Nightmare Fuel / The Cuphead Show!

As this is a Nightmare Fuel page, spoilers will be left unmarked.

"Ah geez, this seems unnecessarily graphic..."

The Cuphead Show! takes a more comedic route from the game. But as this page will attest to, it has lost none of the scare factor.

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Season 1

• It's easy to forget that, for all his goofiness, the Devil is still... well, The Devil. He's still stealing souls from the people of Inkwell Isle, leaving them empty husks.
  • Especially compare this to the game, where he obtained souls by having them be gambled and lost at the casino or traded through various deals. Here, he’s stealing them and his victims don’t have much choice in the matter.
  • The Devil stealing souls in the first episode is quite unsettling. The first time the audience sees the Devil, he's grinning maniacally next to tubes full of screaming souls, gloating wickedly.
  • After King Dice fails to bring him Cuphead’s soul, he delivers a brutal You Have Failed Me speech and uses the magic in his pitchfork to lift King Dice off the floor a la Darth Vader. The camera work and background really sell the tension.
  • The Devil's Villainous Breakdown in "Sweater Off Dead" involves him changing into various demonic forms, from a rampaging bull to a grotesque, bat-like form and finally an Eldritch Abomination of many heads and mouths, making hellish screeches and roars.
  • The Devil actually begins to enjoy Cuphead's company in "Sweater Luck Next Time" until he realizes he's no longer wearing the magic sweater, wherein he immediately corners Cuphead and starts pulling his soul out with a wicked Slasher Smile and Cuphead's soul reflected in his eyes. Had Mugman not arrived just in the nick of time, it would have been all over.
    The Devil: You're not wearing the sweater!
    Cuphead: [realizes he's caught] A-AM TOO!
    The Devil: [cackles as he backs Cuphead against a wall and starts pulling out his soul] ARE NOT!
    • Even worse is that the queue of crowds could do nothing to help Cuphead. Before, they had been so frightened by the Devil's first appearance at the Carn-Evil that they ran away, but over time they started not to mind his appearance, as seeing him repeatedly trying (and failing) to snatch Cuphead's soul (due to the sweater being on Cuphead) and leaving in a huff has dampened his reputation. Now, however, when they hear from the Devil that Cuphead is not wearing the sweater, they become so frightened, they can only stand there and watch helplessly as the Devil corners him and starts yanking out his soul, draining his body of life and color in the process. Again, leave it to Mugman to save the day.
  • During the end of his musical number when he is seen dancing, if you look closely, you can see what appears to be a pair of photorealistic eyes. Yikes.
• "Baby Bottle" has what could be described as the very embodiment of the Enfant Terrible trope. Over the course of the episode the eponymous Baby Bottle goes from being a mischievous prankster to a murderous, psychotic villain.
  • While at first Baby's antics start harmless, merely messing with Cuphead but seemingly taking a liking to Mugman, over time it get worse and worse. It reaches its height when Mugman scolds Baby for one of its misdeeds and calls it a "Bad Baby", causing Baby to don a Nightmare Face and start to throw furniture at the boys and destroy their house. It does all this while chuckling with sadistic glee and with a wide smile on its face.
  • When Elder Kettle comes back home, Baby doesn't even try to keep up a cute facade like it did with the cups and immediately starts beating him up when he scolds it for ripping off his mustache.
  • The ending of the episode has Baby still at large and passed off to yet another poor soul to torment.
  • The episode never explains what the heck Baby's deal is and where it originally came from. The way they act you could be forgiven for thinking it was some sort of evil creature that you can't defeat, only get rid off and hope that it forgets about you.
• “Dangerous Mugman” has a sequence where Mugman annoys Porkrind to a boiling point while Cuphead plays a Dirk Dangerous pinball machine. When Porkrind finally snaps, he takes a hammer and dashes off Cuphead and Mugman’s heads in one swipe, leaving only their headless bodies and puddles of white liquid which were once being held in their now-obliterated skulls! The icing on the cake is the immediate slasher smile Porkrind sports while holding his weapon in triumph. Too bad for Porkrind and luckily for Cuphead and Mugman, this was all wishful dreaming.
• King Dice is a beloved game show host to the residents of Inkwell Isle, but anyone familiar with the game knows he's the Devil's right-hand man. He lures people into a room promising rewards, only to be locked in a room with a portal to the Underworld that sucks out their souls and ejects their empty bodies into an alley. We see the Phone get his soul sucked out again like in the first episode, but unlike that episode we never see him get it back.
  • And to make it worse, when Cuphead is about to roll the titular dice, he states he is excited about getting what is coming to him. King Dice then responds by saying he couldn't have said it better himself, all while dawning a very sinister Slasher Smile.
• Pretty much the entirety of the episode "Ghosts Ain't Real":
  • The graveyard. There are tons of dark shadows, gothic images, twisted trees, and unsettling features. The backgrounds are partially portrayed as live-action models, and it really adds to the creepy nature.
  • The various ghosts that antagonize Cuphead and Mugman. Many of them pull terrifying Nightmare Faces complete with sharp teeth and whited-out eyes. The ghost Duke removes his hat to reveal his spider-ridden brain, and the ghost Jasper has a saw embedded in his head.
  • Cuphead and Mugman stumbling into a crypt full of chattering skeletons. They act creepily playful, dancing around the brothers and chasing them around.
  • Their scares all culminate into the boys unknowingly jumping out of a tall tower and seemingly falling to their deaths. Even the ghosts are remorseful, as while they wanted to scare the boys, they weren’t planning on killing them. Thankfully, the boys survived and used the distraction to get out of the graveyard.
• "Sweater Off Dead" starts off with Cuphead having a nightmare about the Devil coming to get his soul. It starts out exactly like the first episode, just long enough for you to wonder if something's wrong... then a screaming face appears on the wall when Mugman peels off a pancake, and everything goes to the Underworld from there. It really shows that Cuphead is more scared than he's been letting on, and that the Devil can be every bit as scary as he is goofy.
  • Cuphead isn't just worried for himself and his soul. From what we see happen to Mugman and Elder Kettle, Cuphead is terrified of the idea that his brother and guardian are also in danger and could be hurt because of his debt to the Devil.
  • The worst part is when the family's goat suddenly bursts through the window as flames begin to creep up around Cuphead.
  Goat: (demonic voice) Remember me?
  Cuphead: Y-Yes...? I-I think of you often, goat from the front yard!
  Goat: (morphs into the Devil) YOUR SOUL IS MINE!!
  (Cuphead screams as the Devil lets out a terrifying Evil Laugh)
  • Cuphead wakes up screaming, and he still insists that he “ain't too worried about it”. Mugman also notes how this isn't the first time Cuphead has had this nightmare.
• "Dirt Nap" has Elder Kettle mistakenly believe that Cuphead and Mugman are planning to kill him and bury him in the backyard because he's old (they were actually talking about their pet worm). Elder Kettle's solution? Use his old army knowledge to booby-trap the entire living room and take the boys out first. It’s all Played for Laughs and is quite funny, but it is still disturbing to watch Elder Kettle slowly lose his mind.
  • Of course, it's also Nightmare Fuel from Elder Kettle's perspective too. Imagine overhearing that the two boys you've raised with love and have always cared for think that you're old and disgusting, and want to kill you and bury you in the backyard to "put you out of your misery."

Season 2

• Bowl Boy turns out to be not just as big a thrill seeker as Cuphead, he’s a complete wingnut who shrugs at the aspect of getting shattered into pieces!
  • Bowl Boy’s many Nightmare Faces, especially when he reveals that he wants to become Cuphead.
  • The episode ends with him wearing a doctor’s coat and menacingly walking towards the bedridden cups, launching like a maniac brandishing a syringe of unknown purple liquid. Doesn't help that he had an Unexplained Recovery.
• In the game, Cala Maria is an adorable mermaid who's still awfully cute even as a gorgon. Here? She's downright horrifying! Not only does her first proper appearance in a leaked clip for the show that introduces her in her gorgon form, she pulls off a Nightmare Face that's sure to haunt at least a few nightmares!
  • The way Cala Maria petrifies Brineybeard. He gives her a dramatic love confession, to which she simply says, in nought but a mildly annoyed tone, “You talk too much”, and zaps him, instantly trapping him in stone mid-sentence. That is how powerful Cala Maria is.
  • In the intro, she's not so bad in her one-second cameo but her proper debut plays up all the terror a towering gorgon can give. First off, she lives among a graveyard of shipwrecks that she caused. No, scratch that, she lives in a creepy cove shaped like a ghoulish head screaming in agony. Those ships are just her leftovers. But what happened to the sailors? Why, they've been petrified by gazing into the gorgon's eyes, of course! Locked in eternal screaming. What's worse, considering you can break free from Cala's petrification, it's implied that these sailors are still alive!
  • Cala Maria states herself how much she takes pride in being the most feared “dreaded sea beast” in all the ocean.
• The Four Horsemen. What makes them so scary is that their designs aren't so cartoonish as the other characters and much more like something from an Iron Maiden poster! That is until the end of the episode where their voices and behavior make them more Nightmare Retardant.
  • The Devil once again shows just how powerful he is by burning up all his finest and second-finest demon minions by accident.
  • Once the demons arrive at the hay maze, King Dice wastes no time in taking out all his competition. He manipulates the two scorpions to take out the spider demon (and each other), he disintegrates the bat and vulture demons with Burpy's fire breath, and then makes Burpy himself explode from sneezing. King Dice may not be the same threat level he was in the games, but that doesn't mean he's not dangerous.
  • The Devil, while ranting about how much trouble Cuphead had given him, claims that he wants to eat his soul. There are worse fates than getting trapped in the soul vault, it seems.
• Baroness von Bon Bon leaves quite her mark as a haunting character. There's clearly something wrong with the ruler of Sugarland. The various faces she makes while talking to Cuphead are both hilarious and... unsettling. She comes off as really creepy while trying to dupe Cup into taking a bite out of her world for some as-of-yet unknown reason and the music by the end of the clip does not help. She says she doesn’t get out much but it’s clear in just over two minutes that it has been a long time since the Baroness has talked to anyone from the outside world.
  • The reason she doesn’t get out much? An "ancient curse" that prevents her from ever leaving.
  • Cuphead and Mugman are allowed to eat anything Sugarland except for Bon Bon's castle. Why? Well as soon as they take a bite, they turn into sweets themselves! As you’d surely expect, the Baroness was banking on this and just like in the game, she gives her best psychotic face◊ before her castle turns monstrous and starts chasing the cups to eat them! When the chase begins, we get a look inside the castle and see there’s row after row of candy corn teeth in there and nothing else...
  • For a bit of Fridge Horror, consider the fact that she’s so alone in Sugarland. Her only companion seems to be the monster castle but in the game she at least has a small court of subjects. Considering how much she loves to eat sweets…
  • The cups barely manage to escape Sugarland and make it all the way back to the cottage. All’s well that ends well right? Well they’re still sweets and Elder Kettle’s gone sugar-crazy and ready to gobble them up! And the episode just stops there. It’s a good thing this isn’t the last episode of the season or that’d be quite the morbid cliffhanger to end on.
• Mugman has a handful of moments in Season 2:
  • “The I Scream Man” shows Mugman gradually losing his patience with the titular ice cream man annoying him while trying to have some alone time, nearly stabbing him with an ice cream cone. Then after getting chased by the ice cream man in his truck and having his story spoiled, Mugman attacks the man in maniacal retaliation.
  • In “Piano Lesson”, his jealousy towards Cuphead replacing him as Ludwig’s pupil gets to the point where he was willing to cut off Cuphead’s hands with hedge trimmers so he couldn’t perform. The way Elder Kettle scolds him on this fully implies this isn’t the first time Mugman has wanted to hurt Cuphead with the garden tool before. Then the night before the recital, Mugman rigged the stage to drop a piano on his brother.
    • The piano does end up falling on Ludwig. The episode leaves whether or not he survived this ambiguous…
• In "Say Cheese!", Elder Kettle briefly loses it while trying to recover the camera with the photos he had as "Diaper Baby" and at one point he starts walking like he's some sort of demonic spider.
• In "The Devil's Pitchfork" we get to see the view from the Devil's bedroom window in the Underworld, it's a sea of lava with sea (lava?) serpents swimming around and skeletons flailing and screaming.
  • The ending: After Cuphead refuses to give the Devil back his pitchfork, he zaps him repeatedly while pretending he was going to give it back and mocks him over the fact that the Devil can't collect Cuphead's soul anymore because he missed the deadline, and the Devil looks like he's about to lose it with even Henchman not liking where this is going. Then Cuphead and Mugman look around and see the Devil suddenly isn't there, and they hear his disembodied voice saying that Cuphead took something he cares about so the Devil will do the same to him. Cuphead says there's nothing the Devil could take from him that he cares about, then he looks up and sees that Mugman is gone too, he looks around only to see that the Devil kidnapped Mugman. Even worse? This is where the episode (and also the season) ends...
    The Devil: Say Goodbye to Cuphead.
    Mugman: Goodbye to Cuphead.
    The Hellevator lowers into the ground and vanishes
    Cuphead: ...Mugman?

Season 3

• "A Very Devil Christmas" features a level of Body Horror beyond even Invader Zim's "Most Horrible Christmas Ever" when The Devil is painfully transformed into Santa Claus as a part of a deal he made with St. Nick for a toy train. The Devil's very body is transformed not just into the jolly old man's rotund shape, but actually becomes HIS SUIT in its entirety!
  • While awesome, the idea that even The Devil himself, the supreme being of evil that is only second to God and presumably Archangel Michael who booted him out of Heaven at the dawn of existence is actually going through with the deal he made with Santa Claus while being powerless against the latter's magic. He never even entertains the idea of trying to overpower Santa for the toy train. Looks like the inhabitants of Inkwell Isles have a lot of incentive to be nice all year...
• Ms. Chalice getting hit by a streetcar in "Dance with Danger". A surprisingly mundane way to die, but no less unsettling because of how quickly someone can lose their life if they don't watch where they're going.
• In “The Devil and Ms. Chalice”, when the latter tries pulling her usual conwork on the former, he doesn't take it kindly. The Devil reminds Chalice of the manner in which she died before their deal...and shows her exactly the condition her body will be in now if he takes the deal back.
  • Stage One: He shoots a smoky gaping maw from his pitchfork to consume her.
  • Stage Two: After the smoke clears, a crack forms on Chalice’s forerim (forehead) between her eyes and chips of her face and her right handle fall and break off, shattering on the ground.^note IE, her fatal injury that she took when she was hit by the streetcar.
  • Stage Three: Miss Chalice squirms as her face and eyes shrivel up from a full yellow to an emaciated gray.
  • Stage Four: Chalice watches her gloves disintegrate, leaving only skeletal fingers.
  • Stage Five ends with Miss Chalice making an echoey scream of shock as her eyes, skin, and body are reduced to bones and dust.
• Henchman aptly said the sight was “unnecessarily graphic” and the Devil even cracks a dry Yorick joke with Chalice’s skull before restoring her back to life, letting her know he was serious on destroying her should she fail him.

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