10 years after 'Pacific Rim,' Ron Perlman still fondly remembers getting 'all lubed up' in kaiju guts as Hannibal Chau

• "Pacific Rim," directed by Guillermo del Toro, was released 10 years ago this July.
• One of the film's most memorable characters is kaiju parts dealer Hannibal Chau, played by Ron Perlman.

There's a lot of stuff that you, if you are a person with taste, should love about Guillermo del Toro's 2013 film "Pacific Rim":

• Giant, kick-ass robots
• Giant, kick-ass kaiju (or monsters)
• A rock-driven Ramin Djawadi score for the ages
• Idris Elba, playing a character impossibly named Stacker Pentecost, saying the line, "Today, we are canceling the apocalypse!"

All of that alone should be enough to sell you on "Pacific Rim," a bombastic del Toro classic. But the thing that has stuck with me, a person who has watched the film probably at least 20 times over the last decade, is Ron Perlman's unforgettable, if brief, role as the black market kaiju parts dealer Hannibal Chau.

Perlman and del Toro go way back: After starring in del Toro's first film, "Cronos," the actor went on to star in both of del Toro's "Hellboy" movies and a number of his other projects. After his "Sons of Anarchy" costar Charlie Hunnam was cast as the lead in "Pacific Rim," Perlman was thrilled for him.

"Knowing what a treat it is for any artist to be in the presence of Guillermo del Toro on any level is something you wish for your friends. And so I was delighted to hear that," he told Insider.

"Then the icing on the cake was, 'Hey, we also have this interesting character that we're cooking up and it might have your name on it,'" Perlman continued.

'Interesting character' is certainly one way to describe Hannibal Chau

It's the final days of war, and Pan Pacific Defense Corps Marshal Stacker Pentecost (Elba) has gathered the scrappy remains of the Jaeger program for one last stand. That crew includes Newt Geiszler, a kaiju scientist who believes the key to understanding the kaiju lies in their biology, played by a delightfully frantic Charlie Day. In order to further his research, Geiszler needs a kaiju brain. And in order to get that, he needs Hannibal Chau.

Played by Perlman, a striking figure on his own, Chau says he derived his name from his "favorite historical character" and "second-favorite Szechuan restaurant in Brooklyn." He wears gold-plated shoes that jingle when he walks, a jacquard-print maroon jacket, a single gold hoop earring, and sunglasses (worn indoors, obviously) with side shields.

The shoes, glorious as they are, were rather uncomfortable — but at least, as Perlman told Insider, they were actually made of 24-carat gold.

"That gold plate that sat on top of the shoe did not move when I did," Perlman said, laughing. "We limited Hannibal's movement. It's interesting what causes a character to have his little idiosyncrasies. Sometimes it's just like, 'I can't walk in these shoes.'"

In addition to some of the film's best costume design, Perlman has one of the film's single best lines — and he told Insider it wasn't even in the script.

"Are you funnin' me, son?" Chau asks, dead serious, after Geiszler says that he's figured out how to connect his brain to that of a kaiju.

"I know Guillermo's laugh from across town," Perlman told Insider of the director. "I could hear him in Video Village, which was like, at least 40 yards away, cackling when I said, 'Are you funnin' me, son?' I said, 'I guess that stays in the movie.' And at the end of the take, I went back and I said, 'How would you like me to say it the next time?' And he said, 'No, just like that.'"

Acting opposite Day, who Perlman called a delightful but "almost distracting" scene partner simply because he was so amusing, Perlman's Chau exudes savvy. There's no way that he would get caught up in something as pedestrian as a kaiju attack when he stands to profit from the aftermath.

We regret to inform you that Hannibal Chau was eaten by a kaiju

Chau's biggest moment in the movie comes as he gloats in front of an infant kaiju carcass, which crawls out of its mother's cooling body before accidentally strangling itself on its own umbilical cord. Chau, who in fact ran away in terror when the baby emerged, says he only needed "one look" at the monster to know that it wouldn't survive for long, before swinging his switchblade around in a listless display of bravado and stabbing the kaiju in the nose.

"Ugly little bastard," Chau says, wiping his knife on his jacket. "Anyway, I woulda—"

That's when the kaiju cuts him off mid-sentence, gobbling him up whole before croaking to death once more. All that's left of Hannibal Chau is a single gold-plated shoe. That is, until he slashes his way out of the dead kaiju in a mid-credits scene, covered in sticky, dripping viscera and yelling about his missing shoe.

"The goo was practical. Um, you know, if you've ever been married or had, uh.. No, I shouldn't," Perlman began.

Obviously, I told him to continue.

"Forget where I was going with that," he says, before diving in. "But if you've ever had really kinky sex, it's basically, you know, you are familiar with that kinda lube. And that's what it was."

Ultimately, Perlman said that it was a "treat and a treasure" to work with del Toro again after "Cronos," especially on such a novel character. It was worth the goop.

"I have nothing but fond memories, whenever I have to act all lubed up like that," he said. "The last thing it was, was a burden."