One day you're minding your own business strolling through an old graveyard when you accidentally
kick something hard.
Rubbing a stubbed toe, you bend down to check out what you just kicked loose and discover
a strange, mystical trinket, half-protruding from an unmarked grave.
Pulling the trinket free you feel an overwhelming sense of evil and malice, and as dark thoughts
begin to cross your mind you hear a helicopter overhead, and the crashing sound of something
big landing behind you.
Turning around you see the seven foot half-demon himself, Hellboy of the famed Bureau for Paranormal
Research and Defense, and he has a warrant for your arrest.
Pleading your innocence, Hellboy won't hear any of it, accusing you of activating evil
trinkets and dooming the world, and as Big Red bears down on you you realize there's
only one way you're getting out of this unfortunate mixup.
Hello and welcome to another episode of The Infographics You Versus series, today we're
pitting you up against the harbinger of the apocalypse, affectionately known as Peanut,
but called Hellboy by his enemies.
Hellboy is the son of the demon duke Azzael and the human witch Sarah Hughes.
Consorting with Azzael as his bride, Sarah repented for the sins of her youth on her
deathbed and asked her son and daughter to watch over her body for three days when she
died, after which she would be free of Azzael's grasp.
Upon her death, Azzael return to earth to claim his bride, immediately incinerating
Sarah's human children and dragging Sarah to hell, where she died- again- giving birth
to Hellboy.
Upon his birth, Azzael cut off Hellboy's right hand and attached the Right Hand of Doom in
its place instead.
Enraged at this act, the other dukes of Hell came for Azzael and Hellboy, but Hellboy was
sent away before they arrived and Azzael was frozen in ice for eternity.
Hellboy would reappear three hundred years later in 1944, summoned by the evil mage Grigori
Rasputin who had summoned Hellboy as the harbinger of the apocalypse with the aid of the Third
Reich.
Unfortunately for Rasputin and his Nazi allies, Hellboy appeared in a churchyard where an
elite team of American soldiers had been sent to investigate the dark ritual.
Befriended by 1st Sgt.
George Whitman, the soldier christened the small half-demon Hellboy, receiving his official
name.
Hellboy was then moved to the US and raised to be an agent of the BPRD, where he would
have to constantly prove himself as being truly good despite his demonic origins over
and over again.
Now Hellboy's next assignment has him coming after you, and misunderstanding or not, he's
not keen on striking up any bargains for your life- so how are you going to defeat him?
As usual to fight your enemy, you must first know your enemy and what he, she, or it is
capable of.
Hellboy is a conflicted creature, his very birth meant to bring about the destruction
of the earth and its human inhabitants.
That leaves Hellboy with a bit of a muddled personality, but is generally thought of as
a reluctantly good guy who is greatly misunderstood.
There's no denying the effect of his demonic blood though and he can be prone to violent
rages.
Hellboy's most notable feature is his right hand, the Right Hand of Doom.
The hand is completely invulnerable to any mortal weapons, and when wielded with Hellboy's
formidable strength is in essence a giant sledgehammer.
The hand itself is a legendary artifact, originally the right hand of a greater spirit known as
Anum, one of the first of God's creations.
Anum in turn created the great, dark dragon Ogdru Jahad, who in turn spawned a race of
destructive nightmare creatures which set about to claim their own dominion over the
early earth.
The other greater spirits fought the dragon and its spawn, and after defeating them, destroyed
Anum completely for his sin, sparing only his right hand.
The hand now has a deep connection to Ogdru Jahad, and dooms Hellboy to a destiny of eventually
unleashing the sleeping dragon.
Hellboy's right hand of doom is backed up by a prodigious amount of strength.
His half-demon heritage gives him the ability to lift objects up to 5 tons in weight, and
he's able to tear loose large trees and throw them at opponents, which means you'd better
be up on your five Ds of Dodgeball.
Along with his superhuman strength, Hellboy is very resilient to physical damage, but
not completely invulnerable.
He can be stabbed, shot, beaten, and bludgeoned, but his incredible stamina and endurance make
him very difficult to keep down or seriously injure.
Hellboy backs up this super durability with a healing factor that's on par with superheroes
such as Wolverine, and makes his recoveries from wounds a matter of seconds to minutes,
making it seem as if he is completely invulnerable.
He is not though, and can still be damaged by conventional means, it just takes a lot
of hurt to keep him down.
Also, despite his demonic origins, Hellboy is not immune to fire, although his greatly
accelerated healing might make it seem like he is by replacing damaged tissues almost
as fast as they are consumed.
Along with being tougher than a mac truck, and hitting as hard as one, Hellboy also has
incredible eyesight, with vision that is far better than any normal human.
He also has the innate ability to comprehend most ancient and magical languages, drawing
from the innate knowledge stored in his demonic blood.
He is also extremely resistant to aging, and though nearly eighty years old today, still
appears to be in his mid-twenties.
It's not known if Hellboy is immortal like most demons, or simply ages extremely slowly.
Along with his supernatural abilities though, Hellboy makes full use of advanced human equipment,
and is able to use just about any piece of gear or weapon you'd be able to- making him
particularly dangerous to face.
So just how are you going to defeat the harbinger of the apocalypse?
First, always choose your battlefield and force the fight on your own terms.
In this case you're going to want to fight somewhere cold, really cold, because Hellboy
hates cold weather.
This might be part of his demonic heritage, or it might just be that cold weather pretty
much sucks for anyone.
Whatever the case, you want to throw Hellboy off his game, but even more importantly, you
want to take steps to avoid some of the gadgets Hellboy is going to be bringing to the fight.
If it's not bad enough that Hellboy is super tough and super strong, remember that he has
access to some of the most advanced military equipment on earth.
In this case that's going to include thermal imagers, which you'll need to avoid.
Though normally you'd stand out like a beacon against a cold backdrop, dressing in several
layers can help minimize your heat signature dramatically.
But you'll be adding to your thermal camouflage by setting large fires throughout your battlespace,
and making sure that you feed those fires with discarded car tires.
The burning rubber is an absolute health hazard that'll just kill your lungs, but it'll also
fill the air with rubber particulates which can wreak havoc on thermal imagers.
The thick smoke will also block Hellboy's use of nightvision if he so chooses, though
night vision is more easily defeated with the use of several well-placed infrared spotlights.
Invisible to human eyes, infrared light is clearly visible on night vision, and can easily
overload an image, whiting out the night vision goggles.
So now you've got Hellboy blinded and more than a bit irritated at the freezing weather,
making him reckless and impulsive- that's perfect, because the whole time he's been
tramping through the snow trying to find you through the sooty air, you've been biding
your time, waiting for him to get closer and closer until he falls into your waiting trap.
VX is a synthetic nerve agent developed in the 1950s for use as an insecticide.
In trials VX worked wonders on eliminating local pest populations, but unfortunately
it proved to be absolutely bonkers at killing literally anything else as well.
The poison was quickly canned and research taken over by the US military, who developed
it for use as a nerve agent in case an enemy ever used chemical or biological weapons against
America.
As a nerve agent, VX targets a molecule called acetylcholine, an important catalyst in exchanging
messages between nerve cells.
If acetylcholine is not broken down by an enzyme catalyst known as acetylcholinesterase,
then the molecule will keep transmitting the same message between nerve cells over and
over again without end.
VX works by preventing the breaking down of acetylcholine so that nerves are 'stuck' firing
the same repeated message incessantly, which inevitably leads to muscle contractions that
are out of control and asphyxiation.
As one of the deadliest nerve agents ever created, VX can kill in concentrations as
small as 3 micrograms per kilogram, giving a pound of the stuff a killing potential of...
a lot, and we mean a lot of people.
Armed with a simple tranquilizer rifle and a 2 ounce dart, a single hit of VX directly
into Hellboy's bloodstream is going to end this fight pretty quickly.
Hellboy is extremely resilient versus natural afflictions and all but immune to disease
and illness, but VX is a synthetic compound that works in a way that completely surpasses
all of Hellboy's supernatural healing abilities.
The synthetic nerve agent will slip right past Hellboy's healing factor and fry his
nerve cells, leaving them turned permanently to 'on' and causing massive convulsions, and
eventually- death by asphyxiation.
Half-demon or not, Hellboy does still need to breathe after all.
The world may be full of scary things that go bump in the night, but modern science has
given us the tools to bump them right back, completely circumventing their supernatural
defenses with a bit of one of the most noble of sciences: chemistry.
Of course you did just murder one of the Earth's greatest champions against the hordes of hell
itself, so while you're patting yourself on the back don't forget to find yourself a nice
seat to watch the pending apocalypse unfold.
But hey, at least you won.
How would you defeat Hellboy?
Also, check our our other videos in the series, You vs Thanos.
Thanks for watching and see you later!