ok…this I cant understand…
BEing a huge fan of the James Bond films, one thing always puzzles me.
Where the hell do the supervillains get their
work force? I mean, there are always hundreds of scientists and engineers running about their oil rig that they are about to launch the nuclear sub from, or loads of minions in a hollowed out volcano they are about to launch a neuclear warhead from…Where do you advertise for staff?
example:
wanted:
Engineers and Scientists (x1000),
Beautiful supervillian sidekick (x2)
duties:Building, servicing, and maintaining Submarines, Zepplins, Spacecraft, and/or other machines of death
location: Hollowed out Volcanoes, Underwater Laboratories, the Moon
an experience in working for evil Supervilians a must, also the ability to use machine guns and flamethrowers for killing the Interpol/CIA/MI6/U.N. Force sent to foil our plans would be favourable.
Salary: Negotiable.
Dr. Nefarius World Domination Corp. is an equal oppertunities employer.
hell… I’d apply
John Larrigan
“82.35% of all statistics are made up on the spot”–Vic Reeves
The economics of Bond villains is something that needs further study. Consider that they live in gigantic underground complexes with shiny elevators and plenty of nice clean air ducts for the heroes to escape through. It costs money to keep those air ducts clean. Not to mention the missiles and high-tech equipment. No wonder they have to commit such spectacular crimes; the mortgage payments on their headquarters must be staggering, and the start-up costs insane (after all, you can’t start holding the nations of the world for ransom without building the headquarters first). Someone should point out to them that if they worked out of their apartment, they could make a bigger profit.
It’s also a question as to how they manage to keep their staff. How do you keep good help if they realize that if they make the slightest screw-up, they get dumped into a tank of sharks? Wouldn’t it be better if the bad guy said, “Nice try. It’s not your fault it didn’t work. We’ll get him the next time”? A nice comprehensive health care and dental plan would be much better, especially when you factor in the cost of recruiting and training replacements.
“East is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.” – Marx
I think most of the savings comes from not following any government regulations. The savings from eliminating handrails alone in an underground volcano lair will easily pay for a death ray. A 1950s style positive pressure vinyl suit is much cheaper than a properly contained reactor core.
I think the Austin Powers movies hit it on the head. The real money is in volatile chemicals, communications and overpriced coffee bar chains.
Of course, one could avoid all these issues by breeding one’s own henchpeople. Then the only recruiting one would have to do would be of mothers for the first generation; then a sort of ranch would be suitable, I think. It would take a few years to get the infants to an age to be effective henchpeople, but that time could be spent in developing superweapons. And the baby henches could be trained in different disciplines as they grew: scientists, thugs, etc.
Having known nothing else, homebred henchpeople would have no better moral instincts to overcome, always an advantage. And, if they were all related to the villain, they’d presumably be very loyal.
Well, some evil henchmen are hired through recruiters. Kelly has a ‘Hire-a-Thug’ department, and Apple One has recently started an ‘Evil temp’ program where you can hire a platoon of machine-gun equipped temporary workers in a choice of retro-60’s color co-ordinated jumpsuits by the day or week.
However to aquire qualified long-term thugs many Supervillians find it necessary to advertise for evil henchmen. You can see ad’s in magazines such as “Soldier of Fortune” “Guns and Ammo” and surprisingly “Good Housekeeping” boasting benefits like evil 401K, evil healthcare and dental, two weeks of (one would presume evil) vacation, etc.
Specialized talent such as Ninjas, robot assassins, intergalactic bounty hunters, and midget sidekicks are routinely hired through headhunters (many of whom actually hunt for heads) and miclanious positions such as death-ray technicians, veterinarians familiar with the care of piranhas and great white sharks, and sculptors capable of carving your portrait in the side of an active volcano island are freely available through the yellow pages.
Financing an evil empire these days requires a great deal of capital investment. This is available via various evil organizations such as the Mafia, La Cosa Nostra, S.M.E.R.C.H., S.K.U.L.L, F.E.A.R., and Microsoft.
However, some Supervillians are independently wealthy. The evil Professor Skullcrusher is the heir to the Skullcrusher baby food fortune, and Doctor Gravitron holds the patent for Liquid Paper.
A bit of a veer, although not a total hijack: anyone contemplating hiring henchpeople to help carry out their plans of world domination should certainly visit Evil Overlord, Inc., where they will also find handy tips for bringing those plans to fruition. (Hint: don’t save the hero to gloat over; he’ll escape at the eleventh hour and ruin you. Shoot the sucker and get on with it.)
It is often said that “anything is possible”. In fact, very few things are possible, and most of them have already happened.
I get mine the old-fasioned way: Mind Control Ray! That way they don’t even KNOW they aren’t getting paid – BWAHAHAHAHA! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! What? I’m the only one with diabolical laughter around here?
HEre’s the plan. Lets take over the world. All we need is a method. We need to select a
Overlord from the teeming millions. We have all the scientists, lawyers and nefarious evildoers on the MB to build our Machine of Death.
I want to be an Evil henchman. Not Overlord. Im too lazy. So, who gets to be who?
Best method of Taking over the World gets to be Evil Overlord.
John Larrigan
“82.35% of all statistics are made up on the spot”–Vic Reeves
I’ll stick with the minor evil henchman part, thank you. From what I’ve seen, the Overlord role has a zero-survivability rate. I’ll stay in the Dark Side Financial Department and just sew up a few loose ends here and there.
Usually when the Good Guys jet in, they pretty much take care of the Overlord and the Key Henchmen, then it’s Miller Time. Bond takes the girl and goes off in his Love Sub, giving me ample time to abscond with Evil Inc. financial assets and head out to Rio.
Well, Hank Scorpio does it with a great dental plan, three weeks paid vacation each year, and in the lunchroom they serve burgers and hotdogs and beer (he loves German beer!).
Oh, and an incentive programs of being given the Denver Broncos.
We’ll create hypnotic boxes that show moving pictures and sounds (lets call them just for sake of argument “TeeVeez”) and we’ll convince the population of the world to bring them into their homes. Then we mesmerize them with programming featuring unrealistic characters in unrealistic situations living unrealistic lives that don’t even closely resemble the real world (hey, just for that added touch of evil lets create a show called “The Real World” and make it EXTRA unrealistic! Ha ha ha!). Eventually, people will become discontented and dissatisfied with their own lives.
Ha ha ha!
What’s more, we’ll populate that fantasy world with unrealistic looking people (hmmm, might have to modify ordinary people with hair coloring chemicals, steroid enhanced muscles, cancer causing artificial UV skin tanning, surgery and extreme dieting, but we’ll deal with that later…) so that the beauty standard becomes unreachable, and the population becomes dissatisfied with their own bodies!
Ha ha ha!
Then we suggest that this unattainable lifestyle and body can be attained through use of products that WE offer for a price! The poor shrubs will spend what little of their meager life span not drugged by our boxes working to pay for the junk we sell! It’s a positively EVIL plan!
Okay, okay. It’s a bit unrealistic…
How’z about this. Atomic Powered Robotic Mexican Wrestlers!!
Inky