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  • In Wake The Devil, Chapter 5, why the heck did Guirescu explode?
    • Why not?
    • Hecate cut him out of her power source and made Ilsa her new avatar.
  • When Hecate manifested through Ilsa and tried to make Hellboy free the Ogdru Jahad, three people observed. One looked like the Baba Yaga, and one was earlier identified as Medea. Who was the third?
    • I believe the three figures observing Hellboy were the Baba Yaga, the King of the Fairies, and a Fae being who has only been identified as Sir Edward. I believe the idea is that they are three powerful Fae beings who represent the desire to destroy the world, neutrality, and the desire to save the world, respectively.
      • Sir Edward Gray was a real person, so he's probably supposed to be a human wizard. He has a proper scene in the latest storyline.
      • The Companion Gives a lot of background on Edward Gray, painting him as a forerunner to what Hellboy and the B.P.R.D. would become. It also implies that whatever he has become now is the result of his final mission, the results of which are currently unknown but seem to have been disastrous for him.
  • Why does Hellboy have to be such a jerk in the comics? It's hard to root for a guy who whines and moans every time he bashes in a monster's face and OH MY GOSH saves innocent lives. Then for like two years comic book time, he abandons his friends to all kinds of horrible horribleness. Yay, Hellboy.
    • Although for one, I didn't think he was whiny at all, and for another, his destiny is to bring in the end of the world. I'd be a bit miffed. While I enjoyed the film (haven't seen the second one yet), I much preferred the comic's stoic gruff Big Guy to the movie's overgrown teenager.
    • Agreed with the above. Hellboy is not whiny. He's a Film Noir hero—stoic and alienated from the world, but unflinchingly following his own moral code—in an urban fantasy setting. He feels just enough affinity for the monsters that he'd prefer if he didn't have to kill them, but when he has to kill, he does it without reservation. He has no intention of destroying the world, so he's ticked that every other supernatural creature he meets tells him otherwise. And the BPRD wasn't facing any major crises at the time he left, so he wasn't really abandoning his friends—in fact, he probably felt that until he figured out who he really was, he would endanger the BPRD by hanging out with them. Of course, that's Comic-Hellboy. Hellboy from the movies was whiny—justifiably so in the first film, as his personal growth to become a man was one of the subplots, but without any justification in The Golden Army, which chucked out the window all his character development from the prior film.
    • Don't forget that Hellboy's job consists of get punched by things bigger than him and then getting blown up, all while his opponent lectures him on "how we're the same." I'd be pretty grumpy too.
      • Also most of that time was spent trapped in the whale underwater by that hag who wanted to render Hellboy into pieces.
  • What the hell is that thing that Ben Daimo's evil grandmother toted around with it?! It's like someone combined a human, a monkey, and a bunraku puppet together. It's easily the most frightening thing ever to appear in Hellboy, and they show it like all the time - but it's never explained what it is. It's been driving me nuts for years.
    • Given the amount of time it takes for things to get explained in the Hellboy universe, I'm sure there is an explanation, we just haven't been given it yet. Case in point: Sir Edward first appears in the comics in 1996, isn't given a name until 2002, doesn't get a full name until 2008 (which reveals his character had already been planned out in 1996), and his true role in the story is still yet to play out. I guess patience will get us these kind of answers eventually. But yeah, what the hell is up with that monkey?
    • We know now, thanks to the Crimson Lotus miniseries. They are just normal monkeys that the Lotus puts enchanted Noh masks onto, that make them her familiars/slaves. In addition to the monkeys, she puts a similar mask onto a larger simian as well. In short, it was just magic to turn monkeys into soldiers. Don't worry about it.
  • That "angel" that came through the gate in BPRD: The Dead. Has there been an explanation yet whether that was really an angel from Heaven? Or is it possible that it was something else masquerading as an angel? Or that Dr. Eiss was just off his rocker when he called it an angel? (I've only read through BPRD Vol 5.)
    • There hasn't been any definitive answer on the matter yet, but during the War on Frogs 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.
  • What is the relationship between the Ogdru Jahad and the more humanoid (in both mind and body) demons who still consider themselves a part of good and evil on a human perspective? At times, they seem allied, and at other times like there's a total disconnect between the two sets of entities. The apocalypse was supposed to be the literal fire and brimstone hell on earth with demons ruling the world, but at the same time it's also supposed to be a race of mutant frog men ruling the world in the name of the Ogdru Jahad. What's the deal?
    • The Ogdru Jahad are very Lovecraftian - it sort of goes without saying. But while most people think "Lovecraftian" means "horrible tentacle monsters", it means a bit more than that, namely that humanity is so low on the cosmic ladder that things which make perfect sense to cosmic horrors make absolutely no sense to us lowly humans. Lovecraft constantly contradicts himself on nomenclature and the exact nature of the supernatural to reinforce the fact that humans can't understand such things. OR...
    • 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?
    • I like the interpretation that no one knows what will happen if the Ogdru Jahad return to destroy the world. In "Conqueror Worm", Von Klempt thought the destruction of the world was the end goal, while Rasputin thought that a new paradise could be created from the ashes of the destroyed world. The Black Flame is convinced that the frog people are the ones destined to inherit the future ruled by the Ogdru Jahadnote , while the old man from "The Island" thought humanity could beat the frogs and prosper in the new world. The demons of Hell would presumably be just another faction who think they can turn the apocalypse for their favor—especially since Anung un Rama, the fellow who is connected with the apocalyptic prophecies, is one of them by blood and is therefore assumed to be on their side. Since we already know that the Ogdru Jahad can influence others to make them work for its purpose (see Rasputin and the Queen of Blood), it's possible that Hell has been similarly influenced.
    • The Storm and the Fury confirmed that there were at least three potential apocalypses in the works, all with conflicting results. One in which the Ogdru Jahad win, one in which the demons of Hell would have won, and one in which humanity is reborn in some form. Multiple Endings, more or less. Furthermore, it's strongly implied that the Ogdru Jahad do not fucking get along with the race of demons Hellboy is descended from and that any times they seemed to be working together were probably either coincidence or someone attempting to play both sides.
    • The origins of the Ogdru Jahad and the demons of hell and so on are revealed in The Island. Essentially one of the angels assigned to earth took some of God's power and fashioned the Ogdru Jahad out of mud. The other angels assigned to earth set their seals upon it and imbued it with their own fire. Then, when night came, the darkness entered into the Ogdru Jahad and gave it both life and purpose, giving birth to the Ogdru Hem. The angels realized their mistake and went to war with the Ogdru Hem, destroying most and rendering them into spirit form while imprisoning others. The angel who created the Ogdru Jahad then imprisoned his creation and cast their crystallized forms into the deepest reaches of the abyss. The other angels then killed him for his mistakes, only preserving his right hand, which later ends up in a statue at the center of Hyperborea. God then punished the other angels for their own transgressions and cast them down into hell, where they became demons, although some others remained on earth where they bred monsters. So that's the relationship between the Ogdru Jahad and the demons in hell. They were part of the Ogdru Jahad's creation and as a result of that were consigned to hell.
  • So... given that the best war leader Gruagach could find was the Queen of Blood, and that Astaroth turned up and declared Hell's support for the fairies, were they supposed to just accept being driven out of the world? Given that Hellboy and the BPRD get to be heroes by trying to stop humanity going extinct, it seems kind of unfair. (It also just bugs me that Hecate and magic in general are portrayed as inherently evil, but I suppose that does fit with the pulp aesthetic of hitting monsters in the face that Mignola was going for).
    • The Fairies operate on a Blue-and-Orange Morality and don't even take time to consider things from a human's point of view. If they hadn't been snatching babies and spiriting people away for centuries, it's possible that humanity and the faeries could have worked together. But it seems that few made the attempt to understand humans, instead just using them - and the ones that did try to understand humans came to the conclusion that it was better to hide and fade away than open a diplomatic dialogue or waited too long to do so - like the Dagda. This naturally led to humans not caring about them as they destroyed their earthen homes and then forgetting about them entirely. Hellboy's official stance ("I don't care about your plight, just that/because you are stealing children.") seems to be humanity's official stance on the Faeries as well.
      • That explains why Hellboy or the Bureau don't offer to help them (though really? Someone so noble and heroic that lilies grow from his blood won't even say "hey, how about you promise not to fuck with us and in return we'll look into curing your sterility with all our mythological resources and psychics"?), but not why there is no good option for the fairies at all - it's suicide or murder-suicide; the whole thing stinks of a bizarre What Measure Is a Non-Human? ethic in a series starring nonhumans.
      • When the fairies accepted Nimue as the Queen of Blood, they weren't looking for someone to lead them to safety, they were looking for someone to lead them in wiping humanity before all the fairies died. There's no cure for them- it's the end of the age. The fairies are dying, the humans are being attacked by frogs and Ogdru Jahad. Not even the demons and devils are safe- Hell is falling apart and the old demonic order is gone.
    • Supposedly, the fair folk were supposed to either assist mankind in resisting the apocalypse, or just fade into the shadows of the world. Meaning, they'd go into fairy realms, like the one Baba Yaga rules, and no longer interfere with the mortal world. This is also true for the next race of fairy that are being born/created/transformed in what was once Britain. The fair folk are/were never supposed to be important for earth shaking events, their destiny is to become irrelevant. Gruagach refusing to accept that is what lead to all that bloodshed and horror.
  • Maybe I'm being too cynical, but how come the government didn't lock Hellboy away, turn him into a weapon, and experiment on him nonstop?
    • Because they're not cliched mustache-twirling villains.
    • Actually, apart from the "turn him into a weapon" (and still, he worked for the B.P.R.D 40 years, and probably to help his adoptive dad), all that happened: he was put in Area 51, experimented upon until Bruttenholm said "stop", and both Liz and Abe were experimented/isolated until Hellboy himself told the scientists to back off, since "he remembers what it was" (it was in B.P.R.D Hollow Earth, I think).
  • Why do the Ogdru Jahad want to destroy Earth? What do they have against it?
    • They're not rational in a sense that we would recognize. "What do they have against it?" just isn't an applicable question.
    • They are primordial evil beings that exist to oppose "capital G" God and all of creation. Also, according to the transdimensional aliens, who we see in Seed of Darkness, Conqueror Worm and the Visitor, Earth is just the first step before their evil corrupts "all other dimensions."
  • In "The Penanggallan'', why did the titular monster tell Hellboy how to defeat it? Not that it mattered, since it proceeded to drag Hellboy out under the sun, effectively killing itself and doing Hellboy's job for him.
    • It might have been miffed about being forgotten. Even though being forgotten allowed it to commit its murders unimpeded, a big theme in the Hellboy books is the creatures of myth and legend being angry at humanity forgetting them. Because Hellboy was sent out to kill it, it might have figured it was going to die anyway, and it might as well go out imparting imformation about itself. To quote Mommy Fortuna, "There's my immortality, eh?"
  • Why exactly did Herman von Klempt want to unleash the Conqueror Worm? Rasputin's reason for trying to unleash the Odru Jahad was so that he could rule the new world that would rise from the ashes, but von Klempt seemed to be looking forward to getting eaten by the Worm.
    • He pretty much explains to his granddaughter that all his friends are dead, all his projects are lost... So basically, Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum.
    • Simple madness is also a factor. Von Klempt seems to admire and rejoice at the beauty of the Conqueror Worm, in contrast to his contempt for mankind. A clue of his worldview is in the Edgar Allan Poe poem for which the story and the Worm are named after and the very same poem that opens the narrative: It's a poem about angels watching The Folly Of Man with all our disgusting mistakes and needless cruelty, and in the end when "The Conqueror Worm" (in the poem, probably a metaphor for natural death) kills them all, the angels declare this is the tragedy of man, and its sole hero the Conqueror Worm (i.e "Humans Are Bastards, thank God they die eventually to stop their endless cruelty."). The fact Klempt outright calls the beast (which is otherwise entirely nameless) "The Conqueror Worm" suggests he did this on purpose and agrees with the poem's assessment of humanity (we're all terrible and it'd be better if we were all wiped out by a Eldritch Abomination).
  • Why the hell are all the Muggles so relaxed around Hellboy? A lot of the stories are set in places or during periods where racism against other humans of different skin color is common, let alone seeing someone who's a Big Red Devil.
    • Most people around Hellboy are either 1) not Muggles (with him knowing or not) 2) government officials calling B.P.R.D because another scarier, redder, eviler thing was spotted by them. If you see a devil with no horns smoking a cigar and saying "yeah, you called the Bureau?", you'd feel more relaxed too, since the "big guns" are here to take care of it.
    • Although it doesn't come up much, we know that Hellboy lives in a Standard Superhero Setting. Lobster Johnson? The Torch of Liberty, a Captain America Expy mentioned in "Seed of Destruction"? When you could plausibly encounter a superhero, a guy with red skin and stumpy horns probably isn't too shocking a sight, especially if you don't understand his origins. Remember when Ilsa first sees Hellboy in "Wake the Devil" she mutters something about thinking Hellboy is a circus freak of some kind.
    • Hellboy had one field mission before he became a celebrity, with talk show interviews and magazine covers. He's met several presidents from a young age. We find out that he became a minor wrestling celebrity in Mexico during a drunken bender, and that there are movie serials based around him. He's strange but in a way that, probably purposefully, has been normalized to the public. If you want a real-world equivalent, consider Sammy Davis Jr. Also, as the poster above mentioned, Hellboy's world is different from ours. It's stranger. The BPRD had equivalent rival factions in other countries. There are orders of mystics and super scientists that got up to all sorts of strange things. The major cities of the world have underground armies of savage, mindless cannibals, ALL of them do. There are historic, verified appearances of werewolves, vampires and witches. A man in power armor, fueled by comsic life energy, fought a skeleton wreathed in black flames during World War II. There was a steam-punk mecha brawl that took place in 1930s New York City. The strange and horrific are just common enough that people like Kate Corrigan can get government jobs thanks to their degrees in folklore.
  • Do other countries have their own equivalents of the BPRD or does Hellboy just kill everyone's monsters?
    • In BPRD some of the agents are called to report directly to the UN. Not Congress, the UN. It seems that the BPRD was always subject to international oversight, but primarily a US organization. The reason other nations don't have similar groups? My guess is that supernatural occurrences weren't common enough that nobody else really felt a need to have one when the BPRD was willing to help at no cost to them anyway.
    • In recent BPRD storylines we have been introduced to the Special Sciences Service (SSS), the Russian equivalent of the BPRD.
    • The current answer is a big yes, with the caveat that by the time of the "modern" era stories, most have either gone underground, or fallen apart. Russia has the SSS, China used to have the Golden Crane Society, Germany had the Sonnenrad Society and of course Project Ragna Rok, the UK had many equivalents, but the official ones were the Foundry, and the Special Intelligence Directorate, and even the USA had a shadier organization devoted largely to weaponizing the supernatural. The Hellboy and the BPRD series seems to be following the interactions of several of these groups as its current overarching storyline.
  • In the first story featuring the Baba Yaga, Hellboy and Kate are in Russia when a peasant approaches them asking if they're Americans. Why isn't he freaked out when he sees Hellboy, a demon?
    • Hellboy is an international celebrity. An American one.

The Films

  • What the heck were Liz's travel clothes made of? Or did her Fire Resistance have an Aura Of Invincibility extended to her clothing when either she had (slightly) better control over her powers, or when the plot didn't require Clothing Damage?
    • In the films she has an Aura of Invincibility while she keeps them under control.

  • Does Hellboy actually come from hell? (like in the Judeo-Christian sense) The movies seem to make out that he comes from outer space.
    • Not from space, but The Void, a place outside the universe, possibly outside any universe. (In the movie. The comics are pretty clear that HB is a prince of Hell by birth.) Bruttenholm's description of The Void as a dark place where evil beings wait isn't too far off from Hell; he probably didn't give a straight answer when asked if he believed in Hell because a simple "Yes" would have given the impression that he was talking about Fire and Brimstone Hell.
    • The background material found in the Concept Art book makes Hellboy's comicbook origin cannon and relates a simplifed version of it. Hellboy is the son of a demon and a human woman. He was conceived at that spot of the ruined church 300 years ago, and held inbetween states of existence until Rasputin's experiment released him.
    • In the second movie he was stated as being a prince.

  • Why on earth did Johann even need a gym locker?
    • Del Toro says he was removing a polishing kit.
    • Also, he obviously can survive without the suit. (I guess he just needs it so he can hold things.) When he decides to go stretch his legs he has to put the suit somewhere...
    • And Hellboy himself seems to use his own locker mostly to store his beer (which is kind of brilliant since it has, y'know, a lock). Krauss probably uses it much the same way, storing personal effects that he doesn't want other people poking around in or stealing.

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