Daniel Pesina (born 1959 in Chicago, Illinois, USA) played Johnny Cage in Mortal Kombat and Mortal Kombat II, and he also portrayed the ninja characters Ermac, Reptile, Scorpion, and Sub-Zero in the 1st and 2nd games as well (also including the secret ninja characters Noob Saibot and Smoke in MKII). Pesina left Midway in 1994 because of something about "Royality Checks". Not too long after he left, he wore a Johnny Cage costume in a Strata (game company) game advertisement for a game titled BloodStorm, because their game was a rival to Mortal Kombat.
After his departure from Midway, further ventures into other fighting games proved unsuccessful. After the failure of BloodStorm, he and his brother Carlos (Raiden in the 2D Mortal Kombat games) assisted Data East with its digitized fighting game, Tattoo Assassins, which, despite an extensive feature in a summer '94 issue of EGM, never made it to arcades. In 1995, he and fellow MK actors Ho Sung Pak, Katalin Zamiar, and Dr. Phillip Ahn, M.D. all appeared in a fighting game produced exclusively for the Atari Jaguar titled Thea Realm Fighters, but it was never released after Atari ceased production on the failed system later that year.
Pesina appeared as one of Shredder's foot soldiers in the 1991 movie Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze. In the 2003 martial arts movie The Book of Swords, which also starred fellow MK actors Zamiar, Pak and Richard Divizio, he played a hitman whose task was to take out the movie'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. Daniel's character is called Sasori, which is Japanese for Scorpion
As of 2004, Daniel Pesina is a teacher at the Chicago Wushuguan School, while Carlos is working with Warner Bros.
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