he's also known as...

mcdonell benedict miller

master miller

hell master

commander miller

and, of course, his nickname...
kaz!

if it's underlined, please hover over it for delightful tooltip commentary courtesy of yours truly. like usual, every box is draggable.

...with all the fat lovingly trimmed off his story. this is the Sparknotes of lore about him, because if i don't rein myself in, i'll never get this page done. i've already drafted his little biography three times. help me.

Kazuhira Miller (カズヒラ・ミラー) is a character from the Metal Gear series, first introduced in Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake for the MSX2 home computer in 1990, a game then exclusive to Japan.

He was the subcommander of both the Militaires Sans Frontières and the Diamond Dogs, the founder for the latter, where he handled all sorts of matters for both military organizations.

Later in life, after he left the Diamond Dogs, he served as a survival instructor for the SAS, the Green Berets, the U.S. Marines, and FOXHOUND—an elite black ops unit of the United States Army.

Born to a prostitute in Yokosuka, Japan in 1946 as a mixed-race person of both Japanese and American descent, he spent the majority of his adult life working for all manners of military forces. The first of which was the JSDF, but after finding that his skills were unappreciated, he quit and drifted around the globe until eventually joining MSF as its second-in-command.

He was a natural charmer, charismatic enough to sweep almost any woman he wanted off their feet, with an easygoing air about him which made others gravitate towards him. During the days of MSF, he was an "insatiable womanizer", as the fairer sex was his weakness. He was a shrewd businessman too, however, using the funds of a shady business partner to further the development of MSF.

After the devastating, casualty-ridden fall of MSF, his personality hardened into something fitting for an individual spurred on by anger and grief, and he channeled his rage into the establishment of the Diamond Dogs. He lost his home, comrades, and everything he'd worked so hard for, so founding the Diamond Dogs was an outlet for him to hopefully get revenge against Cipher—the same business partner he used to develop MSF—for what they'd taken from him.

While training a group of Mujahideen soldiers in Afghanistan later on, his unit was ambushed and slaughtered with deadly efficiency by Cipher's special forces team, the Parasite Unit. The men in his unit, survivors from the fall of MSF nine years ago, stood no chance, and he was the lone survivor.

The Parasite Unit gave him to the Soviets where he was brutally interrogated and tortured for weeks on end. He lost his right arm and left leg below the knee as a result, and was nearly dead by the time he was rescued and brought back to the Diamond Dogs' Mother Base. His rescuer was a man he thought was his best friend, who had spent the last nine years in a coma.

The further loss at the hands of Cipher only enraged him more, and in order to keep the pain fresh in his mind, he refused the aid of prosthetics, only accepting a rudimentary leg prosthetic and a crutch to allow him to walk. He suffered from severe post traumatic-stress and phantom pains thereafter.

Kazuhira eventually got his wish, killing the man behind the destruction of everything he cared about, but he found that it didn't make anything feel better; in his words, he said, "it doesn't feel like this is over... and I'll never be whole again."

Somewhere during the events of the Phantom Pain, he learned the man he thought was his best friend was a decoy, and the real man had left him to suffer at the hands of Cipher while focusing on his own goals in South Africa. This destroyed Kazuhira.

He felt as if he was left to the wolves by the man he believed was his closest comrade, and from then on, he swore he'd put the wheels in motion for his once-friend's downfall. Some time after the Phantom Pain Incident, he left the Diamond Dogs and returned to employment by official governments.

During the Zanzibar Land Disturbance around fifteen years after the events of the Phantom Pain Incident, he was hired as a survival consultant for FOXHOUND. He assisted Solid Snake—a legendary special-ops soldier working for FOXHOUND—over radio in his mission to infiltrate Zanzibar Land, giving all manners of advice, be it technical or moral support. Kazuhira's past-comrade and now-enemy was seemingly killed by Solid Snake during this incident.

He sounded happier during this time, possibly having started to recover from the mental wounds inflicted on him over the years. He was married with a child during this time as well.

Around 2005, he moved to Alaska, and would eventually be murdered in his home at the hands of an assassin later implied to be someone he worked alongside while with the Diamond Dogs.

i will likely revise and add more to this soon.

press the colored buttons under the icon to flip between photos of my hubby from each game

prior to losing his right arm, he could play the guitar! in the fourth song on my homepage, that's him playing. isn't it gorgeous? i get choked up every time i listen to it.

he also composed the first song—in TPP, it's said that paz wrote the lyrics herself which conflicts with what was established in peace walker, where he was the writer of the lyrics instead—but he is a terrible singer, according to paz who reported as such in one of her audio diaries.

his favorite food is curry, and he gave one of the MSF's curry rations a name that reminded him of a woman he liked.

during the phantom pain, he started a hamburger chain he named miller's maxi buns, and the juxtaposition between his serious, solemn nature in the rest of the game and the hamburger tapes was like night and day.
he sounded so happy and enthusiastic again, just like he was during peace walker. it just made me fall even deeper in love with him.

kaz is also a smoker, having been seen smoking from a kiseru in one of the first cutscenes in peace walker. i shan't voice my thoughts on this because it happens to be against waifu.ist's TOS.

people constantly think kaz is blind due to the appearance of his eyes and what he says at the ending of mission 31 in the phantom pain; "you'll be my eyes," when this idea is... not true. he visibly looks around all the time in the game, even after that cutscene.

besides, a worker at konami said his eyes are very sensitive to light, but he's not blind. his photophobia is why he wears his signature sunglasses all the time. more about his eyes later.

in cécile's briefing files in peace walker, kaz occasionally tries to butt into the conversation, vying for a chance to talk to her, but he fumbles every time without fail.

he has a thing for french women; he initially let the MSF take cécile in because she was a pretty parisienne.

he's fluent in japanese, english and spanish!

his womanizing tendencies got him into hot water during peace walker, where he got the shit beat out of him for having relations with a woman who already had a boyfriend. in the sauna, no less.

i didn't include his MG2:SS transceiver icon because it's tiny and would look terrible as an icon option here. when konami rereleased metal gear 2 as a mobile game in 2004, they changed the transceiver designs of the characters to make them look similar to how they look now. konami kind of fucked him up, i can't lie, but i love him and his scuffed hairline to pieces anyway. he's handsome no matter what.

plenty of metal gear characters don't have canon birthdays, and kaz is one of them. his birth year is 1946. his unknown date of birth is likely due to not having been a registered citizen in japan because of its birthright laws. if your father was unknown, you couldn't be japanese, so the specific date of his birth was never recorded.

he liked to record and listen to the sounds of steam locomotives, and would not stop talking about them if you got him started.

his daughter's name is catherine! she never had any real introduction to the story, only being mentioned in the manual to MG2:SS, and removed dialogue from the game itself. she was also mentioned in the MGS4 database, but no new information of note was given.

during the phantom pain, he tried to say he hated kids, but wanted to give the rescued child soldiers an education.

on one occasion, kaz was established to be a silly drunk. after getting a little too soused during one of MSF's parties, he dropped trou and mooned everybody present.

kaz gets nostalgic randomly, and laments about the past whenever that feeling strikes. while talking about what to do on a mission, he suddenly fell into deep thought about his neighbors at his childhood home and how they had a pet pig named Pooyan. he named that kind of mission a "pooyan mission" because of the pig.

if you call kaz during mission 43 of the phantom pain, he gets audibly choked up with emotion at the loss of more comrades.

his eyes are cloudy by the time mission 31 of the phantom pain happens, but the reason for it is... frustratingly never really explained.
people try to use code talker's words about the "eyes on kazuhira" as a reason, but it was supposedly a mistranslation.
in japanese, this line apparently said something along the lines of "keep an eye on kazuhira", likely foreshadowing his eventual want for revenge against his best friend.
once i get around to making the headcanons page, you can read a more in-depth take about his eyes, because i have thoughts.