(Spycrab)
(Iceking)
“Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.” - Edgar Allan Poe
Pinhead, The former general named Elliot Spencer turned Hell Priest of Hellraiser.
The Tall Man, Once Jebediah Morningside, now mysterious interloper of Phantasm.
No matter how you put it, Humanity will always be fundamentally flawed in its pursuit of knowledge. With such limited time in this cycle we call life, some choose to cherish all the time they have and others choose to live it with the ones who make them happy. However, there are those who aren’t satisfied with the sights shown by the world of the living and wish for more experiences, more knowledge, more pleasure. And as they cross the gate of the tangible into the unknown, they come back as a shadow of their former selves. What came back wasn’t the ones who entered, nor was it human at all. It was a monster. But one must wonder, between these two gruesome wise men, who would come out on top in a game of pain and pleasure?
Will Pinhead enjoy making the Tall Man suffer and making him enjoy it? Or will the Tall Man have to arrange this Pin’s funeral and turn him into his underling? Come, let your desire become reality as we unravel this puzzle in a DEATH BATTLE!
Before We Start…
In contrast to how most other vs media have done the matchup, we’ll be going full off the walls crazy with what we will be using. We will be using Pinhead’s amped form in the comics as well as Lucifer's Armor. But generally speaking, we will be focusing on both Pinhead and Elliot Spencer. Since they are the same character, just that Elliot is the human form of Pinhead.
For Hellraiser, we’ll be including movies, comics, novels, commercials and Dead By Daylight (However we will not be scaling Pinhead to anything in DBD). While for Phantasm, we of course will be using the movies and commercials but also extended material that we have found. Such as the comic, novelization and the new Phiction: Tales From The World Of Phantasm novel. Keep in mind though, there are no onlines versions of the Phantasm comic and novel, so some images and scans may be in a lower quality than others. We had to get these media physically so it may not look the best unfortunately.
Background
Pinhead
Throughout history, every human has had dreams that have motivated them in their way of life. Hopes that bring the brightest light to even the darkest world. But what happens when dreams become desires? Desires that have transpired eons and empower not only their vessel in flesh, but in spirit as well. Not stopping until the soul achieves the end goal of pleasure at their dreams being fulfilled. Meet Elliot Spencer, a captain for the British Army who served in France during WW1. As the head of the British Expeditionary Force, he led in the Battle of Flanders. However, the battle ended up killing a lot of his men as well as making Elliot question his faith in God and humanity as a whole. After the battle had ended, the damage was done. He had seen too much inhumanity to feel like he deserved to live, as so. He began searching for things that could numb his pain and give him a sense of satisfaction.
His search for all things pleasurable eventually ended up with him coming face to face with a strange puzzle box known only as The Lament Configuration. Upon solving the puzzle, he was met with truths of pain and pleasure that enabled him to understand the meaning of desire. He was dragged to Hell where he turned into something beyond Elliot himself. Servants of The Leviathan, a Cenobite. Not just any Cenobite, his new found understanding of suffering let him climb the ranks of Cenobites until he became the Lead Cenobite. At this point, Elliot was no longer. What remained in his place was The Hell Priest, Pinhead. Despite his consistent disapproval of the name and preference of Hell Priest, the name Pinhead has now become the most iconic name for the character.
If any sinner wants a similar treatment of pain, whether it be impalement, dismemberment or perhaps death. Pinhead is more than happy to oblige and give out this punishment tenfold. Opening the box is a way of submitting yourself to The Leviathan in exchange for limitless pleasure. In a way, Pinhead gives his victims a choice whether to live your life as you intended or to give into your desires to become something more. He truly is an angel to those willing to sacrifice humanity for more. But for those who find themselves facing him and wish to continue living without the abundance of pain, he is nothing but a demon.
Tall Man
“Your end approaches but it is not yet, take great care how you play. The final game now begins. ”
The biggest mystery of all in life that has haunted humanity for as long as it lived is not the content that we experience, it’s what comes after our time in this world has run its course, death. Death for many is a step outside of the tangible world and into the unknown, a phenomenon that has resulted in ideas of what death really is and many souls have attempted to reach an understanding of mortality. One such soul is none other than Jebediah Morningside, a kind hearted and soft spoken mortician. But during his time handling and arranging funerals, Jebediah began to become increasingly fascinated with the idea of life after death. His research led him down a rabbit hole, discovering various connections with our world and the world of the dead. Desperate to find an answer to it all, he would create a device that would let him travel across space-time and learn the ways of immortality: The Dimensional Fork.
We don’t know exactly what Jebediah saw once he passed through those forks, besides the fact we know he encountered the Red Planet during his journey. But whatever it was he saw or what he learned, it caused something inside of him to snap. With such knowledge, why would he waste his time worrying about what mattered to him as a human when he now knows the secret of life and death and why would he stop there? He would then take over the realm of the dead as its new found lord, resurrecting the dead to add to his army of creatures. What would he need an army for? Well, to come back to the real world and conquer it too, plunging the graveyards of towns one by one until he was ready to face the world head on. Suffice to say, what came out of those forks was no longer Jebediah. What took his place was The Tall Man.
For those unfortunate enough to be a part of the town Tall Man lurks in, steer clear of any strange activity in the graveyard. You may become an unwanted pawn trying to figure out what’s real and what’s a dream. Imagery or Phantasm. So remember next time you pass that cemetery that when you die, you don’t go to heaven, hell or any place the human mind has perceived to be the afterlife. You go to the Tall Man. And you are now under his non-existent mercy.
Skill And Experience
Pinhead
An explorer in the furthest region of experience, Pinhead has been through a whole lot of pleasure and pain throughout his years as the Lead Cenobite. He’s been Hell’s number one priest for well over 70 years and has picked up a mighty fine legacy that’s filled to the brim with violence. When he was alive, he served in WW1 as a captain of a British Expeditionary Force. During his time as a Cenobite, Pinhead has experienced all pleasures and all pains possible in Hell, all the way from overly heightened senses to the delight of murder. Pinhead has seen and done it all, especially murder.
He led The Order Of The Leviathan to war with countless other Cenobites and emerged victorious. He killed over 260 of the world's sophisticated and highly trained magicians all by himself. And more impressively, he slaughtered more humans in 2 days than most Cenobites have in their entire lifespan. He killed so much that he could drown someone in the blood of the rest of his victims, and he still was not satisfied so he bathed in the blood.
Tall Man
As expected from a mortician who also dabbles as a scientist, Tall Man has been researching death and the arts of resurrection for some time now. Which led to his creation of the Dimensional Forks, a gateway in the space-time continuum, in the first place. Now as the Tall Man, he’s raided several towns and destroyed them from the inside out, he’s tormented Mike’s dreams for 51 years and eventually took this coma worldwide as he moved through the minds of millions. He’s seen some real nasty work since then. Such as the governments of the entire world, whom he bested through the use of his alien virus and giant Sentinels.
He’s also over 7 feet tall, no wonder he’s called the Tall Man.
Equipment
Pinhead
The Lament Configuration
“The box. You opened it. We came.”
If you know Hellraiser, then you know the box. Or as it’s actually called, the Lament Configuration all too well. This demonic puzzle box is the gateway to Hell and when opened by a sinner yearning for new experiences, calls upon Pinhead and his Cenobites to drag you straight to Hell. There are nearly a thousand different Lament Configurations around the world, being found and sold to the next sinner everyday.
The box is more than just a doorway for Pinhead to walk through, it can play music too! But seriously, Pinhead can use it to summon Cenobites from Hell to join him in a battle in the real world. It can even let out an electric pulse that leveled an entire building. Its signature power however is to be able to turn into a crystal like figure that can be used as a stabbing weapon and to make the box unsolvable.
Lament Guitar
Nice puzzle solving skills nerd, check this shit out.
Pins
Naturally, Pinhead’s pins are incredibly important to his character and his powers. They give him his abilities in the first place, and can increase his power and help him recover from injuries. These pins are impossible to get out of his head by any traditional means, but he himself can pull them out and use them as weapons.
Hooks And Chains
Pinhead’s favorite weapon to kill and make his victims suffer is none other than his famous hooks and chains. These sentient weapons always attack at the command of their priest and move on their own accord even when Pinhead’s not with them. Pinhead can summon these chains from basically anywhere, Walls, roof, his back or his face are all places he can shoot chains from.
Chains are quite a popular pick amongst Cenobites, and have been used in over a hundred ways. Though Pinhead’s preferred method has always been ripping his prey into multiple pieces, he has other ways to use them if he so desires. Like chains that can let out blades to decapitate someone on their way back
The Pillar Of Souls
A more interesting piece of arsenal, this rectangular prism is made up of and covered in the souls of tormented sinners trapped within it. This actually served as a prison for Pinhead’s soul at the end of Hellbound, which wouldn’t last obviously. Now, he can summon the Pillar Of Souls anytime he wants and trap your own soul in its structure, which is described as demonically freezing you in time and space.
Cleaver
He’s got a meat cleaver used for decapitation and making a relatively painless death very painful.
Knife
Sometimes you gotta keep the suffering simple, and Pinhead’s a simple man. Usually.
Sickle
Your regular old knife but with a little more style.
Terrorsaw
A giant chainsaw that uses literal chains to slice others apart, with such modifications as hooks attached to the handle and a flamethrower coming out of the engine. No wonder it's called the Terrorsaw.
Saw
Terrorsaw without the terror and certainly without the terror it brings.
Whip
If for some reason he doesn’t want to use his chains, he can pull out a whip with a hook at the end for some long ranged action.
Harrower Sword
A magical sword that Pinhead stole from one of the Harrowers, Ron Ringwood. Harrowers are, in short, warriors who fight in the name of the goddess of light. Due to this, this indestructible sword allows Pinhead to have a direct link with The Leviathan’s power. Letting him fight goddesses he would otherwise be incapable of even standing a chance against.
Sledgehammer
Smashes Lament Configurations good.
Guns
To make up for the fact he had little to no power in the form of Elliot, he wields a gun. Fitting.
Baseball
Pain can’t be his only hobby I guess.
Cenobite Armor
To kill and indulge simultaneously you have to be able to look the part, and Pinhead knocks it out of the park with his outfit. Composed of fancy leather gear that’s resistant to blood stains, it’s a great costume that comes with a fun little skirt. This outfit has weapons strapped to the belt, an amputation saw, a trepanning drill, a small chisel, 3 silver syringes. You name it, he has it.
Battle Armor
Pinhead can’t always rock his regular outfit in a fight scenario, so he has battle armor he uses in wide scale wars across hell.
Lucifer’s Armor
In the Scarlet Gospels, Pinhead stole an ancient set of armor from Lucifer for himself. Commanding the armor as his own, which led to the armor preferring Pinhead over its previous owner. This armor astronomically increases Pinhead’s power to such lengths that he’s able to take on Lucifer and all of Hell at once. Not only this, the armor grants him several abilities. Fitting for the armor of the devil.
Weapon Summoning: The armor can summon and control thousands of different weapons
Fire Manipulation: Can substitute the Hell Priest’s limbs for that of fire.
Energy Absorption: Any attacks made on the armor will only be added to the armor's power and increase the strength of the wearer.
Free Movement: The wearer can walk on lava and seemingly air.
Santa Outfit
He would make a terrible Santa (imagine having to solve a puzzle box to get presents) but, hey he’s trying.
Tall Man
The Dimensional Forks
Originally the Tall Man’s greatest invention when he was a mortal, the Dimensional Forks have stuck with him ever since and for good reason too. They may look like normal looking poles but these bad boys are gateways in the space-time continuum that let the Tall Man travel through different dimensions like the Dreamscape, alternate realities and lets him travel back in time. Tall Man can summon them whenever he wants and can summon several of them at a time.
It also has a variety of other uses besides the obvious. It can suck people in, burn the ground it was on, produce electricity, amplify gravity to where people feel heavy and struggle to move and let out powerful vibrations and rhythmic electromagnetic surges that stun others and pull light objects like bullets into it.
Sentinels
After he’s done preparing human corpses to become a part of his army, the Tall Man salvages the brain of the body and encases it within a metal sphere to become his most iconic weapon, the Sentinels. Despite having implied to still keep the memories of who they once were, these blood suckers are on Tall Man’s control 24/7 and he can hush any Sentinel that tries to defy him. Not like he really needs to though, as he has thousands, maybe millions of them.
They aren’t for looks either. The basic ones can stab into the victim's head, drill into their body and spew blood out in the most popular kill of the whole franchise. More unique usages include extending a human eye out of their dome exterior, form buzzsaws, ram into enemies with spikes and explode, shoot lasers, temporarily shapeshift back into their human form and summon the Dimensional Forks.
Golden Sentinels
A variant of the classic Sentinel, Golden Sentinels are very unique compared to their silver counterpart. Instead of attacking directly, they house the brain of whoevers head they are in. Which includes Mike and Tall Man himself. Tall Man’s Golden Sentinel will burst out of his head if he is ever incapable of getting back up, continuing the fight for him. These Sentinels are far more powerful then regular Sentinels, being able to break holes in doors and fly fast enough to produce smoke. It has spinning blades to dig into you and sawblades to cut you up into pieces.
The Orbitals
As the name implies, these enormous Sentinels are the size of a whole football field in diameter and the strongest Sentinel in Tall Man’s arsenal. They can keep up with helicopters and fire a massive laser capable of splitting buildings in half and incinerating skyscrapers. Reducing them to cinders.
Containers
For safekeeping his minions, mostly Lurkers, while they're still cooking to be let out in the Red Planet, Tall Man keeps them in containers stacked on top of each other.
Hyper Dreaming Program
Tall Man has access to a technology program centered around dreams referred to as “The Hyper Dreaming Program.” While we do not see much of what this program can do, we know it consists of several pieces of technology that can see, record, analyze and graph information gathered in the dreams of whoever is hooked up to it.
Virtual Dream Recorder
One of these pieces of tech is the Virtual Dream Recorder. This thing can induce a specific rem-state that drifts the user into different levels of dreaming. It maps out your subconscious slowly as you go further into your dreams, finding out what makes your nightmares.
Switchblade
Perfect for murdering unsuspected victims while you’re disguised as a woman. Wait what.
Brain Remover
Does what the name implies and does it well, very useful for making people into Sentinels or removing their mind from their flesh.
Baseball Gear
Yes this is a real thing, you’re gonna have to just deal with the fact that Tall Man can throw a baseball at your favorite verse and kill it.
Fangoria
Tall Man’s a fan of all of the classics. He’s got a ton of magazines starring horror icons, from Freddy Krueger to… Pinhead!?
Stormtrooper Helmet
No way, The Phantasm Menace. Thank you Don, very cool.
Santa Hat
Fellas, it’s gonna be a red Christmas this year.
Abilities
Pinhead
Cenobite Physiology
Being a demonic torturer who serves in the name of The Leviathan doesn’t just come with a fancy name and a knack for violence, all Cenobites are extraordinarily complex in their physiology and Pinhead is no different. Cenobites are ageless and immortal and they can regenerate wounds with time or to speed it up, drain blood from a nearby source to quickly recover.
And for any desperate soul looking for a way out of their eternal torment, they can always make a deal with the devil. Much like actual demons, Cenobites can make deals with humans and monsters alike. With these deals differing in certain usages. For example, Pinhead made a pact with a monster from another hell, which gave him enough power to match the might of his original hell. Another deal he can perform is to forfeit his soul to The Leviathan to become human again and have a chance at salvation. Any deal you can think of is likely for almost any Cenobite to do, especially one with as high of respect as Pinhead.
Power Amplification
Through his deals and pontifex with The Leviathan, Pinhead can increase his spiritual and temporal powers.
Portal Creation/Dimensional Travel
It should be common knowledge that solving The Lament Configuration is a sure-fire way to let Pinhead onto Earth, but what is not known nearly as much is Pinhead doesn’t actually require the box to be open to enter our world. He can condense matter at such a rate that it causes shockwaves to summon an expanding sphere of the cosmos that lets him travel between Earth and Hell and summon objects from Hell.
BFR
As expected from a demon of his caliber, he can drag you and your soul to Hell for your eternal torment through the use of his portals,causing your senses to overload or instantly sending you to Hell as a byproduct of killing you.
Soul Manipulation
Flesh is hardly the only thing Pinhead wishes to experience and deliver pain in, your own soul is on the chopping block too. Once The Lament Configuration is activated and his Gash steps onto our world, your soul is forfeited to him. Meaning Pinhead can do whatever he likes with it, either tearing it apart or letting it free due to The Leviathan’s code of honor.
Astral Projection
Cenobites, both inferior to and on the same level as Pinhead, have been shown the ability to appear as a ghostly version of themselves before then manifesting their physical form.
Mind/Memory Manipulation
In Hellraiser, there is little more that is as vulnerable as your very mind, which Pinhead can read as easily as reading a book and enter as easily as opening a door or window. This lets him feel your own mortality and characteristics, and control your dreams. And these dreams take place in a “time between times.” More interestingly, he can place mental and memory restraints on anyone in lower power to him in order to prevent them from going mad with shock. He can unlock these restraints whenever or completely wipe someone's memories if he so pleases.
Telepathy
Controlling, reading and invading are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the pressure Pinhead has over the mind. His telepathy not only can communicate with anyone from anywhere, it can speak to his future and past self and get information on whatever time has in store for him.
Telekinesis
With his power over the mind, including his own, he can telekinetically throw objects and people, break things with a thought, break though tough material like concrete, lift himself up to levitate and exert a telekinetic force that shields him from damage.
Teleportation
He wouldn’t be a supernatural horror movie character from the 80s without the ability to teleport.
Dream Manipulation
Pinhead’s mind abilities are useful, yes, but can they create pointless scenes to extend a movie's length and try to make its plot interesting? Thought so. In all seriousness, Pinhead can give you vivid nightmares and control your dreams entirely on a whim. Let’s just say it's definitely Hellraiser 5-7’s favorite ability Pinhead’s got.
Intangibility
There have been other Lead Cenobites that have taken Elliot’s place at times, one of these is none other than Kirsty Cotton. Who, in a mindscape, was able to phase through the floor and walls.
Electricity Manipulation
To complement his chains tearing through your flesh, Pinhead can release a deadly shock through his chains or by waving his hand that’s strong enough to fry monsters as strong as other Cenobites and lift them into the air with little to no issue.
Heat Manipulation
He can control the temperature of damn well anything he pleases, whether it be turning water into ice sharp enough to stab someone through the mouth or causing metal crosses to melt in the hands of its holder.
Technology Manipulation
Despite being long dead before more advanced technology was made, Pinhead’s been shown to control with technology to a degree, creating fake videos of fake events to mess with the perspective of whoevers watching.
Blindness Inducement
Even in a weakened state with little to no magic, he can inflict blindness upon anyone who gets in his way.
Pain/Empathic Manipulation
Nothing screams a good time in Hell quite like the sound of agonizing pain and emotions of sinners. Cenobite's whole thing is taking pleasure in pain and the surreal emotions expressed in the moments of suffering, and Pinhead can dish out this emotional influence in spades. Letting you experience a multitude of amplified emotions and all future pain and emotions they will feel as well.
Fear Manipulation
With just a touch, Pinhead can lay such fear upon you that time seems like a lie and sound a fabrication.
Blood Manipulation/Regeneration
Blood is Pinhead’s preferred way to express the delight of suffering, hence he can cause your blood to explode out from your body and turn his own blood into acid strong enough to melt asphalt. As it turns out, blood manipulation is recurring in Hellraiser as regular human souls are able to absorb and regenerate themselves off of others' blood.
Supernatural Fog
Pinhead can form a sort of demonic fog around the surrounding area that mutates anything that it touches while multiplying any damage done to the target tenfold. Making any sort of wound a life threatening cut.
Transmutation
Dead or alive, Pinhead can turn you into a brainwashed Cenobite whose mentality he controls over. With your Cenobite form having ironic meaning, like including how you died as a power or making your insecurities your appearance.
Life Manipulation
Through the use of an incantation, Pinhead can play the very fabric of life itself. He can grant inanimate objects like origami life of their own. These newly made life have their own magic and can use spells, such as ones that suck the blood out of you. If that’s not enough, he can absorb the demonic life out of anything nearby to heal himself up and upgrade his physiology. Which in this case gave him the ability to survive without oxygen.
Accelerated Development
(Don’t fucking look at me like that)
I really hate what I’m about to type but here goes nothing. He can just flat out make you pregnant and cause you to birth a baby that develops at a ridiculously fast rate. I am never going to recover from this.
Creation
Similar Cenobites such as Chatterer, can twist their image and create a sort of mirror of the pain, creating new lifeforms and creatures out of their divine agony.
Existence Erasure
It’s considered a routine for Cenobites to erase the location of where the box had been opened out of existence without a trace. Erased in every way possible, with no evidence of it existing in the first place. However, this only applies to physical possibilities, the erased object can still exist spiritually.
Reality Warping
Nowhere is safe from Pinhead’s terror, especially when that nowhere is the confines of your very own personal Hell. Where Pinhead can shape the foundations of it, decide what is real and isn’t, form stories reflecting your own sins and punish you with the horror of reality. He can use this reality warping outside of Hell too, like when nearly destroyed the fabric of reality.
Time Manipulation
Once you’re in the eternal depths of Hell, Pinhead can torment you with your past and future self in a sort of time loop where every time you die you relive your own hell again and again. Making you go so mad with desperation that you kill yourself as an attempt to escape.
Extreme Pain Tolerance
If you couldn’t tell, Pinhead kind of has a thing for pain. His idea of pleasure and pain are so interlinked that he would rather people take their time torturing him. Because of this, his pain tolerance is off the charts. Even after being shot several times, having all his pins removed, having his arm ripped off, lit on fire and being crushed by a roof all in the same day. He still refused to die and kept trucking till he found enough blood to heal himself back up. He enjoyed every second of it, for the record.
Enhanced Memories
Beings of Hell have memories that feel so real that it throws them in a sort of temporal backlash that is a one for one replica of their memories.
Enhanced Senses
Above all, Pinhead desires nothing more than new experiences. One pleasure after another, to the point where he had seen every single pleasure that hell had to offer to him. This includes heightened senses that increase all of your senses to a frankly absurd degree. With these senses being all about overwhelming the user. This allows you to hear the heartbeat of a butterfly and water flowing through veins, see flakes of dead skin on the ground and non-existent sights like music, smell the salt of a tear and taste the darkness and a bumblebee on a grain of pollen that was lost midflight.
Extrasensory Perception
Certain pleasures allow for others to sense the fear in any living creature's heart. Pinhead himself can sense… how many abortions someone has. Okay then.
Perception Manipulation
If you thought his overly heightened and supernatural senses would somehow be cool to have, fear not! Pinhead can give you that same treatment and double it, making you experience mass hallucinations, question your very existence and send you to hell as a byproduct of annihilating your senses. Yeah, he has a whole lot more than mere sights to show you.
Illusion Casting
Pinhead’s tortures often involve an abundance of graphic hallucinations that make you question what is real and what isn’t or illusions of certain places that get more real the more you descend into the illusion. These illusions act as their own undiscovered worlds in a nonsensical maze that mutters gibberish with every passing hallway.
Shapeshifting
For disguising himself amongst a human crowd, Pinhead can shape the shape and appearance of his body by putting someone’s face on himself or changing his form through his magic.
Power Mimicry
With a little magic and a little time, he can utter incantations that can mimic his opponent's voice to near perfection and their unique abilities as well.
Forcefield Creation
By using The Leviathan’s power via a direct link to it, he can summon a forcefield made entirely out of energy in the shape of The Leviathan that protects him against any oncoming attack.
Power Nullification
His forcefield, and all of his energy projections by proxy, can slowly drain people of their magical abilities and weaken them till they’re left wide open.
Matter Manipulation
Pain is apparently so great in hell that it tears through your flesh at the genetic and sub-atomic level, enables your soul to go through higher realms of pain and can condense matter so much it becomes a cosmo sphere that acts as a portal.
Resurrection
After a deal with a being from another hell and being reunited with the thing that killed him, Pain gained the ability to resurrect the many souls still in hell as a walking meatbag fueled by blood. Forming a very literal god damn army to overwhelm the forces of Earth in order to remake it in his own image, his own heaven.
Energy Manipulation
Along with resurrection, his deal with his benefactor allowed him to project an energy force that was comparable to an 100 megaton blast and can become a being of pure energy, being able to move as energy and infect others with said energy.
Size Manipulation
Amped Pinhead being able to morph his body through his energy manipulation. Becoming as large as a planet, and being able to shift his size however he likes. Causing planetary destruction in the process.
Dead By Daylight Perks
It only makes sense that the biggest masochist in all of horror would find himself in the midst of what is now the biggest crossover horror game with the most painful community, Dead By Daylight. Where Pinhead would find himself serving under yet another cosmic entity, this one literally being called The Entity. Pinhead wouldn’t be hunting survivors unarmed, he obtained a few nifty “perks” designed to mess with generators and little down the survivors chances of survival. Among these include…
Deadlock: To induce mental anguish on any pitiful survivor trying to escape, Pinhead will call upon the entity to block the generator with the most progress on it once a generator is completed.
Plaything: Using totems, Pinhead can apply the Cursed and Oblivious status effects onto any hooked survivor so long as the totem is up.
Gift Of Pain: Replaces the traditional hooks to sacrifice survivors to The Entity with Scourge Hooks all about maiming and draining as much blood from a victim. Hindering their ability to be healed successfully while also making them easier to track down.
Resistances
Sleep Manipulation: Was unfazed by a sleeping spell that caused other Cenobites to fall asleep.
Toxins: Pinhead is entirely immune to the effects of toxic gas.
Exorcism: Unlike other demons in fiction, Cenobites are not affected by exorcism and being casted back to hell.
Soul Manipulation: Having sold his soul to The Leviathan, Pinhead is completely soulless.
Space-Time Manipulation: Hell is a realm that does not adhere to the laws of time and space.
Tall Man
Physiology
Whatever Jebediah encountered during his crusade across time and space, it turned him into something much worse than his original skin sac we call a body. No one knows quite what he is now, but his blood is now a putrid yellow and he has cybernetics running through his body. If that’s not enough for you, in his head he has a worm thing that will attack anyone close to it and a Golden Sentinel that houses his brain, this Sentinel will leave his body when he’s incapacitated and start killing whoever it sees.
Body Control/Regeneration
Tall Man has been shown to be able to still control his body parts when they are cut off from the rest of his body, even being able to transform these cut off body parts into terrifying monsters or simply regenerate them back given enough time.
Shapeshifting
Over the course of the series, Tall Man has been shown to be able to shapeshift into anyone and anything. Like a giant flesh monster that traps you in a cobweb with more fleshy monsters. Though his favorite use of his shapeshifting is to disguise himself as women to lure men out and make out with them. Tall Man loves making out with men. You love to see it. He also murders them right after but that’s besides the point.
X-Ray Vision
The Tall Man has demonstrated the ability to see through walls and communicate with anyone on the other side, being able to turn this vision on and off.
Telekinesis
Tall Man is no stranger to physical combat but he usually prefers a more telekinetic approach to not get his hands too dirty. He can lift you up in the air with his telekinesis, exert a psychic force that knocks people down (what a dick), and cut ropes down with his mind.
Teleportation
Instead of using a car to get around, although he still does do that for some reason, Tall Man can appear and disappear at will.
Incorperality
As established in the Overminds comic, The Tall Man is not entirely a physical entity but rather a collective vision that moves from mind to mind. Making its victims experience a vision that spirals down into real life and that can haunt people for years on end.
Intangibility
Tall Man can temporarily become intangible and phase through any physical attack, such as gunfire.
Paralysis Inducement
Tall Man can cause you to drift out of consciousness and make it so you are incapable of moving or speaking with a touch. He can even make you feel like you’re going deaf and only hear your own heartbeat along with you not being able to move any of your muscles. This time by just talking.
Mind Manipulation
Given the nature of the series, it should come as no surprise that The Tall Man has found a variety of ways to trick and manipulate the mind. He can move through millions of minds, telepathically communicate with people, control their mind to make them do exactly what he says and “steal” your personality, will and mind by just looking into his eyes. Turning you into a puppet he can control and let go off once you die underneath his control.
Self-Sustenance
In his new and inhuman form, Tall Man has shown that he no longer requires oxygen to live. Like when he survived for days while he was hung and thriving on the Red Planet for years, which has zero oxygen in its atmosphere.
Heat Manipulation
To stop any rogue Sentinels from standing in his way, Tall Man can heat up objects to the point where they glow red and condense into a different material with a glance. Making them pretty much basically powerless to attack The Tall Man.
Necromancy/Resurrection
At multiple points throughout the series, Tall Man has resurrected the dead after he’s down scooping their brains to use as his minions, ranging from the Jawa like Lurkers to Gravers. What’s more is that he can quickly turn someone into a zombie or summon gravestones from the ground to raise the dead.
Technology Manipulation
Tall Man can remotely control things such as cars to become inoperable for humans and make it drive itself, also making the car impossible to escape from for good measure.
Biological Manipulation
To cover up any of his killings, Tall Man can change his fingerprints to match the genetic tissue of your finger. Situational, but very convenient for getting away with crimes.
Darkness Manipulation
When trying to kill Jody while disguised as a woman, he seemingly made the area he was in darker than what it once was and what it should be.
Sound Manipulation
On several occasions Tall Man has made it so that all sounds cease and people don’t hear anything besides their own heartbeat, not even the wind, but you do get to hear his snazzy boots hit the floor as he walks.
Alien Virus
During his invasion of earth, Tall Man let out an unknown virus with a fatality rate over 98% that was able to spread throughout an entire continent in a single week. Once someone is infected, there is a 10% chance that they could turn into a crazed version of themselves that spreads the virus thoroughly. But the more common outcome is the infection and pus accumulation in the head of the victim and making their head pop like a balloon. If anyone else is caught in a ten meter radius when the head explodes, the brain matter will increase their chances of being infected by an astronomical amount, to where it’s nearly guaranteed.
Portal Creation/Dimensional Travel
Even without his Dimensional Forks, Tall Man hop from place to place on his own using objects he modified like a casket to traverse whole dimensions and travel across the Dreamscape through mind to mind.
Reality Warping
In Phantasm, it’s hard to tell what is a dream and what isn’t real, mostly due to the Tall Man himself and his knack for entering our dreams and altering them. In particular, he’s quite fond of tormenting Mike in his dreams. As it turns out, the dreams of humanity have always had an ancient connection to the space-time continuum which allows them to determine their own reality just by dreaming of it. Mike is one of the only people that still knows how to do this.
Nearly all of the events we see play out during the series are exactly this, Mike’s dreams that have blurred with the real world to where it was next to impossible to figure out what was reality and fantasy. Essentially, nothing is real to Mike outside of his own perception of reality and Mike (along with any other dreamer) can invent possible realities that were then manifested, by Tall Man, on multiple dimensional planes.
This is why Tall Man and his Overminds have such a fascination with Mike. They've harnessed Mike's power while keeping him trapped in the Dreamscape in constant rem-state, which they slowly spread to the rest of the world. They have created and sealed Mike within a dream to have him dream new scenarios so that he could make reality favor Tall Man and his domination of Earth.
Law Manipulation
The Tall Man and his Overmind sealed Mike within a new reality, or new dream that’s outside of the rest of the Dreamscape, with its own set of linear rules that made it easier for them to manipulate Mike to dream scenarios of what they want to become reality.
Space-Time Manipulation
Due to the connection between the Dreamscape and space-time continuum, Tall Man can of course manipulate space-time and dimensions. He can trap you in a bizarre time loop that has you feel a wave of dislocation and black out, where you then wake up at the start of the loop, and warp dimensions of space and time.
Existence Erasure
With a snap of his fingers and grimace on his face, Tall Man can dematerialize things as large as mansions out of existence in only a few moments, leaving behind a massive crater of where the mansion once stood.
Power Amplification
Tall Man’s dimensional fork’s power, and his own power by extension, have been said to grow exponentially in intensity and energy overtime.
Extrasensory Perception/Cosmic Awareness
It's impossible to escape The Tall Man forever or even just for a short period of time, doesn’t matter if you’re near him or in an entirely different dimension. The Tall Man can sense you and will stop at nothing to hunt you down.
Clairvoyance
Along with being aware of people in other dimensions, Tall Man can sense people having telepathetic visions of him or anyone else. Letting him track others down and let them dream about what he has done and what he will eventually do.
4th Wall Awareness
If you ever felt the slightest bit of comfort watching Phantasm, whether it be on your own, with friends or family, we have some really bad news for ya. Every second you stared at the Tall Man, he was staring back. Hiding in the shadows of the screen with interest and knowing him, he’s been staring a lot longer than you have. He’s staring right now. Hi Tall Man!
Size Manipulation
In the dreamworld, Tall Man has been shown to be able to morph his body to become larger than the earth itself. Being able to cause continental destruction with a single touch. Since he’s able to make events in dreams happen in reality, he can very likely turn this size if he would like.
Immortality
No matter what Mike and his friends threw at the Tall Man, it never kept him down for good. His most powerful attribute is not his strength, but rather his unkillability. There are tens of thousands of him in dimensions that humans cannot even imagine and in alternate realities. Whenever a Tall Man dies, another from one of these dimensions will spawn in through the Dimensional Forks and take his place. With all of the memories and motivation of the previous Tall Man. He essentially has at least 10,000 lives to respawn with and can very likely make more, although in an unknown time frame.
Resistances
Extreme Heat: Lives on the scorching hot Red Planet.
Empathic Manipulation: Unphased by usage of the Dimensional Forks, which have a side effect of entering them making your mind experience a super collision of emotions.
Physics Manipulation: Is “beyond” the basic understanding and accepted laws of physics.
Space-Time Manipulation: The Tall Man is entirely disconnected from our reality, not having the flesh that binds us to space-time.
Support
Pinhead
Cenobites
Of course, the Lead Cenobite himself won’t be coming to make you suffer alone. He comes with his own group of Cenobites that accompany him and indulges in very similar pains and powers as he does. His “Gash” has a wide variety of Cenobites ranging from menacing to… less so. There are beyond thousands of Cenobites serving in the name of The Leviathan, so we’ll just be listening off all known Cenobites. But know there are much, much, MUCH more Cenobites at Pinhead's disposal.
Chatterer: By far the most iconic Cenobite excluding yours truly, Chatterer is usually portrayed as a sort of right hand to Pinhead. He’s actually a young kid who was adopted by Cenobites and made one with a knack for chattering.
Female Cenobite: Real creative name, better than her other name at least. Anyway, similar to Chatterer, Female Cenobite is a member of the original gash. Unlike the Chatterer, she actually has the hots for Pinhead. Not anymore but still.
Butterball: A perverted and obese man turned to an even more obese and likely perverted Cenobite, rounding out the members of the original Gash.
Angelique: While they may buttheads in their ways of operating, Angelique is undoubtedly useful. She’s the demon daughter of The Leviathan and was princess of the Labyrinth for quite some time. Because of her descent, she has immense power and utility.
Torso: Created by Chatter as a sort of reflection of himself, Torso is the first Cenobite made Cenobite in all of Hell. He spends his days looking for Chatterer and filling in his fathers role in Pinhead’s new Gash.
Wired Twins: As the name implies, these Cenobites are twins and are just dying to share their bond with you.
Stitch: Apparently some Cenobites wish to remove the scars they obtained when suffering, Stitch in particular is quite violent and angry about her appearance.
Surgeon: Once a surgeon, now a masochist wanting to remove every last bit of your flesh.
Bound: In order to reap souls from the living, you need a strong Cenobite to rip souls apart.
Little Sister: The fuck is a child Cenobite gonna do? Torture me with a fishing rod?
Atkins: Instead of his Gash, Atkins is a member of the order of Hell alongside Pinhead. He’s a crazed madman with a love for battle and a bigger love for guns. He’s got over a million weapons, some with their own “modifications.” Modifications that can turn people into comics, so it must be some pretty extreme modifications.
Balberith: The brains of the order, Balberith is Hell’s only Librarian and she has seen a lot in her lifetime.
Face: Hell’s gotta have entertainment and Face is the glue that holds that industry together, his real Face can make anyone insane by just looking at it. So he wears human faces to cover up, and to change up his persona in his performance.
Abigor: The final Cenobite that affiliates with Pinhead is Abigor, a heartless warrior with questionable fashion sense. She never backs down from a good time and runs her own tournament style fight club.
Pinocchio: This is real.
Pseudo Cenobites
To make sure he doesn’t get too lonely without his Gash, Pinhead can repurpose dead corpses of anyone he’s killed into his new Cenobite legion. These re-animated corpses are what is known as a Pseudo Cenobite. They lack the full power that a true Cenobite possesses but make up for it by being some of the funniest horror characters ever made.
Dreamer: She can dream like any normal person can but get this, she gives you cigarette burns. Now THAT’S fucking scary.
Barbie: He busts through walls and burbs fire. That’s it. That’s all he does.
PistonHead: He has 2 pistons shoved in his head. That’s It. That’s all he Is.
CameraHead: With a working camera for a right eye comes the worst jokes I have ever heard.
CD Head: FUCK YEAH HE THROWS CDs AT PEOPLE!
Siamese Twins: Yet another twin Cenobite, starting to think Pinhead is running out of ideas.
Misc Cenobites
There are certain Cenobites that don’t fit into the same group as regular Cenobites or Pseudo Cenobites, instead they’re more unique. These Cenobites consist of beings like Cenobite Detites, Cenobite Dragons, Demon Dogs and the well known Engineer. Don’t ask why he’s called that.
Souls Of The Damned
As previously stated, Pinhead can resurrect the damned souls of hell onto our world once the gates of hell are open. Despite Pinhead not being the priest of hell at the time, these souls still showed blind loyalty to Elliot. There are so many of these souls that the army never reduced, It got larger with each passing second. Letting Elliot have an unlimited army of the undead that views him as a god. Or the closest thing they have to one at least.
Flies
I guess he just smells.
Tall Man
Lurkers
What good would a Mortician be if he couldn’t bring the corpses? And better yet, what good would an interdimensional alien be if he didn’t have slaves to carry out his dirty work? Tall Man answers both of these questions in his Lurkers, corpses of once normal humans he re-animated as his minions. Shrinking them to the size of a dwarf, likely to withstand the gravity of the Red Planet and making them stronger then before. Tall Man has plunged many towns' graveyards, including a graveyard that stretches for miles and miles, meaning Tall Man likely has thousands to millions of these little creatures around. Along with Sentinels since after a Lurker’s biological procedure is done, Tall Man removes their now small brain and puts it inside a Sentinel to use.
Gravers
These are regular humans hypnotized by the Tall Man into doing his bidding and are an incredibly important asset to the Tall Man’s army. Not only can they blend into human civilization well enough, they are far stronger than their mortal selfs and their sheer size can overpower the military.
The Overminds
In the comics, The Overminds are a group of higher power entities that control the Tall Man, existing beyond the Dimensional Forks in the Red Planet. Besides that, not much is known about the Overminds.
Feats
Pinhead
Overall
Before his transformation into a Cenobite, he was captain of a British Expeditionary Force in WW1.
Became the commanding Priest Of Hell.
Fought numerous wars in Hell and reigned victorious in every single one.
Experienced every single pleasure Hell offered him.
Killed more people in a few days than most Cenobites manage in a lifetime.
Successfully stole several artifacts from magicians all around the world, including from Lucifer himself.
Fought The Leviathan after gaining enough power.
Power
After mutilating Frank, he made his head and body explode.
His chains can…
Bust through concrete walls.
Derailed a subway (6.2 Megajoules)
Busted out of the pillar of souls, a giant rock his size filled with other cenobite souls.
Created fissures around the surrounding walls, floors and roof just by punching a door.
As the Lead Cenobite, he should upscale any and all feats other Cenobites have performed
Barbie casually busted through this brick wall (42.5 Megajoules)
Crow and Moonface turned someone into a literal moon face (29 Exatons Of TNT)
With amps/Lucifer’s armor…
Created an explosion said to be larger and more powerful than a 100 Megaton nuclear bomb.
Grew well above the size of earth (1.8 Exatons Of TNT)
Should be comparable to the likes of Lucifer while in the armor, who can…
Destroy the sky stone in one attack (32.83 Yottatons Of TNT)
Seal the length of infinitude within a finite object like a spear. (High Universal)
All Cenobites are made up of the flesh of The Leviathan and draw power from its presence, this is especially true for Pinhead as he is both the Lead Cenobite and The Leviathan’s golden child. The Leviathan eclipses hell itself, which is but a microcosm to its might. Hell is a labyrinth whose damned order spans across infinity (High Universal) (Debatable, see before the verdict)
There are different pits of hell, likely corresponding to these 5 Cenobites. These pits are all connected to hell but they exist as infinite cosmos nonetheless (Low Multiversal)
Other Pinheads that Elliot should be comparable to have been said to have the entirety of Hell’s power at their fingertips. This has been stated fairly consistently throughout the comic.
Speed
Can move a fittingly large distance as a giant (7% c)
Scales to Kirsty, Who seemingly avoided blasts fired by the Leviathan itself.
Durability
Survived his own torture and transformation into a Cenobite.
Was “consumed” by a gas tank explosion that struck him to the nearby ground and eventually came out fine.
Comparable to Butterball, who survived an entire roof collapsing on top of him (13 Kilojoules)
Scales above most Cenobites, like a water themed one that survived this insanely massive ship exploding in his face.
Tall Man
Overall
As a human, he invented the Dimensional Forks to let him travel time and space.
Became an alien-like creature during his time as a space-time venturer.
Destroyed several towns and stole corpses from their graveyards to turn into his minions.
Implied to have conquered several dimensions before Earth.
Invaded Earth and won against humanity, turning the planet into a wasteland.
Tormented the Dreamscape and manipulated those in it for a long time.
Power
Backhanded Reggie multiple feet away.
Casually blew open a door.
His Sentinels can…
Stab through a human skull.
Orbitals can split large buildings in half and incinerate skyscrapers (174 Megatons Of TNT)
His Dimensional forks performed a similar feat for consistency.
For even more consistently, he turned 2/3 of the earth into a desolate wasteland covered in a red storm (3.38 Teratons Of TNT)
Mike had been dreaming new scenarios that had overlapped with each other, all with their own connection to a space-time continuum (Low Multiversal)
In Lord of The Dead, he apparently warped dimensions of space and time as a result of tampering with the Dreamscape.
Speed
Chased and caught up to Mike as shown above.
Should be comparable to his own Sentinels, which can keep up with cars (52 m/s) and dodge gunfire.
Characters in Phantasm can outrun and dodge the Golden Sentinel, which can fly so fast it produces smoke on impact.
Should upscale his own minions, Who reacted to and avoided an RPG Shot (300 m/s)
Scales to Rocky, who seemingly can dodge an explosion
His powers operate with “a sharp, lightning-like snap.”
Durability
Scales to Reggie, who survived having a sentinel blowup on his hand
Survived being inside of his car as it blew up twice his minions also survive such things very consistently
Survived an RPG shot (1.58 Megajoules)
Scales to his own minions, which an unknown one survived being inside a car as it exploded in a massive fireball. (48 Megajoules)
Tanked an explosion from a ton of grenades that covered most of the hill.
Weaknesses
Pinhead
Being a Cenobite isn’t as perfect as it sounds, and it doesn’t exactly sound appealing to be a BDSM demon in the first place. A Cenobite’s magic, and all Hell's influence in general, can be warded off by magical glyphs and Talisman. Reminding Cenobites of their past life as a human can be used to weaken their abilities and revert them back to a human state, where they bleed just like the rest of us. Finally, The Lament Configuration can be used to banish a Cenobite back to Hell, where they are usually powerless to come back.
Pinhead has more holding him back however. His twisted perspective on the separation of pleasure and pain has led to him leaving himself open to attacks. His own pins, although they give him power, can little his power down if they ever were carved out. Lastly, in some incarnations Elliot is incredibly arrogant. Underestimating others and overestimating himself, which had led to his loss against Lucifer and his embarrassment dealt by The Leviathan.
Tall Man
Despite having the knowledge of god knows what was on the other side of that fork and many victories under his belt, Tall Man will always be as flawed as any human. He's still an alien after all. Having adapted to the hot atmosphere of the Red Planet, cold temperatures can be used to slow him down and can freeze him very quickly if he’s in something akin to a freezer. Extremely cold substances like a liquid nitrogen dipped spear can cause his body to ironically melt, a similar effect happens to his Golden Sentinel after it’s exposed to the cold for too long, except this time it just stops working.
Another method to potentially impair Tall Man’s abilities is the use of vibrations, which can stun him. Although this can just be specific to this one tone since heavy vibrations like the Dimensional Fork have not shown to affect Tall Man at all, besides their intended use of course.
Before The Verdict…
Leviathan Scaling
While strange at first glance, Leviathan scaling is a legitimate thing to consider for someone like Pinhead. It’s pretty obvious that The Leviathan is much stronger than Pinhead generally, after all in every single piece of Hellraiser Media it’s portrayed as a god to Cenobites. And this does hold up in Elliot’s fight with it when he had his amps, where it says that it really was not threatened by Elliot in any way, shape or form.
However, this doesn’t really matter in the context of the scaling the team had decided on. Cenobites are specifically stated to get their power solely from The Leviathan, and are made up of its flesh. It’s even more specifically stated that the sheer structure and order of The Leviathan is far larger than the infinitely large hell and all of its layers. It wouldn’t matter if The Leviathan’s true power was far greater than Pinhead’s own, Pinhead is still made up of The Leviathan’s flesh and draws from its power. A microcosm of The Leviathan eclipses all of hell. If you're still not convinced, The Leviathan’s flesh is made up entirely of energy. So Pinhead would be made up of The Leviathan’s energy, which of course would land him at the same spot. For even evidence, Pinhead after using a portal such as another human being to earth can channel the full might of The Leviathan through a direct link with it. Narratively Pinhead should be below The Leviathan, however it’s not by any quantifiable amount. So The Leviathan’s Universal-Low Multiversal statements are perfectly fine to compare Pinhead to. Especially considering other statements land the Pin in a similar ballpark.
Verdict
Stats
For horror characters, these two are extraordinarily powerful yet their stats range drastically from iteration to iteration. Makes sense given they don’t usually get their hands dirty and rely on their equipment, abilities and minions to do the job for them. Surprisingly however, most of their ends were actively comparable, like the fact that both can get to small building pretty easily (with amped feats for Pinhead), planet and the main focus, Universal to Low Multiversal.
For Pinhead, we generally can compare him to other Lead Cenobites being stated to have the power of all of all at their disposal and is made up of the Leviathan, which eclipses hell itself. Hell in Hellraiser is referred to as being infinite with many pits of hell that are also described as infinite. How many of these pits are there? All of these pits in this context correspond with these 4 Cenobites and Pinhead himself, with Pinhead’s pit being described as the “lowest.” So we can roughly say there are at most 5 of these pits. Now whether you buy either one of the universal statements scaling to the entirety of hell is up for debate.
Moving onto Tall Man, his cosmic feats are much more blatant. Him and his overminds were capable of creating and trapping MIke in a unique dream disconnected from the rest of the Dreamscape; this dream has their own connection to the space-time continuum and can disrupt the flow of it. Along with being “endless.” What’s more is that Tall Man manipulates the scenarios Mike dream to stack onto each other whilst in the dream. Time to go back to the counting game. Since basically the whole series is a dream and Mike’s perspective on what’s happening, we can assume the first 4 movies are fair game, not Ravager though that’s Reggie. Along with this, we can count the comic itself as it has its own scenarios. Leaving us with 5.
You see where we’re going with this. These two were neck and neck and in almost the same range, which means that both’s power amplifications were not surefire ways to gain the power advantage against the other. Even if you were to buy one at Low Multiversal and not the other, that would only be at most a 5x power difference which really didn’t mean anything in the grand scheme of things.
Does giving Pinhead his amped form and Lucifer’s Armor change anything? Not really actually. They were ways to ensure he was logically stronger but not by any quantifiable amount. Although they did offer a backup Universal feat in scaling to Lucifer, who can seal an infinite length within a finite object. Tall Man also had backup feats I would like to mention, like apparently warping dimensions of time and space along with scaling to dreamers who can create alternate realities that manifest themselves on multiple dimensional planes. So in short, yeah they’re pretty much dead even in terms of sheer power.
When it comes to speed, these two are not really known to have many speed feats. They usually walk or stand still, not really chasing their victims very often. Tall Man’s Gravers were able to dodge a rocket, comparing their speed to the rocket itself for the benefit of the doubt, that’d still be slower than Pinhead catching a bullet in his mouth by 1.8x. This speed gap gets even worse when you factor in the 7% SoL Pinhead has in his amped form and the 47% SoL feat he has. This can take Pinhead from barely faster to 77,323x - 475,562x faster. A hell of a gap favoring Pinhead. Even if you were to buy the lightning fast statement for Tall Man, he’d still be 52x - 324x slower. Speed goes to Pinhead without a shadow of a doubt.
Arsenal and Abilities
Right off the bat, let’s address the elephant in the room, Tall Man’s immortality. Tall Man has 10,000 clones of himself in dimensions the human brain cannot comprehend that will take Tall Man’s place whenever he dies. It’s important to note that there is a finite amount of Tall Men, we can assume a minimum of 10,000 off of the line “There are tens of thousands of me.” So with Pinhead’s speed and Tall Man’s immortality, arsenal and abilities were really going to make or break who wins here.
In terms of abilities, there were many that Pinhead and Tall Man shared. Mind manipulation, portal creation and dimensional travel with or without their iconic devices, dream manipulation, existence erasure, among others. Similarly, they shared a resistance to time and space meaning either’s time manipulation (time and space manipulation in Tall Man’s case) options are off the table.
Pinhead had plenty of abilities that could kill the Tall Man. Soul, mind, memory, life, blood, matter and especially ice attacks were all able to affect the Tall Man but these lacked a meaningful way to deal with Tall Man’s immortality. Every time Pinhead would do any of these wincons, Tall Man would just come back until there are no more clones left. Pinhead’s existence erasure could’ve been a really good way to negate Tall Man’s immortality but it’s explicitly stated NOT to work on a non-physical level, since Tall Man himself is a collective vision and not a physical entity, it’s unlikely this would do Pinhead any good here.
On the contrary, Pinhead had ways to keep himself rejuvenated in order to deal with so many Tall Men. His previously mentioned life and blood manipulation allowed him to absorb a Tall Man’s life/blood to heal himself back up and grow in strength. Characters like Frank Cotton have been able to regenerate themselves from a mangled corpse to almost his full self again just after a few bodies. Pinhead has incredible stamina and pain tolerance that lets him stay in the fight for longer than Tall Man likely expects.
Along with this, Pinhead could telepathically communicate with his future self to see what Tall Man has in store and his AOE options meant he could potentially target multiple Tall Men at once if he ever found his way into those dimensions. His fog could amplify Tall Man’s wounds to great lengths and his energy projections while in amped form can cover enormous grounds. In addition to this, his energy can drain Tall Man’s own energy and he can create a forcefield for defense.
However, Tall Man keeps the memories of his previous lives and given his intellect, he’s very likely to find counters to Pinhead’s tricks. Like using his blood sucking sentinels to drain Pinhead of any blood he has to regenerate with and such. But more devastatingly, Tall Man had abilities that could shut down Pinhead and leave him open to Tall Man’s own wincons. Which Tall Man only really needs to hit, once.
Despite also possessing mind manipulation, Pinhead has really no defensive measure against mind manipulation himself. In particular, the Tall Man stealing his personality, will and mind and controlling it. This would make it so Pinhead would be under Tall Man’s control until Pinhead himself died. Tall Man could do this not just on command but as a byproduct of Pinhead looking him in the eyes.
Tall Man’s alien virus was another wincon, a virus that’s able to spread that easily and quickly while having a fatality rate well over 98% would be more than enough to kill Pinhead if he was ever infected. Or likely kill him at the least, he has a solid 2% chance of living. Pinhead’s dealt with toxins before but nothing on the level of Tall Man’s virus, which was able to spread throughout America and infect millions in a week. It would be way too easy for Pinhead to get infected as a byproduct of fighting the Tall Man and Tall Man himself isn’t shown to be affected by his own virus so he’d be okay regardless.
Meanwhile, Tall Man could end the fight whenever he wanted with his existence erasure. Which by dematerializing Pinhead at a rapid rate, would be able to kill Elliot permanently. Since Pinhead’s spirit has no real way of interacting let alone killing the Tall Man.
Pinhead’s one tough son of a bitch to catch thanks to his speed, but luckily Tall Man had more than one way of immobilizing Pinhead and leaving him open to his wincons. By just talking, Tall Man can make it so your muscles refuse to move and by touching you once, he can make you drift out of consciousness and therefore stop moving. Another would be in the Dimensional Forks, which can amplify gravity to make Pinhead weigh more so he struggles to move and let out an electromagnetic surge that will stun him in place. Point being, eventually Pinhead’s speed is going to run its course (pun intended) and Tall Man will let out any of these options to immobilize him.
Speaking of the Dimensional Forks, they ultimately trumped the Lament Configuration and Pinhead’s portals in terms of transportation. Pinhead has really only shown the ability to travel to hell and earth, even if we assume he’s able to visit dimensions besides that, the Dimensional Forks are gateways in the space-time continuum that let Tall Man travel to alternate realities and the past. With Pinhead not being able to follow, this allows Tall Man to regroup his arsenal and army but also lets him target Pinhead through specific points in time. Which is extremely useful because we know stopping Elliot before he opens the box will undo his Cenobite origin. Disrupting the pattern of creation so to speak.
All of this is without mentioning their reality warping capabilities and their control over personal hells and the Dreamscape respectively. To be blunt, Pinhead couldn’t hold a candle to Tall Man in terms of reality warping. As shown in Hellseeker, he can create stories out of reflections of your own sins and outside of hell he’s been said to “tear the fabric of reality.” This pales in comparison to the Dreamscape. Which made it so Tall Man could manipulate what is real and what isn’t based on his own perception of reality, like what he did to Reggie in Ravager, and make it so any scenarios he dreams of will manifest themselves onto reality. Tall Man can create linear rules on the Dreamscape that change how dreamer scenarios affect the real world. This level of reality warping and law manipulation was way too much for Pinhead to realistically handle.
Could Tall Man trap Pinhead in the Dreamscape like he did to Mike? Likely. It’s not like the idea of a mindscape is particularly new to Pinhead, but let’s look at both cases he’s been in a mindscape that wasn’t tied to possession and control over his body. In Hellraiser 3, he did control Joey’s dreams for a time but when a good version of himself, the true being of Elliot Spencer, turned the tables and merged with him. His Cenobite powers were unable to fight back. In the comics and after his “fight” with the Levithan, Pinhead, now human form and with his amps, and Kirsty Cotton, now a Lead Cenobite with the same powers as base Pinhead, were sealed in a mindscape by the Leviathan. Even with their combined powers and manipulating the dream, they were still trapped in the mindscape with no way to get out.
In short, once Tall Man sealed Pinhead within the Dreamscape and started his mind games, Pinhead couldn’t combat it and would be overwhelmed by his control over the battlefield. Tall Man’s reality warping and law manipulation would eventually do him in.
Lastly, I would like to speak on how the two could exploit the others weaknesses. Pinhead had the given option of manipulating temperatures and turning things frozen solid to attack Tall Man’s physiology. Tall Man’s previously mentioned time travel let him undo Elliot’s action of opening the Lament Configuration but he could also heavily weaken Pinhead with mind manipulation reminding Pinhead of his time as Elliot. Although there have been times where Pinhead has recalled Elliot and been fine, it’s far more connected to his humiliation of the Leviathan that caused him. The standard Pinhead should still have this weakness, but it wouldn’t really matter if he did or not.
In conclusion, despite Pinhead’s stamina and versatile abilities that could let him survive longer than you might think. Tall Man’s mind manipulation, virus, existence erasure, dimensional forks and Dreamscape warping outmatched Pinhead.
Tertiary Factors
In their years of terrorizing the horror industry, it’s clear that Pinhead was the more skilled and experienced when it came to pure combat. There have been wars in hell that he’s led and won, he’s killed 260 of the world’s most powerful magicians on his own, killed more than any normal Cenobite could in two days. He’s experienced all the pain and pleasures that hell had to offer him, to the point where he asked for his humanity back from the Leviathan, which he then used to try to take over the world with his new and amped powers. Tall Man is very smart, far smarter than Pinhead, but he’s never seen something like that before.
Comparing their armies was very interesting because there was no clear cut answer. Pinhead had thousands of Cenobites with similar powers as him and could raise souls of the damned from Hell with his amped powers, which would increase in size by the second. On Tall Man’s side, he had his Lurkers and Sentinels which were in their millions and Gravers which were enhanced superhumans that he got after taking over the bodies of humans during his invasion. With both being able to turn any of the other dead minions into minions for their own army and both being able to summon their armies at any time. They were essentially playing tug of war for army control the whole fight. Pinhead no doubt had the stronger minions but Tall Man, after plunging so many towns and so many dreams for corpses, undoubtedly has the size advantage. Before Pinhead’s undead army got too out of control in size, that is.
Tall Man is also taller.
Conclusion
Pinhead
“Your suffering will be legendary! Even in Hell!”
Advantages:
Much faster.
More skilled and experienced when it comes to combat.
Overall better versatility.
Blood and life manipulation allowed him to regenerate far more consistently.
AOE options were far superior and allowed him to target multiple Tall Men at once.
Could be clued in on anything bad coming his way through telepathy and the Leviathan.
In the same verse as CD Head.
Equal:
Fairly equal strength in base.
Shared many of the same abilities.
Comparable army size and strength.
Disadvantages:
Less intelligent.
Leviathan and its deals could be proven unreliable.
Had very little options to deal with Tall Man permanently.
Weaknesses were more exploitable.
Appreciation for pain could backfire.
Freaky.
Tall Man
“You play a good game boy, but the game is finished. Now, you die!”
Advantages:
More intelligent.
Better control over the battlefield and mind fuckery with the Dreamscape.
Immortality made Pinhead killing him a nightmare in of itself.
Dimensional forks let him target Pinhead through various points in time where Pinhead could not follow.
Could always be able to kill Pinhead through his mind manipulation, virus and existence erasure.
Able to seal the deal with his paralysis inducement and Dimensional Forks stunning Pinhead.
Had counters and workarounds to many of Pinhead’s potential wincons.
Consistent movies.
Equal:
Fairly equal strength in base.
Shared many of the same abilities.
Comparable army size and strength.
Disadvantages:
Less skilled and experienced.
Less potent AOE options.
Weaker with Pinhead’s amps.
His immortality could potentially run out given time.
Killed a dog.
Final Tally
Pinhead (2) - Rei (pity vote), Smaggle
Tall Man (6) - Iceking, Spycrab, Fiction, DoRitto, Hade, Saul
