Usually, if someone’s looking for a vacation spot, positive traits are in demand. Sun, sea, comfortable chairs, and preferably access to some sort of frozen drink. Of course, this all assumes that your brain is wired in a positive way, and that things like joy and wonder are emotions you seek.
What, though, if you’re a psychopathic misanthrope who only seeks suffering? Someone who spends their days searching for ways to taint a water supply, or shrink everybody? In that case, you might instead look to travel the world in search of new inspiration, or possibly to scope out a new headquarters.
Tower of London
Supervillains love taking prisoners. Even more than that, they love torturing said prisoners in strange, slow ways, usually while explaining plans to them. So for a modern supervillain, visiting the Tower of London must be like going to the Baseball Hall of Fame. For starters, if you’re a very bad person, the vibes are immaculate. An old tower filled to the brim with cawing ravens? That’ll get your nefarious juices flowing. Plus, at the end of the tour, you could lock some unsuspecting schmo in one of the historic cells and flee in the chaos.
The Paris Catacombs
Another place supervillains like to be is anywhere underground. Whether they’re there in order to drill to the core of the earth or for the stable, cool temperature, they love a bunker. Doubly so if it’s underneath a major city, all the better for them to unleash a reckoning upon. Based on those factors alone, they’d love the system of catacombs beneath Paris. Add on that they’re famously decorated with thousands of human skulls and any supervillain would have a blast, if not ask when they could move in!
Chernobyl
Speaking of bunkers, what could be a better place to be inspired than the site of one of humanity’s greatest whoopsies, Chernobyl? An decimated area left unsuitable for human life for the foreseeable future. They could even pretend they did this, and that they’re finally walking through the rubble left after a successful scheme. Sure, the radiation might not be ideal, but think about it this way: You may end up getting an extremely cool and intimidating mutation that becomes your trademark. A third, tiny arm would make your poker showdowns with James Bond that much more intense.
Pompeii
Again, a perfect place to fantasize about finally getting your revenge. Looking at petrified corpses reaching, terrified, for the sky, and thinking, “Those could be my enemies!” You could also scope out Vesuvius itself and see if it looks like something you could make pop off again. Another huge point for Pompeii: great Italian food! Supervillains have to eat too! It’s not like their megalomania prevents them from enjoying a delicious fresh ragu.
Ilha da Queimada Grande
Barring bilingualism, this name probably doesn’t inspire dread like the others, but its alternative might: Snake Island. It’s off the coast of Sao Paulo, and you’re almost guaranteed that it isn’t too crowded, at least by humans. That being due to the fact that it’s absolutely riddled with snakes. We’re talking one to five snakes per square meter, and not harmless little garden squigglers either. The predominant snake on Snake Island is the golden lancehead, a type of pit viper that possesses a fast-acting, necrotic and highly dangerous venom. Come with a nice big sack, and you could stock your own pit for dissenters on your return to HQ!
The Mariana Trench
Okay, sadly, this isn’t a place that can be viably visited, but maybe developing some sort of diving bell could be a side-project for your villainous R&D division. Deep, inky blackness, filled with the sort of creatures a disturbed 16-year-old would draw in their binder margins? Maybe the sort of creatures a young supervillain themselves doodled instead of math homework? They’d probably react the way a well-adjusted tourist might to the sight of a series of jumping bottlenose dolphins.