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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.
A
- 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 the long dev time of The Delicious Last Course, Ms. Chalice, Chef Saltbaker, and Glumstone the Giant all appeared in the comics and novels years before the DLC was even released.
- 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: The game is set in the 1930s, yet one of the bosses in King Dice's game is a monkey with cymbals. You know, a toy that was invented in the 1950s?
- Likewise 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 II.
- 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:
- Every boss is guaranteed to use at least three parryable attacks during a fight, typically with at least one per phase. If a boss's phase chooses attacks through an A.I. Roulette where they aren't guaranteed to provide a parryable attack, and they're about to change phases without having done one, they'll go out of their way to do an attack you can parry right before they change. In Goopy Le Grande's case, as he's the only boss without projectile attacks, he'll summon his three parryable objects between the first two phases (they're his Confused Question Marks).
- During the Boss Bonanza with King Dice in the Dice Tower, you will notice that certain mini-boss battles grant a "Health Up" when you land on them and give you an extra hit, labelled as heart icons on the roulette board. If you time hitting the dice properly to get the right number, you can move to these spaces to get some of your health back. Also, a patch released for the game
now ensures that if a player dies during each battle with one of the mini-bosses in co-op mode, they will automatically return to life at the King Dice board with 1 HP once their surviving partner has defeated the mini-boss. Oh, and the "Start Over" square will now trigger only once per attempt. Lastly, for the purposes of the final score card, the HP bonus only cares about King Dice himself and not his lackeys, so as long as you can manage a No-Damage Run against at least him, you can take as much damage as you want from the others and still get an A+/S ranking. - 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 a boss. This gives you a bit of relief if you're stuck on a particular stage.
- If you fight King Dice as Ms. Chalice, the heart cards, which you have to parry over to avoid the attack, will have small pink hearts floating above them to allow her dash parry to get her over the other cards.
- 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: Some bosses have you do this: in particular, the fights with Cagney Carnation and Cala Maria, who only take damage on their heads, and the final phase of Ribby and Croaks and the Phantom Express, which only take damage when they open up their cores (well, the boiler in the Phantom Express's case).
- 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.
- Awesome, but Impractical: The usefulness of health charms (which increase your HP but decrease your attack power) depends entirely on whether or not you're gunning for an A+/S rank, where you have to pull off a No-Damage Run anyway. They're a godsend if you're going for the P-rank on Run 'n Gun stages, however.
B
- 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 the level being "Doggone Dogfight" and appearing as a biplane on the map may trick players into thinking it's another airplane level, but in reality, it's a standard platform shooter where you shoot at the airborne bosses while standing 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.
- Book Ends:
- 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.
- Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: The Crackshot effectively functions as this to the base game's Spread and Chaser. If the initial projectile doesn't hit anything, it fires a lower damage projectile at the boss, with the initial projectile having high damage. This mimics the Spread being a close ranged weapon with higher damage, and the Chaser being a homing weapon with less damage.
- 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.
C
- 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.
D
- 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:
- Playing the PC version on the keyboard when you're on the map can show you the simple button commands on speech balloons and screens; but if you plug a PlayStation 4 controller onto your PC, the speech balloons can now give you the simple PS4 commands ("Square", "Circle", "Triangle", "Cross", etc.).
- Deciding to get behind Djimmi during his first phase will get you damage from nothing.
- Similarly, if you’re thinking about getting over Esther in her final phase, don’t bother- the bean cans from her third phase will fly in and force you back between the sausages.
- 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.
- With the addition of Ms. Chalice as DLC, MDHR added an additional animation for players going through the main game as her, in the event that Chalice chooses to become a willing pawn of the Devil; otherwise, the cutscenes are unchanged.
- An Easter Egg/cheat added in The Delicious Last Course is the Game Djimmi, which grants the player doubled health on lower difficulties when activated. If this is turned on and Djimmi is refought, he'll have special game over dialogue referencing the cheat.
- If you're playing two-player mode and both characters have the Astral Cookie equipped, only one of them is randomly chosen to turn into Ms. Chalice. There will be a unique animation at the start of a stage where the other player tries to eat their cookie, but fumbles and drops it. If you're doing a flying stage, then the plane itself will swipe the cookie out of their hand and eat it (which does nothing, presumably since planes lack souls).
- Difficult, but Awesome:
- The Spread shot does a lot of damage, but requires you to be up close for its highest output.
- The Lobber shot is affected by gravity and travels in an arc. But it's exceptionally powerful, and is extremely useful on slow or stationary enemies. A crafty player can also use it to place traps for enemies approaching on foot.
- The Roundabout works like a Battle Boomerang, but increases range as it reverses course. To take advantage of this, you need your back turned to the boss as you fire.
- The Charge shot is the only weapon that isn't rapid-fire, and if you fire without charging, it will only produce weak projectiles. But if you consistently fire fully charged shots, it becomes one of the most useful weapons, having the long range that the similarly powerful Spread shot lacks.
- Before it was fixed, you were able to rapidly switch between 2 weapons and thus have high damage output of both, which actually skip phases on certain bosses. Of course, that did require spamming the weapon switch while dealing with everything else around you.
- The Smoke Bomb charm makes you invincible while you dash, but it also makes you invisible — with no visual cue for where your dash will end, it becomes a lot easier to launch yourself off platforms or directly into other enemies. Even so, the invincibility is almost always worth the extra trouble.
- The Super Art in flying battles where the boys transform into a Fat Man-style bomb to ram the boss. Getting hit by anything will cause the bomb to go off early, and getting close enough to easily hit the boss can leave you open to their attacks. The payoff is a massive chunk of damage to the enemy.
- The Divine Charm is this, as powering it up requires the player to defeat several bosses with their weapons being randomized every time they stop firing and dying in a single hit. Once it's fully powered, it gives the player the effects of several charms at once and doesn't lower their health.
- 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.
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- 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...
- 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: Various animals and people are the things that Cuphead and Mugman have to fight. One of the bosses' Instant Gravestone even tries to kill them!
- 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 only promises to spare the boys if they bring the contracts of all the others back. So, of course, if the boys succeed and fulfill their half of the deal, he enslaves them to be his servants/enforcers.
- In 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!" Naturally, he means this literally, as the Wondertart's secret ingredient is an actual living soul, which he takes from one of the cups, leading into his boss fight.
- 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: Since the Devil gives the boys until midnight of the next day to bring him the soul contracts, this means that the entire game only takes place within a day or so.
- Eye Beams: Done by Chauncey Chantenay, Grim Matchstick's first phase, and Djimmi the Great's last phase (all in ring form).
- 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.
