What is #(nop) and where does it come from?

Listing docker history, some layer commands are prepended with a #(nop) (no-operation?) comment. Where does it come from?

it marks your non-RUN steps. For RUN-Steps in your Dockerfile you see the command executed.
For other Steps like ENV foo=bar you will see the marker #(nop) to tell you, that this is not a command, that has been executed.