YMMV / Indie Cross

• Breather Level: Sans' week, if one doesn't resort to attacking Sans. At worst the intro of the first song will give the player a hard time with its opening attack and gimmicky notes of both the Press X to Die and Press X to Not Die flavor (colored blue and orange respectively), but after the first verse Sans chills out with a much more slower paced song, with the gimmicks being phased out altogether. The second song is much more note dense, but comparably more manageable than if you choose to antagonize Sans. The final song is even different depending on if one goes Pacifist or Genocide, the former completely lacking any gimmicks and being tamer than the song before it.
• Common Crossover: The Undertale based songs, namely "Bonedoggle", are prone to have the characters who are singing swapped out for others, usually with different Undertale AUs. One of the more popular instances is a cover of "Bonedoggle" where the Underswap versions of Sans and Papyrus sing against Saturday Night Swappin' Girlfriend, with the Undertale motifs swapped for Underswap’s versions of the tracks.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • The Nightmare characters being host to the hardest songs in the mod and having such ominous designs were quite the subject of player favoritism, resulting in Nightmare forms of other mod characters, such as Mario.exe, Sky, Monika, and even Boyfriend himself.
  • Out of the official Nightmare characters, Nightmare Cuphead probably is the most popular out of the three, given that he dealt with the Devil, leaving his corpse on display for the player to see, and having one of the most heart-pounding, intense songs in this mod as you face off with him.
• Fridge Brilliance:
  • In "Devil's Gambit"'s official OST track has the name of the game Nightmare Cuphead debuted in instead be "Cuphead: Deal With the Devil". Considering that the Devil is heavily implied to be dead during this song (he's slumped over on his throne, splattered with blood, accompanied by "Winter Horrorland"'s iconic Scare Chord), this makes "Deal With the Devil" a Double-Meaning Title: Cuphead made a Deal with the Devil, and then dealt with him, presumably gaining his powers in the process.
  • Also, the official OST track for Satanic Funkin simply lists the Devil's debut game as "Cuphead: The Devil." Wonder why that could be.
  • While Cuphead could be seen as out of character for how violent he is with Boyfriend, he did also seem to note at first that "if I was a crazy portal opener, where would I be?" before accusing BF of messing with his land. Given how Sans later on states that he was hired to kill BF, it's safe to assume that Cuphead was not only told about BF by someone but was told false information about him being dangerous and even got paid to kill BF. Of course he was going to be violent with BF, this guy was threatening his homeland (or at least, that was what he was told).
  • Think about the order of games here. First is a cartoonish comedy reminiscent of the 30s, then is a comedic but sometimes dark game, and then is a flat out horror game. The games in question get progressively darker as you go along. Considering the next game is implied to be Hollow Knight, it also fits in this pattern as a very bleak game with a depressive atmosphere.
  • In "Despair," Ink Bendy has a new ability, that being summoning Fisher to attack. However, Fisher functions exactly like the Devil's henchmen, which makes sense considering Bendy and the Devil are both demons.
  • To get the Genocide ending to Sans' fight, Boyfriend must try to attack him three times. In Undertale, (possibly excluding the Ruins) the Genocide Route becomes a Point of No Return leading to Sans' fight after you kill three major bosses.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Before news of "Hello Huggy" and other Indie Cross content was revealed, YouTuber "Pouria SFMs" created a cover of "Brimstone" with Freddy and the Ink Demon duking it out against the Neighbor, Huggy Wuggy, Blue and Banban, the latter-most using Stylistic Suck in comparison to the 3D models on display. Once the news came out, it was revealed that all of the latter (save for Blue) were a part of the introduced "Hello Huggy" song, with the Stylistic Suck going the other way around; Banban and his friends being in proper 3D models and the Neighbor and Huggy in wacky 2D art.
• Hype Backlash: Upon release, Indie Cross was hyped up by multiple youtubers as one of the best FNF mods ever made. Subsequently, in response to said hype, the mod received scrutiny from critics for its abundance of gimmick mechanics that oftentimes punished the player with instant game overs.^note Far from the first instance of FNF mods with gimmick notes and extra mechanics, but it's the most pronounced here.
• Memetic Mutation: "Aw, nuts to this! What did my brother say again?" ^Explanation What Cuphead says in the cutscene preceding "Knockout", followed by a Mugman doodle in a thought bubble saying what Cuphead thinks he said before he left. People made several edits of this replacing what the Mugman doodle says.
• Nightmare Fuel: Both Cuphead and Bendy lay some rather intense beatdowns on the Boyfriend by the end, and even Sans will do it should the Boyfriend go full genocide. Seeing Cuphead flip his lid and nearly give Boyfriend one hell of a knockout can be a bit freaky, especially when Cuphead has been mostly goofy up until that point. While Sans and Bendy nearly killing the Boyfriend may not be as surprising, Sans dies doing this, and drags the Fallen Child down with him, leaving a disheveled Boyfriend behind. Bendy, meanwhile, is absolutely merciless, giving a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown that leaves the Boyfriend painted in his own blood by the end.
• Shocking Moments: The final cutscene at the end of Bendy's week. More specifically, how he brutally beats Boyfriend within an inch of his life, with the latter's state being showcased by the amount of blood loss from each hit, especially when Boyfriend is dragged across the wall.
• Signature Scene:
  • Cuphead invoking Self-Serving Memory in the cutscene before "Knockout", if only due to how memable it is.
  • Boyfriend getting a brutal No-Holds-Barred Beatdown at the hands of Ink Bendy after "Nightmare Run".
  • Out of all of the freeplay songs, "Bonedoggle" is the most famous one, not only for perfectly capturing Sans and Papyrus' personalities, but for using three strumlines (one for Sans, one for Papyrus and one for Boyfriend), a first for the modding scene.
• That One Level:
  • "Nightmare Run", the end of the Ink Demon's week on hard difficulty, has garnered notoriety for being rather unforgiving. While the combat mechanics of "Last Reel" being absent would theoretically make this song easier, it is many ways much more difficult. From the previous songs there's the ink and shadow notes: the former obscuring the screen and charting and possibly results in a game over from too many hit; the latter being a One-Hit Kill that, while mostly reserved for the less note dense sections, can still be a pain to avoid when transitioning verses. Most infamous are the shrouded in darkness segments where the notes are changed into mostly black with colored outlines that make it hard to discern what your suppose to press amidst the frantic charting, making it inevitable that an ink or shadow note will be pressed. Chances are, you'll likely either Rage Quit or just turn off the gimmicks when reaching this song. A later patch would alter the appearance of the darkness notes to provide better visual clarity amidst the frantic charting.
  • Nightmare Sans' song, "Bad Time". Meaningful Name is an understatement for the song's name, as you very likely will have a bad time trying to beat it. The song is very fast, it features the blue and orange bone notes in spades, and this time around the dodge mechanic is randomized, in that it can either be orange, meaning that you need to press Space to dodge like the attack you normally would, or blue, meaning you must not press Space in order to dodge the attack. And unlike "Nightmare Run", the mechanics of "Bad Time" cannot be disabled, meaning you have to play the song as intended if you want to beat it, but chances are that you might end up activating Botplay just to get to the end.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: "Nightmare Run", as difficult as it is to play through with the gimmicks, is worth seeing the visual spectacle of Boyfriend running from Ink Bendy while transitioning from area to area in the process. Special mention goes to the large flight of stairs and the titular Ink Machine in the darkness enshrouded background as the chase goes on.

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