Perhaps Savage mentioned them while telling stories at one of his parties. Or it could be the DC universe has had ninjas around much longer than ours.
Well, ninjas have been around in Japan since the 15th century, but it's certainly possible that they became known in the West earlier in Earth-1 than here in Earth-Prime (so to speak).
Or maybe there was an intervening conversation between Sara and the nurse where she tried to explain herself as a ninja and the nurse was confused by the word, and this was the followup where she was teasing Sara by tossing the label back at her.
So is Chronos going to end up being Mick?
I had that thought too. Maybe he stole Chronos's armor, or got recruited, or was Chronos all along, or something. It'd make sense -- Chronos is dull as a faceless adversary, so making him someone we and the team had a personal stake in would be more effective.
This was the perfect episode for Joe Dante to direct. Tapping in to his history. Monsters in small towns. He started working for Roger Corman who specialized in the type of horror films this was inspired by. He work on small budgeted films and big studios films. So he knows to use a limited tv budget to its fullest.
Yeah, it's good to see something from Dante again, though I hope at some point they bring him back for an all-out comedy.
As far as evoking the period went, they downplayed the racism a bit. In 1958, lunch counters were still segregated, so Jax sitting next to Betty at the counter would've evoked a much more severe response than it did.
Its interesting that not only was Savage's alias taken from Smallville. But that he was a Doctor who experimented on people mutated by meteors too.
Oh, I hadn't thought of that. I was thinking more of the meteorite that mutated the comics' Vandal Savage into an immortal. But I guess there is a bit of a
Smallville resonance with the "meteor freaks."