The Cuphead Show!’s infectious theme song almost didn’t get approved

Netflix’s The Cuphead Show! The game’s zany energy is brought to life through short comedy episodes. It was inspired by old Mickey Mouse adventures. Right away you’re sucked into the opening sequence, which couples an infectious theme song with gorgeous, throwback visuals. It’s such a banger that you might not even hit skip when loading up the next episode. But even though it is such an integral part of the show, it almost didn’t happen.

“That theme was contentious,” recounts art director Andrea Fernandez. “It wasn’t a given that it was gonna happen. Because [in] streaming, it doesn’t need to happen. Dave [Wasson]He was very insistent that it be included in the show. Not just that he wanted a theme and an intro, but he wanted a crazy-looking one.”

“There was a lot of discussion aboutIs it really necessary to have an intro when streaming services allow us to skip intros?” says executive producer Dave Wasson. “I was like … my kids, if they’re watching a show, and they really love the intro, they don’t skip it. This could become something everyone really enjoys if it’s done right. We can then [Wasson and co-executive producer Cosmo Segurson]The song was written by them. The song was written by them. You can make this 15 seconds.We wrote 45 second songs. It was like: We can’t! It was shortened a bit. We can’t be shorter than 45 seconds long! You have to do it.”

Wasson mentions the introductions of Spongebob Squarepants Pee-wee’s Playhouse as the “gold-standards” he wanted to emulate. These opening sequences not only have catchy themes, they also contain fun visual details that can be viewed multiple times.

However, the opening sequence had to be created by the entire team simultaneously with the production of the show. As Fernandez says, there was no “extra magic time” or extra budget to produce the sequence, and even if it was against their best interest, the team had enough gumption to make the sequence happen. They worked on it while working on other shows.

“My favorite tidbit about the intro is that we had capped out our stop motion locations. It was said, Don’t even think about it,” says Fernandez. “I remember being like, OK …But, please beg our producer. What if there was a map we could unfurl and it opened up? I’m like, I’ll draw the map. You don’t need any new sets.

“I look at that intro now and I’m like I was so lucky that we sweet talked our line producer into getting that one extra shot. It worked. It paid off for sure.”

The Cuphead Show!Netflix now has it streaming.