Not much is known about the life of J (or James Darrel Edwards III) prior to being recruited into Men in Black. His appearance as a small child in 1969 in Men in Black 3 would place the year of his birth as 1965. His father, United States Army Colonel James Darrell Edwards II, was working security at Kennedy Space Center for the Apollo 11 launch, when he was murdered by the alien Boris the Animal after assisting Agent K in stopping a chain of events that would have led to K's death and a large-scale invasion of Earth forty years later. Nothing else is known about the preceding twenty-eight years except that James became a member of the New York City Police Department. J is said to be a big fan of video games and rap music. A line of dialogue from Men in Black II suggests he owned a Game Boy.
