Moonshine Mob
The Moonshine Mob is a crime syndicate fought during the level Bootlegger Boogie in The Delicious Last Course. They are the keepers of the Distillery Dough.
Description
Appearance
The entire mob is composed of a spider, caterpillar, light bug, anteater, snail and many flies (alongside living barrels of moonshine).
The Spider Mobster is a spider with six long limbs, with a round red nose and his top row of teeth usually shows when he is speaking or smiling. He wears a teal fedora, tuxedo jacket, a very pale green bow tie, and a pair of yellow gloves.
The Light Bug is a purple light bug with a round abdomen, green eyes, blonde hair, and two antennae that poke through her maroon hat. Unlike the rest of the bugs, she has a nose that more closely resembles that of a human. She wears a red dress, hat, a pair of high heels and a pair of white gloves and fur collar. Some of the Light Bug's sprites show her to be wearing maroon panties.
The Anteater has brown fur and wears a teal bowler hats with an orange rim. This "Anteater" is actually a cartoonishly exaggerated cross between an actual anteater and an aardvark, with two mouths: one mouth located at the base of his striped trunk and the second mouth being at the tip. There is a circle of lighter brown fur around his head, resembling a fur collar.
The Announcer Snail, who serves as the Moonshine Mob's boss, is an anthropomorphic snail with a scar over his left eye wearing a yellow suit. On his back is a dark yellow shell, and he carries a megaphone to amplify his voice, launching crescent-shaped blade-like sound waves.
The Fly Goons, who serve as grunts and underlings of the mob, are stout flies wearing red shirts, teal pants, brown shoes, yellow gloves and bowler hats similar to that of the Anteater's.
The Caterpillar Mobster is a timid fellow wearing a lime suit and top hat. He has maroon hair and his face is a light shade of orange akin to human skin and his nose is red and resembles that of a clown.
The Ant Cops are dressed as police bobbies. Their uniforms are blue and they have eyes with yellow sclerae and red snouts. Some wear large goggles to protect their eyes from their own bug sprays.
Battle
Intro
A bunch of Ant Cops on the top left corner and the Moonshine Mob on the bottom right corner are in the middle of a yelling match, before they both retreat. Prior to this, the Spider Mobster fist-pounds his palm repeatedly in anticipation of the impending fight. The Light Bug holds her fan before leaving and pushes a small Moonshine barrel off the platform with her abdomen. The caterpillar holds on his top hat scared before running away. The Announcer Snail shouts out the lines of the announcer with a nasally voice, being carried away by a fly goon making him scream the second part.
In Simple Mode, while the Announcer Snail still announces the fight, he and the fly goon are not seen in the Mob during the intro and he does not scream the second part.
Phase 1
"One-two punch, you and da cops are eatin’ dirt. Bingo bingo!"
—Spider Mobster, Phase 1 Death Screen
The Spider Mobster travels around the platforms. He may do three different attacks:
- He kicks a fellow caterpillar mobster that bounces around the screen. The caterpillar can be defeated, causing his body to break into multiple segments that fall. In Simple Mode, this attack is not used.
- He uses a vintage telephone to call for back ups fly mobsters. They fly from the background and charge forward on the platforms. They can be defeated. In Simple Mode, there are less fly mobsters backups.
- He presses a button to summon bombs that fall from the ceiling and hang between the platforms. They explode when the player is near and burn up the web that hangs them. They shake a bit when the Spider Mobster moves pass them on his way across the stage. There cannot be more than nine bombs at once and some will explode to make way for the next time the Spider Mobster uses this attack. The bombs all explode one by one when this phase is defeated. When they explode, they deal 20 damage to everything around them, including the minions and Spider Mobster himself.
Some Ant Cops use a puff of pesticide and aims at the Spider Mobster. They often miss as they come much later and the Spider Mobster would have moved to another platform already. The puff can damage the player(s); however, they can deal 10 damage to the Spider Mobster as well if they can strike him. The puffs also vary in their colour, with most being green; pink puffs can be parried.
Upon having his health depleted (either by getting struck by the cups' shots or the pesticide that the Ant Cops are launching from their guns), the Spider Mobster falls off the platform into the foreground. He then spins a web to hold himself up and lowers the gramophone which the Light Bug is riding on to the middle of the stage, before the web runs out and the Spider Mobster falls again. Hitpoints = 439/427/495
Phase 2
"This dance is over, there’s no excuse…you couldn’t handle the giggle juice."
—Light Bug, Phase 2 Death Screen
During this phase, the Light Bug starts dancing around on the middle platform, moving left and right constantly as she does so and changing direction when she arrives at the ends of the bridge. The gramophone to whose music she dances to blasts out six musical sound waves which rotate around the stage, three of which rotates clockwise and the other three, counterclockwise. The sound waves can change their colour between green, yellow, and red. When they are green or yellow and slightly wavy, they allow the player to pass through them. However, the Sound Waves only turn yellow when they're about to turn red, and when they are red and twisted, they can damage the player. They rotate faster and faster as the phase goes on, the starting speed in Simple Mode is slower and Expert Mode is faster. A sound wave that is rotating clockwise cannot turn red if a counter-clockwise sound wave is red, and vice verse, so as to avoid trapping the player(s) in an inescapable situation, even in Expert Mode.
Moonshine barrel minions and Ant Cops run across the top and bottom platforms. They can be defeated. The moonshine barrels vary in their colour (either pink or brown); pink moonshine barrels can be parried.
Defeating the Light Bug causes her to swoon over and the gramophone to run out of breath and droop over. The Light Bug then climbs onto the flopped gramophone and is tugged up towards the ceiling. She can trample the Cups while running over to the gramophone, damaging them. In Simple Mode, the battle will simply end here as she stays passed out and the gramophone flops. Hitpoints = 536/427/495
Phase 3
"One thing dis nose knows is, youse cups gonna be pushin’ up roses!"
—Anteater, Phase 3 Death Screen
As the Light Bug escapes following her defeat, a giant hand holds onto the bottom left of the stage. This hand can damage the player(s). Another hand holds the middle right and the Anteater breaks the bridge of the top and middle platform. He greets the player(s) as he lifts his bowler hat with his prehensile snout and the announcer snail resides in it and laughs mockingly at the player(s), before the anteater puts his hat back on.
He stays in the background and uses his long snout to poke around the three platforms from either side of the screen. He can extend his tongue out fully across what used to be a platform, eat a bunch of Ant Cops and fly mobsters, and spit them out. The group starts fighting and forms a ball of scuffle that bounces around the screen. When extending his tongue, he usually squints his eyes first before performing the attack. The Anteater may also fake out to extend his tongue as well. His tongue can be parried.
When he is defeated, sticky flytrap paper with some flies stuck on it and the word "Knockout" appears and the Anteater slumps to the platform defeated, losing his hat in the process, to reveal the still-conscious Snail Announcer. Do not stop here; this is a fake out too and there is one final segment to finish. You can still act while the false knockout is shown, and this can be a clue to the fake-out. Hitpoints = 339/393
Phase 4
"Surprise! Forgetting about da boss ain’t wise."
—Announcer Snail, Phase 4 Death Screen
After the fake knock-out, the Announcer Snail shows himself from beneath the lost bowler hat and starts attacking the player(s) by yelling into his megaphone. This attack creates soundwaves that head for the Cups at an increasing rate. The soundwaves also vary in their colour between green and pink; pink soundwaves can be neutralised by parrying.
After the Announcer Snail is defeated, the real announcer clears his throat before saying "Knockout" and the Announcer Snail holds on for dear life as his Anteater steed swings his head back and forth as his eyes spin around. Hitpoints = 62/72
Gallery
Intro
Phase 1
Phase 2
Phase 3
Fake knockout screen
The Spider Mobster kicks the caterpillar
The light bug does a dramatic pose as she is defeated.
Anteater using his tongue to grab ant cops
The Snail Leader almost falling off of the anteater's head
Caterpillar
Walking around
Holding Caterpillar Mobster
Spider Mobster calling for help
Spider Mobster summoning Bombs
Spider Mobster defeated
Spider Mobster falling
Spider Mobster pulling down the Light Bug
Spider Mobster's hat
Fly Goon in background
Fly Goon
Ant Cop with a pesticide pump
Ant Cop running
Light Bug on top of the gramophone
Light Bug packing up her fan
Light Bug walking
Light Bug uplift her abdomen
Light Bug dancing
Light Bug kicking right
Light Bug kicking left
Light Bug defeated
Light Bug knockout
Light Bug running back to her gramophone
Light Bug goodbye
Moonshine Bins
Anteater
Ant Cops and Fly Mobsters in a fight cloud
Anteater knocked out
Announcer Snail
Announcer Snail knocked out
Overworld Icon
Official art of the Spider Mobster from Edge Magazine
Spider Mobster calling fly goons (pencil test)
Saltbaker lifting barrels of baking soda for them in the epilogue (An ant cop, fly goons, a barrel, and the Announcer Snail only being seen)
The Announcer Snail (left) at the end of the credits.
Official Patch Art featuring the Moonshine Mob being patched of Cuphead and Co.
Walkthrough
| Regular Mode | Expert Mode |
|---|---|
| File:How To Beat Moonshine Mob NO DAMAGE (A+ Rank) - Cuphead DLC | File:How To Beat Moonshine Mob on EXPERT MODE (S-Rank) - Cuphead DLC |
Trivia
- The Spider Mobster, Light Bug, the Anteater, and the Announcer Snail are literal descriptions of the bosses and not their official name.
- The Spider Mobster and the Light Bug have the same health values in the Regular and Expert (hard) difficulty levels, but not at the Simple (easy) difficulty level).
- There are a few notes for translators[1] giving more insight to the group:
- The Spider Mobster and the Light Bug are married and they are referred as such.
- They are based on a group of stereotypical mafia running an underground rum running operation.
- The Light Bug is a lounge singer, seemingly hinting that her role in the mob is to boost their morale by performing for them.
- The Light Bug’s death quote implies that Cuphead, Mugman, and Ms. Chalice not only lost, but were also pushovers for her to deal with. This is even mentioned in translator notes (see above).
- When getting hit by one of the music waves in Phase 2, a hurt stinger can be heard.
- The second phase is a rework of the scrapped Light boss. Funnily enough, this phase also uses a light bug.
- It may also be inspired by Grim Matchstick's originally having a music theme and shoot out music notes instead of flame.
- The Spider Mobster seems to be a redesigned version of the scrapped Giant Spider boss.
- The Ant Cops shooting pesticide that damages the Spider Mobster may be inspired by the unused blue Flying Toothy Terror from Cagney Carnation where it shoots a bullet at Cagney that can damage him.
- The Ant Cops can be considered allies in-universe, but in practice behave like minor enemies, as they can be defeated by player attacks and their own projectiles can damage players.
- This is the only boss where the announcer is different from the normal one, and the only boss to fake out their defeat.
- Considering that the actual announcer clears his throat, it can be assumed that the announcer was not amused when he was temporarily replaced.
- They were first revealed in an issue of Edge magazine. The Anteater is shown to be buried into the ground in the cover while the Light Bug and the Spider Mobster appear in screenshots and promotional art within the issue.
- The Anteater apparently acts as an enforcer to the Moonshine Mob to fight off the Ant Cops.
- The Anteater appears to have two separate tongues, judging by his knockout animation- one tongue in his mouth and one tongue in his nose.
- The Anteater's battle style is very similar to Katzenwagen, as they both appear gigantic to the players, occupying the majority of the screen in the backdrop while preferring to attack the players from opposite sides of the screen (Katzenwagen's paw attack and the Anteater's tongue attack).
- The mob appears to appear to have transitioned legally in the epilogue, as the Announcer Snail is seen negotiating with the cops, and the barrels of moonshine now have "Baking Soda" written on them.
- The Ant Cops are the ones to arrest Chef Saltbaker in the epilogue.
Inspirations and Similarities
- The fight is similar to those of Lololo & Lalala, Nruff & Nelly, and Pon & Con from the Kirby's Dream Land game trilogy, where in the stage also has several layers of platforms with the bosses and minions running about. The bombs hung by webs is also similar to the bombs with skulls on the front that drops from the ceiling in the Pon & Con fight.
- The Ant Cop's pesticide guns are similar to the spray gun that Stanley used in Donkey Kong 3.
- The Anteater appears to be inspired by the anteater antagonist that stars in the 1940 Fleischer Studios short, Ants In The Plants, with the most notable similarity being his trunk.
- The Light Bug's design is modeled after the moth from the 1938 Silly Symphony short The Moth and the Flame.
- The Fly Goons resemble the Beagle Boys from the Donald Duck comics.
- The way the Announcer Snail appears to control the Anteater under his hat by pulling on his hair may be a reference to the 2007 Pixar film Ratatouille.