Demons and devils tend to be villains in movies. Just look at The Exorcist or The Devil’s Advocate, although you should actually probably not look at the latter unless you love watching Al Pacino chew scenery. Then, there’s Hellboy. The film takes a creature of Hell and turns him into…the hero? A flawed hero, sure, but a hero nonetheless. We’ve amassed 20 heavenly facts you might not know about Hellboy.

Hellboy was created by comic-book artist and writer Mike Mignola. This film is an adaptation of the first graphic novel in the series, “Hellboy: Seed of Destruction.”

Del Toro wrote and directed Hellboy. He worked on the script and a pitch for the idea before he even had a studio. The filmmaker has said he was influenced by Jack Kirby and Ray Harryhausen, in terms of its look and style.

When he was writing the script, del Toro would imagine Ron Perlman playing Hellboy as he wrote dialogue. The director really wanted to cast Perlman, whom he had worked with before, believing he could deliver a legitimate performance from under all the Hellboy makeup and prosthetics.

Del Toro and Mignola spent years pitching Hellboy around Hollywood. However, they kept getting rejected. Some didn’t like the title. Others didn’t like the story. There were those who were against Perlman playing Hellboy, which del Toro was still wed to. Eventually, Columbia would sign on, and Sony Pictures Releasing would serve as the distributor.

Del Toro wanted the legendary special effects artist to come by and impart some insight to the film’s animators, as the director really wanted a film with a Harryhausen field. Unfortunately for del Toro, Harryhausen declined. The filmmaker told del Toro that he thought modern films were too violent.

Trevor Bruttenholm, a.k.a. “Broom,” serves as a father figure to Hellboy. In the comics, Broom dies fairly early in the story. For the film, though, del Toro decided to delay Broom’s death so that the audience could connect to him more and be emotionally impacted by his death.

Starting with the opening credits, del Toro established labyrinths as a motif throughout the movie. As del Toro explained, “A labyrinth, it is said, is not a place to be lost, but a place to find yourself.”

For the screenplay, del Toro wrote a scene where Rasputin is stabbed and then a creature emerges from his wound. This was an idea that Mignola had for the “Hellboy” comic, but never used. He also never told del Toro about it. They just both had the same idea separately.

The once-and-future Niles Crane was hired to provide the voice of Abe Sapien, while frequent del Toro collaborator Doug Jones played him physically. In Pierce’s mind, though, Jones deserved the attention. He declined to be credited in the movie, didn’t go on the press tour, and did not attend to the premiere so Jones could get the attention for playing Abe.

Jeffrey Tambor was a late addition to the cast. The original actor cast as Tom Manning evidently did not show up, and so Tambor was cast in the role only a week before filming began.

Del Toro lent his voice — or at least some noises — to a handful of characters. That includes some characters played by real people, and he just dubbed in the voice. Del Toro plays, in part, Baby Hellboy, Kroenen, Sammael, Ivan, and the train driver.

In the comics, Hellboy has a giant stone “Right Hand of Doom.” The early idea was that they might flop that around so the actor would have access to their right hand. Then, Perlman turned out to be left-handed anyway. Thus, he was able to retain his Right Hand of Doom.

Hellboy’s stone hand remained on the right side of his body, but there was a change to him. In the comics, Hellboy has cloven hooves instead of human feet. However, it was decided that Perlman shouldn’t have any prosthetics or anything on his feet so that he could do stunts himself.

For the scene set in a cemetery outside of Moscow, the production didn’t go to Russia. However, they did head to Eastern Europe. Del Toro shot that part of the film at a real cemetery in Prague in the Czech Republic.

The tombstone you see when Hellboy enters the cemetery? It has been digitally altered. The name is actually Mike Mignola’s written in the Russian alphabet.

Maybe those studios worried about the name were onto something. There were theaters who did not want to screen the film since “Hell” was in the title. Additionally, some toy stores didn’t sell Hellboy merchandise for the same reason. A few enterprising theaters came up with a strange workaround. They listed the film as “Helloboy” in their promotion of the movie.

“Hell” caused some problems in America, but it would have led to a full-on banning from Malaysian theaters. The same thing had apparently happened to Daredevil. As such, the movie was given a title that translates to “Super Sapiens” for that market.

Ultimately, in spite of all the consternation, Hellboy proved fairly successful. Made for a budget of $66 million, Hellboy made $99.8 million worldwide. It also has an 81 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

In 2008, del Toro got to write and direct Hellboy II: The Golden Army. This time, Universal released the film. While it had a bigger budget of around $85 million, it proved more successful at the box office as well. It raked in $168.3 million worldwide. This time, it also got a Best Makeup nomination from the Oscars as well.

In 2019, Hellboy was brought back. This time, David Harbour stepped into the lead role. Also, they turned the reboot into an R-rated affair, perhaps influenced by the success of Deadpool. Unfortunately for everybody involved, Hellboy critically and commercially flopped. It made $55 million worldwide off of a budget of $50 million.

Chris Morgan is a sports and pop culture writer and the author of the books The Comic Galaxy of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and The Ash Heap of History. You can follow him on Twitter @ChrisXMorgan.

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