Phear Lap

"This derby is over and the results are in. Last place...YOU!"

—Phear Lap, Death Screen

**Phear Lap** is a miniboss that appears in the boss fight with King Dice when landing on Space 6. He is fought with the airplane above a horse racing track.

## Description

### Appearance

Phear Lap is a skeletal spectral horse that wears white shoes on his feet, and yellow gloves on his hands, a green visor on his head, and a horse collar with a red bow tie around his neck.

### Personality

Phear lap is a stereotypical derby commentator. When defeated, Phear Lap cries out money and holds several bills in his hands, implying that he bet on Cuphead and Mugman losing and lost the bet.

## Intro

Before the battle begins, Phear Lap falls into his craft with his long spine falling down until his head shows up.

## Battle

Phear Lap has only one attack, which is shooting a blue present out of his rib cage. The boxes travel for a certain amount of time before exploding and releasing golden horseshoes in all 8 directions. One of the horseshoes is pink, and can be parried. In Expert Mode, he shoots out the present twice as fast.

While the players are busy fighting him, a derby race is happening below the fight with skeleton jockeys riding skeleton horses. When a ghostly, robed skeleton appears riding its horse, it flies up to the players' location. In Expert mode, the ghost rider appear more frequently.

Throughout the battle, the foreground scenery blocks the player's view, limiting the amount of the screen they can see.

When enough damage is dealt, Phear Lap will cry out money and hold dollar bills in his hands. Hitpoints = 1000/1200

## Gallery

Phear Lap shooting a presentPhear Lap knockout spriteSkeleton horsesSkeleton ghost riderPurple, yellow, and green skeleton jockeys*The present and the horseshoes*
## Trivia

* Phear Lap's sub-stage references Derby racing, an example of equestrian sports which is frequently bet on in casinos.
* Phear Lap and Mr. Chimes are the only King Dice shmup mini-bosses.
* The fact that he shoots blue presents out of his rib cage is possibly a reference to the common saying "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth."
* The projectiles from the presents also look identical to those of the yellow horse in "Carnival Kerfuffle."
* Also, the fact that Phear Lap is a skeleton of a horse is possibly a reference to the common saying "Beating a dead horse."
* Phear Lap does indeed have legs, but they can only be seen for a split second during the intro (along with his shoes). Even so they appear to be shorter than the rest of his body
* Before an update, the line in his death screen, "The results are in." misspelled "the" as "thee".
* In the codes, Phear Lap's other skeleton jockeys can shoot projectiles at the player, but it is programmed to only shoot at an interval of 9999 seconds and it has been removed after version 1.1.3. Even in Legacy the jockeys doesn't have a shooting animation or shoot a bullet at all, so it implies that the codes has been scrapped for a long time.
* In the unused Simple Mode, he won't drop down and make his hitbox active, leading to a softlock. No skeleton jockeys and ghost riders would spawn in the race track below the fight as well. In later versions, like 1.1.3, the Simple Mode differences have been removed and would play like Regular Mode instead.

### Inspirations and similarities

* Phear Lap's name is a combination of a pun on the word "fear" and Phar Lap, a famous racehorse.
* His body design, along with his oversized collar, slightly resembles Horace Horsecollar, a character from the Mickey Mouse Cartoons.
* Phear Lap can be heard whinnying throughout the battle.
* In battle, his gloves are yellow but on the death screen, his gloves are brown. This may be due to inconsistent coloring, something that was common in 1930s cartoons.
* The ghost rider may be a representation of the "Rider of Death", one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in the Book of Revelations of the Christian Bible.

## External Links

* Phear Lap - Antagonists Wiki