Peter K. Rosenthal is the senior film critic of The Onion’s Film Standard. He is also, depending on which video you watch, the true director of Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, a failed investor in a Chicago seafood restaurant, or an earnest sex-ed teacher.

Each of the on-camera film reviews on the satiric Web site can range from dry non sequiturs to gentle absurdism to the fever dream of Gravity, in which he loses his mind, strips naked, paints himself and kills his cameraman. And that’s just the beginning of this character—one of a series of beginnings that resets with every new video.

“He’s the same guy every time, but he doesn’t live in a consistent universe,” says Cole Bolton, editor of The Onion.

These disjointed, mad histories exist within this one, seemingly dry, seemingly scholarly character, fine-tuned by actor Ron E. Rains to seem, at first, just like your average self-regarding film critic. But then, in every video, things get deeply weird.

“He’s the kid from The Shining, but he’s also in the Symbionese Liberation Army. That makes no sense,” says Jen Spyra, senior writer for The Onion and acting head of editorial video. “There is no continuum with him, so we’re never married to a backstory. Everything is in service to the movie.”

According to Bolton, only three things ever stay the same with Rosenthal: the name, his demeanor and his sweater vest. That’s it. Everything else is up for grabs.

On set in Chicago in October, Rains starts his first take of the day, in a review of Interstellar, which neither he nor the video’s writers have seen. This three-minute video, with zero camera movement, one static medium close-up and only one performer, will take three hours and well over a hundred takes to complete.