Characters In Hellboy With More Meaning Than You Realized

The brand new movie Hellboy, directed by Neil Marshall and starring David Harbour, has a much darker tone than Guillermo del Toro and Ron Perlman's earlier vision, but it's based pretty closely on the Mike Mignola comic books, published by Dark Horse, where the character originated. That means that it features many characters who fans of the comics may recognize, but who could remain obscure to newer fans. For that matter, it also draws on mythology and folklore just like those comics do, so many of the characters are truly ancient. Merlin and King Arthur even show up in this movie, but you almost certainly already know who they are. With that in mind, we wanted to help you identify some of the characters who may be more significant than you'd guess from seeing them on screen. 

Ganieda, the witch played by Penelope Mitchell who betrays Nimue in the past and is forced to help her in the present, is also a figure in Arthurian legend, although a much more minor one. Ganieda, also known by the delightfully Welsh name Gwenddydd, was the sister of Merlin, according to Geoffrey of Monmouth's 12th-Century text Vita Merlini. She married King Rodarch of Cumbria, but after his death she moved into the woods with her more famous brother. 

There, she built a house with 70 doors and 70 windows, which enabled Merlin to observe the sky for astrological purposes. They were joined by the British folk hero Taliesin the Bard, who witnessed Merlin overcoming madness by drinking from a magical spring, while Ganieda gained a skill for prophecy greater than even her brother's. Interestingly, many who study these legends see Ganieda as a variation or earlier version of Nimue, which would explain her absence from Sir Thomas Mallory's writing, as she'd already evolved into someone else by then.

Played by Thomas Hayden Church in the movie, Lobster Johnson (or just "the Lobster") is a character from the Hellboy comics who spun off into stories of his own. He was a vigilante in the 1930s who fought crime at first and then fought Nazis when they became the planet's dominant villains. His real name was William Johnson, and his superhero name was the Lobster, but the two were combined over time and he became best known as Lobster Johnson. 

As revealed in Hellboy: Conquerer Worm, Lobster died in 1939, in an unsuccessful attempt to halt a Nazi rocket launch. After that, he continued wandering the Earth as a heroic ghost, the form we see him in during the mid-credits scene of Hellboy. If there's a Hellboy sequel, it seems likely that Lobster will play a larger role, considering his comics counterpart has spectrally assisted Hellboy during several adventures.

In Hellboy, there are three witches alongside Nimue in the medieval prologue who are credited as "Sisters" and played by Nadya Keranova, Mariya Tepavicharova, and Ana Tabakova. In modern times, another more hideous trio of witches, this time played by Meglena Karalambova, Anna Bankina, and Rut Rafailova, reassemble Nimue's dismembered body. Are they meant to be the same characters? Probably not, since there would be no reason not to use the same actresses, and anyway the witches from the prologue aren't resurrected until later in the movie. On the other hand, there's an argument to be made that all trios of witches are the same characters.

Stretching back to the Fates of ancient Greece and the Norns of Northern Europe, trios of wise women, both helpful and terrifying, have been a staple of mythology and fantasy literature. Their most famous appearance is in Shakespeare's Macbeth, where they offer ominous prophecy to the titular protagonist. In more recent times, the three witches played a major role in Neil Gaiman's classic comic book series Sandman, which really emphasized the idea that all versions of this trio have always been the same three, and that those three are at heart one being.

Grigori Rasputin is an important villain in the Hellboy comics, as well as the 2004 Hellboy movie, but before that he was a real man who was born in Russia in 1869. He was a mystic and holy man, and probably a con artist, who purported to have healing and prophetic abilities. Despite coming from a peasant family, he rose to the court of Czar Nicholas II, and became a particular favorite of the Czar's wife Alexandria after seemingly curing their young son of hemophilia. In the years before the Russian Revolution, the royal family's association with the wizard-like Rasputin was a common feature of propaganda against them, as rumors of his unsavory behavior spread across the land. 

Nevertheless, the Czarina remained loyal to the man she believed had saved her son's life. At the start of World War I, Rasputin prophesied that disaster would strike Russia. He turned out to be correct, and the entire royal family was murdered during the Russian Revolution, but by that point Rasputin himself had already been assassinated by a pro-Czar conspiracy that wanted to end his disastrous effect on the regime's reputation. He proved famously hard to kill, when deadly poison seemed to have no effect and his assassins then had to shoot him many times.

In the Hellboy comics, Rasputin was a legit mystic who was resurrected by dark forces after his assassination, and went on to help the Nazis in the ritual that brought Hellboy to Earth. That flashback is his only appearance in the 2019 movie, although in both the comics and the earlier movie, he returns again and continues his villainy in the present day. There's an unseen and apparently undying character who appears with the Baba Yaga in the after-credits scene of the new movie, and it would make a lot of sense if it's Rasputin she's talking to (although there are certainly other characters it might be).

In Celtic mythology, the Gruagach was a loosely-defined monster like an ogre, goblin, or giant. That definition suits the boar-faced character from Hellboy, but the comics flesh him out a lot more. He was originally a shape-shifting warrior of the faery folk, but his power was depleted when a human lover screamed after seeing him in a more terrifying form, thus invoking a curse that banished him to a far realm where he was reduced to a shadow of his former self. In the Hellboy story The Corpse, the weakened Gruagach attempts to take the place of a young Alice Monaghan, just like in the movie. When that fails, Hellboy leaves him trapped in the diminished piglike form of the Fomorian giant Grom, which is the shape he appears in throughout the movie (taking on the giant's true, larger form just for the climax). 

In the comics, Gruagach commits a lot more mischief along the way, but he does eventually resurrect the Blood Queen Nimue. She's not the one who kills him in that story, because he's been cursed by Merlin not to die until the world ends, so he can see exactly what his actions have brought about. He becomes such a pathetic figure that Hellboy tries to kill him as an act of mercy, but Merlin's curse holds. He's eventually saved by Morgan Le Fay, who takes him to the faraway realm where figures from myth live on.