History ComicBook / Hellboy

* {{Satan}}: Mentioned in ''The Wild Hunt''. Is currently [[spoiler: dead thanks to Hellboy stabbing him.]]

* CrystalPrison: The Ogru'Jahad's prison.

* OurDragonsAreDifferent: While always referred to as a dragon or serpent, the Ogru Jahad is an EldritchAbomination, currently seven cocoons in deep space with snakelike bodies and elongated skulls.

* BadassLongcoat: Of the second Hellboy story, Mignola said it taught him two things. The first was that HB looked better in a trench coat. [[note]]The second was that he loves drawing gorillas with bolts sticking out of them, if you're curious.[[/note]]

* NaziHunter: Hellboy acted as one after the war and killed UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler himself.

* GodIsGood: Aside from the plentiful holy relics, {{Badass}} undead saints and OurAngelsAreDifferent types that occasionally lend a hand, Hellboy is Catholic. He doesn't burst into flames at the sound of church bells, and stakes, crucifixes, etc. have no effect on him despite his demonic nature. [[spoiler: Even going to Hell doesn't seem like too much of a torment to him]]. The guy upstairs is pretty forgiving.

** Hellboy himself would become one of these if he ever took up his place in {{Hell}}. He's on the verge of it as he is already, given his strength and how hard it is to kill him.

* GrandFinale: ''Hellboy in Hell'' serves as this to the character, [[spoiler: as he conquers the inferno and then disappears into a beam of celestial light]]

In the final days of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, [[StupidJetpackHitler the Nazis]], through the assistance of [[BeethovenWasAnAlienSpy Grigori Rasputin]], attempted to bring about "Project Ragna Rok" on a small island off the coast of Scotland in an attempt to salvage the war effort for the Third Reich. A group of Allied occultists and soldiers were on hand to witness the event, and found the fruits of Rasputin's labors: An infant demon, quickly nicknamed "Hellboy."

* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: In ''Sullivan's Reward'', Sullivan is being rewarded in gold for feeding people to his HauntedHouse. He's been feeding it drunks and vagrants, and getting a few gold coins each. He decides to feed it Hellboy, and when he appears to have succeeded he triumphantly calls out to the house asking what he reward for HIM would be. [[spoiler: An entire 8-foot by 3-foot by 3-foot block of gold coins crashes down the stairs, crushing him]]

* HornsOfVillainy: Subverted by Hellboy; he may have horns, but he keeps them sawn off and filed down and is anything but evil.

* IKnowYourTrueName: Used with great consistency to control and contain demons, though hubris usually gets the better of the summoner in question. This is one of Hellboy's early weaknesses until he realizes [[spoiler:Anung Un Rama isn't his name but his ''title'' - which [[NiceJobFixingItVillain his enemy had taken from him]]. Cue HoistByHisOwnPetard]].

* PaperThinDisguise: Despite there being no [[TheMasquerade masquerade]] in this world, Abe shows up to the Cavandish estate in ''Seed of Destruction'' in one of these, including a hat, sunglasses, fake beard and ConspicuousTrenchcoat

* {{Grimmification}}L It's never the Disney version of fairy tales.

** The various short story collections contain no small number of would-be occultists with just enough knowledge to be be a danger to themselves an others, trying to use powers beyond their control for usually very petty ends.
** Lampshaded in the first story when a bunch of aliens detect signs of activity from the sleeping Ogdru Jahad. The aliens wonder who would be stupid enough to wake the damn things since the Dragon will simply burn the world to cinders.

* KnightsTemplar: The Knights of Saint Hagan, a Crusader who rose headless to fight in the last battle of the Crusades. His followers continued their campaign to destroy all things Satanic with considerable success. Hellboy lampshades their 'kill em all' approach as misguided... however, ''most'' of the demons and heathens killed certainly deserved it.

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* AbhorrentAdmirer: Hecate is in crazy stalker love with Hellboy. Unfortunately, he's not the kinda guy who goes for metal-skinned vampire snake women who want to kill every living thing on Earth.

* AlienAbduction: [[spoiler:"Buster Oakley Gets His Wish".]]

* AmplifierArtifact: [[spoiler:the Hyperborean artifact Liz uses on the mountain-sized Ogdru Hem spikes her flame powers to the levels of a short radius nuke]].
* AnalProbing: [[spoiler:Almost happened to Hellboy after he was [[AlienAbduction abducted by aliens]], but he decided that he didn't like that idea so he kicked all their alien asses.]]

* AngelsDevilsAndSquid. Though the lines between them are often blurry.

* TheAntichrist: Hellboy, though he's not too keen on the idea and becomes an AntiAntiChrist which ultimately [[spoiler:costs him his life]].

* AndNowForSomethingCompletelyDifferent: Most of the stories involve Hellboy fighting supernatural monsters and demons. And then, in "Buster Oakley Gets His Wish", he suddenly [[spoiler: gets abducted by aliens]].

* AntiHero: The somewhat silly sounding Lobster Johnson is a solid type III, and he is ''not'' someone you want to piss off. Throughout his short career in the 30s he personally killed hundreds of gangsters, Nazi saboteurs, cultists and monsters. [[spoiler:And he only gets more dangerous when he's dead]].
* AntiVillain: Koshchei the Deathless.
* AppliedPhlebotinum: Vril. ''Flamma Reconditus''. '''The Secret Fire'''. The power of God Himself. Apparently a force of creation, but also of destruction when necessary. Mostly seen in modern times to make things that have crossed the GodzillaThreshold go BOOM.

* ApocalypseMaiden: Hellboy
** In the ''B.P.R.D.'' series, it's recently been revealed [[spoiler:that Abe will also have a role in the [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt end of the world]]]].

* ArtificialHuman: Roger the Homunculus.

* AstralProjection: Johann Kraus.

** [[spoiler:Subverted with Roger. They even spend an entire story arc letting you think it's gonna happen.]]
** Ben Daimio's "origin story". He died in Central America under mysterious circumstances and much to his surprise, woke up three days later in a body bag.
** Perhaps most unusually for a series where [[KilledOffForReal dead usually means dead]],[[spoiler: Kurtz and Kroenen]] return in the grand old tradition of comics - after all, [[NeverFoundTheBody we never saw the bodies.]]
* {{Badass}}: Hellboy.
** BadassBookworm: Kate Corrigan.
** BadassNormal: Corrigan again, Captain Daimio, and some of the other BPRD agents. Also Lobster Johnson.

* BigEater: Hellboy

* BloodierAndGorier: The ''BPRD'' spinoff. Artist Guy Davis doesn't make much use of [[GoryDiscretionShot gory discretion shots]]. ''Killing Ground'' is especially violent.

* BrainInAJar: Herman von Klempt.
* BrokenAngel: The "Seraphim" in B.P.R.D. The Dead. It's not made clear if it's a 'real' angel, or a Nazi approximation of one.

* CaptainErsatz: Von Klempt's odd similarities to [[Anime/MazingerZ Count Brocken]].

* ChromeDomePsi: Abe Sapien.

* CursedWithAwesome: Liz Sherman. Arguably, Hellboy himself.
* DarkIsNotEvil: Despite having horns and being half-demon, Hellboy is an utterly regular, decent, rather noble blue-collar guy, who doesn't have much patience for people telling him he ''should'' be evil.

* DeathSeeker: Ben Daimio, [[spoiler: once he realizes he'll never be free of the jaguar curse]].

* TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt: And there's ''no'' escaping it. The B.P.R.D. is fighting a desperate battle to ensure something of humanity's spirit and legacy will survive after the end. But the Ogdru Hem are rising, the FourHorsemen have been unleashed, cities are swallowed in war with monsters and natural disasters, the world's biggest hope [[spoiler:is dead]], and WordOfGod has said things that are broken aren't getting fixed.

* [[MotherlyScientist Fatherly Scientist]]: Professor Trevor Bruttenholm adopts Hellboy after he was summonned into this world.

* FingerSnapLighter: Liz Sherman uses her pyrokineses to light her cigarettes on occasion.
* FishPeople: Abe Sapien.
* FromBadToWorse: [[spoiler:Hellboy's dead]]. Crap.

** Memnan Saa began his long life as Martin Gilfryd, a mortal curator for the British Museum's Egyptology Department. He would go on to study multiple ancient magicks and lost arts from teachers across the globe, even in places unknown to modern man, gaining a great deal of untold power. At the height of his ability he's basically unstoppable.
** Iosif Nichayko was just some kind-hearted grunt in the Soviet military before joining the Special Sciences Service for extra pay, babysitting a healing artifact, dying, being brought back as a zombie, and eventually overthrowing freaking ''Varvara'' as the Director of the SSS decades later. Guy developed some serious Chessmaster abilities.

* {{Geek}}: Kate Corrigan was the occult/mythology geek in the comics (it was her day job before she joined the BPRD). Recently, Johann Kraus seems to be turning into the evil version of this.
* GentleGiant: Hellboy is gentle with children, even sometimes when it's against his better judgment.

* GodzillaThreshold: [[spoiler: Starting with Black Flame, the B.P.R.D. is now at war with the various demonspawn spilling out all over the globe. Collateral damage is barely a concern. Half of Indonesia has been obliterated along with Munich, California, Houston, Seattle, London, New York and a zombie plague is devastating Russia. The nuclear option has come up several times... The Bureau and its allies are desperately trying to HoldTheLine... it's not working.]]
* GratuitousGerman: Johann Kraus, when he loses his temper. Allmachtiger!
* GreaterScopeVillain: The Ogdru Jahad.
* {{Grimmification}}

* HideYourOtherness: Hellboy keeps sawing off his devil horns in an effort to fit in and deny his very, very evil heritage.
* HistoricalVillainUpgrade: Rasputin, obviously. He had some contact with Literature/BabaYaga while he was alive, but he got a ''real'' upgrade when he threw in with the Cosmic Horror Story crowd after his (first) death.

* HorrifyingHero: Hellboy is the demon who was supposed to bring about the Apocalypse, and he probably would have become a straight EldritchAbomination if not for being raised like a human. He's personable enough that he isn't treated like the abomination he is, but by his very nature he was ''supposed'' to be evil.

* KnightInSourArmor: Hellboy, he's gonna be sore in the mornin'.

* LoveTriangle: A weird one in Johann Kraus's past. He fell in love with the ghost of a man's wife he was hired to contact as a spirit medium. Naturally, this did not end well.

* MightyWhitey: Invoked, but ultimately subverted by Martin "Fu Manchu" Gilfryd.

* MundaneUtility: Liz Sherman lighting her cigarettes with pyrokinesis.

* NoShirtLongJacket: Hellboy's usual look.

* OlderThanTheyLook: Hellboy's appearance is inhuman enough to make an apparent age not readily determinable, but he doesn't really seem to show his 60-80 years in which he has been on Earth (he was technically "born" in the 1600s, but doesn't seem to have aged until he left {{Hell}}). [[spoiler:Alice Monaghan also looks about twenty years younger than she is, due to the influence of the fae]].

* RasputinianDeath: Rasputin.
* RedAndBlackAndEvilAllOver: Inverted.
* RedRightHand: Left hand, too.

* {{Satan}}: Mentioned in ''The Wild Hunt''. Is currently [[spoiler:taking a two-thousand-year nap beneath Pandemonium]]. Oh yeah, and [[spoiler:Hellboy killed him]].

* ShellShockedVeteran: Captain Ben Daimio. [[spoiler:He was dead for three days, wouldn't you be too?]]

* SixthRanger: While sorting the various agents into roles is a bit tricky, Captain Daimio is certainly a SixthRanger, now replaced by Johann.

* {{Spinoff}}: So far the main Hellboy series has five official spinoff series, including ''B.P.R.D.''(which has its own ''194x/Vampire'' sub-series), ''Lobster Johnson'', ''Abe Sapien'', ''Witchfinder'' and ''Sledgehammer '44''. Not to mention the ''Odd Jobs'' series, the ''Weird Tales'' comics, and all the novels (a couple of which are considered canon); there's a whole lot more to the Hellboy [[TheVerse universe]] than just the original comics.

* TheStoic: Hellboy.

* TallDarkAndSnarky: Hellboy.

* TheTeamNormal: Kate Corrigan.

* TrademarkFavoriteFood: "Pamcakes."
* TrenchcoatBrigade: one of his trademarks is a coat and a big cigarette.

* TheUnchosenOne: Hellboy

* UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom: [[spoiler: Nice job destroying England, the world, your own people, and the human race, Gruagach.]]

* UrbanLegend: Lobster Johnson, and this is the main reason why all the [[ShowWithinAShow in-universe stories]] about him are [[StylisticSuck pulpy]] and wildly incorrect.
* VengefulVendingMachine: An omake strip showed him dealing with one of these, but the ending reveals that a tiny imp was behind it, not the machine itself.

* WreathedInFlames: Liz can do this.
* ZorroMark: Lobster Johnson's lobster claw.
-->'''Lobster Johnson''': "Here is the claw!"
-->'''ThoseWackyNazis''': "Nein! Nein!"

* LooseCanon: The novels other than the first pair (which are, per the official timeline, considered part of the normal canon) seem to be considered this, in that they have Mike's approval (and his illustrations) but he reserves the right to ignore them if he wants. It may equally apply to the OriginalFlavor guest stories in ''Weird Tales''. All of these tend to be MonsterOfTheWeek stories anyway, rather than possibly contradicting the MythologyArc.

* LikeABadassOutOfHell: [[spoiler:Hellboy in Hell... maybe.]]

** The Lobster as well, both before his death in 1939 and as a [[spoiler:ghost]] afterwards.

* OlderThanTheyLook: Hellboy's appearance is inhuman enough to make an apparent age not readily determinable, but he doesn't really seem to show his 60-80 years in which he has been on Earth (he was technically "born" in the 1600s, but doesn't seem to have aged until he left {{Hell}}). [[spoiler:Alice Monaghen also looks about twenty years younger than she is, due to the influence of the fae]].

* CrossOver: With ''ComicBook/TheGoon'', ''ComicBook/NextMen'', ''ComicBook/BeastsOfBurden'', and ''TheSavageDragon'', as well as a memorable three-way crossover with Franchise/{{Batman}} and James Robinson's Comicbook/{{Starman}}.

* Ben Daimio, resident ShellShockedSenior and with good reason - he died in action and somehow came back to life.

* ShellShockedSenior: Captain Ben Daimio. [[spoiler:He was dead for three days, wouldn't you be too?]]

* HollowWorld: The BPRD miniseries ''Hollow Earth''.

* ApocalypseCult: There is a large number of cults and secret societies—Project Ragna Rok, the Oannes Society, and the Heliopic Brotherhood of Ra, to name a few—hoping the trigger the apocalypse. Most of them are operating under the logic that the world is going to end anyway, but if they're the ones who pull the trigger, they'll at least have some measure of control over the destruction.

* '''''Sledgehammer '44''''' - A mysterious man in PoweredArmour fuelled by a mystical energy source takes on the Nazis.

The first spinoff series, ComicBook/{{BPRD}}, details the adventures of the organization in Hellboy's absence. New members are recruited, including: