| “ | When an adult goes to Hell, that's terrific. But when a child goes... that's why I'm in this business. | „ |
| ~ Adrian. |
| “ | At the stroke of midnight, my father will be completely deteriorated, and all your souls will be mine! Soon, you will see more horrible things than you can even imagine! (Sees Nipples dancing.) Well, maybe not that horrible, but still pretty bad. |
„ |
| ~ Adrian during his rise to power as the new Satan. |
Adrian is the main antagonist of the 2000 fantasy comedy film Little Nicky and the final boss of its Game Boy Color tie-in video game of the same name.
He is one of Nicky's two supremely evil brothers, alongside Cassius, who plans on overthrowing their father Satan so that either one of them would literally bring up, and rule Hell on Earth. He's also described as being the most illusive of the brothers because of his impressive intelligence.
He was portrayed by Rhys Ifans, who also played Eyeball Paul in Kevin & Perry Go Large, Jed Parry in Enduring Love, Vladis Grutas in Hannibal Rising, Uncle Phil in Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang, Edward de Vere in Anonymous, The Lizard in The Amazing Spider-Man and Spider-Man: No Way Home, Grigori Rasputin in The King's Man and Otto Hightower in House of the Dragon.
Personality[]
Adrian is supremely evil and sadistically wicked. He takes psychotic delight in the torture, cruelty, suffering, and everything bad with virtually no morals, code, or inhibitions. Where his father (though the Devil) has standards and only does what he does to souls who deserve it, Adrian just plain does it to anybody. So inhumanly evil is he, that he finds when children got to Hell it's even greater than adults.
Biography[]
The story revolves around a struggle to determine which of Satan's three sons will succeed their father as ruler of Hell. Adrian is the most devious, Cassius is the cruelest and Nicky is their father's favorite. Adrian and Cassius claim that Nicky's mother is a goat and torment him by controlling his body with their minds. Nicky has had a speech impediment and a disfigured jaw since Cassius hit him in the face with a shovel when he was a child.
Adrian was born to Satan and a fire dragon.
Having been the "Prince of Darkness" for over ten thousand years, Satan assembles his sons to decide which of them will succeed him, but instead he keeps the throne for himself. Angered by this decision, Adrian and Cassius go to Earth to create a new Hell by possessing religious and political leaders in New York City. As they leave, they freeze the entrance to Hell, preventing more souls from entering and causing Satan's body to begin decomposing. To stop Adrian and Cassius, Satan sends Nicky to Earth with a silver flask that traps whoever drinks from it inside.
At first, Nicky has trouble staying alive on Earth. He is killed six times, landing in Hell and returning to New York each time. While learning how to eat and sleep, he meets a talking bulldog named Mr. Beefy, rents an apartment with an actor named Todd and falls in love with a design student named Valerie.
Nicky's first encounter with his brothers occurs when Adrian sees him with Valerie, takes mental control of his body and makes him scare her away.
The next day, Adrian possesses the Chief of the NYPD and accuses Nicky of mass murder using an edited scene from Scarface. Not knowing what to do, Nicky has Todd kill him, so he can go back to Hell and ask his father for advice, but his father has trouble hearing because his ears have fallen off and his assistants are in a panic because the midnight deadline to capture Adrian and Cassius is only hours away. Back on Earth again, Nicky and his friends devise a plan to capture Adrian in a subway station, but Adrian discovers their trick. In the ensuing fight, Adrian grabs Valerie and dives onto the track as a train approaches, but Nicky throws her out of the way, leaving himself and Adrian to be killed by the train.
Arriving in Hell just minutes before midnight, Adrian begins the process of taking over Hell by pushing what remains of his father aside and sitting on the throne, rising to Central Park and starting a riotous party. Meanwhile, Nicky wakes up in Heaven as a reward for sacrificing himself and meets his mother, an angel who tells him he can defeat Adrian with the "Inner Light" he inherited from her.
After she gives him a mysterious orb, he goes to Central Park. Adrian appears to win a pitched battle by locking Nicky in the flask and turning himself into a bat, but Nicky escapes from the flask. When he shatters the orb, Ozzy Osbourne appears, bites Adrian's head off and spits it into the flask.
Towards the end of the movie, both Adrian and Cassius are shoved up Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler's buttocks.
Trivia[]
- He was named after both the Roman Emperor and the hurricane.
- Although Adrian's name is a male name, he appears to be quite a bit flamboyant as implied by Nicky.
- Adrian’s bat form was originally Rhys Ifans in a batsuit but the filmmakers changed it to CGI because practical effects seemed too difficult.
