The comics:
- Anti-Climax Boss:
- Despite years of build up, staying off screen and being the cornerstone by which much of Hellboy's mythology is based, Satan goes down incredibly easily. Of course, it's justified, because he dies just like King Duncan, in his sleep.
- Despite his key role in Hellboy's origin, Rasputin also comes across as this to the point that he almost seems to be going through a Humiliation Conga from the point he's introduced.
- Awesome Art: Mignola's instantly recognizable art style is at its fullest and finest throughout.
- Broken Base: The Flip-Flop of God / Lying Creator regarding Hellboy in Hell being the grand finale was divisive. Many fans found the promised ending in Hellboy in Hell beautiful and perfect and were disappointed when Mignola decided to continue the story in spite of that, while others preferred to see Hellboy's further adventures and want to see the promised apocalypse in King of Fear.
- Can't Un-Hear It: Due to playing Hellboy in most media, Ron Perlman's voice is very easy to imagine while reading his lines. It helps that he was Mignola's original choice for the role too. In a lesser way, John Hurt for Professor Bruttenholm and Doug Jones for Abe Sapien also ended up as the definitive voices for the characters for some.
- Ensemble Dark Horse:
- Kate Corrigan was the first, as the team's resident Everyman.
- Karl Ruprecht Kroenen because of his distinctive design (and the fact that he became an Adaptational Badass didn't hurt).
- Agents introduced in more recent years, like Howards and Giarocco, get a lot of fan love.
- Lobster Johnson's pulpy Two-Fisted Tales madness got such a warm reception in The Conqueror Worm that he soon got his own spin-off and Mignola kept finding ways to bring him back. His brief appearance in the 2019 film is widely considered the best part of an otherwise mediocre film.
- Memetic Mutation: Two sets of panels that seemingly make no sense whatsoever out of context:
- Shocking Moments: The vision of the apocalypse in King of Fear, not to mention Hellboy paying back the Baba Yaga... with his own eye.
- The Woobie: Hellboy and Abe inform the captured Daryl that they will have to keep him imprisoned indefinitely, because killing him will only move the curse. They also tell him that his memories of his family will probably start to slip away, and leave him with a family photograph so he can try to remember.
The films:
See here for the first film.
See here for the second film.
See here for the 2019 film.
The animated films:
The video games:
See here for the 2008 game.
- Porting Disaster: Hellboy: Dogs of the Night was released on PC in 2000 to negative reviews. For whatever reason, it got ported to the PS 1 in 2003 (under the name Asylum Seeker) during the height of the sixth generation of consoles. As if that's not bad enough, this port is worse than the PC version in every way. Worse graphics (even for a late PS 1 game), worse controls, and numerous bugs and glitches (I.E. one boss transforms into a monster by glitching his character model, and terrible lighting and fog effects that are just textures standing around).
- The Problem with Licensed Games: Both Hellboy games had outdated graphics and repetitive gameplay, and the first one was full of bugs. Although The Science of Evil was supervised by Mignola and Guillermo del Toro, it didn't make up for the programming shortcomings. Asylum Seeker on the other hand is infamous for being a 2000 PC game that got ported to the PlayStation 1 in 2003 during the time PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube and Xbox were popular. Why it got a PS1 port in 2003 will always be a mystery.
The novels:
- Complete Monster:
- The Bones of Giants, by Christopher Golden: Thrym was the tyrannical lord of the Frost Giants long ago. Hating Asgard beyond all reason, Thrym tortured and killed countless people in his attempt to destroy the Asgardians, eventually obliterating most of the world before being stopped. Awakened in modern day and recognizing Hellboy as containing the spirit of his Arch-Enemy Thor, Thrym devours the souls of entire towns and sets about restoring his kingdom to begin Ragnarok and wipe out the entire world to reign over what is left.
- On Earth as it is in Hell, by Brian Hodge:
- Moloch is a prince of Hell who cultivates the image of a child-devouring demon, priding himself on the "weeping of mothers" and feeding on the sacrifice of infant children. Moloch encourages his chief servant Herzog to father children solely to burn in his name and masterminds all the murder and chaos in the plot, ultimately to rein in an attack on Hell to wipe out Heaven and reduce all of humanity to become Hell's tortured playthings. Moloch even creates a sub-realm named Tartarus where his demonic servants torture and mutilate thousands of their own servants, leaving even Herzog to rot in agony as Moloch's promise of "immortality".
- The aforementioned Matthias Herzog is a wicked occultist and the leader of Der Horn Ordern. Allying himself with the demon Moloch in exchange for immortality and power, Herzog erects a murderous cult of Moloch devotees and revives Moloch's old ways. Fathering many children himself on women desperate for money, Herzog has them sell the babies to his cult under false pretense, sacrificing them to Moloch by burning them alive. After many of these sacrifices, Herzog, knowing full well that his master intends on torturing and slaughtering countless innocents, attempts to sell the world out to Moloch, all for the sake of his own selfishness.
- The Dragon Pool, by Christopher Golden: The Dragon King was an ancient Chinese dragon warlord that held cruel reign over thousands, devastating the populace he ruled over with fire and disasters purely for his own amusement, and forcing them to sacrifice children annually to it lest it deal worse to them. Sealed away, the Dragon King breaks out in the present day, viciously massacring the archaeological team that freed it and annihilating an entire village full of its own servitors simply for failing to provide a child to it in time. The Dragon King intends afterwards to scour the Himalayas of life, spreading its reign of terror as far as it will go.
- The Ice Wolves, by Mark Chadbourn: Carnifex, the king of the wolves, is a dark spirit sleeping within human skin. As the moon of the wolves draws close, Carnifex awakens his werewolves throughout the world, slaughtering many humans throughout. Carnifex decides to hunt the Heart of Winter and Kiss of Winter to blot out the Sun and blanket the world in Endless Winter to fully awaken hundreds of werewolves and sweep through the world to devour humans in untold of numbers, reducing Earth to a frozen paradise for the beasts eternally.
