposed, usually when he's unleashing one of several fast attacks with tells that are hard to pick up on. The Rook, on the other hand, can only be hit by parrying the severed heads of his victims back at him while contending with the storm of sparks and skulls he's tossing your way. Then there's the Queen, who showers you with Bullet Hell projectiles while you're trying and failing to shoot her with the unwieldly cannons stationed around her arena.
  • That One Level: Perilous Piers is manageable up until you hit the final stretch, and suddenly everything goes to hell. You ride a giant octopus across a vast expanse of ocean, and have to parry the anchor on his head so he'll destroy the occasional rocks that pop up to block your path. While you're dealing with that, you have swarms of shrimps jumping at you from the right side of the screen, and an immortal clam shooting you with his own attacks from the left. And just in case that wasn't hellish enough, there's barely any room to dodge on the octopus, and parrying his anchor to clear a path can put you right in the enemies' line of fire. Harsh enough when you're playing normally, but a Perfect or Pacifist run of this stage is control-smashing levels of frustrating.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Elder Kettle. What little we know of him paints him as a Cool Old Guy and a Reasonable Authority Figure who very well may have been a legendary hero in his youth, but his relevancy plunges off a cliff after you clear Inkwell Isle 1. Some wish he could have been Promoted to Playable like the Legendary/Miss Chalice, but others think he could have been a great Bad Ending-exclusive boss if you choose to side with the Devil.
  • What an Idiot!: Gambling in a casino owned by the Devil was already a bad idea to begin with. But the second Old Scratch himself stepped into the parlor, Cuphead really should've quit while he was ahead and left the building.
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