1944: On an island off the Scottish coast, Nazi forces conduct an occult ritual as part of Project Ragna Rok. In East Bromwich, England, a unit of US Army Rangers and specialists from the British Paranormal Society have gathered at church ruins where Lady Cynthia Eden-Jones has sensed a disturbance in the ether. When a small, red, demonic-looking child appears in an explosion of flame, Trevor "Broom" Bruttenholm dubs it Hellboy. 1994: At his Brooklyn home, the aged Bruttenholm tells Hellboy, now grown and known as the World's Greatest Paranormal Investigator, of his recent expedition to the Arctic. Frogs then swarm into the office and Prof. Bruttenholm retreats from the room only to crash back into it, lifeless, moments later. Hellboy battles and kills the froglike beast who has just murdered the man who raised him, then calls the head office of the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense.