The most culturally significant, as can be seen through historical promotional material alongside the genesis of the third film in the series, of the Cenobites was nameless in the original novella, but was then nicknamed "Pinhead" by the production crew and fans of the first Hellraiser movie.

After being disappointed with the way his material had been treated by producers in Underworld, Barker wrote The Hellbound Heart as his first step in directing a film by himself.

Although antagonist Frank Cotton believes they will take the form of beautiful women, they appear instead as monsters: Why then was he so distressed to set eyes upon them?

[6]Author David McWilliam notes that the Cenobites are described in more explicitly sexual terms in the book compared with their depictions in the film adaptations.

The fifth, lead Cenobite, referred to as "The Engineer", appears briefly in the book's climax as an average human being whose body glows with intense light when he travels between realms.

After securing funding for a motion picture adaptation in early 1986, Barker and his producer Chris Figg assembled a team to design the cenobites.

Barker wanted the villain Julia, played by Claire Higgins in both the first and second film, to carry the series as its main antagonist, reducing the Cenobites to a background role.

[8] Pinhead's nature and past are explored in Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth, where it is revealed he was not killed but simply had his human self freed, resulting in the Cenobite now existing without morality or restraint.

The film ends with the human Elliott Spencer merging with Pinhead once more to stop the chaos and reintroduce restraint and a respect for rules into the Cenobite.

In The Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary and Cinematic Monsters, David McWilliam writes that the Cenobites "provide continuity across the series, as the stories become increasingly stand-alone in nature".