40 Fun Facts About Skullgirls

Skullgirls' tag-team play and assist attacks were modeled on which earlier fighting game?

Marvel vs. Capcom 2 supplied the template, but with a twist: a player can instead pick a single fighter, who gets more health and hits harder than members of a team of two or three.

What is the name of the Parasite, an unruly mop of demonic hair, on Filia's head in Skullgirls?

Samson came with a second mouth on the back of Filia's head: the average schoolgirl woke one day with no memories and the powerful Parasite already attached.

Skullgirls made the 2013 Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition for the most what per character?

Frames of animation set the record: the eight launch fighters shared 11,515 frames between them, an average of 1,439 each.

Which former orphanage maid became the Skullgirl and the final boss of arcade mode in Skullgirls?

Marie made her wish on the Skull Heart after a tragedy and aimed her rampage at the Medici mafia, but the Heart pushed her toward ever more severe destruction.

What is the name of Cerebella's Living Weapon hat, which only she can control, in Skullgirls?

Vice-Versa answers to nobody but her, which is why the mobster who raised her rations his affection to keep the circus star fighting in his corner.

Beowulf, the ring champion of Skullgirls, is known worldwide for felling which Gigan warrior?

Grendel was the high point: after Beowulf left the ring, a mediocre acting career tarnished his legacy, so he steps back in to relive the glory.

The Skullgirls team raised nearly $830,000 for new DLC characters through which crowdfunding site?

Indiegogo backers cleared the original $150,000 goal in under 24 hours, and the money kept coming until five extra fighters had been paid for.

Which Skullgirls fighter hears confessions in the Grand Cathedral and usually appears as a smiling nun?

Double is really a formless monster of unknown origin that can take the shape of any person, and it serves the Skullgirl with no apparent will of its own.

What are the cinematic super moves in Skullgirls called, each costing stored meter to perform?

Blockbusters deal heavy damage and can hit several times, and a player with enough meter can chain them back to back in what the game calls a sequel.

Which undead opera singer was the first DLC fighter funded by Skullgirls' 2013 crowdfunding drive?

Squigly comes from a long lineage of opera singers and was spared from becoming a mindless minion by Leviathan, the Parasite who is her family's friend and guardian.

Which royal family rules the Canopy Kingdom, the 1940s-style setting of Skullgirls?

Renoir is the crown's name, and the family carries a scar: its queen wished on the Skull Heart for peace during the Grand War and became a Skullgirl who nearly ruined the world.

Which city is the main setting of Skullgirls, a home of art and culture secretly run by the mafia?

New Meridian mixes humans and ferals from all over the world: its Little Innsmouth district houses the fish-like Dagonians, while the upper class keep to the posh suburb of Maplecrest.

Which Living Weapon does Parasoul, crown princess of the Canopy Kingdom, wield in Skullgirls?

Krieg is alive, and Parasoul wields it with grace, poise and cunning to destroy the Skull Heart so that nobody can repeat her mother's terrible mistake.

What did Ms. Fortune swallow in Skullgirls, leaving her body undying even when cut into pieces?

The Life Gem was the target of a failed heist on the mafia that got the rest of her Fishbone Gang killed, so she plots revenge from the shadows of Little Innsmouth.

In Skullgirls, Peacock's abiding love of what shaped her biomechanical weapons into a gang of cronies?

Cartoons run through her whole arsenal: the Anti-Skullgirl Labs rebuilt the mutilated war orphan with reality-defying weapons, and her damaged mind turned them into toys.

Which Skullgirls fighter, a former beat cop left in an iron lung, was rebuilt by the Anti-Skullgirl Labs?

Big Band is what officer Ben Birdland became after he ran afoul of his own crooked unit; his official profile even lists his blood type as B-flat, an experimental oil mixture.

Which elite military squad of the Canopy Kingdom does Parasoul lead in Skullgirls?

Black Egrets answer to a commander whose loyalties to country and to family often collide, a conflict that began when her own mother became the Skullgirl.

Skullgirls Encore added a bonus mode that changes how super moves deal damage, inspired by which Sega game?

The Typing of the Dead inspired a mode where normal attacks do almost nothing and each super move's damage depends on how accurately the player types.

Which holiday is the official birthday of Valentine, the only survivor of the Last Hope, in Skullgirls?

Christmas Day is the date on her official profile, which goes on to list sentimentality, bedside manner and candy among the things she dislikes.

When not performing in the circus, Cerebella serves the Medici mafia in Skullgirls in which role?

Leg-breaker is an odd job for someone her biography calls inherently good; the acrobatic orphan does it to win the attention of the mobster who took her in.

Which Skullgirls fighter, a clone of Filia added in 2014, began as an April Fools' Day joke?

Fukua was meant to be a temporary nod to the palette-swapped fighters of older games, but fan feedback convinced the developers to keep her.

Which director of the Anti-Skullgirl Labs keeps the unstable Painwheel under control in Skullgirls?

Brain Drain keeps Painwheel on a mental leash because the experiments left her violent and unstable; he also built Robo-Fortune, who shows him neither loyalty nor cunning.

Which diva of the nightclub Bastet's Den secretly hosts the skeletal Parasite Sekhmet in Skullgirls?

Eliza is widely known for her charity blood drives, which in truth feed her Parasite and preserve her ageless beauty.

Which Skullgirls fighter, cursed by the Skull Heart never to grow up, hosts her own long-running TV show?

Annie has been alive for centuries, and the show's story that several actresses have played its lead is a cover: there has only ever been one.

Which Skullgirls fighter is the kingdom's youngest princess, partnered with the Living Weapon Hungern?

Umbrella has grown up sheltered inside the royal palace with Hungern as her only true friend, and she longs to fight evil the way her big sister does.

Which cyborg assassin, right hand of crime boss Lorenzo Medici, joined Skullgirls in the Season 1 Pass?

Black Dahlia was once an agent of the Anti-Skullgirl Labs; mortally wounded fighting a Skullgirl decades ago, she was rebuilt and then betrayed her peers to kill for hire.

Cerebella, an orphan in Skullgirls, longs for the attention of which mobster who took her in?

Vitale became the closest thing to a father she has ever known, and he was left in charge of the whole crime family when its patriarch Lorenzo disappeared.

In Skullgirls, which queen, mother of Parasoul, wished for peace during the Grand War and became a Skullgirl?

Nancy got her wish in the bleakest way: three warring nations stopped fighting each other to bring her down, and an uneasy peace followed her death.

Painwheel in Skullgirls was once a normal schoolgirl with which first name before she was kidnapped?

Carol was delivered to a secret lab, implanted with synthetic parasites and infused with Skullgirl blood, yet the scared young girl lives on inside the monster.

After the whole Skullgirls team was laid off in June 2012, under which new studio name did they regroup?

Lab Zero Games shares its name with the secretive lab in the game's own story; the regrouped team carried on with the PC release and the downloadable fighters.

A dispute between Skullgirls' publisher and which distributor pulled the game from console stores in 2013?

Konami was cut loose after the developers blamed its unresponsiveness for holding up console patches, and the game came back in 2014 under the new name Skullgirls Encore.

Which studio developed Skullgirls Mobile, the free-to-play spin-off released for Android and iOS in 2017?

Hidden Variable gave the spin-off role-playing progression and deck-building on top of the fighting, and later helped make new downloadable fighters for the main game too.

Which Japanese composer, famed for Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, anchored the soundtrack of Skullgirls?

Michiru Yamane was sought out because the developers felt her mix of haunting gothic themes, jazz and rock would suit the game's dark, jazzy style.

Skullgirls runs its online matches on which rollback networking library, created by Tony Cannon?

GGPO predicts each opponent's inputs rather than waiting for them, and that smooth online play is why the game was picked for Evo's online lineup in 2020.

In Skullgirls, the meter that players build and spend on super moves is known by which name?

Dramatic tension can be stored up to five bars deep, and it also pays for outtakes, moves that force the opponent to switch characters.

Skullgirls fans raised over $78,000 in a 2013 Evo charity drive but finished second to which rival game?

Super Smash Bros. Melee won the tournament slot with over $94,000, but every dollar went to breast cancer research and Evo's organisers backed a Skullgirls side tournament anyway.

Which illustrator, known online as o_8, began drawing the character designs behind Skullgirls in high school?

Alex Ahad imagined the characters as a fighting-game roster while at college, an idea that became real when he met a tournament player who was building his own engine.

Skullgirls lets a trapped player break free by pressing any button when the game detects which exploit?

An infinite combo is a repeating, inescapable loop of attacks, and the game watches each player's actions so it can spot one as it happens.

In Skullgirls Mobile, which mode has players compete with other players to unlock new Fighters?

Prize Fights are how new characters are won, while Rift Battles reward players for building up defences and challenging each other.

Which actress voices Cerebella in Skullgirls and also handled voice casting and directing for the game?

Cristina Vee cast and directed the voices as well as playing the circus star, and she later became the English voice of Ladybug in Miraculous.