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| “ | ♪ In case you ain't heard, I'm the Devil! I'm a real low-down, not on the level! They call me Old Scratch, Mr. S, the Big D, I'm the King of the Underworld; yeah, it's great to be me! ♪ |
„ |
| ~ The lyrics from the Devil's song. |
| “ | You have taken something of great value to me, so I shall take something of great value to you. | „ |
| ~ The Devil before kidnapping Mugman out of spite. |
The Devil is the main antagonist of the 2022 Netflix animated series The Cuphead Show!, based on the eponymous video game.
He is the dastardly ruler of the Underworld who uses his love of trickery to spread misery and collect souls among the innocent denizens of the Inkwell Isles. Eventually, the young cup Cuphead will fall for one of his cons and, in the pursuit of his soul, the Devil will become his archenemy. He is the boss of the demon Henchman, the radio show host King Dice, the undead Ms. Chalice (formerly in her case) and the rest of the demons, including the obnoxious bureaucrat Stickler.
He is voiced by Luke Millington-Drake.
His Evil Ranking[]
What Makes Him Heinous?[]
In General[]
- While he may be the Devil himself, nothing indicates that he's made of evil or possesses other moral agency issues, and in fact it's proven he can do good, even if he doesn't like it to the point of not having done a single good thing since the beginning of time.
- For all his comedic moments, he still has more than one moment where he is a truly fearsome threat, he is universally feared in-universe for most of the show and he provides some of the most serious scenes in the whole show, such as King Dice's punishment, Cuphead's nightmare, and his threat to Ms. Chalice.
- He uses his trickery (mainly Carnevil and King Dice's game show, Roll the Dice) to steal the souls of the innocent, unwitting denizens of Inkwell Isles by the tens of thousands. By doing so, the Devil dooms both the physical body and the soul of his victim, as the body "lives" on as a literally soulless empty husk while the soul will spend the rest of eternity trapped in the Devil's Soul Vault in the Underworld.
- What makes this worse is that, unlike in the game where those who dealt with the Devil fully knew what was at stake, the Devil's cons in the show are designed to look fully harmless and the victims won't even be aware their souls are on the line until it's far too late. What further adds insult to injury is that, in Roll the Dice, the winners are the ones who have their souls stolen.
- As of "Carnevil", the soul counter in the Underworld is nearly 6.3 trillion. However, it's unknown how much of that is the Devil's direct doing.
- The Imps are practically his slaves, as they are endlessly overworked in the Underworld and, according to one Imp, hadn't had a break in 3000 years before the Devil threw his party (which, add insult to injury, was to celebrate "his hard work and dedication", completely dismissing the Imps, who actually do all the heavy lifting in the Underworld).
- Through his Imps, the Devil causes wars, overeating, famine and, presumably, many more disasters on the surface.
- By all accounts, this makes the Devil responsible of mass death and destruction by proxy. This isn't Fridge Horror, as one of the Imps working on war states that the three wars currently happening are having "catastrophic results on both sides" and it's not fully Off-Screen Villainy either, as the monitors of the war department clearly show military planes dropping bombs, tanks firing and what appears to be a city mid-bombing.
- Weirdly enough, the Devil in one episode is shown to be surprised and awed by the Underworld's activity in war, etc. and apparently didn't even know where or how they were done, which could put into doubt how much agency the Devil has over these atrocities. However, he and Henchman are given what seems to be a first tour of Hell's departments, which would be weird since the Devil has ruled the Underworld for at least 3000 years, so it's likely the Underworld had just been modernized and the Devil and Henchman were being shown the innovations for the first time.
- Even then, while he didn't know where it was managed, he knew that war was being managed by his imps, and didn't stop them from doing so despite having the authority to. It's very likely he ordered his Imps to control all of the disasters, making him responsible for all the suffering and death they cause, but simply didn't know or care how his orders were being carried out.
Season 1[]
- When Cuphead's repeated successes at the Carnevil game "Soul Ball" is preventing any souls from being stolen, he confronts Mugman to scare him so that he's make his brother lose at the game by accident in his panic.
- When the brothers start running, the Devil, delighted that he gets to chase runways, pursues them all across Carnevil, terrifying them and trying to burn them alive with his trident so as to get Cuphead's soul and, in the process, endangers Mugman, who is fully faultless.
- After the brothers foil Carnevil, he puts up wanted posters of Cuphead so that he can gets his hands on his soul.
- Although he's just as bad as the Devil and deserved it, he cruelly punishes King Dice and fires him from his game show for failing to get Cuphead's soul, even though that had been Dice's first ever mistake and he had, otherwise, successfully provided the Devil many souls with his show.
- After being pestered by Stickler, the Devil becomes fully determined to get Cuphead's soul himself.
- In an attempt to get Cuphead to take off his protective, magic, invisible sweater by turning up the heat with his fire power, the Devil burns down a good portion of the woods.
- To buy himself time before Stickler finds out he lied and didn't really retrieve Cuphead's soul, the Devil destroys Stickler's paperwork archiving all of the souls in the Underworld and forces him to recount them all over, the souls probably being over 6.3 billion by then. Although Stickler is insufferable and is responsible for the conflict of "Sweater Off Death" and "Sweater Luck Next Time", this is still a very harsh punishment, perhaps even too much so even for him.
- While he does allow his Imps to party and take their first break in thousands of years, it was because he wanted to congratulate himself, and treats them horribly otherwise, to the point of murder.
- Although he doesn't murder or even harm Stickler over his disrespect and annoyance, it's likely just out of pragmatism as Stickler is a hardworking bureaucrat and is indispensable for the Underworld to function properly. Even then, this mercy is subverted in season two.
- After a very brief moment of friendship between him and Cuphead as they wait in line for the Obliterator, the Devil immediately throws away his one chance of befriending Cuphead and letting go of revenge the moment he realizes Cuphead no longer has the sweater on and goes for his soul until Mugman intervenes just in time.
Season 2[]
- He burned somewhere around 22 of his top demons after ranting about Cuphead, being so mad he accidentally set himself and everything around him on fire. While he didn't want this to happen, he shows no remorse for that action whatsoever. By the time he gets to the Third Finest Demons, he outright states he wants to kill them, but doesn't want to imagine how his Fourth Finest Demons look like.
- When one of his Third Finest Demons killed one of its fellow demons, he didn't care at all and hypocritically "congratulated" it despite being killing his own demons himself.
- He send his Third Finest Demons and King Dice after Cuphead to get his soul while threatening them with death if they fail.
- Once Dice kills all the Third Finest Demons, he sends the Four Horsemen after Cuphead despite Henchman warning him of the danger in doing so.
- When Stickler stops him from getting Cuphead's soul, he tries to kill him, only to find out he's wearing the invisible, impenetrable sweater.
- It's confirmed that the Underworld tortures people when Henchman opens one of the windows and shows skeletons burning in lava. As the view is right outside his window and he rules over the place, it's quite clear the Devil is aware of it. This is also confirmed in Season 3 where he calls the view beautiful.
- After Henchman gives him an idea and encouragement to terrorize people to cool off, he decides to do it and wreak havoc around the Inkwell Isles and terrorizes many of its civilians while at it.
- After Cuphead shocks him with his own trident one time too many, he takes Mugman hostage and take him to the Underworld just to spite the cup, something not even Henchman was comfortable with.
Season 3[]
- It's revealed that, on top of torture, the Underworld also has slaves being tortured by carrying heavy boulders. One of the people in the Underworld was driven insane by the torture to the point he can do nothing but scream his lungs out.
- He tries to break Mugman's spirit to win a bet with Henchman by turning the temperature up so it would be too hot for him and outright telling him Cuphead is dead.
- Right after Cuphead rescues Mugman, the Devil tries to kill both of them.
- He incinerated one of his demons for mocking his acting.
- He purposefully sabotaged Cuphead and Mugman's performances so he could get a role in a stage play.
- He briefly tries to steal Elder Kettle's soul before changing his mind and going for the Telephone, something he succeeded in.
- On Christmas, he ruined many lives by terrorizing the citizens while singing a song about how delightful it is to ruin people at Christmas.
- He killed one of his demons for revealing that Henchman knew about Santa's Nice List.
- As revealed by Santa, he wasn't nice for even a moment in his life.
- He killed an old woman for asking him to donate to charity.
- He killed Santa's version of Stickler, although he revived him afterwards.
- While he did deliver the presents for all the nice children, this was for pragmatic reasons as he only wanted to go back to normal and get his choo-choo as a present.
- He briefly considered not giving Cuphead his toy train as punishment.
- He almost killed King Dice as punishment for not claiming Cuphead's soul, but changed his mind after seeing he's trying to do it.
- While he did give Ms. Chalice a second chance at life, it was only for pragmatic reasons as he wanted her to owe him a favor.
- He aged Ms. Chalice so hard she died of old age in a horrifically brutal, graphic and painful way to convince her to betray Cuphead and Mugman.
- He makes a deal with Ms. Chalice to determine who's the best dancer of time, during which he'd get to kill her if he wins. He then proceeds to cause an earthquake that brings the Underworld onto the surface to have a stage to dance for, during which buildings are seen toppling and at least one person fell into the Underworld.
What Makes Him Inconsistent?[]
- He is far too comedic to be considered NPE or PE as he has multiple scenes that completely distress his crimes, and there are far too many examples to list, but include saying he’ll get that “cup” before Henchman added “head” as a nod to Cuphead, crying after being stuck in an elevator with Stickler, his frequent attempts to steal Cuphead’s soul to the point where the brothers got annoyed, and even acting like a cat, among many others. By the end of Season 2 even in-universe no one takes him seriously, with there being a newspaper about how he's past his prime.
- He has care for several people:
- Despite a few instances of verbal abuse and even fewer ones of minor physical abuse, he genuinely cares for Henchman and outside of minor annoyance at him generally treats him well. He fully confides and trusts in him, gives him much more freedom than his overworked Imps as Henchman has enough free time to never miss an episode of Roll the Dice, makes him the new Roll the Dice host, takes him with him on his (mis)adventures, generally likes to spend time with him despite being sometimes annoyed by him, and when the Bubbles of Failure start taking away everything he cherishes, Henchman is in one of the bubbles.
- Despite treating him horribly, such as heavily punishing him for one mistake, driving him to the point of homelessness and even almost killing him, he does care for King Dice, as he admits that the Underworld is completely boring without him and that he misses King Dice's entertainment. He ultimately rehires him late into Season 3.
- He doesn't take Elder Kettle's soul despite having the opportunity to do so because he treated him well when he mistook him for a stray cat.
- He does have a sense of honor as he follows all the rules he created for the Underworld with few small exceptions, points out he has the full right to get Cuphead's soul as he owes him it, holds up his end of the bargain anytime he makes a deal with the heroes, and generally avoids hunting for Mugman as he doesn't owe him anything; while he does kidnap him in the Season 2 finale, by then Cuphead had stolen his pitchfork and it's implied he considers it fair play, as he took something Cuphead cares for because the cup took something the Devil cares for. In the Season 3 finale when Ms. Chalice refuses to trick the boys into signing his contract and tells them to run once he reveals himself, he refuses to attack the brothers since they aren't the ones who owe him anything while Chalice does, and he later keeps his deal to spare all three of them when Cuphead beats him in Rock, Paper, Scissors.
- While he was reluctant to do so and hated it, he did ultimately give Cuphead his toy train despite wanting it for himself and having absolutely nothing to gain from it. By further extension, he sympathized with the boy when talking about how hard it is to behave.
- He has standards, as shown through him being disturbed by Santa's ritual and calling him a psycho. However, this prevention is rather minor when comparing it to the things he has done.
Trivia[]
- Only the cartoons' version of the Devil qualifies as in the game, the Devil was a standard crooked businessman and his trickery only damaged people who were willing to deal with him and knew their souls were at stakes, unlike in the show, where the Devil targets a much broader crowd, doesn't let them know the risk they're taking, and commits many more evil actions than his "kill the heroes" game counterpart.
- The Devil was previously approved as Inconsistently Heinous, but was removed due to stealing souls seeming to rely on fridge horror. However, he was re-proposed and approved once more when it was decided that taking one's soul indeed left both the victim's body and soul to fates worse than death.
External Links[]
- The Devil on the Villains Wiki
- The Devil on the Cuphead Wiki
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 Inconsistently Heinous
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