Trivia / Swing, You Sinners!

• Colbert Bump: People have watched it in recent times because this, apparently, was cited as one of the inspirations for Cuphead (particularly with one of the poses done by the flower boss, Cagney Carnation). In a Shout-Out to this cartoon, once you beat the game's final boss, The Devil, you get an achievement named "Swing You Sinner".
• Referenced by...:
  • Cuphead: The game's main inspiration is the Fleischer Studios short Swing, You Sinners!. While this mostly comes across visually, there are also a few direct references such as the achievement for beating the final boss being named "Swing You Sinner". Very early concept art◊ even included a study of Cuphead pleading for his life in the same way that Bimbo does when threatened with a straight-razor◊. Three separate boss fights take their visual cues from parts of Swing, You Sinners!:
    • Cagney Carnation moves in exactly the same way as a particular ghost from that short (particularly his splayed, upward-facing palms)^note which makes this a recursive shout-out, since that ghost from the original short was a caricature of comedian Monroe Silver and the song's melody is similar to his fight music.
    • Baroness Von Bon Bon chases the heroes in her crawling dessert castle in a scene was inspired by the ghost barn that marches after Bimbo in the original short.
    • The ghosts that pop out of the train resemble the final forms of the ghosts that pop out of the ghost barn to terrorize Bimbo.
  • Super Eyepatch Wolf's video Why Cuphead Looks So God Damn Good includes side by side short clips of the Cuphead boss fights inspired by Swing, You Sinners! with the relative clips from the original animation.
• Troubled Production: The short was only partway completed when Walt Disney abruptly did a talent raid on Fleischer Studios, hiring away many of their top animators. The short only got completed when many junior artists, such as Shamus Culhane (who discussed this event in his autobiography, Talking Animals and Other People) were hastily trained to animate by Grim Natwick, and then promoted to the position.

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