Alex is based on one of my pre-college Internet friends whose name was also Alex.  The nickname “Dark Power 451” was a wholly new creation, however.  It was a combination of “Dark Power,” which sounds like the sort of ridiculous overblown name either an online rando or a Rob Liefeld character would have, plus “451,” which was a veiled reference to “Fahrenheit 451,” which gives the name a fighting-the-power conspiratorial air.  What I’m getting at is that I wanted a really Internetty-sounding nickname.