Line #17 Trivia/Cuphead


1	For Trivia tropes from ''WesternAnimation/TheCupheadShow'' go [[Trivia/TheCupheadShow here]].
2	----
3	* AccentDepundent: Werner Werman's last name, when said with a German accent, sounds like "vermin", fitting for an evil rodent.
4	* BlackSheepHit: "Floral Fury" is definitely the most popular song of the soundtrack, in terms of views/listens on platforms and attention by the producers themselves (being given a special behind-the-scenes video and being added to ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBrosUltimate'' alongside the Cuphead costume). Despite this, it's quite different stylistically from the rest of the soundtrack, as it's a samba song inspired by Duke Ellington's "Caravan" and the works of Carmen Miranda, rather than the more traditional big band swing of the rest of the soundtrack. Somewhat downplayed since the DLC, which adds a more diverse array of songs inspired by a variety of genres from the '30s and '40s, including another song inspired by Brazilian music: "Snow Cult Scuffle", which skews closer to choro than samba.
5	* ContentLeak: The [=PS4=] port's icon [[https://twitter.com/Wario64/status/1287908466586087424 appeared on PSN stores]] a day before its official unveiling.
6	* CrossDressingVoices: King Dice's singing voice is provided by a woman, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2xBBDfhWfY Alana Bridgewater]]. Likewise, Sally Stageplay was voiced by a [[https://twitter.com/LukeLandVO/status/913782792386887680 man]].
7	* CutSong:
8	** On the official soundtrack, the tracks "Hurry Up", "Coin-Op Bop", "High Score", and "The Airship" are never heard in-game. As discussed on the WhatCouldHaveBeen subpage, "Coin-Op Bop", "High Score", and "The Airship" belong to cut levels, while "Hurry Up" was likely related to the cut time limit.
9	** Additionally, an [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzJwsKAC9gE alternate opening theme]] can be [[DummiedOut found in the game's files]], which reveals what the original plot of the game likely was (apparently Cuphead originally entered a fighting tournament, instead of fighting to collect Soul Contracts).[[note]]Interestingly, the end bars of the song are still used as the victory fanfare for completing a stage.[[/note]]
10	* DevelopmentGag:
11	** The DLC level "Bootlegger Boogie" features two examples.
12	*** The spider gangster's design was reworked from a giant spider boss (dubbed 'The Flying Gentleman') showcased in early magazine showings of Cuphead, even having a forked tongue and a bright red nose.
13	*** The gramophone phase of the fight is a finalized version of the scrapped "[=DicePalaceLight=]" boss that originally could only be accessed via debug mode.
14	** Another example from the DLC, as stated in in-code notes, is [[spoiler:the secret Nightmare fight]], which was originally the second phase for the Devil before being scrapped; the unused sprite of the Devil holding out his hands was actually part of the transition animation from this phase to his second phase in the actual game.
15	** Finally, the entirety of "The King's Leap" is based on the "Airship" concept for the original game, being a series of parry challenge levels that earn you more coins.
16	* DoingItForTheArt: The Moldenhauer brothers re-mortgaged their houses to make this game before getting backing from Microsoft.
17	* DummiedOut:
18	** Numerous bosses were cut from the game, but data for some of them can still be found in the game's code. Of particular note are three bosses from King Dice's BossBonanza that can be accessed through the debug menu, called "Pachinko", "Light", and "Card". Pachinko features fully-drawn and animated sprites for the boss (as well as a unique quote on the player's death, but no portrait), but the boss' attacks and much of the stage itself is made up of placeholder graphics, Light is made up of simplistic placeholder graphics (including some kind of bird creature and Jared Moldenhauer's head), and Card is made up of even cruder placeholder graphics and [[HopelessBossFight can't be beaten due to the boss not having a hitbox.]]
19	** There are also unique weapons that can only be accessed through the debug menu as well, such as the Arc (which launches projectiles in an arc similar to the Lobber, which would then stick to the ground and act as mines), the Exploder (behaves like the Peashooter, but with a slower rate of fire and dealing more damage the farther it travels, which also has an EX attack which deals a lot of damage, but can also bounce back and damage the player), and the Wide Shot (which behaves like the Spreader, but has a longer range). Wide Shot has been reimplemented in the Delicious Last Course as the new shot type, "Converge".
20	** The Devil boss fight has an unused animation where he holds out his hands. It resembles the art used for his second Game Over card [[spoiler:and in the secret boss of ''The Delicious Last Course'', his skeleton is in the same pose holding up the level's platform]]. The devs have confirmed that this was animation was meant to transition from a scrapped phase to what is now phase 2 of the fight; [[spoiler:the scrapped phase became the secret boss in the DLC.]]
21	* FollowTheLeader: Surprisingly got an imitator in the form of another indie game, ''VideoGame/EnchantedPortals''.
22	* KidsMealToy: It got Arby's toys in 2020, including paper craft figures and tokens.
23	* MarthDebutedInSmashBros: The Legendary Chalice makes her first appearance as Ms. Chalice in the Ron Bates children's novel ''Cuphead in Carnival Chaos'' in March 2020, and has since appeared as a major character in Zack Keller's comic anthologies, Ron Bates' sequel novel, ''Cuphead in A Mountain of Mayhem'', and [[WesternAnimation/TheCupheadShow the animated series]], the first season of which came out just a few months before her official debut in the game, due to the long development period of the DLC. Likewise, Chef Saltbaker and Glumstone the Giant have made their debuts in these adaptations before they made their proper game debuts.
24	* OrphanedReference:
25	** The Elder Kettle's theme is a remix of the Inkwell Isles overworld leitmotif, and it's the only non-overworld theme that's affected by the unlockable piano option. This is because it was originally the theme for a water-themed world, which was moved to the Elder Kettle's house after the world ended up being cut. The DLC mitigates this a bit by having a piano variant for Chef Saltbaker's theme, meaning it's no longer an outlier in that regard.
26	** After Hilda Berg starts changing into a constellation, she is shown mouthing words before the transformation completes. This is in reference to a scrapped voiceline where she repeatedly chants "Coleman" in reference to her designer Joseph Coleman.
27	** The Devil peeling off his skin to turn into a skeleton before jumping further down into Inkwell Hell seems like a bit of a classic cartoon non-sequitur, since the next phase has him be giant and not at all bony. As it turns out, this was originally meant to lead into another phase where you'd have to fight on the skeleton's hands against the Devil's split soul.
28	* RealitySubtext:
29	** An accidental case; two brothers bet everything on the line, only to end up making a risky deal to get out of debt. The game's plot sure ended up reflecting the developers having no choice but to rely on Microsoft, didn't it?
30	** Given the role of Creator/{{Fleischer\|Studios}} and [[Creator/WaltDisney Disney]] brothers in pioneering animation, there's a certain poetic logic to a game celebrating their animation art styles being made by a pair of brothers.
31	* ReferencedBy: [[ReferencedBy/{{Cuphead}} Has its own page]].
32	* RefittedForSequel: Or DLC, in this case.
33	** The spider who is a part of the Moonshine Mob in ''The Delicious Last Course'' takes many elements from a boss that did not make it to the final base game. Additionally, the attack patterns of the gramophone during the female lightbug's phase is taken from a ''very'' early unused boss.
34	** The unused weapon "Wide Shot" is remade into the "Converge" weapon, sharing its SpreadShot properties and its ability to phase through walls and enemies. The code still calls it "Wide Shot", however.
35	** The unused charm "Shield", which granted invulnerability from falling into pits, was reworked into Ms. Chalice's Level 2 Super Art "Shield Pal", though in the later case, it simply acts as an extra hit point. [[note]]Though technically, it does save you from falling pit damage.[[/note]]
36	** While it's unknown what the unused "Turret" charm would have looked like, it's seeming functionality was carried into Crackshot's "P. Turret" EX shot.
37	** According to the notes in the code, the [[spoiler:secret Nightmare boss fight]] was originally a boss phase for the Devil that was either scrapped or was left unused. Jared Moldenhauer in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf9zZMfnb04 his interview with AbdallahSmash]] confirms that it was originally the second phase of the Devil's fight ([[spoiler:you would be standing on the Devil's skeleton, whose flesh would reform after beating the phase, leading to his gigantic form]]), but was removed due to the fight becoming overlong and deciding that the PuzzleBoss aspect of it was too much to throw at the player right after the first phase. This phase was still left over in the code prior to the 1.3.2 update, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBHttNUF4cw and one hacker managed to reimplement it in March 2022]], 3 months before the DLC's release.
38	** The original coin collection system for the game was that the player would encounter a recurring airship throughout the Inkwell Isles and battle several bosses with a parry mechanic in order to earn coins. While this was scrapped very early on, due to this system requiring upwards of ''20'' boss encounters (with only Jelly the Octopus having been animated), the idea was revisited to become The King's Leap in the DLC.
39	* SavedFromDevelopmentHell: The game had a 7-year development cycle starting in 2010. This was mostly due to its authentic, almost-entirely handmade art style.
40	* ScheduleSlip:
41	** The game was meant to be released in 2014 as a small indie title. But it made such a splash at E3 that year that Microsoft gave the developers more backing to expand it into a full-fledged experience. As a result, its release was delayed until 2017, since the developers wanted to make sure the game was perfect before it was released.
42	** The [[https://youtu.be/ibDx3ueg90U Delicious Last Course]] expansion was initially advertised as releasing in 2020. It took until December 2021 for [[https://youtu.be/bskUa1jX0Gg another update]], pinning the specific release date as June 30th, 2022.
43	* UrbanLegendOfZelda: A creepy, reversed version of the main theme song,[[note]]Notably, it also has spectrogram images of the Devil as an extra creep factor.[[/note]] which is heard upon inputting KonamiCode in the main menu after obtaining the bad ending, was, for a long time, rumored to be a form CopyProtection, which was proved to be false later on by [[https://youtu.be/0XjHZ-V4ooA Tech Rules]]. The song was then assumed to be unused until the easter egg was discovered in late 2023 by [[https://youtu.be/OsoFuyAtd7k GioTGM]].
44	* WhatCouldHaveBeen: There's a ''lot'' of cut and unused content in this game. So much, that it needed [[WhatCouldHaveBeen/{{Cuphead}} its own page]].
45	* WordOfGod:
46	** [[https://kotaku.com/cuphead-developers-talk-cut-bosses-and-whats-in-the-cup-1820126327 According to the developers,]] what's inside Cuphead and Mugman's cups are their souls.
47	** Also according to the developers, [[DeathIsCheap none of the characters die permanently]], even the ones who seem to be killed during their boss battles (like Goopy Le Grande and Wally Warbles, which the former can be handwaved via [[FakingTheDead faking his death]]). This would later be made explicit in the DLC's epilogue, where [[spoiler:Esther Winchester, having been ground up to sausages which then become winged souls in a tin can, appears in her normal form as if nothing happened to her]].

Context Trivia / Cuphead