The Fourth World may get its name from the television news talking so often about conditions in the Third World. If there are only three here on Earth, then the Fourth would have to be elsewhere... Mark Evanier talks about Kirby setting up an arrangement of blocks, household items, and a coffee pot and then drawing a fantastical cityscape based loosely upon what he'd constructed.

Caliban seems as likely a starting point as any for Kirby. I myself have wondered if he was somehow connected in Kirby's imagination with the Captain Marvel villain Ibac. I don't know that Kirby himself would remember or that it matters one way or another.

How things came about often has little bearing on what is done with them once they exist. Bob Dylan's "Quinn the Eskimo" supposedly originated with him walking by a theater showing "The Savage Innocents" and finding the notion of Anthony Quinn playing an Inuit hunter ridiculous. Apocryphal? Perhaps. But it ultimately has little to do with the feelings and meaning associated with the song by fans of Dylan's work since.

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Icarus, Mercury, Zeus, Athena, and Ajax?

Star Trek's third season episode "The Enterprise Incident," for example, was vaguely suggested by what the news back then called "The Pueblo Incident," wherein an American naval vessel was captured by North Korea for spying in their waters. The crew was eventually released, but the ship itself is still there, on display for the crowds.*

At the time the episode was made, the producers were hot to capitalize on the premise's vague resemblance to what had just taken place. Audiences at the time would certainly have known about the Pueblo and possibly been curious as to how Star Trek would interpret the story.

I think that blog post you've cited, Colin, is probably accurate, although the inspiration may have taken the long way around. Flip Wilson had his own television show from 1970 to 1974. During that time, he may have donned a wetsuit and done a skit based on the Broadway production mentioned, and that was perhaps what Kirby saw when working on the next issue of Jimmy Olsen. I don't think it's likely he came up with Flippa earlier and held the character close to his vest to use later. He certainly seems to have been borne of the moment in 1970. 

I can't locate the account I read mentioning Flip Wilson's connection with the character, and who knows, I may be mis-remembering the whole thing, or the person giving telling the story may have had it wrong. But that is how I remember the story going. I scanned Mark Evanier's site for the story, but had no luck. I'm thinking I must have read it in an issue of Back Issue magazine at this point, and most of those are currently in my storage unit.

* I could absolutely see this year being the one in which the Pueblo is finally returned to the U.S. just before the election, in time for Trump to claim it as a victory achievable by no other American President in fifty years.

As for Kirby, I didn't know that about Flip Wilson. Don't believe I've ever seen that bit, or heard about the Cleavon Little play.