After working together on Evil Dead, filmmaker Sam Raimi and actor Bruce Campbell became frequent collaborators.
In Spider-Man, Campbell showed up as the wrestling ring announcer who gives the wall-crawler his name. Spider-Man 2 saw him play an irritating theatre usher, while Spider-Man 3 allowed the actor to pester Peter Parker as an obnoxious French waiter.
Had Spider-Man 4 happened, it's widely believed Campbell would have played Mysterio in a brief sequence showing the web-slinger marching the villain into a police station (and confirming theories Quentin Beck had spent the past several years taking on different identities).
When Raimi made his Marvel return with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, so did Campbell. While we'd heard the plan was for him to portray Balder the Brave as a member of The Illuminati, reshoots are thought to have led to him instead becoming that Earth-838 pizza vendor.
Talking to ComicBook.com, Campbell confirmed that all these characters are the same person.
"You're assuming that I know anything about Marvel lore, and I appreciate that," Campbell initially said when he was asked about those Mysterio theories. "I watched Doctor Strange in a movie theater, and I was like, 'What the flying hell are they talking about?'"
"And then there was a guy who was an assistant type guy, and I was talking to him about it, and I go, 'Man, there's a lot of words, a lot of dialogue,' and he goes, 'Oh, no, no. I needed all of that. I needed to know all of that. I'm so grateful for that movie.' And I'm like, 'OK pal.' So, yeah, I don't know."
"The cameos are like, in the Spider-Man movies - if you know anything about the multiverse, you know now, retroactively, I'm in the multiverse now because of Doctor Strange," he continued. "I'm not a pizza vendor, OK? That would be a massive mistake to think I'm just a pizza vendor, or an usher, or a ring announcer, or a maître d'. It's called the multiverse, my friend."
"So, yes, he is the same character, but we don't know who he really is. It has not been revealed yet. I just got off the phone with the guys at Marvel, and we're getting close to finding out." However, when Mysterio came up again, all the actor would say was, "I can't confirm or deny."
Something tells us he's just having fun here, but these comments may be based on conversations with Raimi. However, we only anticipate Campbell returning to the MCU if Raimi does, so he'd best hope those Avengers: Secret Wars rumours are true!