( I loved this character, clearly a reference to Ming the Merciless from the Flash Gordon series. And his catch-phrase - "I shall revert to this vicinity!" Lovely reference to the Terminator and his most famous catch-phrase.
The funny thing was, in the original serial they didn't hire extra people, so they had the same two henchmen all the way through. Every episode they'd screw up, every episode Ming would scowl and give them only one last chance, for 20 or so times - he should've been called Ming the Merciful!
Well... if he was Ming the Merciful, he wouldn't sound like too much of a Stereotypical Saturday Morning Cartoon Villain(TM), would he? Ming the Merciful sounds a little more like a choir boy.
I haven't seen the Flash Gordon series (only a few bits here and there), but Ming's same two henchmen remind me very much of Bebop and Rock Steady from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (who constantly screw up and are given one last chance), or indeed Evil Harry Dread's Evil Henchmen(TM), who are terrific fun.
I think Ming's henchmen may have been the first comic _pair_ of henchmen. In books it's much easier to write in new henchmen than it is to hire new actors all the time, and if their names are shorter, it might even be cheaper (less ink). Laurel and Hardy and other classic pairs of clowns of course predate them, but I don't know of comic _pairs_ of henchmen in plays. I suppose someone may have tried it somewhere in the ones we don't study instead of Shakespeare. Maybe somewhere in Restoration comedy?