We first meet Mr. Miyagi (Pat Morita) as the maintenance man in the apartment complex Daniel and his mom move into in the first “Karate Kid.” During the movie, we find out that Miyagi once lived in Hawaii, where he got married. But after WWII began, Miyagi and his pregnant wife were put in an internment camp at Manzanar. While Miyagi was off fighting for the U.S. army, his wife died in childbirth because there were no doctors on-site to help. This tragic backstory was deepened in “The Next Karate Kid,” the oft-forgotten fourth movie in the franchise that replaced Ralph Macchio with Hilary Swank. That film opens with Mr. Miyagi being honored for his service in the war, all while the presenter talks about the horrors of Japanese-American interment camps.

However, apart from this and some vague information we get about Miyagi’s childhood in Japan during “The Karate Kid Part II,” we’ve known very little about the man up to this point.

In the third episode of “Cobra Kai” season 6, Daniel discovers a hidden box in Mr. Miyagi’s old apartment. The box includes a newspaper clip of a story about the police looking for a man who committed robbery and assault — one identified as Keisuke Miyagi. They also find a fake passport and later discover that Miyagi was involved with a shady boxing gym. We even find out that he fled the U.S. after the alleged robbery.

The fake name is actually a clever nod to a decades-long mystery about Miyagi’s true name, which has actually changed with every movie. The first film identifies him as Hideo Miyagi, but “Part II” changes this to Nariyoshi Miyagi, the name used on Miyagi’s gravestone in “Cobra Kai.” The name Keisuke, meanwhile, wasn’t mentioned at all until “The Next Karate Kid.”