Cuphead

A 2017 Run-and-Gun game made by Studio MDHR, Cuphead: Don't Deal With The Devil looks less like a video game and more like a long and surreal Fleischer Brothers cartoon straight from the 1930's. And that's no accident, because in between the lovingly hand-animated sprites and worlds that look like they were taken from an animation cell, the developers intentionally sought out to recreate the feel of those kinds of cartoons and did everything in their power to make them feel as authentic as possible. While this dedication led to a long development cycle (as well as the Moldenhauer brothers turning to Microsoft for assistance), the widespread critical acclaim and popularity are proof that it was definitely worth it.

The game stars the spunky Cuphead and his more cautious brother Mugman, two boys with drinking glasses for heads and a knack for getting themselves into trouble. After getting lost and ending up on the wrong side of the tracks, they stumble upon a casino owned by The Devil himself quite literally called The Devil's Casino. As bad of an idea as it is, they enter, gamble, and win game after game until they get the attention of the Devil. Intrigued by their skill, he offers to give them all his treasure if they can beat him in one last game... with the caveat being that they owe him their souls if they lose.

Terrified, Mugman begs Cuphead to take their winnings and go, but his greedy brother can't resist the potential payday and gambles once more, sealing their fate when he loses. When the Devil demands payment, Cuphead and Mugman plead for mercy and ask for an alternative that the Devil graciously provides: they have 24 hours to hunt down a bunch of debtors who owe him their Soul Contracts. If they gather all of them in time, he'll leave them alone. But if they fail, he'll have their heads, and quite literally at that. Left without options, Cuphead and Mugman begin the hunt, and face a ton of dangerous, powerful, and downright weird opponents in their quest to save their souls.

In wake of the game's success, a DLC campaign known as the "Delicious Last Course" was announced in 2018 alongside a new playable character in the form of Ms. Chalice. But it missed its 2019 release date, and slipped neatly into Development Hell before being slated for release on June 30, 2022. There is also a Netflix series in development, with a sneak peek available here.

Tropes used in Cuphead include:

Action Girl: The female debtors kick just as much ass as the male ones, especially Rumor Honeybottoms and Baroness Von Bon Bon.
Ambiguously Gay: A female diner seems very interested in the dancing showgirls performing in the background of Ribby and Croaks' boss stage.
Amusement Park: Inkwell Isle Two is set in a carnival, as are Beppi the Clown's boss stage and the "Funfair Fever" Run 'n Gun level.
Anti-Villain: The debtors. Yeah, they're willing to kill two children and happily trashtalk them when they die... but considering that those children are the (conscripted) debt collectors of the Devil himself, can you really blame them?
Badass Baritone: Friendly merchant Pork Rind has a cool, deep voice that complements his somewhat intimidating appearance.
Badass Normal: Sally Stageplay and Captain Brineybeard are fairly average human beings, but kick some serious ass when Cuphead and Mugman try to collect their Soul Contracts.
Bait and Switch Boss: Subverted. At first it seems Werner Werman is the boss of Murine Corps, but at the end of his second phase he is eaten by a cat that the player must fight next. After defeating the cat, its face falls off, revealing that it was a robot that Werner was controlling the whole time.
Balloon Belly: Hilda Berg inflates her stomach while turning into a blimp, and will further inflate herself before flying at you as one of her attacks.
Bare Your Midriff: Cala Maria, in classic mermaid fashion.
Bash Brothers: Ribby and Croaks, frog boxers with a close brotherly bond between the two that's reflected in the way they cooperate during their boss fight. Cuphead and Mugman's relationship is a literal spin on this trope as well.
Big Bad: The Devil, who forces Cuphead and Mugman to collect the Soul Contracts of his many debtors on threat of taking their heads.
Big Red Devil: Subverted. The Devil has dark brown fur at first, but during his boss fight it will eventually take on a dangerous reddish hue.
Boring but Practical: The Smoke Bomb is a lot less flashy than the other charms, but a dash with generous amounts of invincibility frames is too good not to have.
Boss-Only Level: Most of the game consists of these, with the only exceptions being the Run 'n Gun stages and the mausoleums.
Brains and Brawn: Wally Warbles and his son Willy have this kind of dynamic, with Wally using huge and simplistic attacks like giant bullets and tons of razor-sharp feathers while Willy's attacks are a lot more complex, such as his carefully-aimed ray gun shots and his expanding/contracting egg barrier. Willy even references the trope by name in his death screen.
Bubbly Clouds: Grim Matchstick's boss stage.
Bullet Hell: Later boss fights will absolutely flood the stage with projectiles. Wally Warbles, Beppi the Clown, and Dr. Kahl tend to be really bad about this in particular.
Casino Park: King Dice is fought inside the Devil's Casino, and to fight him you first have to clear a dice game that will pit you against various minibosses depending on the number you roll. Said minibosses are based off of things dealing with gambling and vices, such as a skeletal horse jockey, a giant living cigar, and a sentient pile of casino chips.
Cats Are Mean: A huge cat seemingly eats Werner Werman during his boss fight and tries to kill you during the last phase. Even though it's revealed at the end to be a mech Werner is piloting, it's still a dangerous beast at the end of the day.
Climax Boss: Your last opponent before the Devil is Mr. King Dice... and man. What a battle it is. He isn't much of a threat by himself, but his "boss fight" is a luck-based Boss Rush that forces you to fight several tricky opponents before him. And despite his general easiness, he can easily finish off a wounded player who wasn't lucky enough to recover their health before fighting him.
Clipped-Wing Angel: What terrible form does the Devil take during his final phase? Nothing: he's still kaiju-sized, but his threat level is completely diminished when he starts bawling his eyes out. His tears can still kill a weakened player, but he basically loses his will to properly fight once you've got him on the ropes.
Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Parryable attacks and objects will always be a bright, eye-catching pink that's nearly impossible to miss even on the busiest of stages.
Cool Old Guy: Elder Kettle, the elderly teakettle who looks after Cuphead and Mugman. He's a loving grandfather figure to the boys and gives them the powers they need to stand a chance against the Devil's debtors.
Cute Giant: Grim Matchstick is a big, adorable dragon whose stuttery, friendly game over quotes make it hard to hate him even after he's killed you for the billionth time.
Cute Monster Girl: Cala Maria is a gigantic mermaid, and a smoking-hot one at that. Even when she turns into a monstrous gorgon, she's still very attractive.
Cyclopean Creature: One chases you at the end of Rugged Ridge.
Dark Is Evil: The Devil's fur is is a very dark brown that borders on black. Unsurprisingly, he's a nasty piece of work.
Deal with the Devil: Cuphead and Mugman being forced to make one is what kicks off the game, and most of your opponents are other debtors who made these kinds of deals.
Death Mountain: Rugged Ridge is a Greco-Roman flavored version of this trope.
Deliberate Values Dissonance: To go along with its retro cartoon aesthetic, there are a few of these present:
- In a few levels such as "All Bets Are Off!" and "Clip-Joint Calamity", people can be seen smoking indoors. It was a common sight back then, but is a lot less common nowadays thanks to advancements in research regarding the health issues that smoking and breathing in secondhand smoke can cause.
- An example that crosses over into Black Comedy territory is the prominently labeled asbestos curtain in Sally Stageplay's fight. In the past, it was considered the perfect fireproof material. Nowadays, you're very unlikely to find anything with asbestos anywhere thanks to their toxicity.
Dem Bones: Living skeletons feature as a recurring type of NPC, with the most prominent examples being Phear Lap and the Phantom Express' conductor.
Difficult but Awesome:
- The Spread Shot's woefully short range can make it frustrating to safely fight bosses with it, but its damage output is insane if you're able to constantly hit them with every bullet from its spread. With very careful footwork, you can kill even the toughest bosses with it in record time.
- The Lobber's range is limited, and it travels in an arc. But thanks to its high damage output, it's a lifesaver against bosses with limited mobility such as Grim Matchstick.
Do Well, But Not Perfect: If you're trying to get an A+ ranking against the bosses, you don't want to kill them too fast because you need to parry 3 of their attacks to get it. These attacks are only available during certain phases, meaning that if you hurt them too much before you get all your parries, you'll miss out when they change phases.
The Dragon: King Dice is the Devil's right hand man, and runs his casino while personally collecting the Soul Contracts needed to progress through the game. He's also the game's second-to-last boss and fought right before the Devil himself.
Dual Boss: Ribby and Croaks, as well as the Lollipop Ghouls of the Phantom Express.
Easy Mode Mockery: When you fight a boss on easy mode, you aren't allowed to do the full fight. You're also not given their soul contract until you beat them on standard, meaning that you won't be allowed to fight either of Inkwell Hell's bosses. If you want to beat the game, you'll have to put on your big boy pants and do it the way the Moldenhauer brothers intended.
Eaten Alive: Cala Maria's hinted to have eaten a lot of sailors, judging by all the ghosts she's got living in her stomach. Werner Werman also seems to meet his end this way when a giant cat swallows him whole during his boss fight... but it turns out that the cat was a mech that he controlled.
Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Unsurprisingly, quite a few debtors have people in their lives that they clearly care about given their Anti Villain status. Sally Stageplay is happily married to another actor, Ribby and Croaks are brothers who have each other's backs, and Dr. Kahl's happy to help his robot fight you off despite not owing a debt to the Devil.
Everything's Worse with Bees: Rumor Honeybottoms, a queen bee with an arsenal of powerful magic spells at her disposal.
Everything Trying to Kill You: The diversity among the Devil's debtors is insane. Giant vegetables, dragons, robots, genies, queen bees, trains (albeit haunted trains)?! And that's not even getting into King Dice's boss rush, where you'll be fighting cigars, dominoes, glasses of booze, and a crane machine/cymbal monkey toy among others.
Flunky Boss:
- Baroness Von Bon Bon fights alongside her many minions such as jelly bean soldiers, a living gumball machine, and a monstrous piece of candy corn. She herself only attacks by taking the occasional potshot with her candy shotgun and throwing her head, leaving her henchmen to do most of the heavy lifting.
- Captain Brineybeard barely fights you himself, and usually lets his sea creatures, sentient barrel, and pirate ship do all the heavy lifting. He'll occasionally grab an octopus and use it as a living gun, but he's far from the biggest threat during his fight.
- Like Brineybeard, Cala Maria will summon sea creatures to help put the squeeze on you. Notable examples include swarms of porcupine fish that will cut off your maneuverability, and electric eels that will fire clusters of lightning bullets at you.
Gorgeous Gorgon: Cala Maria turns into one during the second phase of her boss fight.
Greed: Cuphead's major flaw: while Mugman's got enough common sense to not risk gambling against the Devil, Cuphead can't resist the treasure he offers up, and damns their souls with his reckless betting.
Green Hill Zone: Inkwell Isle One has lots of pleasant grasslands and picturesque forests, as befitting of the game's first world. "Forest Follies" is also set in a lush, forested area and is far easier than the other Run 'n Gun stages.
Hair-Raising Hare: Hopus Pocus, a demented bunny magician who serves as one of the minibosses in King Dice's stage.
Happily Married: What little we've seen of Sally Stageplay's relationship with her husband indicates that they're quite the loving couple: her husband's in a state of distress during their boss fight but will celebrate if she hits you, they're happy to "drive off" together in the prop car while switching to the second phase, and if you kill him to trigger the fight's secret phases, she's genuinely heartbroken.
Humanoid Abomination:
- Hilda Berg is a weird boss, even by classic cartoon standards. She can use her laughter as a weapon, summon tornados, and transform into things such as blimps, constellations, and monstrous mechanical moons that can summon UFOs. There's a method to the madness behind most of this game's weird opponents, but good luck trying to figure out whatever her deal is.
- The Devil's a more subdued example, but him being able to transform his head into dangerous monsters or grow kaiju-sized are good indicators of just how unholy he is.
Humongous Mecha: Dr. Kahl's Robot, a towering mechanical monstrosity that is so big that you only ever see its top half during his boss fight. This is also the true identity of the cat that seemingly kills Werner Werman during his boss fight.
Interface Screw: Objects in the foreground of certain stages can really screw you over, since they can obstruct Cuphead and Mugman's location, as well as enemy attacks. Not only does this further Hilda Berg's "Wake-Up Call" Boss credentials, but it also makes Phear Lap a frustrating example of That One Boss.
Interface Spoiler: The lack of a KO screen always means the boss survived, so don't be fooled when it looks like bosses such as Goopy Le Grande and Werner Werman bite the big one.
Jackass Genie: Downplayed with Djimmi the Great - he doesn't grant wishes and isn't any morally worse than the other debtors, but he puts up a serious fight and is quite tricky for when you fight him.
King Mook:
- Goopy Le Grande is a bigger, stronger version of the tiny slime enemies fought in the "Forest Follies" Run 'n Gun stage.
- The baby dragon enemies in Rugged Ridge look like miniature versions of Grim Matchstick, making him an example of this trope.
- Rumor Honeybottoms is a gender-flipped variant: not only is she a literal example due to being a queen bee, but you have to fight multiple bee minions during her boss fight.
Laughing Mad: During the final phase of his boss fight, Dr. Kahl belts out nonstop maniacal laughter while he showers you with projectiles.
Luck-Based Mission: Baroness Von Bon Bon's fight is partially this: before you fight the baroness herself, you have to fight three of five randomly selected food minions. With each phase, she throws in new obstacles that don't always mesh with the fighting style of the minion currently in play. Getting an A+/S rank on her, let alone beating her at all boils down to hoping that the RNG won't screw you.
Maniac Monkeys: Mr. Chimes, a creepy cymbal monkey toy who's one of King Dice's miniboss minions.
Monster Clown: Beppi, a creepy clown who always has a deranged grin on his face. However, the ending reveals that when he isn't fighting for his life, he's more of a friendly Non-Ironic Clown who just happens to look creepy.
Nintendo Hard: The Moldenhauer brothers really wanted this game to emulate the difficulty of classic Run 'n Gun arcade games, and boy does it show. You can only take three hits before dying, there are no checkpoints, many late game bosses attack in Bullet Hell patterns, and even the easy ones are likely to kick your ass a few times.
Off with His Head: There is a ton of decapitation imagery in this game. Cuphead and Mugman are collecting Soul Contracts so the Devil won't take their heads (the "milk" inside them being their souls), and the game's theme song makes it clear that this is the consequence if they can't rise to his challenge. This overlaps with Detachment Combat: the pair "take off" their heads during their super moves, and various bosses such as Baroness Von Bon Bon, Cala Maria, and even the Devil himself will detach their own heads as part of their attacks.
One-Winged Angel: Some debtors gain a huge and imposing final form during the last phase of their boss fight: Hilda Berg turns into a robotic crescent moon, Rumor Honeybottoms becomes a monstrous plane with buzzsaw arms, and Werner Werman pilots a mech disguised as a giant cat among others.
Our Dragons Are Different: Grim Matchstick seems like your typical fairy-tale dragon at first, but then he suddenly grows two heads out of nowhere near the end of his fight. And when he breathes fire, the attacking head briefly turns into a flamethrower.
Perverse Puppet: Cuppet, a Cuphead puppet Djimmi the Great summons during his boss fight who will chase Cuphead and Mugman around the screen while firing finger bullets of his own at them. As of the 1.2 update, shrinking at the start of the phase will skip Cuppet's dedicated phase, but you'll have to deal with a tiny Cuppet harassing you during Djimmi's last phase.
Protection Mission: The mausoleum levels task you with protecting the Legendary Chalice from a legion of mobster ghosts. Keep her safe, and you'll be given a new super move for your troubles. Let them get her, and you lose.
Ridiculously-Human Robots: Dr. Kahl's robot can laugh, get angry, chew bubblegum, and has a heart and a soul that the Devil wishes to collect.
Rise to the Challenge: Rumor Honeybottoms is unique among the bosses due to the screen scrolling upwards during her boss fight, requiring you to constantly jump from platform to platform so you don't drown in the sea of honey rising upwards, as well as deal with her minions and spells.
Scary Black Man: While technically not a black man, King Dice's appearance and voice are meant to evoke black musicians from that era (particularly Cab Calloway and Louis Armstrong). And thanks to his love of inhuman, deranged grins and his status as the Devil's right hand man, he's definitely got the "scary" part down to a science.
Seadog Beard: True to his stereotypical pirate aesthetic, Captain Brineybeard's got some impressively scruffy facial hair.
Sea Monster: Captain Brineybeard's ship comes to life over the course of his fight, and it looks less like a ship and more like a monstrous wooden narwhal by the end of it.
Slasher Smile: Whether it's Hilda Berg, Cagney Carnation, or King Dice, there are plenty of demented grins to go around.
Smug Snake: While a competent manipulator, the Devil's overconfidence screws him over when he refuses to listen to King Dice's warnings about how powerful Cuphead and Mugman are growing, and that they should kill them when they have the chance. Thanks to his arrogance, the Devil loses to the brothers and is forced to free all his debtors from their contracts.
Tank Goodness: Werner Werman pilots a soup can tank during his boss fight.
Terrible Trio:
- The Root Pack, which are a trio of gigantic vegetables consisting of an angry potato, a sad and scared onion, and a maniacally grinning carrot. As of the 1.2 update, there's a secret fourth member: a (relatively) tiny radish who looks even angrier than the potato.
- The Tipsy Troop, one of King Dice's minibosses, who are a living martini, a shot glass filled with whiskey, and a rum bottle respectively.
Turns Red: All bosses change their patterns to become more difficult as the fight goes on.
Unexplained Recovery: If you kill Sally Stageplay's husband to trigger her boss fight's secret route, he'll still be alive and well during the ending where the debtors are celebrating the Devil's defeat.
Vague Age: Cuphead and Mugman seem to be kids since they live with an elderly caretaker, but their gambling habits and moonshine powerups complicate things a bit. Though given their mischievous natures and their old-school cartoon world, underage gambling and drinking definitely isn't out of the question.
Villain Song: The Die House theme is a catchy tune that serves as this to King Dice.
"Wake-Up Call" Boss: While most of the bosses in Inkwell Isle 1 are fairly easy, Hilda Berg and Cagney Carnation are good indicators that you'll really need to step up your game. She may be the introduction to the aeroplane mechanics, but Hilda's a surprisingly relentless opponent who will happily hit you with bullet patterns and attacks that are faster and more complex than anything you've seen thus far. Cagney, on the other hand, simply has a lot going on in his battle. In between the bullet seeds he drops on you from above, the monstrous plants they spawn, his boomerang attacks, and the damaging vines he sends to coil around your platforms, you'll really have to learn how to keep track of multiple attacks onscreen to survive his fight and beyond.
Warmup Boss: While it's likely you'll die to them a few times before getting a hang of their attack patterns, the Root Pack and Goopy Le Grande are both incredibly simplistic foes that ease you into the game's mechanics well before the truly brutal opponents show up.
Wrong Side of the Tracks: Where the Devil's Casino is located, according to the storybook intro. Considering that the (intended) last boss before Inkwell Hell is the Phantom Express, this appears to be a literal example!