Frank Cotton shows that humans are often the worst of all.
"Time and again—it was always the same...My onslaught—beginning quickly, stopping suddenly—my sincere promises to return always kept. I fed on their terror—drank their torment and anguish in deep, slurping gulps—my never ending attacks maddened their imaginations—festered in their nightmares. It made me smile. It made me...happy."
— The Stalker, Clive Barker's Hellraiser, issue #14's "Later"
Cenobites often operate on Blue-and-Orange Morality. The following characters, however, Cenobites or not, are pure evil.
In each group, entries are listed by approximate release date/publication date.
All spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!
open/close all folders
Literature
Examples
- The Hellbound Heart: Frank Cotton is a hideous, hedonistic lech whose pursuit of higher pleasures led him to a tortured Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere at the hands of the Cenobites. From a small trace of his seed left in the human world, Frank calls out to and manipulates his abused girlfriend Julia—Frank's sister-in-law—into luring men to her apartment so she can butcher them and use their flesh to reconstitute Frank's own body; the final one of these victims is Frank's own brother Rory. Julia means nothing to him; after she sacrifices all of her morals just to bring him Back from the Dead, Frank rewards her by feeding upon her while she begs for help. Upon getting a human body back, Frank celebrates the recapture of his physicality by attempting to rape the novel's heroine Kirsty: "Come to Daddy."
- The Scarlet Gospels: The Hell Priest, better known as "Pinhead", is the result of the character stripped of any redeeming qualities. The Hell Priest systematically exterminates the world's magicians or tortures them mentally, physically, and sexually to death or until they are broken, mutilated slaves. This achieved, he exterminates the Cenobite Order of the Gash in order to lead a resurgent Hell under Lucifer's banner. When it turns out Lucifer himself despises these plans and has no intention of trying to dominate the rest of creation, the Hell Priest steals his armor and attempts to kill Lucifer himself to unite Hell under his own power and subject everything that lives to the worst tortures he can devise.
- Hellbound Hearts's "The Confessor's Tale", by Sarah Pinborough: The Boyar is the depraved ruler of a feudal region in Russia. A hedonistic Serial Rapist and Serial Killer in love with his own cruelty, the Boyar is known for burying people alive in his flower garden and hanging people outside of his castle walls, leaving them to be eaten alive by buzzards. Always fascinated by pain and extreme "physical experimentation", captives are taken to his dungeons and made into guinea pigs for new tortures that were devised to be carried out on local petty criminals. Not satisfied with the brutality of his hobbies, the Boyar invites young women from neighboring towns to his castle, drugging his victims before raping and even killing some of them for sadistic pleasure.
- Sherlock Holmes and the Servants of Hell, by Paul Kane: Professor James Moriarty, having escaped to Hell itself, has contrived to become the new Engineer, the keeper of the Lament Configuration. Plotting a coup, Moriarty has many souls smuggled to him, torturing them physically and psychologically to twist them into Pseudo-Cenobites to serve him and expand Hell's dominion. Intending on capturing Sherlock Holmes, Moriarty horrifically tortures him to break him for good, showing him all his failures amidst the agony, all to satiate his ego and power.
Films
Examples
- Hellraiser & Hellbound: Hellraiser II:
- Frank Cotton is a cruel hedonist, who was taken by the Cenobites in his search for ultimate pleasure. After escaping, he manipulates Julia Cotton in to helping him murder several innocent people in order to complete his return to normal world. After murdering his brother and disguising himself in his skin, he tries to rape his own niece Kristy. When he killed Julia by accident, he just tossed her aside to continue his hunt for Kristy. When he's taken by the Cenobites again, Frank languishes in a private hell and sends Kirsty letters begging for help, pretending to be her father so she'll come to save him, solely so he can keep her as a Sex Slave.
- Julia Cotton is Kirsty's Wicked Stepmother who helped Frank accomplish his murders and was trying to help him rape her own adopted daughter Kristy. After she is revived, she gleefully drains people at a mental hospital of their life while relishing in their pain and suffering to restore herself. She feeds her rescuer Dr. Channard to her master to turn him into a Cenobite and tries to kill her stepdaughter and an innocent, mentally handicapped girl. When she encounters Frank again, she murders him by ripping his heart out.
- Hellbound only: Dr. Philip Channard is a psychiatrist and head of the Channard Institute with an obsession with the occult, specifically Hell. Using his facility as the front for his studies, Channard has his patients solve the Lament Configuration, and observes them being taken by the Cenobites. When he gets his hands on the mattress Julia Cotton died on, Channard takes his patients to be sacrificed to complete Julia's resurrection. In return, Julia takes Channard to Hell where Leviathan looks into his mind, revealing that he would dissect animals as a child. Channard is turned into an abnormally chaotic Cenobite, at which point he drops his affable façade and revels in his sadistic side, proceeding to slaughter every living thing that crosses his path, including the other Cenobites when they stand against him.
- Bloodline: Pinhead, the High Priest of the Cenobites, towards the time of his final death, is beholden to none of his previous honorable, or human qualities, proudly admitting that he is "empty". Now a cruel and hegemonic demon, Pinhead is freed from his prison to hunt John Merchant by Hell's princess, Angelique. Along the way, Pinhead commits pointlessly wicked deeds, such as fusing two innocent brothers together, mocking their wish to never be separated, and feeding a live dove to his hound. Growing bored of Angelique's methods of temptation, Pinhead takes John's family hostage, threatening to personally torture his young son for a thousand years. When the Elysium Configuration backfires, Pinhead decapitates John and drags Angelique to Hell, forcibly converting her into one of his slaves. Summoned centuries later, Pinhead picks off the crew of the Elysium, and during a final confrontation with John's descendant Paul, makes it clear his intent to lead Hell in consuming the world.
- Deader: Winter Merchant is the mysterious, white-dressed leader of the Deaders and the Black Sheep of Phillip LeMarchand's descendants. Viewing himself as the rightful owner of the Lament Configuration but incapable of opening the box on his own, Winter began attracting emotionally-vulnerable people to his cult with his nihilistic teachings before convincing them to commit suicide in name of his cause, reviving them with necromancy to be turned into his obedient slaves. When a Deader loses faith in Winter, he punishes them by making their body rot while they are still conscious. Wanting to overthrow the Cenobites, Winter gets Amy Klein killed and makes her solve the Lament Configuration for him, intending on becoming the new ruler of Hell.
- Judgement: The Preceptor—Detective Sean Carter—is a deranged Serial Killer, with at least 14 victims to his name, who targets his victims based on the Ten Commandments. Having punished an "idolater", the Preceptor kills a woman and surgically places her still living dog into her womb; to punish a pair of "liars", he cuts the tongues out of two parents before force-feeding them to their son; to punish petty thieves, he tortures and mutilates three young teens and leaves their hands, eyes, and teeth as a message. The Preceptor has a run in with the Stygian Inquisition and seeks to escape retribution from Hell; his wickedness is so great and depraved that the demon who devours sin as part of his judgment ends up choking and vomiting on it. Revealing himself as the killer, Carter later forces his wife and brother to open the Lament Configuration to punish them for their affair and attempts to offer them to Hell in his place.
- 2022 film: Roland Voight is a hedonistic millionaire who seeks to experience every sensation and pleasure. Discovering the Configuration Box, Voight bargains with the Cenobites, giving them innocent souls in return for the ultimate sensation. Through this, Voight has countless people sacrificed, having them suffering horrific deaths via mutilation. "Rewarded" by the Cenobites by being fused to a contraption, Voight plans to have them trapped within a labyrinth for his freedom. Hiring a thief named Trevor, Voight has him lure countless people to be mutilated and dragged off by the Cenobites. Voight's hedonistic desires stem from a sense of power over others, and he stands out as vile than the Cenobites themselves.
Comic Books
Examples
- Lady Abigor, a fierce warrior in Hell's Army and elite member of Vasa Iniquitatis, is rumored to have been either Queen Cleopatra or Helen of Troy in her human life. A Cenobite who hides her rebellious individuality behind her devotion to Leviathan, Abigor has her own slaves and a group of nine mutilated young men that she uses as steeds for her chariot. Performing a ritual to make a fellow Cenobite human again, Abigor gladly agreed to destroy him even if Leviathan would get angry. As the first Cenobite to be enlisted in Vasa Iniquitatis, the cold and focused Abigor was assigned to install an oppressive regime in an African country, Volksland, manipulating events from behind the scenes and eliminating every obstacle in her way until only the option of a Final Solution remained, succeeding in establishing a dictatorship based around Afrikaner supremacy and starting a genocide against the black population in Volksland, ordering her human accomplice to hang himself before returning to Hell.
- Clive Barker's Hellraiser:
- Issue #2's "The Vault": Arturo Velez is a corrupt South American prison warden who enjoys abusing his power over life and death. After using his skills to assume the role of "Jefe of La Enfermidad", Velez turned the prison into a "strictly-modeled version of Hell, created on Earth, by one man", ruling the prison with an iron fist. When an inmate solved the Lament Configuration to escape from his torments, Velez forced captured revolutionaries to solve the box for him, executing them if they refused. Having been warned by his right-hand man to stop ordering unnecessary executions because the "mounting death rate" was attracting international forces, Velez beat and threatened him for not providing the right people. Torturing a revolutionary for days, Velez bludgeoned the man to death when he discovered that a substitute was coming to take over his position.
- Issue #13's "The Ferryman": Harmon Taylor is a high-ranking member of the Ku Klux Klan behind the legendary Dixie Shadow and the depravities that occurred on the ship. Leading "midnight raids" across the countryside to kidnap African Americans and take them back to his "floating house of horrors", even children, his victims were used as entertainment for his fellow Klansmen; men were tortured and forced to participate in Gladiator Games, and the women were raped before they were thrown overboard directly into deep water, abandoned to drown. Always saving the Dixie Shadow's champion and his favorite fighter, the titular Ferryman, for last, Taylor unleashed the sadomasochistic maniac on his victims. When not enjoying himself with the Dixie Shadow's brutality, Taylor took some of his victims to a deserted island and set them free with the sole intention of Hunting the Most Dangerous Game.
- Issue #14's "Later": The Stalker is a monstrous human wanting to become a Cenobite. Targeting women with anxiety issues, the Stalker would savagely beat and stalk them for a long period of time, doing this to numerous women for years and confessing that his actions made him happy because he could play women "like violins". Filling his room with pictures of women, the Stalker was responsible for the mental breakdown and suicide of most of his victims, claiming to be "providing a multitude of fodder souls" for the Leviathan. After solving the Lament Configuration, the Cenobites judged him unfit and agreed that he did not understand their philosophy at all, enjoying committing his crimes simply because he liked to be feared.
- Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth comic book adaptation, written by Peter Atkins: Pinhead Unbound is given a different origin than that of the film, a demon that has existed well before it possessed Eliot Spencer and served as the black pope of Hell. After he and Eliot were separated, Pinhead was bound in a statue before being awakened and feeding on a woman seduced by JP Monroe. Offering Monroe a place at his right hand in rebelling against Leviathan and ruling his own Hell he'd make on Earth, Pinhead later tempts Monroe's ex-girlfriend into sacrificing him. Upon his freedom, Pinhead slaughters his way through Monroe's nightclub and turns some of his victims into his new army to cause murder and torment to those who cross them. Pinhead torments a priest for his faith, mockingly declaring himself "the way", and sets his sights on Joey Summerskill. He briefly tricks Joey with a vision of her father before stating his intent and attempt to personally torture Joey forever before he is forcibly rebonded to Spencer.
Clive Barker's Hellraiser (Boom! Studios)
- Captain Elliot Spencer strips away his humanizing qualities as Pinhead from the films, in favor of cruel, power-hungry megalomania. Following the third film, becoming disillusioned by his status as Hell Priest, Spencer orchestrates the mass slaughter of multiple people, including Kirsty Cotton's loved ones to break her and get her agree to take his place as Hell Priest, while he becomes human. Pulling a Memory Gambit, Spencer gains new godlike powers and reopens Hell, making himself an army from damned souls he uses to slaughter hundreds of people to become a new god, trying to destroy Leviathan in the process. In life, Spencer was a hedonist who saw the atrocities of World War I as works of art and lusted after his own daughter, who he raped as part of his initiation into Hell. After Spencer escapes his prison, he joins Abaddon's army for world conquest. To keep Kirsty from interfering, he takes the soul of her father, bending and twisting him when defied. When beaten, he agrees to close the gate in exchange for a new position as Hell Priest, allowing him more power and control, pursuing his own pleasure over duty, and kills Kirsty's fiancé to deny her a happy ending.
