Lyle Lipton

"Heaven?! You don’t make millions in technological advances by not experimenting on the poor!"

- Lyle Lipton, explaining why he is in Hell

Lyle Lipton is a character in Helluva Boss. In the season one episode, C.H.E.R.U.B, he becomes the target of assassination of I.M.P due to his old business partner, Loopty Goopty, wanting to prevent him from taking over the business they co-founded, Lyle-Loopty Robotics.

Appearance
Prior to the aging machine mishap, Lyle was a rather short white man with a mustache and indeterminate hair color. He wore gloves, an overcoat and what could be a tank top under the coat with brown pants and boots. After the mishap his nose and head underwent rather massive growths easily doubling in size. His mustache is all that remains of his hair, which is now grey. He now wears a pale blue shirt and a diaper.

In his demon form, he acquired a robotic appearance with a round, spherical body with his head on top that includes a bowler hat, and two arms on which his gloves returned. He has mint-green skin, a large bushy light grey mustache, and a pair of red pince-nez goggles with dark red spirals on the lens. With his lower half being a ball and lacking legs, he gets around simply by rolling. His teeth resemble that of piano keys.

Personality
Lyle is a greedy business man, with such insane greed that he has a stock photo of money (complete with water mark) that he says goodbye to. He has little to no care about other things, especially when it comes to experimenting upon poor people and despises children (despite admiring their innocence at times). At first he is suicidal and unwilling to live with his old body before the intervention of C.H.E.R.U.B. In the end he saw the value in life after watching the cherubs and imps fight, realizing his life must be worth something if supernatural beings were fighting over it. While appearing to show some affection towards a few of the concepts C.H.E.R.U.B. showed him (such as children indulging in innocence and romance), it ultimately could not top his greed. Moxxie describe him as being a selfish, greedy authoritarian capitalist.

Skillset

 * Wide Intellect: Lyle is shown to be quite the genius, as he and his business partner invented an anti-aging machine, and co-founded a company that eventually grew into a technological empire.

Death
While C.H.E.R.U.B. was trying to stop Lyle from hanging himself,  I.M.P. tried to make him do it. During his final moments, C.H.E.R.U.B. took him to an opera concert, while Blitzo accidentally murdered the star with a falling light. C.H.E.R.U.B. began to fight with I.M.P on the rafters. On the ground, Lyle realized that since supernatural beings were fighting over his life, it must be worth something. Additionally, he can buy anything with money, so he ultimately ends his will to kill himself. Unfortunately for him, however, when Cletus tried to kill Blitzo with a magical crossbow, a stray arrow accidentally let loose a metal beam that landed on a wooden plank, which catapulted a piano in the air, immediately crushing Lyle and killing him instantly. He later appeared a mechanical demon in Hell after his death, explaining how his actions when he was alive condemned him there instead of Heaven, this reuniting him with Loopty, his best friend and deceased business partner.

Trivia

 * Lyle's demon form resembles that of Bigweld from the movie, Robots. He also partly resembles Dr. Eggman from Sonic the Hedgehog franchise.
 * Lyle's demon teeth being piano keys is a nod to his cause of death.
 * It is also a possible reference to classic cartoons where a character, crushed by a piano, is then seen with keys having replaced their teeth.