Remember last week when late night host Stephen Colbert brought back the character of Stephen Colbert, the star of Comedy Central’s faux-conservative talk show The Colbert Report? Apparently Comedy Central’s lawyers do. During last night’s episode of the real Stephen Colbert’s current program, The Late Show, the host announced "immediately after that show CBS’ top lawyer was contacted by the top lawyer of another company to say that the character Stephen Colbert is their intellectual property."

"Which is surprising," Colbert added, "[because] I never considered that guy much of an intellectual."

To appease the lawyers, Colbert retired his famous Stephen Colbert character, only to follow it with the immediate reveal of that character’s "twin cousin" also named Stephen Colbert. The new Colbert seems to be a slightly more macho, and definitely more likely to shop at Kohls version of the Comedy Central character.

In the bit, the third Stephen Colbert wore an American flag button-down and a permanently cocked eye. He spoke with a gravel as he explained just how "twin cousins" work. Stephen Colbert, third edition, closed with the announcement that he’d be joining the Late Show team.

The real Colbert followed the introduction with a new segment called WERD, which is like The Word from The Colbert Report but spelled with an "E."

Today’s big winner is the slash-fiction community. Its authors now have three different Colberts to work into some of the most knotty novellas since my infamous erotica series inspired by Michael Keaton’s Multiplicity.