Small Hellboy Details You Missed

Hellboy starts off the movie heading down to Mexico in order to find a missing B.P.R.D. agent and close friend, Esteban, who disappeared while investigating a group of vampires. He finds his old pal wrestling in a lucha libre arena under the name Camazotz, seemingly indifferent to Hellboy's concern about his well being. At this point, audience members might have gotten a feeling of dread that Esteban wasn't quite himself, but Hellboy comic readers were likely way ahead of anyone else.

In the comics storyline Hellboy in Mexico, Hellboy teams up with a group of luchadores while fighting vampires in Mexico during the '50s. After a night of heavy drinking, one of the brothers (named Esteban) wanders out into the night and gets turned into a vampiric luchador called Camazotz. The movie more or less follows the storyline to a tee, as Hellboy is forced to battle against the giant bat creature, and, ultimately, impales him onto a nearby ring post. The movie even includes the months-long drinking bender that Hellboy goes on afterwards. Whatever else your criticisms of the movie might be, you can't say that it isn't closely inspired by the comics.

If you've got a phobia around eye trauma, you should definitely stay away from Hellboy. The opening scene features a raven pecking out a corpse's eye. Hellboy himself blinds at least three different monsters (and likely more) onscreen over the course of his exceedingly violent adventures. Plus, there's Baba Yaga, the witch who lost one eye to Hellboy before the movie's events, and is eager to pop one of Big Red's yellow eyes into her socket. She offers Hellboy a deal: information on Nimue the Blood Queen's next move in return for one of his eyes. Hellboy accepts, but ends up reneging on the deal, telling the witch that she can have the eye when he's done with it.

While it might seem like a savvy move on Hellboy's part, that might not have been the right decision. He gets hit with a nasty curse courtesy of Baba Yaga (more on that later), but he also ends up losing out on some wisdom. Considering how much of his adventures are so heavily influenced by mythic storytelling and folklore, Hellboy probably should have remembered the Norse myth of Odin. In stories, Odin is said to have traded an eye for divine wisdom, and later depictions (and pop culture inspirations) have shown that the sacrifice of one half of your 20/20 vision helps you to see things a bit more clearly. Metaphorically, of course. Sounds like something Hellboy could've used a bit earlier.

We'll point out one last detail in Baba Yaga's chicken house before we move on to other scenes. When Hellboy leaves with both eyes, Baba Yaga curses him that he'll be able to use both of his eyes to see the one person he loves most in the world suffer and die. Later in the film, Alice is hit by one of Nimue's poisonous needles, and her outlook seems grim. With Alice knocking on Heaven's door, it seems like the film is setting her up to be the unfortunate recipient of Baba Yaga's curse. As it turns out, all she needed was a little Merlin magic to get back up on her feet.

Instead, the curse's real target seems to be Professor Bruttenholm, who's killed by Nimue by the end of the film while Hellboy watches. If Hellboy is cursed to watch his dad die in front of him, then Baba Yaga's curse also nicely ties up the lingering plot hole of why Professor Broom was one of the only members of the B.P.R.D. not to be massacred by Nimue.

One of the most memorable lines in the trailer (and in the finished film) come when Hellboy rebuffs Nimue's offer of romantic alliance by telling her that, "this is not gonna work, ya know, cause I'm a Capricorn, and you're f***ing nuts!" While it may have gotten a laugh in theaters, it's not actually accurate. In the comics, Hellboy's given birthday is October 5, which would make him a Libra. It's easy to see why screenwriter Andrew Cosby went with the Capricorn symbol instead of Hellboy's canonical birthday; the zodiac symbol of the Capricorn is a goat. Hellboy's demon father takes the form of a goat, occasionally. Hellboy's horns are goat-like. It makes enough sense.

However, Hellboy in the comics being a Libra is pretty perfect, at least in reference to horoscope characterizations. Libras are known for their thoughtful demeanor, even keel, and need for partners — qualities that perfectly match Hellboy's general vibe in the comics. On the other hand, Hellboy in Hellboy is a bit more feisty and independent, so maybe the movie-verse version of the character actually is a Capricorn.

While Hellboy's appearance on a small Scottish island after a Nazi ritual is kept fairly faithful to the original comics, there is one noticeable twist to our favorite demonic hero's origin story. That would be the appearance of pulp hero Lobster Johnson, a.k.a. the Lobster. In the original comic, there's a pulp superhero along for the operation, but he's not the Lobster; he's a guy called the Torch of Liberty, a creation of John Byrne's that was loaned to Mike Mignola on a one-time basis for the story while they were collaborating on Hellboy: Seed of Destruction. Since the character figured so prominently in Hellboy's origin, you'd expect him to make another appearance over the next 25 years of comics — instead, due to copyright issues, Mignola has steered away from ever reusing the Torch.

Instead, whenever Mignola (and his many collaborators) needed to use a pulp hero to fight Nazis in the Hellboy universe, they used the Lobster. Making him an official witness to Hellboy's arrival on Earth is a pretty declarative statement that the film takes place within that larger universe. More importantly, they kept his extremely good catchphrase: "Beware my claw, for I've come to inflict justice!"

It wouldn't be a comic book movie without a post-credits stinger, and Hellboy is no exception. The scene finds the half-demon getting prodigiously drunk at his father's grave, only to be interrupted by the Lobster's ghost. Hellboy geeks out at meeting his childhood hero, and the Lobster gives a stirring pep talk to get Hellboy back on his feet.

It's a cute scene, but it's also arguably the most important moment in the film. Why? Because if there's one thing that Hellboy loves doing, it's getting drunk with ghosts. More than punching monsters, more than shooting and missing targets with his oversized revolver, Hellboy just can't get enough of boozing with the dearly departed. In fact, that's how The Wild Hunt storyline in the comics starts — Hellboy's called to lead the Hunt after going on a boozy tour of Great Britain's finest ghost houses. Some character beats are simply too important for any adaptation to ignore, and if you want a Hellboy movie, you've got to have a scene of him drinking it up with the great beyond.