"The little mugs have some fight in 'em, I'll say that much! They're makin' mincemeat outta them debtors!" —King Dice to the Devil
King Dice is the right-hand man of the Devil and the secondary antagonist of Cuphead, making his very first appearance in the game in the opening cutscene. He can be found within every Dice House, where he acts as a gatekeeper, blocking passage between isles until a required list of soul contracts are turned in to him by either Cuphead or Mugman.
King Dice is later fought in the stage All Bets Are Off! which serves as the penultimate boss-fight in the game. Instead of being able to damage him immediately, a minimum of three mini-bosses must be defeated before one can directly attack King Dice himself.
King Dice is roughly six feet tall, having the body of a human man, but with his head being modeled after a floating dice. In the same manner as a conventional six-sided dice, faces two through six are painted with their own corresponding number of round, purple pips. It is only side number one that has the features of a human face, with eyes, eyebrows, a mustache and a mouth. In this case, the single purple pip in the center of the dice's face serves as his nose.
He is shown wearing white dress gloves and purple dress shoes that match in color with his purple tailcoat, lavender waistcoat, dark purple pants and bow tie. He also has a pointed black mustache, high black eyebrows and shiny purple eyelids. When illustrated as behaving in an especially devious or threatening manner, he is also sometimes shown with bright, green colored irises.
In The Cuphead Show!, his design stays the same as in the game, but with small changes. The buttons on his waistcoat are black, his bowtie is fuchsia purple, and his eyelids are silver. His shoes also have a different design.
Personality
King Dice is an extremely sleazy, deceitful, untrustworthy, and manipulative individual. While on the surface he has the personality of an energetic and easygoing entertainer, he nevertheless can be as cruel and sadistic as his boss, The Devil, when he wants to be. Equally as arrogant and overconfident as the Devil, he nevertheless seems to be the more analytic and cautious amongst the working duo, as it is he who first informs his boss of the potential threat the boys may pose should they successfully fulfill their end of the bargain.
King Dice also takes his own bets very seriously, going as far as to attempt to kill the brothers when they succeed in getting all of the soul contracts after he made a bet that they would fail their mission. This possibly goes to show just how high the stakes were for him if he lost, as well.
When he talks, he often peppers his speech with stereotypical 1920s American mobster slang, using phrases such as "Now scram!', or "the Big cheese".
In the TV series, King Dice is shown to be very charismatic and talented in both dancing and singing; this further shows King Dice's occupation as a game show host rather than running a casino.
Story
King Dice watching smugly as Cuphead makes his final roll.
For a presumably long amount of time, King Dice has served as the immoral manager of the immortal Devil's casino. He first appears when Cuphead and Mugman are on a gambling streak at Craps, commenting that they seemingly can't lose. He then bows and smirks as the Devil enters the scene and offers a bet on their souls. After the brothers are put into debt, King Dice is sent to make sure they complete the deal by blocking the passage to the other areas of Inkwell Isle.
Once Cuphead and Mugman collect all of the soul contracts in Inkwell Isle 2 and pass the second Die House, King Dice and the Devil have a conversation regarding their success. While admitting that the brothers are doing a good job, King Dice states that he believes that they are up to something, although the Devil assures him that, if they try anything, he'll be ready for them.
After Cuphead and Mugman collect the final contracts, King Dice confronts them at the Devil's Casino. Initially complimenting them for successfully completing their task, he then angrily states that their success has caused him to lose a bet, and that they are going to play a "game" before seeing the Devil. King Dice is nowhere to be seen after his defeat, although it is implied that after he was defeated, he ultimately gave in and allowed Cuphead and Mugman to see the Devil.
Passage dialogue
King Dice has certain dialogue in each section of Inkwell Isle if the player speaks to him, depending on whether the contracts of every boss have been collected or not.
"Well, look what the cat dragged in. You think you're just gonna ankle on over to the next isle? Well that ain't how it works, genius. You ain't goin' nowhere 'til you finish up here! That means givin' them debtors their medicine. All of 'em! Now scram!"
Bosses not defeated (Second time)
"What're you doin' back here, wheat? I told ya, take care of them debtors. If you've got what it takes, that is, ha! Awright, enough bumpin' gums. Take a powder."
All bosses defeated
"Well, ain't that a pip! Looks like you really put the kibosh on them debtors. You can head on over to the next isle. Plenty more marks for you to lean on there!"
Bosses not defeated
"Hold it right there, wheat! You ain't leaving 'til you put the screws to them debtors...all of 'em! Ya get me? Good. Now scram!"
All bosses defeated
"Looks like I mighta underestimated you bums. You gave it to them debtors but good! Go on over to the next island. Lotsa fun times waitin' for ya there! Ha ha ha!"
Bosses not defeated/All Bosses defeated in Simple mode
"Hold it right there, you! You mighta busted up some of them deadbeats, but you don't have all their soul contracts! You ain't seein' the big cheese 'til you got those contracts in your grubby little mitts...all of them!!"
All bosses defeated
"Well, lookee here! You actually pulled it off...but you made me lose a bet!! And for that, you ain't seein' the boss just yet. We're gonna play a little game first!"
Battle
Intro
Before the battle, King Dice pops up from behind the board game whilst laughing sinisterly, and his head briefly flies off the screen before falling back into place. Every time the players come back after finishing a mini-boss battle, King Dice does his intro again, but without the laughter.
Board Game
King Dice's Board Game
In order to fight King Dice, the player must play and finish the board game provided by King Dice himself by parrying the die block summoned by his clap with 1, 2 and 3 numbered on it. If the player parries the dice before King Dice moves his hands, they will always get a 1. There are 15 spaces in total, counting the START, START OVER, SAFE and FIN spaces:
SAFE: There are 3 spaces of this kind and they spare the players from fighting the bosses. Landing on this space will cause King Dice to snicker evilly, before checking the players' position on the board and summoning the dice again.
MINI-BOSSES: The spaces numbered 1 through 9 are the spaces in which each of the mini-bosses are fought should the player land on them. When landing on a mini-boss space, King Dice will wink before eating the camera, starting a loading screen and taking the player to a place where the will have to fight the mini-boss belonging to the space. Some spaces have randomly generated hearts which will increase the player's health by one. Landing on spaces that have no heart will cause King Dice to laugh. If the player dies at any of the mini-boss fights, they will be forced to start over from the beginning of the board game. Also, unlike the fight with Baroness Von Bon Bon, where her subjects were fought at random, each of King Dice's henchmen are affixed to each numbered space as follows:
START OVER: If the players land on this space, King Dice will burst into maniacal laughter as they are helplessly sent back to the start, and they will have to play the board game again. Any mini-boss that was previously fought will not appear again if the player lands on their space, as it is turned into a CLEAR space. The game will go on as if it were a SAFE space.
FIN: The last space on the board. If the players hit this space, they then proceed to the main fight with King Dice.
Main fight
"So clever, so dapper, ya betta' believe this dice is loaded. Hi-de-ho!" —King Dice, Death screen.
When reaching the finish line, the main battle commences with King Dice closing in on the player. He will use only one attack during this battle. By using his hand, which moves like a person, he sends out a row of cards (12 to be exact, with 4 cards (specifically the hearts) that can be parried) which march towards the player while he cackles evilly.
This attack is only doable with parrying; the players will need to bounce atop the pink heart cards until the stampede ends. Parrying these hearts counts towards the parry total and fills the super meter, even though it will be less than normal parryable objects. In Expert mode, he produces a much longer string of cards. This makes it harder to parry consistently, but also builds the super meter faster. The player can also hide in the tiny space behind the hand King Dice uses, though this only works with knowledge on which hand he'll attack next, which is not easy because he sometimes uses the same hand twice.
When playing as Ms. Chalice, it is more difficult to parry the cards, as they player cannot dash parry between the cards; despite this, the cards generate pink particles above them for her to parry them. These pink particles count towards the parry total but they do not fill the super meter; only hitting the cards directly does that, which is almost impossible to do without taking damage unless a heart card is at one end of the line of cards. However, there are no special effects to make Hopus Pocus' parry more manageable.
Once he has taken enough damage, King Dice is defeated. In his knockout animation, he appears terribly beaten up with his tuxedo damaged, his head cracked and chipped, and both of his gloves begging in defeat.
Sound Effects
Description
Audio
King Dice exits the Die House in style.
King Dice's introduction.
King Dice winking and eating the camera.
King Dice snickering if the player lands on a SAFE space.
King Dice cackling if the player lands on the START OVER space.
King Dice laughing if the player lands on a mini-boss space that has no heart.
King Dice chuckling as he attacks with his cards.
King Dice moaning in pain after being defeated.
Walkthrough
Regular Mode
Expert Mode
Gallery
King Dice Quote Box
King Dice's response to defeating a boss on the Simple difficulty.
King Dice blocking the way inside the Die House
King Dice talking to Cuphead
King Dice shifting into the ground
King Dice shifting into the ground (transparent)
King Dice and the Devil having a chat
King Dice starting to get suspicious about Cuphead and Mugman
King Dice stopping the player if they haven't collected all of the soul contracts
King Dice gets in Cuphead's face and commands him to leave the casino and not return until the contracts are collected
King Dice bearing down on Cuphead
King Dice's idle animation
King Dice eating the camera
Clubs Card
Diamonds Card (Unused as of most recent update)
Hearts Card
Spades Card (Unused as of most recent update)
King Dice before clapping
King Dice clapping
King Dice's Knockout Sprite
King Dice winking
A headless King Dice in the intro of "All Bets Are Off"
King Dice's arm
Background
Animation process of King Dice’s full body, along with his clap
King Dice in the Thank you image found in the Studio MDHR website
King Dice in the second anniversary image
King Dice in a Steam advertisement
King Dice animated in-game
Spirit Artwork for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
King Dice Mystery Mini
Trivia
King Dice is one of the characters that are voiced by another gender, along with Sally Stageplay.
King Dice's gloves sport three darts each, but when fighting him, they have two pairs of buttons instead. This was probably done to give his gloves a more human appearance. Oddly, Bendy from Bendy And The Ink Machine has two dots on his gloves as well. This is most likely a coincidence.
King Dice seems to be a foil character for both Cuphead and Mugman, as while all three of them are cartoonish humanoids that are into gambling, Cuphead and Mugman act more innocent and wear simple clothes while King Dice acts more arrogant and wears a tailcoat and a bow tie.
In his song, King Dice refers to himself as Mr. King Dice, which is interesting because the only two characters to be referred to as "Mr." in-game are Mr. Wheezy and Mr. Chimes, two of his underlings who can be fought in his casino.
The name King may not be his title, but actually his first name.
"King" might reference his role in the game, however.
It's also possible that the game's developers originally called him "Dice King" before thinking that "King Dice" sounded more like the name of a sleazy casino manager/mob boss, which he is.
King Dice (along with the Devil) cannot be fought in Simple difficulty; only on Regular and Expert.
However, selecting Simple on bosses beside the ones in Inkwell Hell, his stage can be played on simple. None of the enemies will attack and will just stand still. But, it is impossible to beat it like this as Hopus Pocus, Phear Lap, Mr. Chimes and King Dice himself can't be hurt normally. He doesn't have a hitbox at all so there is not way to defeat him. Then he will start attacking but no cards come out and will keep being in that position forever.
This glitch is fixed in version 1.1.3, in which even with mods or using the same glitch to select Simple Mode on both King Dice or the Devil, the Regular version of the fight would play out instead.
There is a bug in the game where King Dice's attack animation will play, but the cards will not appear. Since the animation never ends, this renders him completely vulnerable and makes the fight effortless.
Depending on the player's actions, King Dice has the most phases in the game and the fourth to have individual characters in each phase. King Dice and his minions total 10 phases in all which is four more than Hilda Berg with 6 phases.
When adding the health of all these fights, King Dice is, by far, the boss with the highest health pool, with a total of 5845/8370 hitpoints
It seems that the game board in his boss fight was going to have an extra section, with evidence for this including 3 unused bosses found in the game files.
King Dice's death quote is a pun on loaded dice, a type of dice that's weighted to roll high numbers and is used to cheat in gambling, along with the fact that "loaded" is a slang term for "very wealthy". This also implies that the match against the Devil that Cuphead betted on was rigged.
The mini-boss fights in the board game are references to casino aspects as well as overall gambling. For example, Chips Bettigan is a poker chip stack.
Based on the positions of the pips on King Dice's head, it can be surmised that his die faces are arranged in a clockwise placement. This suggests that the back of his head, never directly shown in the game, would display six horizontally-arranged pips, while the unseen die face connecting his head to his body would show two - something confirmed by the one brief glimpse of King Dice's back given when he disappears in the Die House (though the pips are technically aligned the wrong way).[1]
Interestingly, a clockwise arrangement is more typical of Asian-style dice, which feature more compact, differently-sized and different-colored pips. King Dice's head uses Western-style pips (monochrome and evenly spaced), which would usually have a counterclockwise pip arrangement.
In keeping with his position, King Dice's head also shows some features typical of casino dice specifically; the sides have sharp edges, a precaution taken in casinos to ensure random rolls, and the placement of his facial features on the ace side are typical of where a logo might be stamped to prevent die substitution.
The walking cards that King Dice summons along with his living gloved hands resemble the anthropomorphic cards and gloves featured in the Mickey Mouse cartoon Thru the Mirror.
King Dice is one of two characters in the game (besides Quadratus) that breaks the fourth wall; every time Cuphead and Mugman land on a MINI-BOSS space, he stares directly at the player, winks at them, and eats them as a transition to each battle.
The designer of King Dice, Joseph Coleman, stated King Dice is 110 years old jokingly.[2]
Prior to update 1.2, in his dialogue when passing the second Die House, King Dice would say "cupface" instead of "bums". This change was probably done due to the similarity between the word and Cuphead's name.
Also, as of this update, he no longer attacks with diamond and spade cards. The reason for this is unknown.
Inspirations and similarities
A comparison between the creepy faces of King Dice and the Coachman from Pinocchio.
In the last phase of King Dice's boss fight, his eye color is shown to be green as he laughs wickedly. This is likely a shot for shot reference to the Coachman's nightmarish smile and evil laugh in Pinocchio. Their eye colors are almost the same, and both have an identical white glimmer cutting to the center pupil.
King Dice's Smash Bros. portrait compared with an image of Cab Calloway.
King Dice's design is heavily based on Cab Calloway, a famous American jazz singer who notably appeared in three Betty Boop cartoons with his songs: Minnie the Moocher, Snow-White, and The Old Man of the Mountain. His role as an antagonist might reference how Calloway voiced the villains in two of these films (the Ghost Walrus in Minnie the Moocher and the titular Old Man in The Old Man of the Mountain).
Joseph Coleman created King Dice to honor black artists of the era.
As an added reference, if the player is defeated by King Dice in his boss battle, he says "Hi-de-ho", a phrase commonly associated with Cab Calloway and the songs "Minnie the Moocher", and "Hi-de-Ho Man".
"Hi De Ho!" is also visible on Studio MDHR's Twitter page.
When he first enters the stage in the "Roll the Dice" episode of The Cuphead Show!, he sings and dances in a similar fashion to Cab Callaway.
When his gloves walk in his boss fight, they move like characters that were rotoscoped versions of Cab Calloway, like Koko the Clown and the Ghost Walrus.
His boss theme is very similar to that of Minnie the Moocher.
King Dice's singing voice is also alike to that of Louis Armstrong, another famous American jazz player, who was also coincidentally an occasional collaborator with Cab Calloway. A famous example of which is "St. James Infirmary Blues". Louis Armstrong also voiced as a villain (albeit a jungle cannibal) while singing his hit song I'll Be Glad When You're Dead You Rascal You in the 1932 Betty Boop cartoon of the same name.
At the beginning and in-between the mini-boss fights, King Dice would appear saying "Ha-Cha" before making the pink die appear. This might be a nod to the legendary Jimmy Durante with his catchphrase "Ha Cha Cha Cha".
King Dice's name may be a reference to the song Sons Of The Silent Age by David Bowie, specifically the lyric "listen to tracks by Sam Therapy and King Dice". These musicians did not exist and were made up by David Bowie.
In Sons Of The Silent Age, the 'silent age' refers to Americans born into the Silent Generation; people born between 1928-1945.
King Dice's Super Smash Bros. Ultimate portrait is based on a picture of Cab Calloway.
Revealed in The Art Of Cuphead, King Dice was also inspired by Clark Gable notably the mustache of him and Batman's Joker.
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