Sweater Off Dead

**Sweater Off Dead** is the eighth episode from *The Cuphead Show!* It succeeds Root Packed and its successor is Sweater Luck Next Time. A Stickler makes his debut here.

## Synopsis

Mugman knits a special sweater to keep Cuphead's soul safe from the Devil while the Devil is having a party.

## Plot

Since the episode of Carn-Evil, Cuphead keeps getting nightmares from the Devil and Mugman is getting tired of it, so they head off in the middle of the night to find a way to deal with the Devil himself.

Meanwhile in Inkwell Hell, the Devil became impressed on the work of his demons, so he throws a party, but Stickler appears to convince the Devil to get Cuphead's soul but the Devil continues the party. Meanwhile in the woods, Mugman introduces Cuphead to a great sage advisor called "Quadratus" who advises Mugman to knit a magic invisible sweater to protect his brother's soul from the Devil.

Back in Inkwell Hell, Stickler keeps ruining the Devil's vibe in the party until he goes out to collect that "Cup Soul". Back in the woods, Mugman finished knitting the sweater before the Devil made his presence. Now the Devil can no longer take Cuphead's soul because of the sweater, He tried various attempts to get rid of his sweater but no avail. The Devil became frustrated and flew into rage, but realizes he can cook Cuphead until he takes off the sweater, but Mugman gives Cuphead a big hug and the Devil tries to cook them alive with a blast from his trident. The sweater's magic protects the Cups, however, inciting the Devil's ire which causes him to uncontrollably shapeshift into different beasts and lastly an eldritch horror.

Now back in the Underworld, the Devil tries to continue the party but Stickler tries annoying him again, so he destroys his ledger causing him to do a full recount and kicks him out of the party and the episode ends with the cups heading back to bed.

## Cast of Episode

* Cuphead
* Mugman
* Elder Kettle (dream only)
* The Devil
* Quadratus (debut)
* Stickler (debut)
* Henchman
* The Devil's Imps
* Mangosteen (pictured)
* Goblin-like-Monster (Dream Only)

## Trivia

* It's revealed that Mugman is good at knitting.
* Mangosteen briefly appears in the form of a poster on the Devil's fake carnival setup. This is the second instance where a character from Cuphead: Don't Deal With The Devil shows up as a cameo in the show.
* The beginning of the episode plays out just like Carn-Evil, except that the saturation is slightly raised and the scene plays out much differently.
	+ Coincidentally, one of the tricks the Devil sets up in order to get Cuphead to take his sweater off is a carnival.
* Several bits were cut from the episode. Originally:
	+ The Devil avoiding Stickler used to be a longer montage, in which he asks Henchman to dance with him in order to eschew his auditor, as shown in a Twitter post by storyboard artist Megan Ann Boyd. The scene was most likely removed due to time constraints.
	+ King Dice was going to attend the Devil's party; in the deleted scene, after Henchman sarcastically compliments Stickler ("Nice work, Stickler."), he jumps in to insult the auditor ("Yeah, you ruiner.")
	+ At the end of the episode, the scene where Stickler confronts the Devil played out differently; after the Devil returns to the Underworld, the moment where he cuts the cake extends a bit, as he passes everyone a slice. Here, Stickler is already aware that the Devil is lying and confronts him about it, only for the Devil to outright blow him up with his pitchfork (and presumably killing him), before returning to handing out cake, clearly stressed.
* When the Devil screams in a rage upon missing Cuphead and Mugman, one of the forms that he takes on resembles the Reaper Bird from *Undertale*. The main differences include that the Devil retains his black colour scheme, his legs are bowed, his wings are dragon-like, his beak is red, and his eyes are yellow with red pupils.
* This episode shows that the Devil's shapeshifting powers can go haywire from something making him extremely angry.
* Sweater Off Dead is derived from the phrase "better off dead", which describes someone who isn't good at all.
* One of the forms that the Devil takes on in his uncontrolled shapeshifting during his freakout over missing resembles Taurus from the game, the biggest differences being that Taurus has a pink face and is white otherwise, his eyes have star-shaped pupils, his nose contains a ring, his teeth are square, and his rear legs are missing, instead trailing out in a cloud while the Devil as a bull is all black, except for the fact that he has yellow eyes with red fire-shaped pupils and lacks a nose ring and has sharp teeth.