Cuphead / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes (2024)

"Welching on me just like all the others, eh... I'll teach you for backing out of a deal — have at you!"

"[...] And having said that it's cartoony and upbeat, its premise admittedly is that you're crippled with gambling debts and now have to collect from fellow debtors or be murdered by Satan."

• Starting off with the plot, the Devil tricks Cuphead into gambling his and Mugman's souls for the Devil's entire fortune after a winning streak at his casino. Thanks to Cuphead's greed, he ends up putting his and his brother's souls literally on the line.
  • Also, before the Devil is summoned, you can see that Cuphead and Mugman are playing dice with King Dice and a few skeletons, and the Craps table is shaped like a coffin. A kind of foreboding, perhaps?
• The bosses you fight in the three Inkwell Isle areas are all the Devil's debtors — which are these unfathomably powerful beings of all shapes, sizes and forms, ranging from mighty dragons, mermaids, clowns, to even actresses to even a train carrying the dead... just how did these things manage to get their souls indebted by the devil in the first place?^note Badass in Distress doesn't even begin to describe it, because all of these supposedly mighty beings are now slaves of the Devil in exchange for more power or fortune like Cuphead did. No matter how mighty you are, if you Deal with the Devil... you become his slave! No wonder all the debtors fled when they got the chance!
• Early promos of the game show the devil making a neck slice motion after winning the game. In the shadows on the wall, you can see Cuphead and Mugman's heads being cut off by the motion to drive home the point of his threat.
  • In fact, the game has a real hard-on for decapitation. The intro song mentions it (and it's proven to not be a figure of speech if you lose to the Devil in the final phases), Cuphead and Mugman remove their heads when getting supers, Baroness Von Bon Bon removes and regrows her head several times (before that, she makes her Throat-Slitting Gesture with her finger as her head jumps up a bit at the beginning of the battle), Cala Maria detaches her head from her body in the last phase of her fight, Rumor Honeybottoms lowers her head in the middle of her fight to attack you, and the Devil himself can detach his own head and turn it into a spider that tries to squash you. The only one it makes sense for is Dr. Kahl, and that's just due to piloting his robot, whose body you destroy.
• Let's talk bosses, the game's main draw. A few start off seemingly normal but take more absurd and/or grotesque forms as the battles go on.
  • Cagney Carnation starts out in a cutesy pose before distorting his face and roaring at you, then keeping a maniacal grin through the rest of the fight. He must really love stretching his face — one of his first attacks is him lunging his face out with an even more evil look in his eyes (which is even quicker and harder to dodge in the patched version) (although there could be mild Nightmare Retardant if one compares his face to Mr. Burns). Then comes the second phase, where he gets fed up and makes thorny roots cover the floor, limiting your safe area. His face gets even more sinister, with his teeth turning to fangs and his eyes getting more detail. Think that's the last of his faces? NOPE! Beat him and you see his defeat pose. He holds his head up, his mouth gapes open with his tongue out.... and his eyes are now two empty sockets. It's a grim reminder of what you need to collect for your journey. What's more is that he has a Dummied Out voice line that was intended to play at this moment, a drawn-out groan of pain that shows how much he is suffering from his defeat.
  • Hilda Berg's main design is cute enough: Betty Boop with a pointy nose and an airship for a body riding a unicycle for the most part, and her transformations as constellations aren't even that bad either. However, then you hit her final form and she suddenly begins groaning, shaking, and then turns into this bizarre crescent moon form, which invokes a vibe of a wicked witch. Then her face pops out just like Cagney Carnation, but this time, her face stays popped out, revealing a jarringly mechanized body. And for the rest of the fight, she just cackles nonstop.
  • Baroness Von Bon Bon has quite a few creepy moments. Some of the candy-coated creeps she sends your way look a bit odd. Examples are a giant candy corn with a monster face or a flying waffle that fights by exploding and then coming back together. The Baroness first taunts you by having her head pop off and then retreating into her castle which is also alive with eyes on the towers and the gate acting as the mouth. During the later half of the first phase, she begins to fight on her own, drawing a shotgun and training it on you with a grin. Make it to the second half and the Baroness emerges from behind the castle wall, gives you an award-winning psychotic grin, tugs on the castle towers... and the castle turns monstrous with yellow eyes, the gate opening like a mouth, the walls turn into hands, and it starts crawling towards you! And to top it off, the Baroness will start throwing her own head at you! She's even holding her severed head in her game over screen!
  • Beppi the Clown, as expected, can be scary at times. His Cheshire Cat grin can be a little creepy, along with most of the faces he makes, but then comes the later phases. In the second phase, he turns into a balloon pump and his head separates from his body! And he sends evil balloon animals after you along with a monstrous roller coaster with some equally spooky riders. In the next phase, he's back to normal but then for the last phase, he turns into a chair swing ride, laughing all the way. And the face he makes when he spawns enemies is especially unsettling. And then his defeat pose...
  • Djimmi the Great is a prime example of the Deranged Animation next to Beppi: One of his actions has him shooting his skull from his head at you. And in his final phase, he goes utterly giant-sized, taking up most of the screen, all the while having an echoing evil laugh that is just as creepy.
  • The Phantom Express. It starts out with a cyclops ghost with an empty eye socket and eyes in its hands. It attacks by throwing its eyes at you. Then comes the second phase: a giant skeleton busts out to try and flatten you! The third phase has two heads pop out of the train that spits lightning downwards, the creepy part comes when they die and their faces literally melt away.
    • The death message of the Blind Spectre does not help. Instead of the usual Hurricane of Puns, you get a rather chilling quote that leaves no doubt as to Cuphead and Mugman's fate if they fail:

      I can see... the future. You will be... counting worms.

  • The lovely Cala Maria starts out as a giant mermaid who can spit ghost pirates at you! (Don't think of why she has ghosts in her stomach...) Then the second phase where electric eels shock/bites her and turn her into a gorgon (trust us, just go with it), which isn't that scary until the third phase. Her body turns to stone, leaving only her disembodied flying head to fight. Also, her petrifying gaze involves snakes coming out of her eye sockets!
  • Werner Werman has a creepy moment. Get to the last phase of his fight and he gets eaten alive by Katzenwagen, the cat lurking in the background. You see Katzenwagen skulking behind the wall, so you could probably predict it was gonna happen. But still, it comes as such a shock the first time around when you see it burst through the wall to eat Werner. And then Katzenwagen spawns helpers by opening its mouth, which suddenly turns into a jail cell and ghosts of criminal rats fly out. The ghost rats attack by throwing pink bowling balls, complete with creepy laughter. Thankfully it's mitigated when it turns out Katzenwagen was just a robot that Werman was piloting, but still...
  • Rumor Honeybottoms is intimidating at the start, though not really enough to take seriously. However, her changing into an airplane is something that's quite unexpected. But even more when she tries to attack you with one of the propellers on her wing in a buzzsaw method, gleefully laughing as she tries to get at you. And the cue that she's doing this attack is really subtle, so the first time she does it, it's likely to take you by complete surprise.
  • Captain Brineybeard himself isn't that bad, usually letting various sea creatures do the fighting for him. However, the third phase has his ship suddenly transform into a giant narwhal-looking monster with huge teeth. And this transformation is accompanied by an ungodly discordant screech reminiscent of Monstro.
• A few of the boss areas likewise are very nightmare-inducing, mostly those seen during King Dice's boss rush, where the "gambling games (and gambling-related activities) are sinful" theme is milked for all it's worth.
  • You might end up fighting against a domino called Pip and Dot in a strange world made of dominoes. They're a half woman and half man, as in a face on both halves of the domino. The creepy part comes when they attack by opening a mouth in their stomach to attack, complete with shaking, large sharp teeth and a demonic snarl.
  • You could end up on a table against a shot glass filled with whiskey, a martini, and a bottle of cognac called the Tipsy Troop. If you look at the background, you'll see empty tables at first — but after a few seconds, the seats start to fill with demons, ghosts, and skeletons.
  • Mangosteen, an eight-ball with floating eyes and teeth which looks a bit unsettling already. What's really unsettling is his defeat pose, where he starts melting and falling through his teeth. It looks as if he's barfing up himself!
  • You could end up fighting the skeleton racing horse, Phear Lap, on a haunted derby track.
  • Mr. Wheezy the cigar. Cuphead fights him on two ashtrays over a giant pit of fire. And the background is a distorted image of people mingling among the smoke. Pit of fire's pretty fitting, all things considered.
  • Hopus Pocus, a crazed magician rabbit sitting in a hat. One of his attacks is a circle of... rabbit skulls. There's something to be said about someone who fights with the remains of their kin with a deranged look on their face.
  • The background of Chips Bettigan's fight features a host of skeleton patrons in the casino watching the action. Something about the lack of animation in the background save for it tilting back and forth slowly in a slightly nauseating manner also makes it more than a little unsettling. The knockout animation doesn’t help, either.
  • Pirouletta, a cross between a ballerina and a roulette wheel, fights you on a roulette betting layout. Giant, disembodied gloved hands float slowly in the background, tossing chips around and lifting drinks.
  • You might go up against Mr. Chimes, an evil cymbal-banging monkey toy in a claw machine complete with empty eye sockets and an ear-piercing shriek whenever he wakes up. Also, when you make an incorrect guess in his memory game, he will let out an unsettling Evil Laugh while still hanging limply from the claw holding him.
• King Dice's deep voice in his Villain Song "Die House" makes the lyrics all the more creepy. He is the devil's right-hand man.

  If you haven't finished your task,

  Haven't worked assiduously,

  No, I cannot let you pass;

  Don't you mess with me!

  • Speaking of whom, King Dice comes off as more unsettling than his boss. One can tell from first glance that the guy's a shifty character, so it comes as no surprise when he leads the boys on when they come into the casino to gamble. But then you have to face him in All Bets Are Off, and the way he just looms over you while you play his dice game with that ominous grin of his. Then you actually have to fight him once you reach the end of the board (which comes very instantaneously), and that grin becomes a full-on Slasher Smile as he sends his cards out, laughing all the while. Thankfully, he's fairly easy, since all you must do is parry through his row of cards and blast at him when you can. But losing here means re-doing the whole dice board game again, having to put up with all of his creepiness once more.
    • The manner in which he sends you to the mini-boss battles. He leans in and eats the camera, complete with requisite *GULP*.
    • Not to mention, King Dice's Slasher Smile is just like the infamously freaky Coachman's leer from Disney's Pinocchio, big green eyes and all◊.
    • Also, King Dice's laugh when you start the battle and when he sends you to battle his goons is the stuff of nightmares. It doesn't sound normal in the slightest.
    • There's also the Evil Laugh sound that plays when you land on the 'start over' space in Dice's game, which may come as a Jump Scare for some because of how sudden and loud it is. Unlike Dice's usual deep cackles, this one sounds more high-pitched and completely unhinged!
• Not surprisingly, the Devil is milked for all he's worth in his boss fight. He morphs into bizarre creatures like a goat, a spider, and a serpent creature, he occasionally displays Glowing Eyes of Doom, and in his final phase, he jumps out his skin and hops into a hole, where you chase after him, right into a boss fight in Hell itself against his now kaiju-sized self staring right at the player! Things really get nuts from there.
  • Speaking of, if you lose during phase 2 and onwards, the taunting death message you get shows the Devil holding the lifeless and decrepit heads of Cuphead and Mugman. Also, unlike many of the bosses' game over taunts, which are quite whimsical and comical, the Devil simply gives a straightforward, but terrifying Badass Boast^note.

    The Devil: Anyone who opposes me will be destroyed!

    • To put the super-sweet icing on this already-sweetened nightmare cake, Word of God states that both Cuphead and Mugman have their immortal souls inside their cups-for-heads. It's just no wonder the Devil wants their heads so badly because he will stop at nothing in order to claim them for their souls.
    • Speaking of which, this Game Over image◊ will give you one more reason to shudder. Take a look at Cuphead's and Mugman's decapitated heads. Those empty black, hollowed-out sockets where their eyes used to be (just like Cagney's upon his being defeated), with a few cracks on their faces and in their empty sockets, their mouths hanging open, and a bit of liquid left over on their faces... it's as if they're deprived of their souls that are getting drunk off by the Devil himself... like they have some sort of Nightmare Faces!
  • Cuphead and Mugman can agree to the Devil's terms just before fighting him. If they do so, the player is granted a bad ending where both of them turn demonic while the Devil says they're going to have "one hell of a time". We then see the brothers, whose heads are partially broken, laughing evilly with the Devil happily glaring in the fiery background while sporting a huge Slasher Smile, and the music certainly doesn't help. The game ends with a very depressing tune playing over the credits.
    • After the credits, once the game returns you to the title screen. The game's main theme "Don't deal with the Devil" is played in reverse. It's really unnerving.
    • Ms. Chalice has been added to the Bad Ending of the base game where you agree to join the Devil, and this is where things become even creepier. Demon!Chalice cackles maddeningly between the transformed cup-bros, now neon pink and grey with fangs and a broken handle. Not even a ghost in the astral plane is safe from the Devil's corruption.
    • Although this can veer into Nightmare Retardant after reading Volume 2 of the Cuphead Comics, where they were made to be so mindless and evil that they end up refusing to do any of the Devil's work just because it was too boring, instead just smashing his inventions as that's more fun to them. Even in the bad ending they still end up costing the Devil (at least some of) his plans.
  • The Devil's battle intro has him glaring at the heroes, with his pupil turning into a cup that gets cleaved into smithereens. Notably, this is the only boss intro where Cuphead and Mugman react by screaming in terror.
    • And after jumping down into the hole, they scream in terror again when they see that the Devil has grown to kaiju size while they are clinging for their dear lives on floating platforms. Talk about scary!
  • A blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment, but during the transition to the second phase, when the camera pans down to below the earth, you can briefly see a small cave with multiple pairs of creepy glowing eyes. What ARE those things?
  • In addition to his shapeshifting powers, the Devil can also attack you with magic by spinning his staff. When he does this, his eyes glow white and lets out a horrible distorted raspy chant.
    • Speaking of shapeshifting, one of The Devil's attacks is by turning into a goat with both hands turnings into hooves as he tries squishing the player. During that attack, he has distorted Evil Laugh which sounds like goat bleats.
• The invincibility power you gain, while helpful, is activated by having Cuphead's and Mugman's heads grow huge with blank eye sockets, who follow it up by laughing rather creepily.
• There is a blink-and-you-miss-it moment in Cuphead's and/or Mugman's death animations. If their HP gets dropped down to zero, they pause with a shocked expression before their eyes vanish from their sockets as a single church bell tolls ominously, signifying death, and their body crumbles into dust with a shaky downward slide whistle, at the same time their spirit forms in a dizzying state (with their straw forming into a halo), showing their shiny pink heart as they are flying away. It's all in a quick motion, but it's still Nightmare Fuel as to what happens to their bodies when they die (though they can be revived in co-op mode, making it a bit of a relief, but still...).
• As if the battles with the pink ghosts in each Mausoleum stage weren't creepy enough, the patched version of the game adds a spooky announcer who spouts out creepy lines like, "Here comes a spooky bunch!" and "The ghouls are out tonight." And should one of the ghosts happen to reach the urn where the Legendary Chalice is imprisoned, you now get a scary/sad chord from Shoptimus Prime that plays out like this, all while Cuphead or Mugman look absolutely terrified:

  "YOUUUUUU FAILED!" *cue Record Needle Scratch*

• On the game over screens, the music slows down, becoming deeper and more distorted. This can turn songs that are normally fun and catchy and make them scary. Especially notable is when you die in the Die House (by hacking the game, since it's impossible to do so otherwise), and King Dice's already deep singing voice becomes just plain demonic.
• This song hidden in the files was thought to be a piracy measure, but considering it's on GOG.com it's probably an Urban legend about the file appearing after an update. The track has now been dubbed "You Paid The Price" by fans.
  • It doesn't help the fact that there's a hidden image in the thing too, showing each of the Devil's three forms, with the last one staring directly at you.
  • GioTGM found that the song can play in-game after all. Turns out, by getting the Bad Ending, then inputting the Konami Code, of all things, on the main menu, the game will turn off the music that normally plays there and play this already unsettling track in its place.
• With the 1.2 patch update, the mid-game cutscenes are now fully animated. This actually makes King Dice and the Devil look more threatening when you end up confronting them.
• The "Crisp Apples" trailer has Cuphead and Mugman sitting on a bench enjoying an apple but the facial motions the brothers make while eating can look unintentionally disturbing to say the least, which has caused some viewers to be rather creeped out by it. The chewing sounds they make doesn't exactly help either, as it almost sounds more as if they're chewing on hard glass. That's not to mention their teeth are visibly shown here (which are normally not ever visible), which goes straight into the uncanny valley for some people.

  • The actual Youtube thumbnail for the trailer has an extreme close-up shot of Cuphead's face, which looks rather unnerving. Heck, pausing the actual video at random times could produce some truly horrifying nightmare fuel faces from the cup bros.

  • It's a Freeze-Frame Bonus but apparently Cuphead has a neck. Yes. A neck.◊ Let that sink in for a moment... especially when you consider he can detach his own head.
  • It can be nightmare fuel for Mac (the apple guy) if you put yourself in his shoes: Imagine walking up and greeting your friends, only to see them casually munching on a smaller version of what is basically your own head.
  • The fact that Mugman keeps on eating the apple in front of Mac despite probably very well knowing Mac is standing there, clearly horrified and shaking in fear. And continuously smiling as he does so.
  • Mac's laugh at the end of the trailer's equivalent of That's All, Folks! ended up being a Jump Scare for some viewers, especially since they weren't expecting it. The laugh also sounds rather creepy too.
• While the previous trailers used the traditional hand-drawn animation, and the Switch reveal trailer had a very cool Roger Rabbit Effect, the reveal trailer for the PlayStation 4 is unnerving. What makes this trailer unique from the others is its use of Stop Motion animation instead of the hand-drawn animation. Something about those puppets of King Dice and Cuphead look really off based on how stilted the animation is.
  • Despite the uncanny animation, there are two interesting instances of Fridge Brilliance here. One, stop-motion animation was a very popular animation and filmmaking technique back in the early 20th century and has been used in many popular films at the time, animation or live-action.
  • Two, it can also be factored that stop-motion, in general, is seen as an uncanny animation format, so this Uncanny Valley look was likely intentional.

• Mortimer Freeze is a bit unsettling in his own right, for these two instances:
  • The roar Mortimer gives when he puts on the giant snowman suit at the start of his second phase.
  • One of his attacks during his third phase involves him wringing out his own body until one of his eyes pops out from the pressure, which he later retrieves by swallowing it.
• While he's intimidating, Glumstone the Giant may not look as creepy as previous bosses like Cagney, Beppi, or the Devil. Then he eats you and you wind up in his stomach, with only still-living reptilian skeletons keeping you from falling into his stomach acid. And now you fight his stomach ulcer. His hideous, disgusting stomach ulcer that lingers from above, grinning down at you with a face not even a mother could love. This also means you end the fight by attacking him from the inside. Best not to imagine what the outcome of that fight looked like. Thankfully, Glumstone's fine, as the ending shows.
• There's something discomforting about seeing Esther getting cooked into living sausage links. Sure, Black Comedy and all, but it's arguably the most brutal transformation in the game solely because it's the cartoon animal equivalent of being flayed and cooked alive. The moo she lets out when attacking in this form sounds like a cow in pain. And then there's the fact that she's spitting out steaks at you. Is she... coughing up her own innards?
  • Once you defeat Esther in this form, she gets packaged into a can, out of which two long, non-living sausage chains emerge and serve as the main obstacles for this part. Notably, the only seemingly alive thing in this part of the fight is the image of Esther on the tin adorning her own packaged meat, and all she does is spit hot peppers at you with a coughing noise. It very much feels like the player killed her off for real by this point, further punctuated by the fact that sausage angels escape the can once you defeat it. Thankfully, the epilogue indicates that she came back to life and regained her original form, but the battle can be very disturbing the first time it's played through.
  • Esther also has a rather cutesy and charming design (being a literal cowgirl and all), making the fact that the whole battle involves you turning her into packaged meat even more disturbing. And aside from just gasping at a mirror, she doesn't seem hindered by this. Which is even creepier because, again, skinned and cut up. At least Wally was on a stretcher and Cala was simply a floating Castlevania head. This is a cow's dead, diced, but still living body running around spitting meat at you like it's completely normal. It looks so...offputting, but it's treated like any other transformation in the game barring final bosses.
• The third phase of the Howling Aces boss fight involves Saluki's plane grabbing the screen and periodically rotating it. The Interface Screw is already disorientating enough, but doing so also gives the player a good view of the plane's empty eye sockets and beartrap-like teeth.
• The Pawns in the King's Leap lose their heads when you parry them. Still, their headless bodies prance along. It's an unnerving visual, to say the least.
  • The Bishop has a rather unsettling design with his constantly aghast face, which turns into three rotating faces when he takes his head off. And throughout the whole battle, his headless body just dances in the background!
  • The Rook battles you with the decapitated heads of his own victims, and the player must parry them back at him. Said heads look very humanlike (possibly representing Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette), and look dead... until you parry them, at which point they look back at the Rook and suddenly gain determined smiles.
• Chef Saltbaker turns out to be Evil All Along as he reveals that he's been making the heroes bring him the ingredients the whole time and will use one of their souls for the final ingredient of the Wondertart. The Slasher Smile he wears throughout his boss fight certainly doesn't help.
  • The build-up to it is haunting. If the fact that you walk into his bakery only to find it empty with a trap door open for you to enter as his usual theme sounds broken in the background doesn't set off all the alarms in your head, the dungeon it leads to with skulls adorning the walls certainly will. Then you see the shadow of the good chef himself holding a knife and cackling.
  • Proceeding forward to confront Saltbaker has him reveal that he's gone mad with the power that the Wondertart will give him once he's baked it. Except that the tart has one final ingredient... a living soul. He then reveals either Ms. Chalice's (If you don't have the cookie equipped) or Cuphead's/Mugman's (If you do have the cookie equipped) soul trapped in a jar, banging and desperately calling out for help!
  • Also, when Saltbaker stabs his knife into a cutting board, the knife passes outside the frame and into the letterbox itself.
  • The cup trio reacts in sheer terror at the start of the battle against him. The only other boss where this happens is the battle with The Devil. And the rest of the battle shows just how he can be as horrifying as Satan himself, if not more...
  • His attacks during the first phase of the fight deserve mention, as he hurts living food to attack you. And that living food? That's all the ingredients you've been collecting for him. The whole thing feels a lot more sad*stic than anything else prior. Brineybeard and Cala used animals as guns and it didn't come off as this cruel. Hell, even Glumstone tossing a bear away and Esther's later transformations came off more as Black Comedy Animal Cruelty compared to the G-rated hate crimes you're witnessing in this fight. Namely:
    • The Icy Sugar Cubes he sends at you are from a child-like sugar cube person that he breaks apart with a hammer and spike (though it mercifully doesn't have enough time to react). The Desert Limes he puts on the table run around in a panic before he cleanly slices them all in half and dices up their corpses. And both of these ingredients still have their eyes and mouths shown on their now-cut-up bodies.
    • The Distillery Dough scoots onscreen, looking kinda happy before realizing what it's in for and getting squashed flat by a rolling pin and cut up into animal-shaped cookies.
    • The Gnome Berries get off easier, as they aren't sentient, but the basket carrying them is. It runs across the screen scared for its life, before getting the berries squeezed out of it and running offscreen crying.
  • In the second phase of the fight, Saltbaker grows to giant size until the fight takes place literally in the palm of his hand as he stares down at you with manic glee, while the only way to damage the madman is to hit him with his own pepper shakers. After he takes enough damage, the whole place starts falling apart until Saltbaker himself is all broken up and the entire kitchen is covered in what looks like salt. Among the wreckage is the captured cup still in the jar and Saltbaker's broken, and still smiling empty shell! When his salt figures are beaten, he then emerges as a huge salt monster as tornadoes of salt rise from the salt landscape, as the floor beneath you cracks... and two tornadoes of salt, with dozens of Saltbaker's grinning, pained, or angered faces on them, all distorted, close in from the sides!
  • Basically everything about Saltbaker can go onto this page! Between his boss theme sounding nothing like what you'd usually hear from Cuphead (more like Final Fantasy and such), and his attacks being unusually cruel in comparison to everyone else, where he cuts up the living ingredients whilst they scream and cry (even the Devil's henchmen seemed willing to help their master!), it really emphasizes how much bigger the threat is this time around, considering the whole astral plane is in danger.
  • And in one of the Game Over quotes, it kinda reveals what Saltbaker wants to do with his control over the astral plane.

    Saltbaker: Your futile efforts were in vain, this world will be my salt domain!

  • Speaking of the boss theme, when you first start the fight, some ominous chanting can be heard in the background, which while it serves as a nice Call-Back, also REALLY paints the picture for how dangerous Saltbaker is, with just two words.

    Cup-Head!...*Ding*...Mortem...

• The secret boss fight is just creepy. Right away, the hourglass that forms the loading icon is broken, twitching as it tries to stand up. Everything from the familiar-looking Angel and a Demon constantly changing states, the grim, haunting music playing in the background, and what appears to be the Devil's skeleton hovering in the astral background, holding up the main arena! What's going on here? Is Cuphead simply having a terrible nightmare? Did the Devil actually die and is now haunting Cuphead's dreams to torment him? Who knows.
  • The yell the Angel lets out before unleashing the harmless attack is probably supposed to be a Most Wonderful Sound as it indicates the player isn't in danger, but somehow sounds very unsettling, almost like someone crying out in pain.
  • One way to view the battle is that it's somehow a manifestation of Cuphead/Mugman's PTSD of their encounters with the Devil (while Ms. Chalice might not have previously interacted with him depending on how the player progressed through the game before reaching Island 4, it's still Mugman's dream), which adds a whole new layer of disturbing to the fight.
  • "One Hell Of A Dream", the track that plays during this battle, may be by far the most disturbing battle theme in the game. It's nothing but a soft, almost gentle remix of Admission to Perdition, the Devil's first battle theme. Then it gets creepier and creepier as the ominous, plodding notes play, and then the sudden discordant strings suddenly sound, almost like a musical Jump Scare. And if you get a game over, the music doesn't distort or slow down like previous music. Not even a record scratch. It simply continues playing on as if nothing happened.
  • Probably the creepiest part of the fight is how strangely cerebral it feels in contrast to the rapid-fire nature of most Cuphead battles. The battle is clearly representing something very wrong and unnatural... but what?
  • The boss here doesn't even have an intro animation. It just fades into this fight as if the players' vision is adjusting to this complete Mind Screw of a boss fight. Even the Devil and Chef Saltbaker had some darkly amusing intros before their fights started, and King Dice, who didn't have an intro, had a goofy attack where he made his hand dance. Here? No goofy animations, no darkly funny intros, just a devil roaring at you and an angel singing at you.
  • The death quote for the fight only raises further implications that this is no normal nightmare.

    Dream Devil: Wish you may, wish you might, your soul is now trapped in the night.

  • There's also one particular detail that stands out the most of the quote above: there aren't quotation marks. This is jarring because every single boss battle has a quote said by the boss in the game over screen that is written between quotation marks, so who (or what) is saying this?!
  • What's more, having the Cursed Relic equipped changes the music in the overworld to an ominous, haunting jingle just to sell home that you're walking around with something unnatural. It somehow gets even worse once you find out it was done on a Novachord, one of the world's first electronic synthesizers, just to let you know how truly unnatural the tune is in comparison to the rest of the jazzy big band soundtrack.
  • Then there's what happens after you win the fight: your Broken Relic regains its power and becomes the Cursed Relic, which when equipped, sets you to one hit point and also randomly swaps between all of the weapons and charms you have available. Playing with this on is undoubtedly the scariest challenge in the game, though beating seven bosses with it on does upgrade it into the Divine Relic, making the pain worth it in the end.