There are plenty of Cenobites in the franchise, with some being just as iconic as Pinhead among Hellraiser fans. Some have appeared once and others have appeared in multiple movies one way or another. These not only look cool but are some of the strongest Cenobites.
1987's Hellraiser was writer/filmmaker Clive Barker's most famous creation. His macabre tale of demonic creatures ("Cenobites") who come for people's souls to take them back to an eternity of sadomasochistic pain became an instant horror classic.
Pinhead is one of the leaders of the Cenobites, said to be humans who were later transformed into demonic creatures blindly devoted to the practice of experimental sadomasochism. They exist in an extra-dimensional realm that is Hell or one of many versions of Hell that co-exist.
When a person solves one of the many boxes (Carborro, the Lament Configuration, etc), a small group of Cenobites arrives. If Leviathan, god of Hell, believes the person is worthy to become a Cenobite, they are taken to Hell to be remade in a Transformation Chamber operated by the Engineer.
Leviathan, also known as the God of Flesh, Hunger and Desire, is the overarching antagonist of the Hellraiser franchise. It is the "deity" residing inside the extra-dimensional world known as the Labyrinth who is the overlord ruling the Cenobites, including their masters Pinhead and the Engineer.
Judgment is the first Hellraiser film to include heaven in its mythology. According to Tunnicliffe, he took influence from The Scarlet Gospels, stating "I am in no way religious, but if you are writing a story that acknowledges the existence of Hell, then you have to acknowledge the existence of Heaven.
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.
The Cenobites are disfigured, sexless, sadomasochistic entities tasked with capturing whoever solved the riddle of the demonic puzzle box known as Lament Configuration and submitting them to extreme physical torture, an act meant to reveal all of the hidden pleasures of intense pain.
The original novella and first two films indicate they are morally ambiguous ("demons to some, angels to others") but later films and comics depict them as often malicious and taking delight in causing harm.
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.
Candyman is a Cenobite. Both stories which Hellraiser and Candyman are based off of are by Clive Barker. Each character only causes mayhem when they are summoned. To top it off all they know after their deaths are pain and pleasure.
The most straightforward is to reverse the Lament Configuration. In doing so, it will send him back to his world. Pinhead also abides by a strict code, and if a person summons him because they were forced, he won't go after the victim.
The Hellraiser franchise revolves around a mysterious puzzle box with the ability to summon a group of extra-dimensional demons known as the Cenobites. These beings are former humans warped by their own ambitions into sadomasochistic abominations that can no longer distinguish between pain and pleasure.
After killing J.P. and releasing Pinhead, Terri was turned into the Cenobite known as Dreamer. It was one of the worst Cenobite designs, particularly because Dreamer had no real powers in comparison to her brethren. She was also far more human in appearance than the rest, which didn't add much to her own malevolence.
In the Hellraiser franchise, the cenobites showcase the alien beauty of the demons in Barker's chilling, carefully-crafted world, featuring interesting designs that intertwine flesh, leather, and metal to personify the combination of pain and pleasure that they represent.
Leviathan is obsessed with law and order, and views the human realm of flesh as chaotic and wrong. It uses the Cenobites as its foot soldiers in the war against chaos and flesh. The Labyrinth which it presides over represents the maze of the mind.
He was dragged into the Labyrinth and then transformed into the Cenobite Pinhead. In the decades that followed he obediently served the dark entity Leviathan as the new leader of the Cenobites, losing all memory of his past life as a human being in the process.
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.
Edward, then, is a Cenobite, which is why he has scissors instead of hands, he's so pale, and he wears black leather clothes that look very similar to the ones the Cenobites usually wear.
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.
Spanning several generations, this final bloody entry in Clive Barker's horror tour de force acts both as prequel and sequel to the original Hellraiser films.
Its plot involves a mystical puzzle box that summons the Cenobites, a group of extra-dimensional, sadomasochistic beings who cannot differentiate between pain and pleasure. The leader of the Cenobites is portrayed by Doug Bradley, and identified in the sequels as "Pinhead". Hellraiser was filmed in late 1986.
However, while it's not unfair to read a lot of that as secondary intent, the real story behind the “Jesus wept,” line in Hellraiser is much more mundane - Andrew Robinson simply didn't want to swear.
