Each of the four primary Cenobites from The Hellbound Heart were featured in the film, with appearances based upon their descriptions in the book. The first Cenobite became Butterball, the second Pinhead, the third Chatterer, and the fourth The Female.
While the novella describes the Cenobites as being sexless (their mutilations having made their gender uncertain and their voices being indistinguishable), the movie is far more explicit as to each member's gender, mostly due to the actors playing each character.
Kirsty reappears in Boom! Studios' Hellraiser comic series, set roughly twenty years after the events of the third film. By issue #8, she becomes a Cenobite, a female Pinhead, as the original Pinhead becomes human again.
In in the original text, the Cenobites are unnamed and are described as asexual beings who have been marred and modified so horribly, they bear little resemblance to the human form. Barker is surprisingly vague in describing the Cenobites in great detail.
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Freddy is a member of the Cenobite council and the rival of Laughing Jack. He is also the most feared and dreaded enforcer of Zalgo, even more so than Pinhead. Freddy is played by Robert Englund.
Merkova is one of few cenobites to have a lover, Pinhead, others being Female Cenobite who was also with Pinhead, Alastor and Chalkis and Sculptress and "My Sweet".
We always knew that [a female Pinhead] made sense given the history of the franchise and the kinds of fans that have embraced it,” Bruckner says. “It was also a way for us to not replicate Doug Bradley's incredible, iconic performance. There had been a lot of precedent in the franchise.
However, 20 years after her first encounter with the Cenobites, Kirsty agrees to take Pinhead's place in Hell as the Hell Priest after losing everyone she's ever cared about - becoming a Cenobite crafted based on his original style, and the new favorite of Leviathan.
On the decision to cast Clayton, a trans woman, as the character, the film's director, David Bruckner, explained: "We felt a kind of anticipation around the fans to reimagine the character. We knew we wanted Pinhead to be a woman. Jamie was just the right person for the role.
Not only have the Cenobites completely mutilated themselves, but they'll do worse to anyone who summons them. Much like Frank, the Cenobites are predators, using their puzzle box to lure victims with the false promise of sexual rapture, but in the end, it's all about the Cenobites fulfilling their own pleasure.
In The Hellbound Heart, Cenobites are described as androgynous, and Pinhead is said to have a feminine-sounding voice, which was used as inspiration to cast Clayton as the character.
The Cenobites are a monastic order in service to their god Leviathan. Leviathan rules an extra-dimensional realm called The Labyrinth. In the movie it is depicted as a giant living Lament Configuration, but presumably a god can take many forms.
In the mythos, only those who are so obsessed with solving a puzzle that can open a gateway (or 'Schism') can be considered. Those who have a taste for the outermost reaches of human experience and have no moral limitations for what they will do to achieve those desires would even be considered to become a Cenobite.
The Lament Configuration Box is a cubic puzzle that people need to solve to summon the Cenobites. Since the Cenobites come from a dimension of unbounded pleasures and pain, people solved the Lament Configuration Box hoping to experience things unknown on Earth.
While taking Nora to the hospital in Trevor's van later to treat her injury, Nora is abruptly pulled into The Labyrinth where Pinhead mutilates her with her hook-chains and taunts her when she prays to god only to flay her and turn her into a cenobite.
Hellraiser has since become a queer horror classic for numerous reasons, according to Riley Wade of Horror Obsessive. The work's gay author/director has been hailed as a master of the counter-cultural “splatterpunk” literary genre.
Leviathan, the powerful entity, experiences a significant weakening and undergoes a temporary loss of power when a human being successfully solves the intricate puzzle known as the Lament Configuration while residing in the depths of Hell.
According to Hellraiser lore, the Leviathan is a god who is responsible for creating Pinhead and his pain-loving colleagues. It is likely this deity who is responsible for Voight's transformation and it is also likely that they are turning him into a new Cenobite.
Like his fellow Cenobites, Chatterer has lost all memory of his life as a human before he became a Cenobite; Hellraiser: Hellbound indicates that Chatterer opened the box while still a young boy.
The use of nails and pins evolved out of one of Barker's short stories called The Forbidden, which featured a board hammered with nails at specific intersections of laid out squares. This aesthetic would resurface for the Pinhead character years later.
