Eligor was a minor enemy that could be fought in the Train Graveyard during the original game. His role in the Remake has been expanded, however, and he has even been given his own little bit of in-game lore. In addition to the story of the Black Wind abducting children and trapping their spirits in the Train Graveyard, co-director Motomu Toriyama, revealed in an interview that Eligor has the ability to foresee events. Specifically, the ghastly fiend can sense the imminent collapse of the Sector 7 Plate and the deaths of thousands of civilians, knowing that this will cause a significant disturbance in the Lifestream.
The lore surrounding Eligor is not limited to the Final Fantasy VII universe either. In the old game, the monster’s design was very similar to how it appears here: a masked figure riding a hellish creature that was half-horse, half-chariot. In The Lesser Key of Solomon, a medieval book concerning Christian demonology, Eligor – also known as Abigor – is a Grand Duke of Hell, often described as a handsome man on a horse, wielding a lance, but occasionally he is depicted as a cloaked spectre riding a semi-skeletal steed. He is also able to see the future, and commands legions of demons.
And just in case that wasn’t enough to explain where the Remake’s developers drew their inspiration from, one of Eligor’s attacks in the game is the ‘Winds of Gehenna’. According to the Hebrew Bible, Gehenna was a cursed valley, where some of the kings of Judah had previously sacrificed their children. In other texts, Gehenna is likened to a sort of purgatory for wicked souls or, as in the Kabbalah, a waiting area for all those who have died, but not yet passed on to the afterlife. All this, of course, reflects the spirits of dead children being trapped in the Train Graveyard, stuck somewhere between the physical world and the Lifestream.