Tropes N to Z / Cuphead

Cuphead Trope Examples
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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:
- Winning any run and gun stage/boss with the Game Djimmi cheat activated (which doubles your HP count) will bar you from getting a higher ranking than B+, regardless of your performance, preventing you from getting 100% completion. It is also disabled when playing in the expert difficulty, regardless of if you've activated it or not.
- The second phase against Glumstone the Giant has bleachers with gnomes in the bottom corners of the screen to prevent you from standing there to completely avoid the ball thrown across the screen, as you won't be able to see if any gnomes are about to jump out of the floor there.
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, the parents of the Howling Aces, and the members of the Moonshine Mob.
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.
Noob Bridge: Downplayed example. One of the Devil's attacks is a slap which can be dodged with a jump and a dash, but it's tricky to pull off. Or the player can simply duck under it. Since ducking is never really required anywhere else in the game, many players forget about the simpler option, at least for a time. This was patched out, however, suggesting it to be an oversight. There are still several other boss attacks throughout the game where ducking is the simple option.
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 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. None of the Mooks can directly hurt you, but if they reach the urn in the center of the screen where the Legendary Chalice is imprisoned, it's an instant 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.
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: Most of the characters in Cuphead have these, as per the game's artistic inspiration. Some emphasize it more than others, depending on how much Deranged Animation is involved in their battles.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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 enter a boss.
- 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.
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 will drop a piece of scenery on top of Sally's husband and make her mourn his loss. He's briefly reincarnated during the third phase and makes the fight harder, but doesn't show up afterwards.
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 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.

Wake-Up Call Boss: Cagney Carnation, for sure. He's the first ground boss to start invoking Bullet Hell and will force you to pay attention to not only where the attacks come from, but also stay cognizant of his distinct wind-ups and whatever follows; things you'll need to learn if you want to get far in the game. Fittingly, he's the final boss unlocked for the first world.
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 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 the plane of the Bulldog of the Howling Aces, 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.

Cuphead / Tropes N to Z

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Cuphead / Tropes N to Z

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