Mort (Mortadelo) Mort is a bald detective with pebble glasses and a long nose who usually wears a black
frock coat. He is always fighting with Phil, his partner and boss, mostly because he tends to mess things up, usually to Phil's discomfort: his profound lack of skills to make his disguises believable and common sense have often made him a danger to everyone around him. His favourite hobby is wearing all sorts of (sometimes outrageous) disguises - professional and historical clothes and gear, animals, inanimate objects, even small-sized vehicles like miniature
blimps and
mopeds - which he mostly dons for special tasks or when he is on the run from Phil or his boss, and which all include his signature collar which obscures part of his mouth. He holds a grudge against Bacterio because he used to have lush hair until Bacterio offered him a supposed medicine against baldness, which actually made his hair fall out. His real name,
Mortadelo, comes from , a kind of sausage.
Phil Pi ()/ Mort's partner and chief. He only has two hairs on his head and wears a white shirt with a black bowtie and red trousers. He usually insults Mort because Mort is quite clumsy, but is often at the receiving end of any mishaps which come their way, mostly in the shape of their outraged boss. Mortadelo habitually addresses him as (Spanish for "chief" or "boss"). He's also incredibly accident-prone, capable of being injured in comical and painful ways. As the leader of the two-man team, Phil is an educated man and an expert in a variety of fields. In the movies, however, Filemón is shown to be just as ditzy as Mortadelo (especially in the animated movie
Mortadelo and Filemon: Mission Implausible).
Vicente / Called for short or just , Vicente is Mort and Phil's boss. While he, as the head of the organisation, lives in splendour, indulging himself in expensive beverages and
Cuban cigars, he keeps the T.I.A.'s operatives on an extremely tight budget. Vicente is bald and has a dense moustache, which makes him the object of mocking abuse by his underlings as a human
walrus. He is very short-tempered and usually gets angry with Mort and Phil because they fail in their missions, making a mess of everything - occasionally at the expense of his own possessions. Just as often, however, he ends up as the one being chased by his underlings, as his frequently short-sighted assignments, and his habitual failure to properly introduce them, cause them no end of grief.
Professor Bacterio The T.I.A.'s black-bearded scientist and chief inventor. Mort blames him for his baldness (he had tried a new hair-strengthening concoction on Mort's then-lush mane, which made the hair fall out instead) and therefore the doctor is the unwilling prime recipient of Mort's practical jokes and revenge acts. His inventions, which are intended to assist Mort and Phil in their assignments, often fail quite spectacularly, mostly because they either achieve the opposite of what they are supposed to do, or work perfectly but fail at the most inconvenient moment. His name comes from
bacteria, and acts as a parody of the character Q from the
James Bond franchise.
Ofelia The fat and vain secretary of Superintendente Vicente. She is still single and would like to become involved with someone (usually with Mort), but so far her attempts have been in vain. She is quite touchy about her lack of luck with a relationship and being called fat; she reacts with corresponding violence when either of topics are brought up; and with her considerable weight, this is nothing to be ignored. She was the first female character created for the series and acts like a parody of
Miss Moneypenny from the
James Bond franchise.
Irma The bombshell secretary of El Súper. Both Mort and Phil have a huge crush on her (much to Ofelia's chagrin), but she is not interested. This character disappeared from the series after only 24 volumes.
F. Ibañez The creator of the series himself has a number of
cameo appearances, either by name or in cartoon form. Mostly he is portrayed as the bald and bespectacled "Artist of the Nation", in perhaps the same league as
Pablo Picasso. On several occasions, the series' characters often long to be "as rich as Ibáñez".
Rompetechos Rompetechos is a small man in a black suit, with an oversized head, receding black hair and a small moustache. He is always put in as a comic relief character; his short-sightedness causes him to react in ways which causes some inconvenience to Mort and Phil if they happen to cross his path. He has his own comic series (little known outside Spain) and makes cameo appearances in Ibañez's other works.
The Minister Vicente's boss (and the only person who he ever shows deference to). His appearance changes constantly throughout the series. In recent appearances has been replaced by a caricature of the
President of the Government of Spain at the time.
Señora Superintendente The wife of Vicente (also with an ever-changing face). She is in charge of their household.
Bestiájez The giant agent of the T.I.A. He usually has to hunt down Mort and Phil because they do not want to do their missions. A rather minor character, his face has changed many times in the past. Many other agents appear, most of them having descriptive surnames ending in "
-ez" ("Bestiájez" comes from "bestia", beast/brute).
Tete Cohete Tete Cohete (lit. "
Tete Rocket") is a preteen boy who is an enthusiastic amateur mechanic and inventor. He habitually tinkers with mechanical devices, turning many of them into rocket-powered (hence his name) or hazardous contraptions, and because he neglects to warn other people about his modifications, often causes a lot of grief to any adults in his vicinity. Tete Cohete was the main protagonist for another Ibáñez comic series which ran from 1981 to 1986. He makes infrequent cameos in other Ibáñez titles, particularly
Mortadelo y Filemón and
El botones Sacarino.
Parody characters There are also parodies of numerous celebrities and political personalities such as
Ronald Reagan,
José María Aznar or (in three albums in 2017)
Donald Trump. ==Albums==