Besides those early trips through Guadalajara’s sewers, Mr. del Toro drew inspiration for the series from cultural references high and low: Jonny Quest cartoons. The early work of Hayao Miyazaki, “back when he was animating for Toho.” Irish folklore and Arthurian legend. Kids movies from the 1980s, like “The Goonies.” Asked about a scene involving a gnome and a dollhouse, he admitted with a laugh that, yes, it did indeed come from the 1963 “Twilight Zone” episode “Miniature,” starring Robert Duvall.

Mr. del Toro was at the Four Seasons Hotel here recently, explaining how he incorporated many of these past and present loves into his current venture. Dressed in a black hoodie, black T-shirt and jeans, he looked a lot like the fanboys who flock to see him at comic conventions or who queued up for hours to view his recent exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, “Guillermo del Toro: At Home With Monsters.” Many of the exhibited works there — a fraction of the director’s vast collection of paintings, animation cels, comic books and movie props — shaped his vision of “Trollhunters.”

“I do not lead a normal life,” he said. “I spend my day surrounded by creatures.”

A lifelong lover of fairy tales, Mr. del Toro recalled a Brothers Grimm story about a king who offered his daughter’s hand in marriage to anyone who could hold her attention. Three brothers go to the kingdom. The youngest is something of a scatterbrain, picking up a piece of string here, a dead bird there. “His brothers laugh at him,” Mr. del Toro said, “but eventually he uses those objects to keep the interest of the princess.”

“That’s me,” he continued. “I’ve always got my head in the clouds, looking at the floor, picking up string that nobody picks up, and enshrining it.”