Scrapped Big Boss backstory from MGS1

Recently an online friend sent a scan from a manual of Metal Gear Solid, which gives Big Boss a detailed backstory that was later scrapped/retconned for Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. I thought this backstory was very interesting and I wanted to share it here, the scan is pretty hard to read so I wrote up a transcript of it.

Born as a third generation Japanese American on Hawaii, Big Boss lost his entire American side of family during a Japanese Imperial Navy’s attack during World War II. While his Japanese side of family was placed in concentration camps, he joined a Japanese American infantry unit (the 442) in his teens. He gained his first combat experience fighting against Nazis in france, his unit contributing to freeing towns from invading Nazi units. After the war, Big Boss returned back to the U.S. but suffered from prejudice against him due to his ethnicity. This stunned his patriotism, and he turned his attention to fighting for himself and his own ideals.
Acting as a mercenary for the French, Big Boss participated in the Congo Crisis of 1961, and continued fighting in Africa until the second Congo Crisis in 1968. After these skirmishes, he offered his combat services in Asia, Africa, and the Middle and Far East. Just as the conflict in Vietnam commenced, he participated in the Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol (LRRP) as an “unofficial soldier” (or mercenary), attached to a team of Green Berets and Ranger units. His skills earned the “great mythological soldier” moniker. Once the Vietnam War ended, Big Boss took part in over 70 missions attached to groups such as the SOG (Special Operations Group), the Wild Geese, and Delta Force.
An abundance of governments, military organizations, and terrorist groups contacted Big Boss to recruit him. However, he denied many (often well paid) missions, and only participated conflicts where people’s liberation was concerned. This drew attention from journalists who championed this perfect killer. By then, the now middle aged Big Boss was diagnosed as senile due to combat injuries. However, the U.S. government highly valued his warfare ability and covertly agreed with Big Boss on an external fertilization program (a project codenamed Son of Big Boss: Les Enfant Terrible, and also known as the Eve Project) using external DNA procedures. Despite its inhuman nature, the U.S. military deemed this necessary during the Cold War period.
After a combat wound that blinded him in one eye, he began to participate in military education. In the 1990’s (when he was more than 70), he was appointed as a commander of FoxHound. With ample resources, he seized his chance at a lifelong dream, and built an independent militarized nation named Outer Heaven. A covert operative codenamed Solid Snake disbanded this nation, but was unable to capture Big Boss, who escaped and built another homeland in the Middle East, naming this Zanzibar. He used refugee and mercenary labor, but the plan failed after Solid Snake was again dispatched. Big Boss died in the uprising, and after the government collected his corpse, his genetic information was analyzed using his remaining tissues. It was then saved as a sample for the base (nucleotide) experiments and added to the awareness patterns of an experimental unit called the Genome Soldiers.

My Thoughts

First of all, the reason this was scrapped for MGS3 is most likely because he would have been too young to be involved in WWII. Instead, we learn in Snake Eater that The Boss, Big Boss’s mentor, fought in France during WWII. (Notably the beaches of Normandy, where she gave birth to her child).

Another part of Big Boss’s original backstory that was brought over to another character is the fact that he's Japanese-American. This heritage is a very central part of Kazuhira Miller’s character. In Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker we learn that Miller was the son of a young Japanese woman working as a prostitute in Yokosuka, which she fled to after Tokyo was bombed by the United States. His father was an American officer occupying the town. Kazuhira was named that because it means ‘peace’, his mother saw him as her hope of peace in post-war Japan. Tying this back to Big Boss, his original backstory also has him experience prejudice due to being mixed Japanese-American, like Kaz did.
Something else that was brought up is how this storyline fits with the themes of MGS3, that even the best people can do horrible things due to their circumstances, and that someone who grew up hating the world can still contribute to the reason they hated it in the first place. This is something I think Miller exemplifies, since he grew up in the aftermath of a war that destroyed much of his country, yet went on to work for Militaires Sans Frontieres, which largely profited off of war.

Lastly, one small detail that I really enjoyed is how Les Enfants Terribles is also called the Eve Project. I can’t say if this was taken into consideration when EVA was introduced in MGS3, or if she was just called that because of the biblical imagery of ADAM, EVA, and the Snake. In my opinion it probably was just a coincidence, but it’s still a really interesting one since EVA was the surrogate mother for Solid and Liquid Snake.
I also found this detail cool because it reminded me of Neon Genesis Evangelion, but I don’t really have any deep analysis to give based on that.