Who Is Mork Sphincter? The Moon Knight 'Character' You've Already Seen, But Didn't Know About

Between Oscar Isaac's character's split identities, all the Egyptian mythology, and that adorable hippo that just showed up, there's a lot going on in "Moon Knight." With all this in mind, you'd be forgiven for missing a finer point or two while trying to keep up with Marvel's most brain-bending series yet. But it turns out, there's an entirely new character you may not have realized recently joined the Marvel canon: Mork Sphincter.

Okay, fine: "Moon Knight" is a weird show, but they didn't actually name a character Mork Sphincter. But there was someone on set who played that role: Isaac's brother, Michael Benjamin Hernandez. As a character suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder with an alter ego that appears physically, Isaac's Marc Spector often has to chat with Steven Grant via reflections, and vice versa. This is where Hernandez comes in. Isaac's brother was hired as the actor's stand-in. As he explains to Marvel.com, "If Oscar was playing Marc at the time, I would play Steven opposite of him. Then we would switch around, and he would play the Steven role and I would do the Marc role."

Although stand-ins don't always appear prominently screen, they need to be camera-ready and as well-rehearsed as their counterparts. Hernandez says he went all-out for the part, physically training alongside Isaac, memorizing both roles, and even applying prosthetics to match Isaac's features. With so much invested in the role, it only makes sense for Hernandez to come up with a name for this not-quite-Marc character. Thus, Mork Sphincter was born.

That's right: Hernandez dubbed this variation of Marc "Mork Sphincter," a hilarious name that calls to mind slightly off-brand labels or Mad Magazine parodies. "It was just this weird, mutated abomination of Marc with a fake prosthetic nose," he tells Marvel.com when describing the transformation into Mork. His quote about getting into character is too good not to share in full:

"I had never done the whole casting thing where they pour the green goo over your face...and I was totally game for all of that. I was totally game for like, yeah, you want to give me a wig or fake nose? We even thought of fake chin parts and cheeks. But then we established that if we were going to film from behind my shoulder, the nose was the prominent piece to get. And so that made it feel like it was actually Oscar there, because he has a beautiful schnoz, and we wanted to recreate that."

So there we go. The latest Marvel hero, Mork Sphincter, has yet unnamed superpowers, but we know he has a "beautiful schnoz." While there are currently no reports of future Mork-focused projects, Hernandez seems like he'd be game to disappear into the role again if ever necessary. "You could see that it worked well," he told Marvel. "Mork Sphincter will always be a part of me."

"Moon Knight" is currently airing on Disney+.