Clonus

Mentioned as "Growth is the amazing power to make yourself an easy target."

Those are from 1920s Germany along with the highly interesting Alraune who would make a good Poison Ivy style villainess but a century too late for BM II and III. Doctor Mabuse was a true supervillain capable of impossible feats of disguise along with mind control and who repeatedly dies to come back in a new body.

Characters of the time period who could inspire supervillains include "Melmoth the Wanderer" (1820) a man who traded his soul for great longevity but now tries to to find others willing to sell their souls in order to fend off the approaching end of his bargain and Doctor Frankenstein and his monster (1818), Volkert the Necromancer, a German charlatan who pretends to be able to summon and communicate with the spirits of the dead, using stage magic to sell the act,

Black Mask II or IIi would have run into at least one villain who was fond of death traps like the classic pendulum trap or burying or immuring people alive. This sort of thing was rather popular in the gothic fiction of the time although it survives into the present only through Edgar Allen Poes "The Pit and the Pendulum" and "Cask of Amontillado". The old "tying someone to the railroad tracks" gimmick was a continuation of the trope, although that started in the 1860s when they had the necessary railroads. That time frame is also when the sexy vampire was first invented with Byron-inspired Lord Ruthven in 1819, which led to Varney the Vampire in the 1840s and then Carmilla, the first sexy lesbian vampire in the 1870s.

I just had a very pop culture dream. I was a Starfleet officer shooting zombies but then a special metal covered one shows up that's impervious to regular shots and I can't remember how to change the settings on my phaser.

Click on it to see it at full size.

I recall some doofus claiming that the odds were nearly certain we were a simulation because there were so many simulations in a chain like that. He failed to consider that the original hardware would have to be running both the simulation and the simulation of the simulation, and the simulation of the simulation of the simulation and so forth. So, obviously it would crash as the process multiplied beyond it's capacity.

He'll have a following in prison. It makes things easier.

7 Ashbury Station: PR 3 Outpost (6,000), Class III spaceport

He could have, but he figured the horse was going to die so why bother?