Real-World Supervillains (You'll Swear We're Making Up)

Sadly, his dream of blowing himself so hard that it opened a Stargate remained unfulfilled, and rising competition in the auto-fellating game put Dr. Infinity out of business stateside. The big-dicked burglar moved to Barcelona, where he continued to do his one-man sex shows until the early '90s, when he finally settled down and lived a happy family life. And at the end of the day, isn't that what every burglar / sex fiend wants?

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Count Dante developed his own martial art, Dan-Te, which he described as "the most advanced form of Kung Fu" and we'd describe as bad wordplay. The Count also claimed he mastered the Dim Mak technique, better known as "the touch of death," and promised that anyone who joined his Black Dragon Fighting Society (not to be confused with the Japanese nationalist group of the same name) would become one of the deadliest killers to ever be roughly escorted out of an Olive Garden.

And if this all starts to sound like Count Dante was the kind of guy you'd find in comic books ... well, he was. Though few serious grandmasters were aware of his new martial arts, dorky kids were, as ads for his book Deadliest Fighting Secrets were as prevalent in the back of '60s comic books as the ones for those cheapo sea monkeys.

Black Dragon Fighting Society"Flip to page 7 to see me get my ass handed to me by Iron Man."

Other ways Count Dante fostered his reputation included walking around downtown Chicago with a lion cub on a leash, driving around with a bull in his truck telling people he was going to kill it with a single punch, and showing up at Muhammad Ali's house and challenging him to a fight (which Ali declined, like a coward). Most importantly, Count Dante also hosted his own Bloodsport-style tournaments with full contact and no padding.

This pissed off local legit martial artists, leading to the infamous "Dojo Wars," which sounds like something Steven Seagal might be pitching to Netflix at this very moment. Highlights of the Dojo Wars include Dante trying to blow up a rival dojo using blasting caps and an epic kung fu brawl in the streets of Chicago that left one guy impaled by a sword. Amazingly, a judge deemed all of this self-defense. Count Dante was allowed to walk away from the mayhem, only to die in 1975 of a bleeding ulcer -- likely from being hit with one of those touches of death with a five-year delay. That or his painkiller abuse.

Related: 6 Real-Life Villains Who'd Be Too Crazy For Comic Books

By the 1950s, he was running his own chemical sales business (you might be able to see where this is going). But when that business started failing, the adversity finally caused Peddicord to snap. The involuntary explosives expert then gathered his chemicals, built some bombs, and decided that from then on, he would be the one making things blow up in people's faces, and not the other way around.

In 1955, Peddicord sent the president of Portland's famed Meier & Frank Department Store a letter threatening that his store would explode "by the time you receive this." Perfectly timed, a huge bomb went off as the man was reading it, the shock wave smashing windows across the building and injuring two. The note continued that a second bomb would obliterate the store and the hundreds of people attending its "Friday Surprise" sale unless the president paid $50,000 to learn its location.

Thus began an epic cat-and-mouse game between Portland PD and the Blind Bomber, as Peddicord delivered a series of instructions via payphones and hidden notes Simon Says-style to lead the cops on a merry chase. Meanwhile, he managed to lure the drop-off guy (wearing a white carnation in his lapel for full film noir effect) alone with the cash to a hidden location. But the Blind Bomber never came to collect, getting cold feet at the last second and disappearing into the night.

Nevertheless, the cops eventually zeroed in on Peddicord by tracing the typewriter used to type the note. They also arrested his sister-in-law, who was believed to have guided the blind man through the store, but had to let her go due to a lack of eye-witnesses. Peddicord wasn't so lucky, and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Related: 6 Supervillains From History That Make The Joker Look Subtle

But Doctor B-J (nope, not better) wasn't just a kooky scientist; he was a mad scientist. Throughout his life, he displayed signs of extreme narcissistic personality disorder, which led him to repeatedly sabotage colleagues and steal their work. But it was only when his wife died in 1977 that the then-head of New York University's anthropology department started breaking bad, turning his lab into a massive drug operation that pumped out LSD and Quaaludes.

IParjan/Wikimedia Commons In this version, Jesse is a lemur.

When some of his assistants became suspicious of the amount of narcotics in their human studies lab, Buettner-Janusch convinced them the drugs were necessary for his research on lemurs about, um, how much balls they could trip. The faculty didn't buy it, and in 1979, the Lemur King of NYU was arrested and given a five-year prison sentence. Having learned his lesson, Buettner-Janusch made a vow that he would never again use his drug-making skills ... for good, that is.

After Buettner-Janusch was released from prison, the poisonings started. On Valentines' Day, boxes of chocolate laced with arsenic were sent to former colleagues and the judge who had sentenced him, which led to the hospitalization of the judge's twice-disappointed wife. A better drug dealer than murderer, the police easily traced the boxes back to the doctor, and for his chocolaty spree, The New York Post branded him "The Nutty Professor." Come on, guys, "The Nougaty Professor" was just sitting there! Buettner-Janusch remained in prison for the rest of his life, presumably after the "Free B-J" campaign met with a series of hilarious misunderstandings.

Related: 4 True Stories That Sound Like Supervillain Plots

Like most cults and off-Broadway productions, the Unarians were also vicious infighters and schemers, none moreso than Ruth. While shooting a psychodrama on a steamboat, the group's second-in-command became so jealous that Ruth had given a younger cult member a better role that he pushed the septuagenarian overboard in her 19th-century petticoats. On another occasion, the angel and her lieutenant got into such a big fight that Ruth took off her crown and started beating him with it, shouting, "You wear it, then!"

But unlike disco, the Unarius Academy of Science endured into the 21st century. A little shy of infinity, Ruth managed to live to the ripe age of 91 before the archangel Uriel vacated her body. Meanwhile, some Unarians are still going strong, waiting until the Space Brothers return and make drinking poisonous Kool-Aid fashionable again.

E. Reid Ross has a book called BIZARRE WORLD that's on store shelves as we speak. Or you could just order it now from Amazon or Barnes and Noble and leave a scathing/glowing review.

For more, check out Why Supervillains Always Keep The Good Guy Alive:

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