Game Theory - Cuphead's SINFUL SECRET Business!

Episode Date: April 7, 2023

Don’t deal with the devil… An introductory phrase like this makes Cuphead and Mugman seem like victims to a devilish scheme. However, what if they weren’t so pure themselves? What if this whole time we’ve been getting played? Cuphead and Mugman are into some shady things and today I’m going to expose their secret business!

Nothing blows my wig quite like the keen sounds of a doghouse and gobble pie pitching woo to the beats of a skin tickler. Oh, come on, don't be a tin ear. This platter is a ringa ding ding, baby. Man, they talked weird back then. Speak to me, bro. Oh yeah, I know. Tonight's party is gonna be late A.F.

I am low-key excited to get turned up. We gotta get savage tonight. Hit me later with the DM fam. Stay woke. Oh, internet. Welcome to Game Theory, the thickest show. in gaming that's thick width four C's a K and a silent QUE if you're looking for a brick from these Well, you're in the right place in a year full of great games Cuphead is easily one of the best or at least best from a game play standpoint On the theorizability side there seems to be a little less meat on the bone

I mean the story seems pretty darn straightforward our heroes Cuphead and Bugman find themselves in hot water with the devil after gambling their souls away Since neither of them really want to lose their souls, they strike a deal with the devil and are sent out to collect Soul contracts from the other inhabitants on the island to give the devil his due. It's all pretty cut and dry. But before you go running off to your kitchen to explain the dangers of the real world to your cutlery, I'm about to let you in on a secret that will completely shatter the way that you perceive our heroic bowl-headed boys. For as innocent and heroic as Cuphead Mugman and Elder Kettle may seem, they're actually no better than the devil himself. When you look at the evidence, it is clear that these three are active criminals,

participating in an industry of sin. Not gambling like the Devil and King Dice, but instead, illegal alcohol sales. That's right, Cuphead, Mugman, and Elder Kettle are all moonshiner's. Smack dab in the middle of Prohibition. Okay, so you're probably wondering just how an inkwell hell did I figure that one out. So let's take a big gulp of liquid from our heads and start looking at the game. First, it's immediately obvious that this game is set in the 1930s. I mean, if the animation and music didn't already tip you off,

the game reminds us of its setting very frequently. We've already covered this era of animation in our analysis of Bendy and the Ink Machine to death, so no need to belabor the point here, but on this subject, here's a really fun fact. When culled out on Twitter for the inconsistent coloring of cup heads, hands and shoes, sometimes white, sometimes yellow, brown, even the color of their shorts, The makers of the game, studio MDHR, responded that it was to mimic the inconsistent coloring practices used by cartoons at the time. It's just another reason to absolutely love this game and its attention to detail.

Anyway, the reason I bring up the setting of the game is because it has everything to do with the devil's evil scheme on Inquil Isle and how Cuphead fits into that. You see, between 1929 and 1939, the world as a whole suffered from the Great Depression, an economic crisis that began in the United States with a crashing stock market but had devastating effects on markets around the world. In the US, the unemployment rate would eventually rise to 24.75%, which meant that out of a workforce of 51 million people, 12 million people were left jobless. It was so bad that the US dollar wouldn't be worth a whole dollar again until 1944. So you had prices rising, the dollar losing its value, and people losing faith in the government to help with this job crisis. With no hope in sight, people started to look for hope in other places, like a big win on the craps table, or at the bottom of a stiff drink.

Tobacco, alcohol, and gambling all saw huge upswings during this period, and thus America saw the rise of what became known as the sin industries. Businesses that got their name by exploiting human addiction to less than savory practices. Think it's a coincidence that the casino and cuphead is run by the devil? Absolutely not. In fact, the Las Vegas we know today owes itself to the sin industry boom of the 1930s. The legalization of essentially all forms of gambling happened in 1939. Everything from slot machines to cards to craps. And where have we seen all of those before? Oh yeah! Across Inkwell Isle. Tobacco use, meanwhile, took on a completely different tone from how we perceive it today. Cigars were associated with tough guys, while smoking cigarettes was meant to make you look sophisticated

and refined. Now look how we see smoking portrayed throughout Ewell Isle. On the gambling boat with ribby and croaks, we see classy in the background. And if you can make it out behind the fight with Mr. Weesey, a living cigar, you'll see twisted images of mysterious men in trench coats all smoking together. And again, both those fights are tied to gambling in some way. And by proxy, the devil. This is the 1930s, sin industries. But of the three sin industries during this era, the most interesting was alcohol. Because this was smack dab in the middle of Prohibition. For those of you who don't know, the Prohibition was a ban on alcohol that happened between 1920 and 1933 in the US. It was a governmental effort to reduce crime, solve social issues, and make Americans healthier by ceasing the production and spread of this so-called devil's drink. But it actually just ended up doing the exact opposite.

Organized crime and gang violence surged during this period as underground booze trafficking became big business. It was just a total failure across the board. Just because it was illegal, people were still finding ways to get a hold of their alcohol. And if you pay attention to all the little details in Cuphead, you'll notice that the only places you see alcohol are in areas owned by the Devil, the aforementioned gambling boat and the Devil's Casino, where you actually throw Fisticups. Fisticups couldn't resist. Fistice Cups against whiskey, rum, and a martini.

But remember, this is 1930. It is literally in the middle of Prohibition. All of this is illegal. It would make sense for the devil to be breaking those anti-alcohol laws, but it would be something else entirely for poor innocent Cuphead to be doing it Sadly though that's exactly what he's doing Cuphead mug man and elder kettle heroes by day and moonshiners by night Moonshiner was the name given to someone who made home-brewed illegal alcohol during the prohibition and while many were unsuccessful and I mean really unsuccessful we're talking 65,000 people dying from poisoned

liquor in one year levels of unsuccessful. Eventually the science did become refined enough that alcoholic beverages were being produced that didn't necessarily need to include Maycault's death on the label. Since making the stuff was illegal, most moonshiner's tended to work far into the woods, near a water source, and in places that only they would know how to get to. You can make moonshine using practically anything, but, and it's most basic, all you need is a pan, a kettle, and a rubber hose. Once you have your juice, it would be placed into jugs, marked by X's to indicate how many times they were distilled, aka how much punch your moonshine was packing, and then they were delivered in secret to various businesses.

From there, it would be common for your drink to be served by tea kettle or coffee pot into a teacup or coffee mug to avoid suspicion. Now where have I seen all those things before? Moonshine made using a kettle served in teacups. But that's not all. Think about where Cuphead starts his journey. Elder Kettle's home, the only place that's away from town and completely surrounded by woods, just like where the moonshiders lived during the Prohibition era, and right next to a water source. Coincidence? Maybe, but consider this. You ever wonder why Cuphead lives on an island? It seemed like a weird choice to me that Inkwell is just a series of small interconnected land masses all sharing the same name. Well, the size, shape, and general

topography of Inquell Island is actually fairly similar to the Bahamas, a series of closely connected islands just off the coast of Florida. Now have you ever heard of rum row. It was an alcohol smuggling operation that ran between Florida and the Bahamas during the Prohibition. They were producing alcohol at the edges of the Bahamas and using boats to smuggle that booze into the mainland US. Now those boats around ink will start to seem like they have a real purpose. And it doesn't just end with a few geographic similarities. Let's stop for a minute and examine the fluid in Cuphead's head. Some has speculated that it could be a non-Newtonian fluid, the kind that acts like a liquid, but when forces apply to it hardens like a solid. Others have said that it could be similar to the water of life that Japanese kappas have in their heads. But given the circumstances, it's incredibly unlikely that the fluid is something magical.

It behaves just like any other liquid in the game. You see it splashed when the characters are hit or do anything that shifts from side to side. In the opening scene, they're kicked out of the casino and we get the best view into mug man's head and we see that the liquid is white. Seeing a white liquid makes you immediately think it's milk, right? Or eggnog, I guess, but that's the liquid. That would be really weird. Well, it's not necessarily either of those. Researching animation techniques, you immediately learn that when drawing a clear liquid, white is the color of choice for just about any artist. Given this old-timey style of animation, one that doesn't use transparency,

if they didn't color it in, it would just look incomplete. Or on the flip side, if they were to use blue, it would be more reminiscent of water. So cartoonists of this era tended to use white. In other words, yeah, it could be milk, but it could also just be any form of clear, booze, specifically moonshine. Now consider this. Before a fight, the timid mug man takes a huge gulp from his head to get himself pumped for battle. You're not taking a swig of milk and then suddenly being infused with courage and doing flips, but there is the stereotype of taking a stiff drink of liquid courage, alcohol, before a fight, to get yourself all charged up. But for super solid evidence, we need to keep looking back to the past, but this time not as far back as the 1930s, instead back to 2015's

trailer of Cuphead, where he pours white liquid from a jug, marked with three X's into his head. Three X's, the mark of bootleg alcohol, a triple distilled jug of moonshine, which in 1930 is expressly outlawed. So, there you have it. Our innocent heroes are actually no better than the devil in his casino. They're agents of one of the prohibition era's most nefarious sin industries distilling illegal booze with elder kettle in their secluded shack in the woods on the outskirts. outskirts of inkwell. Can't make it any more black and white than that. But the editors can... But hey, that's just a theory. A game theory. Thanks for watching.