After playing the game for a good while I decided to check out some Fleischer cartoons. Swing You Sinners was the first one I watched. Creepy stuff they did back then. MDHR did well with their inspiration.
I knew that Tom & Jerry and all the old school Looney Tunes and Hanna Barbera cartoons were from the 30s-40s but Popeye in 1919?? That shit is 100 years old!
Zarozapa CnJ They're brothers in an extremely meta sense. They were both created by Walt Disney with the intent of being the company's star mascot which signifies their close relation with the creator and company. Walt Disney acts as their "Father" figure in that sense since he created them while the two belong (Or belonged in Oswald's case) to two different "Mother" companies, that being Universal for Oswald and The Walt Disney Company for Mickey. So in that sense they're half brothers, but in the game Epic Mickey (Which is a very meta game in it of itself that connects the real world with the "Disney World") once you get Oswald to actually like you (You play as Mickey) instead of hating your guts like he did for a majority of the game then he says that he used to think of him and Mickey as half brothers but that he'd like to just plainly be brothers from now on.
Am I the only one who finds this heart-warming? I understand that originality can be good, but I also love the fact that you can be inspired by something you love, and I really love how the creators of this game took so much inspiration from the things they loved and grew up with - I have heard it said that they watched a lot of old cartoons when they were younger, so it is obviously something that means a lot to them. It's not even like they were trying to take the easy way out, and copy things, but rather, show their love for something. They also did pretty well with them in not directly copying, so they still managed to be unoriginal in an original way - some are more obvious than others, but a lot of them, you need to do a bit of work to see what they referenced/were inspired by, and then there's a bit of reward when you notice it, in a way. I'd actually love to make a game which references things I love, but in a way that looks like I'm using them as a base for what I create, and not just copying everything (I don't mind being unoriginal, but I do mind that people will write them off as rip offs and not tributes/inspirations, and I don't want to copy things directly). They did really well at not making things too obvious as well like putting the references where you wouldn't always expect them - they could have put all the "Swing You Sinners" references in one obvious place (i.e. a graveyard level), yet they shook things up by scattering them about, and putting some of them in levels you wouldn't think to look for them in.
+Yayuhz. EXE The slot machine also references Bison and Sagat. When it strikes 3 bisons, you are attacked by purple psycho power, and when it strikes 3 tigers, the energy comes from below, like an uppercut.
Grim Matchstick (the dragon) is based off of Grim Natwick who was an animator at Fleischer studios. The name is an obvious reference and the dragon stutters like Natwick too.
If you ever do Part 3, I do got at least one more thing you should know. In Inkwell Isle 3, there's a statue that is a saxophone with a hat. This Saxophone is a reference to "Music Land" of the main character, a saxophone with a hat. A side note including "Music Land" is that the part where the music war starts with the Jazz King, it heavily reminds me of a few songs in this game.
I really like how the music fits so well with the video and gives of the vibe where all the chaotic bosses came from cartoons that were sweet and innocent ( well most of them)
As a Person who watched all of these vintage films before knowing about cuphead, I loved seeing and noticing that these characters and boss fights that were inspired off these vintage films.
oh man. at the time i definitely knew they were references, especially things like woody woodpecker and bluto. but i never treated them as like obvious homages to those classic characters. and just like that i have yet again found a whole new respect for cuphead
Dr Kahl’s robot can be referenced to the wizard of oz from 1939, where in the first stage the player destroys his brain (scarecrow), heart (tin man), and gut, referring to courage (lion)
0:39 The funny thing is I watched that Popeye many times over as a kid but when seeing the bird in cuphead I didn't realize the similarity. Still, really amazing!
Also the bugs in the background of the Ribby and Croak boss fight remind me of that animation short with the dancing bugs, I think it was called Silly Symphony: Woodland Cafe.
@@jamesdime6865 I think they just mean that every other "Nostalgia Project" goes back to the 80s (or seems to in their opinion), and Cuphead's creators focused their "Nostalgia Project" around the 30s (although the videogame references where from and/or around the 80s.)
@@MJN_SEIFER Exactly. Nothing against the 80s, I'm just tired of 80s nostalgia being everywhere. I love Thor Ragnarok, Kung Fury and Turbo Kid, but after making the mistake of watching them back to back, I didn't want to hear anothing fucking synthesizer or see another goddamn neon light for a long ass time!
Hey. I not know all this references but you super, you open my eyes on this game thanks you. I'm one million times played this game and no times not seeing reference on this all in this game.
For the people who claim that the creators of Cuphead stole from these cartoons, first, these are inspirations, not copies, they took a few ideas from other cartoons but they still create their own characters and elements, second, when it seems that they straight-up ripped off those cartoons and not just took inspiration, many of these are cartoons in the public domain, meaning that the copyright to them expired and no one owns these cartoons anymore.
Now all we need is an animation of King Dice doing the famous dance that Cab Calloway did (The one where he almost looks like he’s doing the moon walk)
dr kahl is a mix of dr wily, dr eggman, and bowser's clown kart from megaman, sonic, and mario. cuphead and mugman can be references to mario and luigi as well.
I thought Dr Kahl's last phase was a reference to Dr. Eggman, since their designs in these flying machines are similar and he takes a supposed powerful diamond that he uses against you (*the chaos emerald).
Outstanding work on this! Woody Woodpecker was the only one I recognised myself so far (haven't actually finished the game yet though, so haven't got to the Tom and Jerry boss). No that I see them here, the Betty Boop and Bluto are stuff I should've got.
fun fact: mortimer was the original name for mickey mouse till they changed it, they later introduced a character named mortimer mouse. a rat who seems friendly but rips everyone off
The fact that oswald was outshined and completely 4gotten reminds me of bendy and the ink machine. Like hes somewhere w/ his old merchandise as an evil entity craving the limelight, lol.
I feel like Cuphead should actually resemble Bimbo the Dog since he got their souls dealt off, looks more brave and is money hungry. Mugman should represent Mickey since he is the one getting out of trouble, he KNEW the dangers, and looks less threatening
Thanks for making a few things clear freind. Im here because my kid made me buy Cuphead for the Nintendo switch. Excellent breakdown for a pure novice.😂😂
And this might be WAY darker than the game intended, but seeing as how Werner Werman is clearly a Nazi are those ghost mice in ... concentration camp uniforms?? If so, that would make this also a nod to "Maus" (graphic novel with mice and cats standing in for Jews and Nazis, respectively).
Ah true! I remember seeing a whole bunch of WWII-propaganda cartoons from the same(ish) era and got my source material confused. Still, I gotta think the Cuphead devs took major liberties if they're referencing Pac-Man and Gunstar Heroes in the game. I just assumed Werner was "all things German militarism" the way the genie has all kinds of Egyptian stuff in his fight when that's an Arabian mythology.
Personally, I think they wanted to pay homage to that era of military propaganda but without making it uncomfortable with the Nazi angle. With the other references to video games, they're obviously fans of videogames so a few cheeky visual references wouldn't distract too much from the aesthetic. The Egypt stuff... It looked cool?
Maybe Werner Werman is Jerry+Mortimer Mouse Jerry is a slang term for a Nazi used by allied forces And the mouse is German Because of its name and helmet The game is set on 1936 so there are Nazis Werner Werman's body looks like Mortimer's and his skin looks like Jerry's
Uh ... no, the reason I think this is that it's based on old cartoons which made fun of Germans and Nazis all the time in a broad, generalized, super-stereotyped sense. I can't get over all these people pointing the year 1930 like this game is in any way trying to be historically accurate. The Arabian genie flies around the middle of Egypt and shoots tiny planets out of a sarcophagus at you for Christ's sake. (and the gesture I'm talking about, he has his entire palm outstretched in a locked elbow, not the one finger thing he does at other times).
TBH I think beppi's more inspired by the Betty Boop cartoon "Impractical Joker" (i think that's what it's called) Since there's a character whose basically got the same look as Beppi, body wise at least.
![Cuphead [Character References]](/img/logo.svg){kind=logo}
