We bring you the origins of the iconic Grigori Rasputin for fans of the Hellboy franchise. Grigori Rasputin was known by numerous names, including The Mad Monk, The Dark Priest, and The Dragon, demonstrating his power and fear.
In January 1869, he was born in Pokhofskoy, Siberia, and raised in the Russian Orthodox Church. As a child, Rasputin began to exhibit healing skills, and he observed that he could receive religious visions, which mostly consisted of Christian symbols. He also noted images associated with more pagan folklore, such as the shape-shifting leshi and the kosher egg containing the devil’s soul.
In his early twenties, he left to find reasons for his growing talents, and in 1895, he saw the Baba Yaga, who told him he was the father of the new century. She did, however, come to him in the flesh five years later and give him half of her soul to keep safe. When he rose to power and influence in the Russian court, Prince Felix assassinated him. He was poisoned, beaten, shot, and thrown into the river, where he heard the dragon’s cry in his final moments. He heeded the dragon’s summons and vowed to aid in the birth of a new world and a new race of man. The Ogdru Jahad was the culprit.
As he continued to preach and acquire influence, he eventually came to support Hitler and his global conquest. However, his ultimate goal was to free the Ogdru Jahad. He worked on the Ragnarok project, but things did not go as planned, and he began to see visions of a child born from fire. In 1993, his resting place was discovered far north, but by that time, he had already communicated his consciousness to the dragon and was more or less one with him. A terrifying adversary.
“Every time I died, I crossed over, and little more of the master came back with me.” Grigori Rasputin stated. He persisted in his efforts to realize his ambition of freeing the dragon as its mortal agent, and as a result, he came across Hellboy, whom he intended to employ to free the Ogdru Jahad. Let us have a look at the roots of this centuries-old deadly creature.
Grigori Rasputin First Hellboy Appearance
The first appearance of Rasputin is in Hellboy: Seed of Destruction (1994), the comic. Rasputin performed a ritual during World War II to summon the tools to bring the Ogdru Jahad to Earth and let them raze the planet.
However, the summoning put the creature who would carry out the act, subsequently known as Hellboy, in the hands of the Allies. Rasputin advises those in Project Ragna Rok he considers faithful to seek sanctuary in their base in Norway while he traveled to the Arctic Circle at the beckoning of Sadu-Hem, a monstrous spawn of the Ogdru Jahad, having already known the war is lost and Hitler’s eventual death.
Rasputin fell into a contemplative state there. When an expedition party awoke Rasputin in 1994, he used them to access the Cavendish estate. Hellboy was enticed to the estate by Rasputin, who wanted him to rescue the Ogdru Jahad from their crystal cages. Rasputin decided to syphon power from Liz Sherman in order to use Sadu-Hem to free its creator.
Rasputin is reduced to a skeleton as Liz’s flames incinerate Sadu-Hem, thanks to the timely intervention of Abe Sapien impaling him while under the control of the spirit of Elihu Cavendish. Despite Rasputin’s best efforts to persuade Hellboy to spare him, he is physically destroyed.
Facts about the real Grigori Rasputin
Grigori Rasputin was actually based on a real-life Russian mystic. The character was created by Mike Mignola and John Byre, and was based on the real-life Russian mystic of the same name. Rasputin serves as the second archenemy of Hellboy after the Ogdru Jahad itself.
Rasputin was infamous and quite notorious in undivided Russia, however, he had humble beginnings and was born in a remote Siberian village his father was a farmer and both parents were illiterate peasants and this makes his come up even more impressive. In fact, a lot of what we know about his early years is mostly speculation; however, he did have his own family which consisted of a wife named Dubrovina and seven children. As it turns out though, he was not one for simple familial life and ended up leaving his family to go on a journey to discover more about his powers and abilities.
Rasputin went on a pilgrimage to the Saint Nicholas Monastery in Verkhoturye, some 300 miles from his native village, in 1897, after ten years of marriage. He seemed to have had a religious awakening there and returned a different man.
For the next decade, he preached and claimed to have supernatural abilities, including the ability to heal the ill, as a self-styled holy man around the country — and potentially even further afield. His fame finally went to Saint Petersburg, the Russian capital at the time, when he met the Tsar and his wife. However, there is controversy on whether he actually even had healing powers in the first place which was his initial claim to fame.
He was an unkempt man who had a lot of egos and even referred to himself as Christ in miniature. He also became quite unpopular due to his influence and behavior and thus was the target for assassination attempts. While he was able to survive the first attempt on his life by a peasant woman, he did succumb to the one carried out by Prince Felix; however, that was not the end of his story or his life.
What did Rasputin actually want? What was his endgame?
Rasputin was first summoned when the Empress, eager for her son Alexei to recover from his illness, agreed to let him treat him. Alexandra lavished presents on Rasputin when he appeared to heal the tsarevich, the dynasty’s frail little boy. He was given a car and started wearing silk blouses. He also got a personal assistant. While Nicholas was gone at the front, he began sending policy proposals to Alexandra, who was acting in for him. However, historians have said that he had no real true purpose and simply enjoyed his lavish lifestyle.
It is in the Hellboy Universe that some form of intent is put forward. The Hellboy villain takes almost entirely from the real life of Rasuptin and adds the tale of the Baba Yaga and the Ogdru Jahad. Thus, it is after Rasputin’s assassination at the hands of Prince Felix that his fictional life truly begins. He hears the voice of the dragon moments before dying and becomes the mortal agent to serve the dragons purpose and to free the dragon from its shackles.
Grigori Rasputin – Hellboy Origin
Rasputin was resurrected after being assassinated by Prince Felix and was approached by the Ogdru Jahad. They enlisted him as their world’s mortal agent. The Nazis contacted Rasputin soon after to begin developing an occult way for ending the war and emerge victorious. Ragna Roksoon became a reality as he worked with them. The Nazis intended to utilise Rasputin to fight the Allies, but Rasputin was well aware that this would not be possible.
He only wanted to use the Nazis’ resources for as long as he could in order to achieve his own goals: to build a new Eden by triggering the apocalypse. During World War II, Rasputin first emerged, summoning The Beast of the Apocalypse for the Nazis. Rasputin escaped to the Arctic Circle after the summoning mistakenly placed the beast known as Hellboy in the hands of the Allies.
He reappeared in 1994, accompanied by Sadu-Hem, a monster spawn of the Ogdru Jahad. Rasputin’s purpose was to unleash the Ogdru Jahad from their crystal imprisonment and let them to raze the earth using Hellboy’s stone right hand. Rasputin’s ambitions were thwarted by Hellboy’s associates from the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense (BPRD), Liz Sherman and Abe Sapien, who intervened just in time. Rasputin was assassinated, and Sadu-Hem was set on fire.
While his henchmen attempted to resurrect the vampire Vladimir Giurescu, Rasputin reappeared as a ghost. Ilsa Haupstein, a devoted member of Project Ragna Rok and his “Mary Magdalene,” was told by Rasputin to forsake her attempts to resurrect Giurescu and instead place herself within an enchanted iron maiden delivered by Koku. Haupstein died in the process, but the goddess Hecate was able to use the iron maiden as a permanent and semi-indestructible body thanks to her blood. Hecate’s mortal form had been annihilated, just as Rasputin’s.
Last but not least, Rasputin arrived as a ghostly advisor to Inger von Klempt. He convinced her that she would be the first of a final race of men, but she was killed by Lobster Johnson, and the world was saved when the Conqueror Worm was destroyed. Rasputin withdrew to the Yggdrasil’s roots, where the Baba Yaga gathered what remained of his soul and deposited it in an acorn.
Later, when Baba Yaga has exhausted all of her resources in her battle with Hellboy, she tries to utilise Rasputin’s soul as a final resort. However, her servant Koku, perceiving him as too dangerous to utilise, seized the acorn and tossed it into the fires of Hell, where supposedly his menace would be eternally ended. Later in BPRD: The Devil You Know, Rasputin reappears, aided by Varvara, his illegitimate daughter, and possessed by the Ogdru-Jahad, intending to bring the world to an end until he is defeated by Hellboy.
Grigori Rasputin Abilities
Quite the formidable enemy, Rasputin had many powers and abilities. Grigori Rasputin exhibited superhuman skills before he was recruited by the Ogdru Jahad, including the ability to temporarily heal others. Rasputin’s skills finally began to come into their own after he established touch with the Baba Yaga in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century, making him a very powerful wizard indeed. Rasputin became everlasting, albeit not invincible, by giving Baba Yaga a portion of his soul.
Hellboy was born thanks to his magic, and many Nazi doomsday projects were conceived thanks to his guidance. Rasputin was able to turn four explorers into frog men with the help of an Ogdru Hem. He was a powerful magician who could take a lot of punishment. Rasputin was also able to use arcane ways to take possession of Liz Sherman’s mind, and he was proven to survive a spear wound on the chest, but the wound sapped his powers greatly. Hellboy shattered him with his stone fist when he was reduced to a burning skeleton, and the last power he displayed before his death was the ability to breathe fire, which he then used to murder him.
Rasputin became a ghost after his death, yet his ghost also possessed enormous power. Even as a ghost, he carried the spear wound that Abe Sapien had inflicted on him, which had turned into a wound that emitted blue flame. Rasputin’s ability to travel, become immaterial, and blind humans was demonstrated as a ghost. He could also travel through several dimensions, even visiting the Baba Yaga near the World Tree. Rasputin could also «mark» those he thought were important by flickering a blue light above their heads. It’s unknown what, if anything, this symbol meant to the individual.
Grigori Rasputin Live-Action Adaptation
In Hellboy, actor Karel Roden played Rasputin, the main antagonist. In the film, he was seen collaborating with Nazis and demonstrating incredible occult powers tied to the underworld. Rasputin was depicted as practically immortal, resurrected with a piece of his god within his body each time he died. Rumours that the real-life Rasputin was difficult to kill possibly inspired this ability.
Rasputin was an esoteric counsel to the Romanovs, not a faith healer, as depicted in the comic. Because of his unbridled dabbling in the black arts and devotion of the Ogru Jadhah, he was assassinated by prince Felix and his cohorts. Felix and his accomplices poisoned, shot, stabbed, clubbed, castrated, and drowned him at a feast in his honour. Later, he was resurrected and fled into hiding. As World War II began, Rasputin became a member of the Thule group and was assigned by Hitler to employ the occult to oppose the allies. The Nazis, on the other hand, had no idea that Rasputin had employed them to carry out his plot to free the Ogru Jahad.
Rasputin attempted to free the Ogdru Jahad in 1944 with the help of a group of Nazis, using a gigantic apparatus that, when Rasputin fired his magic at it, created a gateway to the Ogdru Jahad’s prison. According to him, the Ogdru Jahad would defeat their foes and turn the world into a paradise. The Allies, on the other hand, attacked the church where the event was taking place, and Professor Trevor Bruttenholm threw a grenade at the gateway. The grenade damaged the portal-creating gadget, making it unstable. Rasputin was drawn to the gateway, and when he tried to flee, the malfunctioning machinery shocked him to death.
Sixty years later, in the Moldavian mountains, Rasputin’s lover, Ilsa von Haupstein, and Karl Ruprect Kroenen resurrect him. Rasputin summoned the hellhound Sammael when he returned to a world that had changed in his absence. Bruttenholm spent quite a lt of timein the movie trying to find Rasputin, who appeared to Hellboy several times. Eventually, he and Kroenen entered the Bureau headquarters and killed Bruttenholm. Rasputin stole Liz’s soul out of his tomb and promised Hellboy that her soul would be returned if he freed the Ogdru Jahad. Hellboy was persuaded to halt by John Myers, who cut off his regrown horns and stabbed Rasputin with one of them. This put an end to the mystic’s life.
The life of Rasputin was a long and eventful one where he was involved in many heinous deeds and crimes. He was known to be a heretic and was one of Hellboy’s main opponents in the Hellboy universe. His tale is quite the interesting one as we trace his origins and also take a look at the real Gregori Rasputin who was equally infamous and heavily influenced the making of the films character.