King Dice

**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 Die 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 randomly chosen mini-bosses must be defeated before one can directly attack King Dice himself.

## Description

### Appearance

King Dice is roughly six feet tall, having the body of a human man, but with his head being modelled after a floating die. In the same manner as a conventional D6, 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 die'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.

Despite this, he does have a soft side. As shown in multiple Roleplays. Estelle even views him as a father figure.

## Story

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.

## Trivia

* King Dice is one of the characters that are voiced by the opposite 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.
* 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 third to have individual characters in each phase. King Dice and his minions total 10 phases in all which is twice the amount than Djimmi The Great with 5 phases.
	+ With the sum of all these phases, King Dice is, by far, the boss with the highest healthpool, with a total of 5845/8370 hitpoints
* It seems that the game board in his boss fight was going to have an extra section. Evidence for this includes 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".
* The mini-boss fights in the board game are references to casino aspects as well as overall gambling. For example, Chips Bettigan is a casino 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).
	+ 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 animator of King Dice, Joseph Coleman, stated King Dice is 110 years old jokingly.
* 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

* King Dice is one of the characters that are voiced by the opposite 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.
* 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 third to have individual characters in each phase. King Dice and his minions total 10 phases in all which is twice the amount than Djimmi The Great with 5 phases.
	+ With the sum of all these phases, King Dice is, by far, the boss with the highest healthpool, with a total of 5845/8370 hitpoints
* It seems that the game board in his boss fight was going to have an extra section. Evidence for this includes 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".
* The mini-boss fights in the board game are references to casino aspects as well as overall gambling. For example, Chips Bettigan is a casino 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).
	+ 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 animator of King Dice, Joseph Coleman, stated King Dice is 110 years old jokingly.
* 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.