Chapter 2
On Earth-21, several weeks after Ollie had temporarily swapped bodies with his Earth-1 counterpart, an object fell out of the sky one night and crash-landed in a field in Smallville. The commotion got the attention of Kara Kent, who investigated the crash site and, to her shock, found a gravely injured, bloodied, battered, and dying man clad in a Superman suit, a gaping wound in his chest where he had been impaled by whatever he encountered. With his dying breath, the man introduced himself as Kal-El and told Kara, "My universe... it's gone. You must prepare... for what will come. They will do to your world... what they did to mine... " As the alternate Kal-El died, tears rolled down Kara's cheeks. She wanted to save him, but his injuries were too severe and his heart had been damaged.
Realizing the Crisis that Mar Novu had sent her back in time for was approaching, Kara informed Clark and the rest of the Justice League of her encounter with the alternate Kal-El, whom they found out was from Earth-88 after scanning his body at the Fortress of Solitude.
A few months later, another incident occurred when a mysterious alien with ridge-like markings on his bald head similar to Mar Novu crash-landed in Russia. After being informed of what happened by the President of the United States, Clark flew to Russia as Superman with the intention of confronting the alien, known as a Monitor, and learning of his plans. Upon arrival, Clark saw the Rocket Red Brigade, a team of Russian heroes garbed in red and white suits of armor, battling the Monitor, who was beating them badly and had even killed one of the Brigade members. Clark took over the battle with the Monitor, who introduced himself as Ray-Lan. Clark sent Ray-Lan flying off with several punches and Ray-Lan retaliated with a blast of red Bleed energy from his arm cannon that struck Clark in the back, actually staggering him several feet forward. As Clark delivered a powerful head-butt to Ray-Lan's face, the Kryptonian and Monitor were knocked back in opposite directions by the impact of the blow, a stunned Clark finding that the attack gave him a cut on his eyebrow, which bled out, while Ray-Lan used the distraction to escape.
Meanwhile, in Gotham City, Batman and his partners, Nightwing (Barbara Gordon) and Robin (Dick Grayson), were summoned to a crime scene by Commissioner James Gordon, who showed them the heavily beaten and battered corpse of a man dressed in a bright blue Superman t-shirt, a red cape, and blue jeans. The man's face was so disfigured that they were unable to identify him right away.
While Ollie was in San Francisco handling business related to Queen Industries, Chloe spent some time with Lois at the Daily Planet and, upon learning of what appeared to be a Superman-related 'hate crime' in Gotham, the cousins traveled there to chase down the story. Once Lois and Chloe found Batman, Nightwing, and Robin interrogating a criminal named Victor Zsasz on a rooftop, the two women headed to the Batcave with the three vigilantes. With the use of the facial reconstruction software on the computers, they learned, to Lois and Chloe's shock, that the dead man dressed in the Superman t-shirt was the spitting image of Clark, but was human instead of Kryptonian.
Back in Russia, Clark tracked Ray-Lan to the abandoned city of Chernobyl. Finding a hole in the ground that led to an underground level, Clark leapt down into it and stumbled upon Ray-Lan's spaceship. Clark entered the ship, exploring the interior of it as he discovered a glass tube-like structure with thousands of small holographic Earths inside it. More than half of the orbs were dark, while the rest were full of light.
Ray-Lan soon appeared, telling Clark that this world and many others would perish like the ones that already had. As another battled between the aliens ensued, Ray-Lan explained to Clark that he and his fellow Monitors had been destroying one universe after one in a specific order, but one of his 'overzealous colleagues' had made the mistake doing things in the wrong order, causing a 'bleed quake' that sent Ray-Lan to Earth-21. The Monitor added that Earth-109 and Earth-137 had been torn asunder by collision, shattering reality on Earth-113, which Ray-Lan presumed had allowed some residents of that universe to arrive on Earth-21 as well.
Their fight continued, Ray-Lan telling Clark that he and the other Monitors would begin the destruction of Earth-21 ahead of time, despite that the one they were working for would disapprove, but Ray-Lan didn't care. Using the Bleed technology he was wearing, Ray-Lan remotely activated the spaceship and it rose out of the underground level, bursting through the ground above and continuing to rise in the air towards the cloudy sky. Clark overpowered Ray-Lan, grabbing the Monitor and flying him outside as they crashed clean through a part of the ship, damaging it. He threw Ray-Lan down on the snowy ground and, as the Monitor recovered and prepared to fire a blast of Bleed from his arm cannon, Clark flew down in a blur, picked Ray-Lan up, and hurled him many feet away, sending him crash-landing into a forest. Speeding to Ray-Lan once more, Clark grabbed the Monitor's arm cannon and destroyed it along with the rest of his armor, leaving his opponent defenseless.
"How do I stop the ship?" Clark demanded.
"There's nothing you can do to stop the inevitable. We are entropy," Ray-Lan sneered.
As a concentrated beam of Bleed shot down from the opening underneath the ship to the ground, Clark flew directly into the beam, standing his ground against the Bleed despite the pain it caused him. Gritting his teeth, Clark flew up into the ship through the opening, grabbed the emitter, and turned the weapon upwards as the Bleed beam shot upwards instead, violently ripping through the top of the ship, which exploded in a massive burst of flames a few moments later, sending scraps of metal and shrapnel flying in every direction.
Clark fell to the ground, multiple burns and blisters on his face from the Bleed energy. He stood up, looked around, and found Ray-Lan lying on the ground among a pile of rubble, dead with a long piece of rebar sticking out of his chest. Saddened by his latest opponent's demise, Clark regretfully muttered "I'm sorry" and closed the Monitor's eyes.
Back in Gotham, at the abandoned park called Amusement Mile, Batman, Nightwing, and Robin were confronted by the alternate Clark Kent's killer: Bruce Wayne of Earth-113, who looked identical to his Earth-21 doppelganger, except his face was twisted into a sadistic grin, his skin was chalk white, and his hair was green, making him resemble the Joker. He was dressed in a tattered dark gray suit with an oval-shaped emblem containing a black bat over a red background on his chest.
Batman engaged his Joker-like doppelganger, leading to a stalemate between them as their skills were evenly matched. Batman pulled out a batarang and charged at Evil Bruce with it, but Evil Bruce dodged the attack. Batman then threw the batarang, only for Evil Bruce to sidestep it before the projectile circled back around and exploded behind him, throwing Evil Bruce forward towards Batman, who elbowed his Earth-113 doppelganger in the abdomen. Turning around, Batman noticed some small bombs that Evil Bruce had dropped at his feet and uttered "Damn" right before they exploded, the force of the blast knocking him several feet forward before Evil Bruce struck Batman in the throat with a clothesline attack.
Nightwing and Robin joined the battle, the former cracking Evil Bruce in the back and face with her electrified escrima sticks while the latter struck him in the chest with his bo-staff. Evil Bruce kicked Robin away and plunged a small knife into Nightwing's abdomen, while revealing that he'd killed both the Barbara Gordon and Dick Grayson of his Earth.
Angered by that revelation, Batman rammed into his doppelganger from behind, threw Evil Bruce on the ground, and pummeled him in the face.
"Why did you murder your Clark?" Batman growled.
"He found out who I really was and told the cops," the Joker-like villain snarled with a wicked grin. "Stupid homemade hero. You give a kid a comic book, he straps on a cape, and starts jumping from rooftop to rooftop." As Batman cuffed his doppelganger, Evil Bruce added, "None of it matters anyway. My Earth was going down in flames while I chased that little caped pansy through that portal."
After Batman pointed out he couldn't take Evil Bruce to Arkham, given that the latter would quickly be identified as the former, Evil Bruce suggested that Batman may as well kill him, only for the Dark Knight to respond, "I don't know what happened on your world, but this Batman doesn't kill. Not after what happened to his parents."
Evil Bruce grinned sadistically, remarking, "Huh. Guess you didn't kill yours then?"
Later, the Earth-113 Bruce Wayne was imprisoned on Mars by John Jones, placed in the same containment cell as Curtis Knox, who had been there for years at that point.
Meanwhile, Ray-Lan's corpse was transported to the D.E.O., where Emil Hamilton and his crew performed an autopsy on it in the quarantine zone as Director Steve Trevor observed them, while Agent Diana Prince examined the Monitor's damaged Bleed tech.
On Earth-1, some months after Oliver had temporarily swapped bodies with his Earth-21 counterpart, a mysterious masked man clad in a black suit identical to the one Adrian Chase had worn as Prometheus showed up in Star City, going on a killing spree. Unlike Chase, this new Prometheus targeted criminals, from purse-snatchers and low-level street thugs to corrupt individuals in high positions of power. Among his targets were Emily Pollard, Kullens, Kimberly Hill, Sam Armand, John Byrne, Stanley Dover (a serial killer who had escaped from prison), Jarret Parker, and members of the Bertinelli crime family.
As soon as Oliver and his team learned of the new Prometheus' existence, they wondered who was under the mask, but knew that it wasn't Adrian Chase (at least the version knew) since he was dead and the M.O. seemed different. One thing Team Arrow knew for sure was that they needed to confront the new 'Throwing Star Killer' and find out what he (or, she, for all they knew) wanted.
It wasn't until the night that Oliver, Sara, Roy, and Thea were in a battle with Emiko Adachi and the Longbow Hunters, who had helped the former Ninth Circle leader escape from A.R.G.U.S. custody, when they finally encountered the new Prometheus, who showed up during their battle and fired an arrow into Emiko's forehead, killing her instantly, right after Oliver killed Bear by stabbing him in the throat with an arrow after a tough fight with huge assassin, while Sara broke Red's neck, ending the fight between the two women. As Roy was fighting Silencer, an arrow from Prometheus flew into the latter's chest, killing her as well.
As Oliver and his team set their attention on the newcomer, the emerald archer snarled, "Who the are you and what do you want?"
"You'll find out very soon, Oliver Queen. I promise you won't see this coming," Prometheus stated in a distorted and disguised voice before tossing a flash-bang grenade on the ground as he disappeared from sight.
A few nights later, Roy and Thea were in their apartment when Prometheus showed up and started attacking them. The couple held their own well against the intruder, but Prometheus defeated them in battle as he shot Thea in the shoulder with an arrow and knocked her out with a single punch to the face before beating Roy to a pulp and shooting him in the right leg. Prometheus then stamped Roy's arm, breaking it as the young man let out a cry of pain.
The following night, Prometheus was confronted on a rooftop by an angry Green Arrow and White Canary, the former demanding to know why he'd attacked Thea and Roy, who both had been hospitalized for their injuries. Prometheus replied that it was to goad Oliver into coming after him and provide himself with a fighting advantage by removing two of the emerald archer's teammates from the equation.
"You could've killed Thea and Roy. Why didn't you?" Oliver wondered.
"I never had any no intention of killing your sister or her boyfriend," Prometheus answered, before removing his mask.
Oliver and Sara stared in absolute shock at their unmasked opponent. The face behind the Prometheus mask looked exactly like Oliver!
As Oliver and Sara correctly guessed that he was from another Earth, Prometheus explained that he had arrived on their world through a portal while his world was under siege and getting destroyed with beams of red energy by aliens and ships from outer space. He then told Oliver and Sara that he'd been on Earth-1 for over two months, watching them from the shadows and learning their routines, adding that Oliver and his team were 'naïve' for choosing to spare criminals rather than indiscriminately kill them and that even someone as petty as a purse-snatcher deserved to die.
Oliver wondered what happened to his doppelganger and Prometheus explained that his world's Sara Lance had drowned when the Queen's Gambit went down, his sister Thea had died of a drug overdose after becoming addicted to Vertigo shortly before he returned home from Lian Yu, and Laurel had been murdered in her apartment by China White because he hadn't been there to protect her during his second week back in Starling City. The premature deaths of his loved ones had led to the alternate Oliver taking a much more vicious stance on crime as The Hood than Earth-1 Oliver ever had.
Another difference was that the alternate Oliver had never brought John Diggle and Felicity Smoak into his crusade. Instead, he'd teamed up with Helena Bertinelli, who, like on Earth-1, became The Huntress to kill her father and avenge her fiancé. Oliver had agreed to help her and the two succeeded in Helena's mission. From that point on, The Hood and The Huntress became a brutal vigilante couple, mercilessly killing any criminals and enemies in Starling City that they came across as well as anyone else who dared to get in their way, even police officers and those who were foolish enough to try to 'be a hero'.
Almost two years after they'd started working together, Oliver and Helena were confronted by a group of A.R.G.U.S. agents, led by Lyla Michaels and John Diggle. During the fight, the pair of vigilantes held the upper hand for the most part, managing to take out all the agents. However, Agent Diggle had managed to fire two bullets into Helena's chest, killing her. An enraged Oliver had taken out the remaining A.R.G.U.S. agents, including Lyla, and knocked out Diggle, whom he wanted to make pay very painfully for his girlfriend's demise. Oliver had taken Diggle to his lair, tied the latter on a table, and spent the next several hours slowly skinning the former soldier alive as Diggle's cries and screams of agony gave The Hood pure satisfaction until his girlfriend's killer finally died from his excruciating and gruesome injuries.
"I did what I did to John Diggle not only because he killed my partner and girlfriend, but because I wanted to and I liked every second of it," the alternate Oliver told Earth-1 Oliver and Sara without an ounce of remorse.
Following that incident, the alternate Oliver had ditched his green suit and donned his current black one. The Hood had died and Prometheus had been born. And he would spend the following years instilling great terror into the residents of Starling City and surrounding areas as he racked up the body count of all his victims, whether they were criminals, cops who went after him, or people who simply pissed him off. Among his victims were Tommy (who had intended to expose Oliver's secret to the public after discovering it), Moira (after his own mother had tried to kill him after discovering her son's secret and realizing he was far too gone to be reasoned with), and Roy (whom he caught attempting to steal a car). He'd also killed Barry Allen, who was an ordinary human in their universe. A few months before the alternate Oliver escaped to Earth-1 while his world was getting destroyed, Allen had successfully exposed his identity as Prometheus to the public. In retaliation, Oliver had hunted the young CSI from Central City down and brutally tortured and beat him to death.
Earth-1 Oliver was horrified and disgusted to learn that a version of him had been responsible for his own mother's death. Sara didn't look any better. Realizing that their opponent was beyond reason, since the alternate Oliver clearly felt not even the slightest bit of remorse for his actions, the two heroic vigilantes knew there was only one thing to do at the moment. Prepare to fight.
Putting his mask back on, Prometheus engaged Oliver and Sara, managing to hold his own extremely well against them. While Oliver and Sara easily matched his own skill set, Prometheus was far more ruthless than both of them and used that to his advantage.
The fight went on for over ten minutes before Sara punched Prometheus in the face and Oliver sent a kick to his doppelganger's chest, knocking him to the ground. Prometheus jumped back to his feet, only for Oliver to fire a cable arrow that wrapped itself around Prometheus, restraining the alternate Earth serial killer. Oliver then punched him in the face, sending him back down, and removed Prometheus' mask from his doppelganger's face.
"I assume you're not gonna put me in an A.R.G.U.S. prison," Prometheus sneered.
"Since you're my doppelganger from another Earth, that'd make things complicated," Oliver pointed out. "There's only one way to stop you." He walked behind Prometheus, grabbed his doppelganger in a chokehold, and snapped his neck.
The next day, Oliver contacted Cisco, requesting him to vibe his doppelganger's corpse. Cisco breached to Star City and did as Oliver had asked, revealing that the alternate Oliver had come from Earth-16, which had been destroyed by alien beings who resembled The Monitor, whom they grew even more suspicious of.
On Earth-64, Alexander 'Lex' Luthor, Lois Lane, and Emil Hamilton opened a portal on the inter-dimensional transporter after finally providing the large circular machine with the necessary amount of power that it required. Alexander, fully decked out in his shiny gold and black armor, prepared to journey through the portal to another dimension and would return in two hours. Lois wanted to go with him, but Alexander ordered her to stay behind as it was only a 'test run'. Lois insisted, telling Alexander that she wasn't going to let him wander alone in an unfamiliar and possibly dangerous world alone, only for him to point out that their world would continue to need one of them to protect in case the machine failed to bring him back home. Lois complied, she and Emil watching as Alexander flew into the portal and disappeared. Smirking and making a last-moment decision, Lois entered the wormhole at super-speed, disappearing into it faster than Emil could notice that she'd moved at all.
On Earth-694, a portal appeared in the air and Alexander fell out of it, crash-landing hard in the middle of a street as his armor protected him from harm. A moment later, Lois fell out of the portal too, landing on the ground several feet away from Alexander as she, too, was unharmed thanks to her invulnerable body. As the two got to their feet, Alexander noticed Lois and chastised her for not listening to him. Lois shot back, arguing that she would be damned if she allowed the man she loved to jump into uncharted territories without backup and insisted that he should have more faith in her.
They abruptly stopped their argument upon noticing their surroundings. Alexander and Lois realized they were in Metropolis, but it was like a literal war zone. Many parts of the city were on fire and covered in smoke. Many of the buildings and vehicles had been destroyed, while the streets and sidewalks were heavily damaged with cracks, craters, and piles of rubble. The darkened sky was filled with a number of ships shooting down beams of red Bleed energy. Lois gave Alexander a smirk and said, "See what I mean?"
They flew into the air, heading towards a building that looked very similar to the Daily Planet. Lois asked if they could "exit this hellhole and go straight back to their world", but Alexander explained that, unfortunately, they couldn't return right away because the transporter had already been set to not pull them back into their own universe until the two hours were up, to which Lois could only sarcastically reply "Great".
They stopped flying upon noticing tall and well-built dark-haired man, who was clad in a white and red suit with a white cape, bound by his wrists to the large golden globe on top of the Daily Planet-like building. Alexander and Lois stared at his face in shock, noticing he was a doppelganger of Clark Luthor and Earth-21 Clark Kent. Lois wondered if this version of Kal-El had been good or evil, but Alexander pointed out that it didn't matter since the man was clearly dead and it looked like that the rest of the world would soon meet the same fate.
They were suddenly approached and surrounded by dozens of robots with red bodies and white heads. "No man escapes the Manhunters! No man escapes the Manhunters!" some of the robots, known as Manhunters, chanted before beginning to attack the pair of Earth-64 visitors.
Lois flew around, easily destroying the Manhunters via punches, kicks, heat vision, or simply speed-blitzing through them as well as literally ripping them apart, while Alexander also flew around, destroying many with sonic blasts, shockwave blasts, electrical blasts, and flames emitted from his gauntlets while occasionally punching some. The two flew through the devastated city, taking out more Manhunters as the robots pursued them. Once the coast was clear, Lois used her super-hearing to listen for any civilians who may be in danger. Hearing some people praying in a nearby church, Lois urged Alexander to come with her and the two entered the church, only to be met with hostility as a man, Hank Olsen (whom Lois recognized as the doppelganger of her cousin Chloe's old photographer boyfriend), demanded them to leave. Hank punched Alexander, who had retracted his helmet, in the face, saying that so-called superheroes like him were the reason many people were dead.
To the shock of Alexander and Lois, the Lois Lane of this Earth, who looked depressed and worn-out, appeared, assuring Hank that the newcomers could stay, since there was nowhere for them to run. As the visiting Lois asked what was happening, her local doppelganger tearfully explained that she'd watched them murder her lover, Mister Majestic, along with every other hero. Alexander asked how the attack began and the local Lois explained that the Monitors had put one ship on each side of the planet and did something to the Earth's core, destroying one city after another. As the local Lois added that it was only a matter of time before the entire world got destroyed, several Monitor ships appeared right outside the church and shot down Bleed energy. The visiting Lois told Alexander that they had to get the hell out of there, to which he replied, "I couldn't agree more."
Alexander and Lois flew out of the church to be met by a horde of Manhunters, who proceeded to attack them. The two Earth-64 visitors destroyed a good number of the Manhunters before some of them chanted "Prepare for the purge! Prepare for the purge!". As the Manhunters retreated into the Monitor ships, the sound of multiple gunshots coming from inside the church suddenly got Lois' attention. In a blur, Lois rushed back into the church and found everyone inside, including her doppelganger, dead as a result of self-inflicted gunshot wounds to their heads. Alexander flew in behind her and both of them realized there was nothing they could do to save this alternate Earth from destruction. As a Monitor ship started blasting Bleed energy into the church, Lois and Alexander flew out of there and into the sky. They looked down and saw a huge wave of red Bleed energy approaching, obliterating buildings and everything else its path like a tsunami.
As he and Lois increased their flying speed, Alexander stated that only seventeen minutes had passed since their departure, meaning there was still an hour and forty-three minutes left until the inter-dimensional transporter would pull them back into their own world. Lois pointed out that the entire world would most likely be destroyed long before then and wondered what they were going to do. Alexander explained that, since this universe also had a Kal-El who arrived on Earth in the form of Mister Majestic, it was highly likely that a version of the Fortress of Solitude existed as well and could help them return home or at least get them out of this universe.
Realizing they were running out of time, Lois grabbed Alexander and increased her speed, soaring through the air as fast as she could towards the North Pole, while the expanding wave of Bleed followed them. Just as the Kryptonian ice palace appeared in their sight, Lois and Alexander suddenly disappeared through a portal, while the Bleed continued on, eventually consuming the Fortress and the rest of Earth-694 before the entire universe was gone.
Lois and Alexander suddenly reappeared in a Metropolis in another universe, this one being Earth-111. While the two were relieved that they had miraculously escaped the previous world's destruction, they were confused as to how it happened. Before Alexander could point out his theories, he and Lois were suddenly approached by a tall attractive woman with long dark hair and blue eyes who was clad in a mostly blue suit with a red cape and a House of El emblem on her chest. They regarded the woman, noticing her face heavily resembled the Earth-21 and Earth-64 versions of Kal-El, but figured this female version of them was a heroine due to her costume. The three of them moved to a rooftop, where Lois and Alexander explained their story to her.
The woman, Clara Kent (birth name Kala Jor-El) aka Superwoman, was shocked to not only learn that the Multiverse was real, but that a version of Lois had Kryptonian powers in one of those alternate universes. She was also shocked to learn that there were multiple worlds where she was a man, while horrified that the male version from the universe Alexander and Lois were from had been a cold-blooded murderer before he was imprisoned in the Phantom Zone on another Earth. Clara found their tale to be 'wild', but believed them nonetheless. She offered to use her Fortress of Solitude to try to get home, but Alexander insisted that they would wait out the remaining two hours to see if the inter-dimensional transporter would still work as planned.
In the meantime, Clara took Lois and Alexander to the Kent farm in her hometown Smallville, where she introduced them to her adoptive parents, Jonathan and Martha Kent, who were even more shocked than their daughter had been to learn of the Earth-64 visitors' wild story. The Kents were initially wary of Alexander, due to their unpleasant history with the Luthors, but calmed down once Lois assured them that he was a good guy, though Jonathan in particular continued to remain cautious.
Clara then told Lois and Alexander some things about her own life. She lived in Smallville with her parents, but worked at the Daily Planet in Metropolis, and had a sister-like bond with her best friend, Lois, who was fully aware of Clara's powers and Kryptonian origins. The Lex Luthor of this world had been killed as a child during the meteor shower that Clara arrived in, while Lex's sister, Tess, had been raised by Lionel. Eventually, Tess met Clara when the latter had saved the former from drowning in a river that Tess crashed her car into and the two developed a close friendship that later transformed into mutual enmity, much like what had happened between Clark and Lex on Earth-21. Tess' hatred for Clara grew even worse after she had discovered her former best friend's secret, not only because Clara had lied to her for years, but Tess blamed her for Lex's death. After years of scheming against Clara and attempting to kill her several times, Tess had finally been imprisoned for her crimes, though, according to Clara, who often visited her former friend, she recently had begun to express some remorse for her previous actions, providing hope that Tess wasn't beyond redemption at all.
Once the two hours were up, the inter-dimensional transporter portal suddenly appeared in the Kent house as Alexander and Lois were pulled back into their universe before the stunned eyes of Clara, Jonathan, and Martha.
A week after their adventures, Alexander and Lois were visited by Earth-21 Clark and his Lois, who both came to see how the former two were doing. Alexander and Lois-64 explained what they had gone through and Clark and Lois-21 were amused that they had met a female version of Clark, while Clark felt bittersweet on hearing that his adoptive father was still alive on Clara's Earth. As for the destruction of Earth-694, Clark and Lois-21 realized it was connected to the upcoming Crisis and Clark explained everything he knew to Alexander and Lois-64, telling them about the Monitors who intended to wipe out every world in the Multiverse and his encounter with Ray-Lan. Realizing that universes were getting destroyed as they spoke, Alexander stated that he, Lois, and Emil would do everything they could to prepare for when the Monitors inevitably attack their universe.
Worlds will live. Worlds will die. And the Multiverse will never be the same.
To be concluded in "Crisis on Infinite Earths: The Final Event".
The Earth-88 Superman who died at the beginning of the chapter is the one from Superboy, which came out in 1988. In this, he's played by John Newton, the actor during the show's first season.
An alternate Oliver who eventually became Prometheus after going down a much darker path than his Earth-1 doppelganger (with Thea's and Laurel's premature deaths being the catalyst) was a play on the idea of him being the very cold-blooded killer that parts of Arrow Season 5 tried to sell 'our' Oliver as. Also, if Adrian Chase could become Green Arrow in one universe, I figured this could happen somewhere in the Multiverse as well.
Some of the summarized events in this chapter were adapted from the Smallville Season 11 comics, particularly the miniseries arcs Alien and Chaos.
In Alien, Lex went to Russia with Clark when they encountered Ray-Lan, but in this story, since Lex is elsewhere in the Multiverse, Clark went alone. And there was the sub-plot with the evil Jokerized Batman from what Smallville referred to as 'Earth-13', though I decided to call that world Earth-113 here.
In Chaos, Clark and Lois of the main Smallville universe ended up on the "Mister Majestic" Earth, but in this story, I had Lex and Lois of Earth-64 go through that adventure instead and decided to name that world Earth-694, a reference to Mister Majestic from WildStorm comics debuting in June 1994.
Lastly, Earth-111 is obviously a gender-flipped Smallville Clark Kent world.