Daniel Pesina

Daniel Pesina (born December 1, 1958) is an American martial arts expert and a former freelance employee of Midway. He is the actor who played Johnny Cage and ninja characters Sub-Zero, Scorpion, Reptile, Smoke, and Noob Saibot as well as help create the video games Mortal Kombat and Mortal Kombat II. His younger brother Carlos, whom he worked with on the first two Mortal Kombat titles, remained with Midway until the company's closure.

In 1994, Daniel Pesina promoted BloodStorm (a fighting game designed by former Midway employee who assisted in the making of Mortal Kombat series) in an advert, dressed up as Johnny Cage. He had already parted from Midway at this time, so his characters were played by different actors in subsequent installments: the ninja roles were taken over by John Turk in Mortal Kombat 3 and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, while Johnny Cage would be played by Chris Alexander in Mortal Kombat Trilogy. He and his brother Carlos also secretly worked on Tattoo Assassins, another competing game to Mortal Kombat.

Daniel Pesina appeared as one of Shredder's foot soldiers in the 1991 film Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze. In the 2003 martial arts movie Book of Swords, which also starred fellow MK actors Katalin Zamiar, Ho-Sung Pak and Richard Divizio, he played a hitman whose task was to take out the film's leading man. Daniel and Carlos also appeared in a videogame-based comedy film entitled Press Start, which was released to DVD on September 25, 2007. In it, Daniel's character is called Sasori, which is Japanese for "Scorpion". As of 2004, Daniel is a teacher at the Chicago Wushuguan School.