Pain and Panic

Pain and Panic are a pair of pint-sized, devil shaped demons (also called imps) in the Disney animated feature Hercules. Pain is a fat, red-shaded demon, and Panic is skinny and blue-green. They are the minions of the film's villain, Hades.

Panic is paranoid, twitchy, panicky and easily spooked, as his name suggests, but he appears to be relatively smart and is very cautious. He appears to be more honest than Pain. For example, when he says, "Hades is gonna kill us when he finds out what happened!" Pain replies, "You mean if he finds out." And Panic replies, "'If'. 'If' is good." Pain, on the other hand, is bossy, hot-tempered, and sly, but also clumsy, impulsive and liable to get into painful situations, and seems to be less intelligent than Panic. One instance was when Hades asked them how they kill a god. Pain didn't know while Panic answered correctly.

Both possess the ability to shapeshift into almost any form. They frequently manage to irritate Hades even more than usual, and he is always ready to punish them severely for any mistakes. He also threatens them with torture. Ironically, since they are demons, even Hades cannot kill them – but it is made clear repeatedly that they can still feel pain, and since both Hades and they are immortal, they endeavor not to anger him. It is unclear why they even serve Hades, though they seem to do so out of fear or because he owns their souls.

In the movie, Hades sends them to kidnap baby Hercules, make him mortal, and kill him. The imps obey and somehow capture him in the middle of the night, but fail to kill him, and only half-succeed in making him mortal: he keeps his godlike strength, allowing him to dispose of the pair before they have a chance to kill him as snakes (a reference to the original Hercules myth). Not wanting Hades to know about their failure, they tell him that Hercules is dead. Many years later Hades discovers that Hercules is actually alive. To try and grovel sufficiently they become insects, reminding Hades they could still kill Hercules in the time left. Throughout the rest of the movie, they're seen either cheering Hades's monsters on, grovelling to Hades, or using their shape-shifting powers to contact Hades's spy, Meg. In rare moments of competence, they manage to trap Pegasus by pretending to be a mare, and even capture Hermes in the assault on Olympus, herding the gods off the mountain in chains. At the end of the movie, Hades is punched into the river Styx, and they are left behind, hoping that he won't return. Their fate after that is unknown.

Pain and Panic also appear in the Hercules TV series, and still serve as Hades's lackeys. They made many brief appearances in the House of Mouse television series, usually along with Hades (though there was one episode in which they broke up Pinocchio and Jiminy Cricket without Hades's aid) and had a very small role in Kingdom Hearts II, where they are working for Hades and work at the Underdrome, but have no other purpose.

In Ultima, Pain and Panic continue to serve Hades as they have all been recruited into the Organization by Maleficent. They once imitated Jimmy Neutron and Dexter in order to trick Nick into giving Hades the Ultimastaff.