History Headscratchers / HellBoy

**** Neither; it's desperate, pure and simple. Love makes you stupid, after all, or at least prone to incredibly bad decisions.
* In the final panoramic, there are way more than 70 x 70 Golden Soldiers. Even counting only the ones we could see, there were more than 4900.

* The AlwaysSaveTheGirl moments in the sequel bug me, even when the one being saved is a guy. As noted in the main article, Liz choosing Hellboy over 'the world' ''kinda'' makes sense because Hellboy has a proven record of [[ScrewDestiny avoiding his destiny.]] But then a few moments later Abe gives Nuada the means to ''commit genocide against the entire human race'' so he can get back the princess (not so he can save her life, mind, so ''he personally'' can have her back, given that the Prince obviously can't harm the Princess without hurting himself.) AlwaysSaveTheGirl usually results in a little MoralDissonance; in this case it's taken to an extreme and Abe comes across as a full-blown selfish moron ready to sacrifice everyone and everything for the sake of getting his potential girlfriend back. Seriously, Abe, screw you.
** In all fairness, the Golden Army was kinda underwhelming. Their much stronger than a human and can self-repair to some degree, but they didn't seem too fast or agile and one wonders how their ability to pull themselves back together would hold up to being melted into seventy times seventy golden puddles from a hail of ICBMs from across an Ocean, or what would happen to them if the very arrogant prince who was controlling them was sniped from a rooftop a quarter mile away. And that's not even counting nukes. And that's not even counting the ridiculous tactical advantages modern society holds in terms of communications and spy satellites, especially if BPRD figures out how to implement the glamour-breaking technology into them...

**** Who the heck had the authority to make a treaty for ''the entire human race'', anyways? By the time we were starting to really make weapons and armies, we were spread out over Africa and Eurasia with no way to reliably coordinate with one another. I suppose that forgotten magic may have ironed out some of those problems (as well as the idea of non-Modern-ish human societies being able to take on an entire unified army of superhumans with a wide variety of magical abilities and skills), but it still seems like a stretch since the magic shown in the Hellboy films doesn't really seem to lend itself to such common uses.

* The ancient war between Humanity and all the supernatural races. It's a bit of a head scratcher that in those days of yore the humans could almost beat the Elves and their allies in open warfare, all while in present day humans with modern tech and weapons are still woefully overwhelmed whenever fighting those threats (IE: The whole reason for having people like Abe and Hallboy around).

** Much like there are different religions with different eschatology, the different supernatural beings have their own apocalypse beliefs. In America, certain hardcore evangelical (though certainly not all) have stated that they have worked towards the apocalypse, most of the time by trying to make sure Israel stays a Jewish state (after all, you can't have the Final Ultimate Battle in Israel if Israel doesn't exist). So, why can't several supernatural beings all be working towards a different apocalypse?

* How I didn't realise this before is... inexplicable. How on EARTH does Nuada holding his sister prisoner even WORK? If he kills her, he kills himself. Threatening the heroes with her death if they don't do his bidding is pointless. The worst he can do is hold her captive. And if they go to fight him, they actually ADD do the risk of her death. There's a major IdiotBall being held by all sides here...

** There hasn't been any definitive answer on the matter yet, but during the [i]War on Frogs[/i] miniseries we get to see a vision of Heaven for the frog monsters that is filled with those bug creatures. So it seems Eiss did get a vision of Heaven, just not one we want to visit.

* Is it just me, or does the king seem kinda like a JerkAss ? I mean, he's all like, "oh kill me, I can't stop you from taking this piece...and by the way, feel free to massacre my guards, too."

** I was originally going to say, "Because showing a guy with his teeth chewed out and then showing him turned into a skeleton isn't as creepy," then I remembered that a guy screaming in agony while his teeth are chewed out could actually be ''scarier.'' And besides, for best access to the teeth, you want to get the tissue around them first. Hell, these things have probably been locked up in the Undeworld for thousands of years, they'll take what they can get at fastest. Did you see any of them tying a li'l napkin around his neck?
*** How accurate are Abe's books? It's possible that they contain some inadvertant mis-information, it's not really like they've got a reliable backup source to check them against until they actually run across whatever beasty they're playing with.

*** I dunno, it seems like Hellboy won that duel by virtue of being able to direct a killing blow at Nuada and forcing a surrender. He doesn't seem to have been injured enough to stop being a threat, whereas Hellboy was probably fighting on adrenaline alone. It seems that overall, she wanted to end the threat he still posed permanantly, before he could hurt anyone else.

*** Possibly both. Because let's face it, when bad guys are given the chance ''not'' to die, they come back. At that point, Nuala was probably already guilty over the fact that she hadn't done anything earlier, and let her feelings imperil the ones who were trying to help her. Besides, c'mon... Who ''really'' wants to die? Can't be an easy choice, especially if you're potentially immortal.

**** I thought it was kind of weird, just the absolute about-face that the humans do after the elemental dies. I mean, ''what?'' I know the movie was making a point, but in all honesty both sides kind of sucked. I cheered for the humans, though, because [[HumansAreBastards I'm one of those]] [[HumansAreSpecial humano-centric]] [[FantasticRacism supremist types]].

* I dont get this argument at all. HUMANITY DOESNT EVEN KNOW THE TREATY EXISTS ANYMORE, how exactly can we be expected to keep treaty we dont know exists, to preserve mythical creatures we dont know exists, under the threat of a war we didnt even know had occured!

**** Also, we're not as long lived as the mythical creatures, we die off like flies during major disasters, we tend to forget stuff when we're trying to survive, so basically modern humans are held accountable for something that we have nothing to do with and no way to know about, since our goverment kept the supernatural secret.

*** I assumed it was like keeping the hardcopy of a contract, a binding rememberence of your promise. Or, as a relic of the 'glory days,' what with everything having gone to pot for the magical creatures since.

* How I didn't realise this before is...inexplicable. How on EARTH does nuada holding his sister prisoner even WORK? If he kills her, he kills himself. Threatening the heroes with her death if they don't do his bidding is pointless. The worst he can do is hold her captive. And if they go to fight him, they actually ADD do the risk of her death. There's a major IdiotBall being held by all sides here...
** Did the heroes even know about their syncronicity at the time?

* What Happen to Myers, apparently the only decent human that was still alive by the end of the first movie. He was actually a pretty cool character for a noncanon one and was at least a good person at heart if normal.
** In the brief, brief, scene preceeding the Tooth Fairy fight, Selma Blair remarks that Hellboy had him transfered to Antarctica, to which Hellboy answers with "He said he liked the cold". No, I am not making this up.

*** No, he sprayed this experiemental stuff on his gills, to keep them from drying.

* Does Hellboy actually come form hell? (like in the Judaeo-Christian sense) The movies seem to make out that he comes from outer space.

** In the second movie he was stated as being a prince. SoYeah.

** So I wasn't the only one! Somehow it just seemed kind of dick to give Mr Wink lines (sort of) right before he gets offed. It wouldn't have been so bad if he'd just been the mindless servitor like he seemed in the earlier scenes.

** My feeling was that she didn’t want her brother imprisoned, either through a belief that he would escape and kill more people or not wanting to see her brother suffer in captivity.

***Well, to be fair, only the fantasy creatures remembered the treaty - humans just did what humans do best, expanding and exploiting. Arguably it was the humans' fault for not finding a way to retain the treaty through the generations, but what-have-you.

**** I thought it was kind of weird, just the absolute about-face that the humans do after the elemental dies. I mean, ''what?'' I know the movie was making a point, but in all honesty both sides kind of sucked. I cheered for the humans, though, because I'm one of those humano-centric supremist types.

*** Is genocidal fanatic really the right word? ''His'' entire species were on the verge of fading way because humanity broke their end of the treaty. Attacking humanity - which is within his rights due to the treaty - to save your own kind isn't as simple as being a genocidal fanatic. Mostly because everything he says about humanity is ''100% right''.

*I dont get this argument at all. HUMANITY DOESNT EVEN KNOW THE TREATY EXISTS ANYMORE, how exactly can we be expected to keep treaty we dont know exists, to preserve mythical creatures we dont know exists, under the threat of a war we didnt even know had occured!

**** I assumed that the surprise was more due to 'holy fuck, I/he was actually hit.' As to the original question, the obvious answer is: ''Then we whouldn't have a movie.''

** So they could have a sister names [[{{Sandman}} Nuala]], obviously.

**Or maybe Nuada was just bluffing about hurting her, and was counting on the BPRD being unfamiliar with {{Synchronization}} and therefore not considering any of the stuff you mentioned. And it worked! None of the big three were thinking straight: Abe was too concerned for Nuala, Liz was too preoccupied with Hellboy dying, and Hellboy was too preoccupied with dying. And I don't recall Nuala getting any chance to tell them her brother was bluffing before Abe hands the crown over.