| “ | ♪I'm Mr. King Dice, I'm the gamest in the land. I never play nice, I'm the Devil's right hand man!♪ |
„ |
| ~ Lyrics from King Dice's theme song. |
| “ | 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! | „ |
| ~ King Dice to Cuphead and Mugman after they successfully brought all the contracts. |
King Dice is the secondary antagonist of the 2017 run-and-gun videogame Cuphead. He is the evil, sleazy and treacherous manager of the Devil's Casino and the right-hand man of The Devil.
He was voiced by Alana Bridgewater.
Biography
King Dice first appears when Cuphead and Mugman enter the Devil's Casino, and comments that they seemingly cannot lose. He then smirks as The Devil enters the casino and beats Cuphead at Craps after he bets his soul. The Devil then promises to free Cuphead and Mugman from their debt if they collect the Soul Contracts from his other debtors, and sends King Dice to make sure they complete the deal by blocking the passage to the other areas of Inkwell Isles. If Cuphead and Mugman face one of the debtors on simple difficulty, King Dice appears and reminds them that they can only get the Soul Contract by facing the debtor on regular.
After Cuphead and Mugman complete the second island, King Dice and The Devil have a conversation regarding Cuphead and Mugman's 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 will be waiting.
Once Cuphead and Mugman collect the final contracts, King Dice confronts them at the Devil's Casino. Initially complimenting them for successfully completing the deal, 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.
Fight and Defeat
King Dice takes Cuphead and Mugman to a giant Roulette wheel and creates a pink dice for them to roll. Each space has an effect on the fight at hand, from extra health, to starting over the roulette table. If Cuphead and Mugman land on one of the nine number spaces, King Dice swallows them and takes them to an area where they must fight a boss determined by the number they landed on. If Cuphead and Mugman manage to land on ten/fin, they will fight King Dice himself, who attacks by unleashing waves of anthropomorphic playing cards from his hands, although Cuphead and Mugman can parry on the pink cards to avoid being hit. After a short battle, Cuphead and Mugman defeat King Dice and make their way to The Devil.
Personality
King Dice is an extremely sleazy, deceitful, untrustworthy and manipulative individual. As the manager of the Devil's Casino, besides running the Casino his main job is to fool others into thinking that they are having a lot of luck and make them overconfident enough to think that they can beat The Devil when he offers to play with them, and then takes great joy in watching his victims try to do so. While normally relaxed and sadistically cheerful, he can be extremely cruel and abusive if he wants to be, as shown when he crushes (and supposedly kills) his minion Mr. Wheezy with his shoe for losing to Cuphead.
Being very arrogant and overconfident in himself, King Dice believes that no one is allowed to "mess with him" and that he can easily defeat anyone who tries to, which ultimately leads to his defeat. Due to his nature, even The Devil does not like him very much, regarding him as "good for nothing" and proud that Cuphead and Mugman managed to defeat him.
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Trivia
- Despite being the secondary antagonist, he has more screen time than the Devil.
- King Dice is often mistakenly thought to be the main antagonist. This is not true, since the Devil is his master and has bigger plans than him. Besides, the Devil himself considers King Dice a "good-for-nothing lackey", proving himself to be more superior.
- Though one could argue that King Dice is the central antagonist, since he appears to drive the plot more than the Devil.
- In the last phase of King Dice's boss fight, his eye color is shown to be green as he laughs wickedly.
- This is similar to the Coachman's horrifying smile and evil laugh in the 1940 Disney film Pinocchio, as their eye colors are almost similar, and both have an identical white glimmer cutting to the center pupil.
- King Dice's theme song "Die House" is sung by Alana Bridgewater, who also sings during the games end credits.
- His design is heavily based on the late famous jazz singer Cab Calloway. In addition to this, if the player is defeated by King Dice in his boss battle, he says "Hi-de-ho" in his defeat quote, a phrase commonly associated with Calloway.
- 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 tuxedo.