The Cuphead Show is getting a new season very soon, sometime this year,
likely the Summer from what we’ve heard. This led us to rewatch Season
One so we could discuss the myriad of relationships throughout the show. Now,
for this video, we will be discussing all kinds of relationships and not just romantic ones,
which of these relationships are healthy and which of them are heavily toxic?
I’m Caleb with WickedBinge and this is The Cuphead Show! Relationships: Healthy to Toxic.
Small spoiler warning, as we will be going over some major plot beats,
go watch the first season on Netflix and then come back to this list.
With our obligatory spoiler warning out of the way,
we can now move into the first of our sections, The Healthy Relationships.
Earning our gold medal of healthiness is that of Cuphead and Mugman. Cuphead and Mugman are
brothers and lifelong friends since they seem pretty close in age, maybe even being twins.
The two are shown to respect each other quite enough and will always stand up for each other.
They share meals when needed, Mugman makes a life-saving sweater for his brother,
and while the two bicker it’s nothing out of the ordinary for brothers. Cuphead and Mugman’s
relationship is a focal point of the show, and it makes them all the better at the end of the day.
The silver medal of healthiness belongs to Cuphead, Mugman, and Ms. Chalice. The
three of them are considered fast friends at best and partners in crime at worst,
as Chalice teaches the boys about how to effectively utilize charm
to get what they want. They go throughout town doing a song about charm and doing all kinds of
criminal acts. Now, yes, Chalice does accidentally get the Cup brothers arrested
but she does try to wake them and get them away before escaping so she didn’t have to
deal with being arrested as well. But the three of them have a very certain camaraderie that we
think marks them as a healthy relationship for the most part we hope is explored more.
Grabbing the bronze medal of healthiness is the relationship between Cuphead, Mugman, and Elder
Kettle. The Cup Brothers and The Elder Kettle are family, with Kettle either being their biological
grandfather or father or possibly being an adopted father figure for the boys. The boys seem to have
grown up under Elder Kettle’s care and he seems to care about them greatly. They all get along quite
well, although Kettle does get quite strict at times and the boys do like to slack off at times.
However, the main reason they fall this low on the list is because of Episode 11
“Dirt Nap” where Elder Kettle does try to kill Cuphead and Mugman in a variety of ways. Now,
he thought that this was in self-defense so we can’t get too angry at him here,
although it’s still more toxic than the previous because of this.
The next relationship we wanted to talk about was Henchman and King Dice. These two don’t
interact for very long during Episode 5 but they are considered Coworkers as they both work for The
Devil. Henchman is a big fan of King Dice and his show “Roll The Dice”, so much so he wishes
for King Dice’s autograph. Sure, he asks at a bad time, and Henchman does end up taking over
on “Roll The Dice” but the two seem to be on good terms. They aren’t nearly as close as the family
from the last entry but at least they’re not trying to actively harm each other which is nice.
Rounding out our healthy section is a very tentatively ranked Cuphead, Mugman,
and Porkrind. Now, this relationship is probably the most strained on this list,
as they aren’t friends and are really closer to something like business partners as Cuphead
and Mugman are just customers at Porkrind’s shop. Porkrind as a person is manipulative and kind of a
douchebag at times, but he seems to treat his customers like Jerry quite well. He tolerates
Cuphead and Mugman for the most part, however, he does imagine killing them when they annoy
him. However, he has the common sense not to send the two of them on a suicide mission even
if they do it on their own. Cuphead and Mugman do respect Porkrind quite enough and love his shop,
even if they do cause it to get destroyed by accident.
With the healthiest relationships out of the way we now move on to The Gray Area
The first relationship in the Gray Area is Dorris and Sherman which spoiler alert,
is the only romantic relationship on this list. Dorris and Sherman
are minor characters during Episode 3 who have been dating or married for quite some
time considering Dorris makes mention of their anniversary. Sherman gets quite angry at Dorris
for mispronouncing “anniversary” but doesn’t seem abusive, and at worst just yells at her.
Even after being yelled out Dorris still reveals that Cuphead and Mugman ran away
showing they do care about each other even if Sherman is too busy with work most of the time.
Up next on our list is the group of Duke, Emma, and Jasper. Now it’s unknown exactly what their
relationship is but they are at the very least colleagues or friends who work together in the
cemetery to scare people. The three of them are ghosts and generally like each other. However,
Duke is immensely abusive towards Jasper and Emma does very little to stop this although she is the
most peacekeeping of the three of them. Duke’s abuse of Jasper’s stupidity is toxic but at least
the three seem to like each other, and maybe Duke is trying to help Jasper in his toxic evil way.
In a similar vein is The Root Pack which is next on our list. This is another group of friends who
go around and scam people such as Cuphead and Mugman. The three of them are grifters
who take over people’s yards to throw parties and have fun at the other person’s expense.
Now, much like the previous relationship, Sal is pretty abusive towards Ollie,
but not because of idiocy, rather for crying, knowing that Ollie is rather emotional which
leads to a vicious cycle where his bullying leads to Ollie crying which leads to Sal bullying him
and so on. Now, Chauncey doesn’t pretend to be a peacekeeper like Emma and really
just lets Sal do what he wants rather than even pretend to care, which shows how toxic she is.
Rounding out the Gray Area of our list is The Devil and Henchman. The Devil employs plenty
of demons throughout his time, but one of the biggest employees we see a lot of during the show
is Henchman. Henchman is kind of obvious as to his role, where he serves as one of The Devil’s
high-ranking assistants, helping him with the burns from the sweater or informing him
about important events on Inkwell Isle if The Devil doesn’t already know. Out of all of his
employees, The Devil treats Henchman the best, never really being abusive towards him outside
of being angry when his song was interrupted by Henchman. That’s why it ranks in the Gray Area,
he’s still treating Henchman badly, and it’s not a relationship to aspire to,
but between this and The Devil’s many other relationships within the show,
this is by far his best, and Henchman definitely deserves The Devil’s niceties in this show.
We now reach the bottom of our spectrum, none other than the many Toxic Relationships.
Starting off our Toxic section is the brotherly duo Ribby and Croaks. Ribby and Croaks are the
main antagonists of the self-titled episode during the first half of the season and can
be kind of seen as a dark reflection of Cuphead and Mugman. Not only are both pairs brothers but
they were raised by a single relative, with Ribby and Croaks being raised by their darling mother,
who they even sing songs about. The two were pro boxers who often fought with each other but quit
thanks to their aforementioned mother. Nowadays they tend to fight each other anyway,
over the pettiest smallest arguments, and we mean fully physical fights with very little
beyond basic insults thrown between the two. They also get so focused on fighting each other that
they show very little regard for the environment around them when they do so. It’s no surprise
the two of them are toxic but they’re still not the most toxic relationship we see in the show.
Earring our bronze medal of toxicity is the relationship we see between The Devil
and Stickler. Much like Henchman, Stickler is employed by The Devil and therefore is at the
whims of The Devil throughout the show, however, Stickler only appears in one episode. But,
in this one episode, we learn everything we need to learn about the relationship between these two
characters. Stickler, as his name employs is a stickler who prefers that work be completed before
anyone could relax, which is very annoying to everyone around him,
especially when it’s said that the Devil rarely gives out vacations or breaks to his workers.
The Devil also finds Stickler quite annoying, but for some reason doesn’t destroy him in any way,
which is probably the nicest thing he’s done for the small demon. However, while Stickler
doesn’t seem to mind The Devil and may even look up to his boss, The Devil finds Stickler annoying
beyond belief, going as far as to destroy Hell’s records just to make Stickler go away.
However, The Devil also somewhat fears that Stickler will find out about his deception
which is interesting as well. When it comes down to it, The Devil hates Stickler and the
only reason they don’t rank lower is that Stickler doesn’t hate the Devil in return.
The silver medal of toxicity very neatly belongs to The Devil and King Dice. The final employee
of the Devil is his supposed right-hand man, which makes sense as to why it’s the second
most toxic relationship in the show. King Dice runs a soul-stealing operation disguised as a
game show called “Roll the Dice” which is supposed to be easy enough for the dumbest
people to win and therefore lose their souls to. However, it is quickly revealed that it’s
too smart for the main character Cuphead which leads to King Dice having his first loss EVER.
This, understandably makes The Devil upset, not just demoting the King to a lower position than
Henchman, but maybe even killing him based on how he reacted. He was willing to harm Dice beyond
belief for this failure, which shows a severe lack of care for his servants, and the only reason he
didn’t outright slay King Dice is that he was good enough to be the Devil’s right hand at one point.
Hopefully, we see more of not just this relationship but King Dice in general
as we’ve mentioned on this channel a hundred or more times at this point.
Maybe this will lead to the relationship being less toxic or possibly even more so.
But our most toxic relationship and earning our coveted gold medal of toxicity is the
relationship between Cuphead, Mugman, and The Devil. Now, this should be a no-brainer as to why,
but the simplest explanation is as follows. Cuphead and Mugman are at odds with The Devil
since the VERY FIRST EPISODE and then on and off throughout the rest of the series,
they are bitter rivals until Episode 9 where The Devil makes his final appearance for Season One.
They fight with words and trickery throughout the series and they only have one fleeting moment of
friendship while in the line for the rollercoaster but even that started off with false pretenses.
It’s no surprise that this relationship being as strained and hateful as it is takes the bottom
spot, and it wouldn’t surprise us if more of this relationship is explored in Season Two
and it somehow gets worse, but at the moment it unequivocally takes the gold on our list.
But let us know in the comment section if you agree with our ranking. And tell us what we should
cover next. Remember to hit that notification bell and binge our Good to Evil playlist.
Where we break down the morality of the characters in your favorite cartoons,
shows, and movies. But most importantly, stay wicked