Characters / Metroid - Samus Aran

Main Character Index | Samus Aran | Metroids | Space Pirates | X Parasites | Galactic Federation |
Chozo | Bounty Hunters | Other Antagonists | Others | Noncanonical Characters

---

"Don't worry... I'll end this. Once and for all."

Voiced by: Jennifer Hale (Metroid Prime series, uncredited pain grunts), Vanessa Marshall (Metroid Prime series, uncredited death scream), Alesia Glidewell (Super Smash Bros. series), Jessica Martin (Metroid: Other M English), Ai Kobayashi (Metroid: Other M Japanese), Nieves "Nikki" García (Metroid Dread, dialogue), Holly Renaut (Metroid Dread, scream)

"The Cosmos. In the vast depths of the Universe, the history of humanity is but a flash of light from a lone star. The life of a single person should be lost in space and time. But among the stars, there is one light that burns brighter than all others. The light of Samus Aran. Her battles extend beyond her life, and etch themselves into history."

— Metroid Prime's Intro Narration

---

The Hunter. The Entrusted One. The Protector of the Galaxy. Nintendo's first ever Action Girl and the Trope Namer of Samus Is a Girl.

Samus Aran made history in 1986 by being one of the first video game heroines. Samus Aran is the main protagonist of the series and considered to be an icon of strength within her own universe. She's regarded as the finest killer alive in a society spanning at least one inhabited galaxy under a still as yet unseen umbrella nation; which comprises trillions of individuals, some of whom know of other populated galaxies, for which Aran has waged a perpetual war with nomadic inter-stellar brigands and all manner of criminal scum in its defense for the near entirety of her career, a career that stretches through the ages and has become myth. As such, she is held in such high regard to the degree that he, she, or it is often mistaken for an urban legend or patron saint of bounty hunters, though supplemental material reveals her to be a woman of humble origins and surprising means. Although seemingly remorseless and without scruples, she possesses untold benevolence and humanity despite her violent profession and strives to be a force for good, spreading light into the darkest corners of space. Underneath her armored suit, she's also very beautiful, and regularly recognized as one of the sexiest women in video games.

---

A-D

• The Ace: Incredibly experienced and talented warrior in both ranged and close-quarter combat, genius historian, supreme hacker and technician, master of espionage and stealth, extremely knowledgeable biologist, keen survivalist, unrivaled acrobat, master linguist, eagle-eyed archaeologist, professional particle physicist, top-tier xenologist, immensely skilled pilot, all-round engineer, enlightened meditative spiritualist, intuitive tracker, skilled chemist, Cool Ship designer and a gorgeous and voluptuous hottie.
• Action Girl: One of the first major examples in all of video game history, if not the first. She's been involved in numerous and very dangerous missions and succeeded in all of them thanks to her physical and intellectual skills. She's defeated legions, hunted impossibly dangerous quarries and walked over every nightmare that dares cross her path and then some. She wiped out the Universal threats embodied in the Metroids, Gorea, the X, the Phazon mutagen, and the Ing. She's battled an NGO Super Power for her entire life, reducing them to a bad memory, and she takes on her family's murderer every other week, eventually wiping him from the face of existence with an Earth-Shattering Kaboom. And that's what she gets up to in her spare time.
• Adaptational Dumbass: In the Super 4-koma comics, Samus is depicted as a hair-triggered trigger-happy ditz, such as having an obsession with round things (including bosses), curling inside her Morph Ball, smacking things with her arm cannon (before Samus Returns made it a melee counter move), turning off power with her Grapple Beam, and shooting a red door five times. A red laboratory door. In the games proper, she is a very professional woman who knows how to do her job.
• Aerith and Bob: The "Aerith" to her own parents, Rodney and Virginia. Also to Adam Malkovich and his BOTTLE SHIP crew. In fact Samus seems to be the only human in the series without conventional name.
• Affectionate Nickname: The Tallon IV Chozo in Prime call her "the Hatchling", while Anthony Higgs in Other M calls her "Princess." Adam almost always calls her “Lady”. The fact that ADAM rarely calls her "Lady" during the events of Dread is a big clue that something is amiss.
• All Your Powers Combined: A minor example. In Metroid Dread it is noted that Samus has both Thoha and Mawkin Chozo DNA within her. The former slowed the development of her Metroid powers (as the tribe could control Metroids) until her clash with Raven Beak awakened it, and the latter gives Samus her enhanced physical capabilities. Since she explicitly got her Mawkin DNA from Raven Beak himself, it's implied that Grey Voice was part of the Thoha tribe as he also donated DNA to her.
• Amazonian Beauty: Zig-zagged. Official art in 1994 described her as "strong and muscular" and when her suit came off at the end of Super Metroid revealing her wearing a cropped halter top and panties, she certainly looked it. She retained this build in Metroid Fusion before progressively becoming more slender throughout the games, until Metroid: Samus Returns finally gave her back some of her old muscle definition and athletic physique, as did Metroid Dread and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in her Fusion/Zero Mission postgame attire costumes, as seen here. Her design seems to have settled into the muscular profile for someone physically strong but highly acrobatic.
• Ambiguously Gay: The non-canon manga Victory Techniques for Metroid has a segment where Samus poses with two pretty, bikini-clad women as part of Samus' promotional video which she fondly reminisces on, implying she has same-sex attraction. Though other characters and narration refer to Samus as male, the final pages allude to "the chance to meet the true Samus", indicating that the other characters calling Samus that is to avoid spoiling an otherwise-endgame twist.
• And Then John Was a Zombie: After wiping out the Metroids to extinction, she slowly turns into a humanoid variation of one over the course of Fusion and Dread. By the end of the latter, Raven Beak reveals that she's fully become one, and Samus demonstrates the full suite of Metroid abilities, including energy absorption and self-directed mutation, transforming her partially organic cyborg power armor into a fully Metroid-esque suit.
• Animal Motifs: Metroids, the species local to her franchise. She is the project of the Chozo for the Ultimate Warrior, she has a deep sense of family, shares history with them, and becomes one over the course of Fusion and Dread.
• Archnemesis Dad: As of Dread, with the reveal that Raven Beak was one of the genetic donor of her Chozo DNA. The wicked Chozo even has the nerve to call Samus his daughter.
• Arm Cannon: Her primary weapon among a veritable arsenal.
• Art Evolution:
  • The look of her armor has changed over time, steadily becoming more and more feminine. At first her armor was far more unisex and looked like she could either be male or female underneath but after "Other M" looks like only a woman could be under the armor. It is best done by comparing the title posters in Metroid II: Return of Samus and Metroid: Samus Returns.
  • The designs for how Samus looked under her armour were inconsistent throughout the early games. In Metroid she wore a purple-red long-sleeved, legless leotard, boots, and had long, free-flowing brown hair,^note while playing in armourless mode her hair turns green if she has the Varia item and if the game was beaten quickly, the leotard was swapped with a bikini in the ending. In Metroid II she ditched the boots and replaced the leotard with a tank top and bikini bottom. Super had her wearing a black sleeveless, legless, neck covering, belly exposing one piece suit, wristbands, gave her back her boots, and switched her hair colour to blonde done up in a ponytail while in her armour, and a more athletic-looking body type. Fusion switched the one piece to a blue sleeveless, midriff baring top and short-shorts, and also changed her wristbands and boots to blue. Prime didn't show her body outside of her armour but based her hairstyle on the official art of Super. Zero Mission changed her body type to a less muscular, more slender build, and threw out all the separate clothing pieces for a light-blue full body, form-fitting suit, dubbed the "Zero Suit", though some endings have her wearing something similar to an orange version of her Fusion outfit in "civilian" settings. All subsequent games have used variations of the Zero Suit, though Samus Returns returns her body type to the more athletic build from Super/Fusion. "Zero Suit Samus" in Super Smash Bros. For the 3DS/Wii U uses her Fusion and Zero Mission civilian outfits as alternate costumes.
• The Assimilator: As of Fusion, she can absorb unique Core X and gain their powers. Even before that her suit could absorb and integrate nearly anything she found useful and accepted tech from at least six different species as well as Metroid DNA.
• Badass Adorable: In her younger years. The manga depicts an inexperienced Samus training and using her Power Suit at the age of 14, still with some of the sense of wonderment she had as a young child.
• Badass Cape: Aran sometimes wears either a billowing desert poncho or a high-collared tunic over her armour. It's awesome.
• Badass in Distress: She is captured by Space Pirates in Metroid Prime: Federation Force.
• Badass Longcoat: Owns a pure white one in the manga, and yes, she can still kick your ass with it. Plus, a matching nifty wide brimmed sun hat that would make the Queen of England jealous to boot.
• Bad Powers, Good People: By the end of Dread, she is a Metroid-human hybrid with all that entails, able to manifest a spiky green carapace and possessing the Metroid's signature Vampiric Draining. Despite this, she is still on the side of the Federation, helping to maintain order and justice in the galaxy.
• Bag of Spilling: Between most entries in the series, Samus typically loses all her previous upgrades and expansions, resulting in being forced to seek out new ones in each entry. Inverted in Other M in a controversial fashion, where Samus is explicitly shown to at least still have most of her iconic upgrades, but refrains from using them until she receives authorization to do so.
• Barbie Doll Anatomy: When Samus says her farewell to Joey in the Samus and Joey comic, one still portrays her this way◊ a bit down the page.
• Beam Spam: The Beam Burst Aeion ability in Samus Returns massively ups her rate of fire. Charging the Hyper Beam in Prime 3 results in a similar effect.
• Beware the Nice Ones: She is one of the kindest and most caring people in the Galaxy, as long as you aren't a threat. If you are, or you really tick her off (like Mother Brain or Raven Beak), then you'll be dead soon and maybe even the entire planet you're on, if necessary.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: No matter the amount of physical damage she and her suit takes, by the end of the game she is still as stunningly beautiful as before, with nary a scratch on her. Averted in Prime 3, as the more titular Corruption she takes on from Phazon, the more deformed her face becomes in her visor.
• Be the Ball: One of Samus' constant abilities in her suits is to turn into the Morph Ball, which allows her to roll through narrow passageways and drop bombs to destroy things. A spinoff manga even spoofs the concept by having Samus need to turn into the Morph Ball every once in a while due to a personal obsession, and when asked, Samus actually stated that she enjoys being a ball just as much, if not more than, being a human.
• Bilingual Dialogue: Though it would be presumed given her heritage, Metroid Dread demonstrates that Samus is fluent in Chozo.
• Big Eater: Not that she has much of a choice to begin with. She feeds on the X in the B.S.L station to regain health and missiles.
• Bio-Augmentation: Her DNA is as modular to genetic upgrades as her armour is to technology, as she was infused with Chozo blood through some form of higher spiritual science and much later in life given a Metroid vaccine made of the last specimen's cells which she adapted to in more ways than one.
• Black Box: With the Chozo seemingly extinct, how some of her Power Suit functions operate are a mystery to even Samus (in some cases, she learns about these functions on a need-to-know basis from the suit itself). When the Space Pirates tried to replicate this technology for themselves, they didn't work as intended. For example, they got their version of the Morph Ball to perform its intended function, but couldn't figure out how to make it work safely. When the Galactic Federation tried to make a project to match the suit's power it required making Mini-Mecha at least twice the size of a regular human and they still couldn't match it!
• Blue Is Heroic: Her jumpsuit is completely blue, the right arm section of her suit is blue, and she's a very nice woman.
• Body Horror:
  • A minor version may or may not occur while she's in her Power Suit, as the cut of the armor makes it physically impossible for humans to be able to wear it: the shoulder joints are too far apart. The picture shown when using the Scan Visor on a save station in Metroid Prime depicts Samus using the station, with the X-ray showing that her ribcage and shoulder joints having changed shape to fit the unusually broad torso/shoulder span. There is a guidebook for Super Metroid that shows how Samus in the suit with no alteration to her body, however. How she moves it, much less how it "augments" her strength is not explained.
  • She goes through this fighting the corruption in Prime 3. When was the last Nintendo game in which you saw the protagonist vomiting up radioactive sludge? Also, if she overloads on Phazon in Hyper-mode, she becomes fully corrupted. Her reflection inside her visor changes as the game progresses to show the Phazon corruption physically transforming her, and by the endgame she is sufficiently transformed that her gunship's security systems no longer recognize her.
• Boobs-and-Butt Pose: Shown in her Zero Suit character render◊ for Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
• Bounty Hunter: Purportedly her profession, but some overseas developers think Nintendo's refusal to include actual bounty hunting^note As in, hunting down criminals and/or dangerous wildlife for a set reward in the games indicates it's a translation screw-up. Despite this, they seemed to have no problem with the manga showing her hunting bounties. The original Famicom Disk System release of the first game also showed money bags that appear next to a completed game's save slot, strongly implying she did get paid for completing the mission on Zebes. A loose enough interpretation could frame her battles with The Space Pirates and Metroids as bounty hunting "on a larger scale", but overall she appears to be more of a paramilitary mercenary than a bounty hunter most of the time. Metroid Dread has Adam note in the intro that the bounty Samus is getting for the ZDR mission "does not seem appropriate," confirming that she is indeed working freelance and being paid on a per-job basis.
• Boyish Short Hair: Flashbacks in Other M and Dread show Samus with a very short haircut as a child and teenager, and she was also shown to have had a hot-headed and rebellious side to her as she had this hairstyle when she worked in the military. She is also shown to have had shorter hair as a child in the manga up until her adult years.
• Broken Bird:
  • Displayed perfectly in the first manga; Samus gets through her traumatic experiences by clinging to her sense of duty, deciding that she is not a human but "a warrior" who focuses exclusively on the mission. However, her ability to maintain this persona is not perfect. In her narration at the start of the manga, Samus admits that she sometimes wishes she could give it all up and live a normal life, but cannot allow herself to.
  • Averted in the Samus and Joey manga; despite all her traumas and hardships, she is still the Ultimate Warrior who will never concede to victimization or self-pity and is very much The Idealist as exemplified with the final chapter, where the usually taciturn and sparse-worded Aran embarks on a poignant Patrick Stewart Speech to her young protege.
    Joey: Are you always prepared to throw away your life in order to end this crisis?! Do you want to die?! I WON'T LET YOU DO IT!
    Samus: ... (removes her helmet, the Varia Suit dematerializes)
    Joey: *Speechless* (then gaping like a fish)
    Samus: Surprised? I'm used to it, Joey. Although I was born a girl, from the time I was very young I've carried the choices of a warrior on my shoulders and held the consequences in my arms... Just as a mother would carry her child; though I will never give birth to one of my own. But I have raised them and I raise them still by fighting now and forever. By violence I have protected and nurtured children... Who are the hope for our future... I do not intend to die today! Not even after the last day I am required to provide hope, provide teaching, provide peace. This is my battle to fight. ... (kneels before the boy and places a hand over his chest) Joey, listen to me one more time, my young friend. One day you will become a fine warrior. When it becomes time to preserve everyone else's future, then it will be your turn to fight in their defence! But far more important than strength is what you already have! (embraces him) Grow into a strong... kind man... For whatever hardships may come — So when we remember each other, neither of us will lose sight of the pursuit of goodness. I will never forget you.
• Building Swing: The Grapple Beam in Super and Grapple Lasso in Prime. This becomes less important with the Space Jump/Screw Attack, but Prime 3 gives the lasso more functions to keep it relevant.
• Bullet Time: The Phase Drift Aeion ability in Samus Returns lets her slow down time for everything but herself, creating this effect.
• The Cameo: She makes an appearance in Kirby's Dream Land 3 as one of the characters who give Kirby a Heart Star when their task is fulfilled. In her case, Kirby has to exterminate six Metroids so that she would give a Heart Star. When the criteria is fulfilled, she removes her helmet as a reference to her native series when the 100% Completion allows the player to take a glimpse at her face (and, sometimes, the whole body) uncovered.
• Casting a Shadow: The Dark Beam from Echoes. This will ruin anyone's day with concentrated evilness from the Dark Dimension. It hurts a being of pure Phazon.
• Character Title: In a roundabout way. The word "Metroid" is eventually revealed to be a Chozo word meaning "ultimate warrior", and the Metroids were named as such since they were built as the perfect predators. Of course, "ultimate warrior" is also a good way to describe Samus. Less roundabout as of Fusion, when Samus gained Metroid DNA. She embodies the title in full come Dread as Raven Beak reveals that the DNA injection has fully converted her into the most powerful Metroid.
• Child Soldier: According to concept art for Other M, Samus was between the ages of 15 and 17 during her time as a soldier of the Galactic Federation Army, after which she went AWOL to become a bounty hunter. Even before this, she was trained from childhood by the Chozo to be a warrior.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Though she presents herself as a mostly-unflinching gun-for-hire almost all of her documented jaunts are ones she took as a matter of solving a problem or eliminating a threat by personal choice, not one accepted simply to line her pocket. Even missions that start out as assignments (such as Fusion, where she is being deployed to investigate an explosion at the Biologic Space Laboratories) turn into personal battles by the end (Samus deeming the X Parasites cannot be allowed to escape the B.S.L). That said there have been allusions to jobs she's taken as a matter of occupation rather than personal investment (such as her first encounter with the X, where she was on escort detail for the Biologic research team), they simply aren't the ones that you get to play out. So far the only game where both her personal objectives and the mission she's being paid to do have aligned is Metroid II / Samus Returns, where the expressed goal is total elimination of the Metroid species from their homeworld of SR388 because of the danger they present and she accepts the job understanding that it needs to be done.
• The Chosen One: According to Chozo prophecy and the carvings on Tallon IV.
• Clarke's Third Law: The Aeion Abilities in Samus Returns are stated by the developers to stray closer to magic than technology, similar to things like Mogenar or the Torizos.
• Clothes Make the Superman: Although she is still inhumanly agile and monstrously strong outside the suit, Samus is unable to take down a lowly Space Pirate trooper without its help. Averted (possibly even inverted) in Super Smash Bros. for Competitive Balance reasons. That might be because she was basically unarmed (that paralyzer doesn't really count) without it.
• Combat Pragmatist: Fond of shooting people at point-blank range when getting into physical grapples and applying the most overwhelming amount of force possible to end a fight quickly. In Super Metroid, she is capable of defeating Draygon, ordinarily a fairly tough creature to bring down in its own right, within seconds by conducting electricity through the Grapple Beam and through herself, flash-frying the monstrous crustacean.
• Combat Stilettos: Well, combat wedges. The Zero Suit design in Other M has wedge heels. Ironically enough, high heels were previously discouraged◊ during Zero Mission's design process. Super Smash Bros. for 3DS/Wii U then turns them into literal Combat Stilettos - by weaponizing them into jet boots. The Zero Suit design in Samus Returns keeps the wedge heels, though they look different from Other M’s design, and it also carries over into Dread, albeit with the heels' height reduced by a few inches.
• Cool Helmet: Especially in the Prime series, where it resembles a V-shaped, upside-down bird's wings. In all games, the shape of the mouthpiece suggests a beak; appropriate, since it's a modified Chozo design.
• Cool Ship: Her Gunship. With its own remote controlled auto-piloting functions, industrial grapple beam, missile silos, prisoner containment cells, array of beam weapons and even capable of self-repair and enduring ridiculous levels of combat damage and even the corrosive properties of Phaaze's atmosphere. To top it off, Samus herself designed it.
• Cowboy Cop: In the prequel comic, Samus was part of a cowboy cop trio up until she left the force to become a solo bounty hunter on General Adam Malkovich's suggestion.
• Cultured Warrior: Explores uncharted territory, muses on war, peace and her place in the universe, collates zoological databases on a variety of exotic flora and xeno-fauna, is an evaluator of her own and other's morality, translates ancient advanced alien scriptures and seems to practice a form of Instrumentalist Philosophy.
• Cyborg: The manual for the original Metroid referred to Samus as a "cyborg". However, this (in addition to referring to Samus as "him" in the English localization) at first seems to be a deliberate misdirection once she removes the suit and proves to be a human woman. Then, Fusion reveals that Metroid's Power Suit needs to be surgically removed from her body in order to treat her, and she "regrows" a new suit after being given a transfusion of Metroid DNA. Dread further reveals that the suit possesses any biological traits that Samus herself has such as a Metroid's absorption powers and ability to evolve. This all implies that the Power Suit(s) are integrated into part of the wearer's body.
• Dangerous Forbidden Technique: The feeding ability native to Metroids she develops over the course of Metroid Dread. It's easily quite possibly the most powerful tool at her disposal, able to immediately dispatch most any opposition and even bring Raven Beak to his knees whereas, before using it, he had her decidedly at his mercy. However, to do so will cause her to mature as a Metroid and metamorphosize into one entirely on the physical level. Only her genes from the Thoha tribe help her to stem this, and only receiving a fresh dose from the X copy of Quiet Robe helps her get it back under control when it runs amok.
• Death Glare: Gives Raven Beak an epic one before the Final Boss fight with him, especially when he claims to be her father (which is technically right but is actively demeaning Rodney Aran, Old Bird and Grey Voice's memory, as well as clearly an attempt to manipulate her).
• Deadpan Snarker: Very heavy on the deadpan, but some readings of her lines and implied lines hint at this. A couple of examples include describing her emergency pistol as "rather useless" in Zero Mission and some of the flavour scans in the Prime games, like the one about how "Space Pirates, strangely, dislike theft" from Prime 2.
• Deliberate Injury Gambit: In Super Metroid she can latch onto the electrical sources in Draygon's arena to electrocute herself, which fries the boss alive if it's currently holding her.
• Depending on the Artist: Before Zero Mission settled on a mostly "final" design, the only thing consistent about Samus's true appearance was that she's a young woman. Everything else varied widly, from hair color and length to physique, to facial structure.
• Determinator
  • One particularly impressive display of willpower she displays is in Metroid Prime 3. She staves off Phazon Corruption longer than any of her fellow bounty hunters, in spite of being given the largest dose of radioactive venom by her arch-nemesis. And even retains her mind when at its very origin. With the poison coursing through her veins she descends into the core of the planet Phaaze and wipes the floor with her dark doppelganger, endures the cancer being (unimaginably painfully) purged and somehow manages to escape back up to the surface before the world blows apart.
  • Given doubt is shown crippling her defenses in Metroid Other M, it would also mean she is maintaining a zen level of focus throughout all the trials and tribulations where it remains strong as ever, especially the notorious "hell run", in which she runs through several super heated laval filled areas where the convection is continually eating away at the suit's energy shielding and she doesn't even bat an eye.
• Doom Magnet:
  • Inherited from the Chozo. Person, planet, species, once she gets there, if they haven't already suffered tremendously (and they often have), they will. Not necessarily by her design or intent, mind you, but it inevitably happens anyways.
  • Subverted with the Luminoth, as she actually does help them out with no negative side effects to them in the long run.
  • And the Elysian star charts in Corruption show that the native life on Tallon IV is thriving since Samus ended the Phazon spread.
• The Dreaded: The Space Pirates probably tell their spawn stories of the 'Accursed Hunter' that stalks their kind. They fear and loathe her above all else. Even as early as Metroid Prime, chronologically set early in the series timeline, reading Space Pirate logs make it clear they view her as a threat that needs to be captured and/or terminated (preferably the latter) as soon as possible to the point their Elite Pirates run through simulations based around combat with Samus and research on her various weapons and armors is considered in near the same priority as with Metroids and Phazon.
• Dub Personality Change: In the Japanese version of Metroid: Other M, Samus is more sarcastic and resentful towards Adam, having disliked him calling her "Lady"; while in the English localization she expresses admiration towards him and says that she liked him calling her "Lady" due to it making her feel delicate. Even in Metroid Fusion's Japanese script, she thinks (in the internal monologue where it's brought up) that him calling her "Lady" felt a bit tactless. The English release of the game says he made it sound dignified.

E-I

• Early Installment Character-Design Difference: In the original Metroid, her sprite was unusual at best. Especially outside her suit where she has an almost bare outfit and has green hair when wearing the Varia Suit. When you play as her outside her suit, she can use the majority of her suit's abilities including her Morph Ball function.
• Earth-Shattering Kaboom: This cannot be understated. She's blown up four planets, one by crashing a massive colony-culture research vessel into it, and an entire dimension full of Eldritch Abominations. Enemies in all four did not stand a chance.
• Eating the Enemy: After being infected by the X and receiving the Metroid Vaccine which mutated her genome into making her part Metroid, this became Samus's primary means of dispatching the X infestation on the B.S.L space station: preying on every single one she came across through absorption on physical contact. This gets majorly ratcheted up in Dread when Samus's Metroid DNA fully manifests within her and grants her the species' Life Drinker and Energy Absorption powers, able to drain the opposition to a crumbling husk much the usual Metroid way and even able to consume X-mimics whole without even needing to break them back down to their original form anymore. However, unlike her passive attributes gained in Fusion, using this ability carelessly threatens a serious case of Power Incontinence and spiraling out of control. That said, she outright defies this in regards to the X Parasite that absorbed both Kraid and Raven Beak into a Clipped-Wing Angel form, blasting it with a full-powered Hyper Beam that atomises it rather than absorbing it. This is more due to it having absorbed Raven Beak and as a showcase of Samus' utter disgust towards him, wanting to remove every trace of him from existence and refusing to absorb his DNA by proxy through the parasite.
• Elemental Powers: Her beam weaponry is given elemental attributes in Prime - Wave Beam is treated as electrical in the Prime series, Plasma is superheated, and Ice Beam does Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
• Empowered Badass Normal: By way of her Chozo and later Metroid genetics.
• Expy: Directly stated to be one of Ellen Ripley, another strong female sci-fi protagonist who battles cosmic monstrosities. She's also occasionally considered a Distaff Counterpart of Boba Fett, another space-faring Bounty Hunter with a Cool Ship, a full suit of armor, and lots of weapons and gadgets. This continues for the Super Metroid comic strip, which called her a "combination of Ripley and Princess Leia".
• Fear Is the Appropriate Response: Samus informs a would-be ally that a warrior only fights their hardest when controlling and utilizing their fear of death. Not suppressing or trying to deny it.
• The Fettered: She has a code, it has a lot of leeway. The most prominent example is her refusal to kill the baby Metroid despite the fact the Galactic Federation ordered the complete extermination of the Metroid species and that leaving even one Metroid alive is enough for the Space Pirates to bioengineer their ultimate weapon.
• Final Boss: Thanks to Master Brain's brainwashing, Samus unwittingly becomes the last boss to face in Metroid Prime: Federation Force. However, you only fight her in her Morph Ball form.
• Flash Step: The Flash Shift from Dread lets Samus zip horizontally left or right, leaving an afterimage behind. The strafe in Metroid Prime also works pretty well as one, especially with cover to dart in and out from. Another explicit example happens in Samus and Joey, accompanied with an insane bullet catch when the hostage's face is two feet away from the muzzle of the weapon. Samus manages to shoot the Pirate at the same time.
• Flying Brick: Her Metroid Suit in Dread turns her into one, granting her an infinite Double Jump as well as Nigh-Invulnerability. Though in effect it makes her look more like a flying buzzsaw.
• Foil: As of Metroid Dread, Samus ironically became a facsimile of her own Evil Knockoff, Dark Samus. Both of them started out as otherwise normal members of their species before being augmented by alien technology and sources (Phazon and Chozo/Space Pirate tech for the Metroid Prime/Dark Samus, Chozo technology and Bio-Augmentation for Samus), then were changed forever due to the infusion of a source of incredible DNA (Samus herself for Dark Samus, the baby Metroid vaccine for Samus) that turned them into human/Metroid hybrids that could make strong cases for being the most powerful beings in the galaxy. Samus's Metroid Suit in Dread also bears a strong resemblance to Dark Samus's own armor, particularly in Corruption. The only difference is that they started on opposite ends of the spectrum.
• Former Teen Rebel: Samus was especially angsty and rebellious as a teenager in the Federation Police, as shown in the Metroid manga and Other M. She's mellowed out considerably since then, but still doesn't enjoy being ordered around.
• Friend to All Living Things: So long as it doesn't show hostility to her (which, admittedly, a lot of it does), she's shown to concern herself with the well-being of wildlife she encounters during missions. Notably, she adopts the baby Metroid as her own on SR388, and took time to rescue the Etecoons and Dachoras who helped her while the planet they're on is about to explode. This is one of the few traits that has always been shown consistently in other media outside of her own games, such as her rescue and bonding with Pikachu in Super Smash Bros..
• From Camouflage to Criminal: Subverted. She's a former military service member who now works as a freelance bounty hunter. However, while bounty hunting is generally considered a criminal activity in most of the developed world (in fact, her being labeled a bounty hunter came as a result of an early misconception by the developers, and were disturbed to learn what bounty hunting actually was), she almost exclusively takes government-sanctioned jobs and with the intro scene of Dread confirming she does get paid for her work (and ADAM chastising her for taking a job with a risk that outweighs the reward), it's apparent she's more motivated by her moral compass than a need for money.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Samus was originally a sweet, innocent girl growing up happily with her parents on colony K-2L. Then Ridley's Space Pirates came and destroyed everything, leaving behind a traumatized orphan who was adopted by the Chozo. Years later, she became one of the most feared Bounty Hunters in the galaxy and the bane of all Space Pirates who dare threaten peace.
• Genius Bruiser: Her handwritten notes in her log book very much implies extensive knowledge in the fields of biology, physics and chemistry. After all, she was brought up and educated by enlightened Precursors. She also knows a great deal about mechanics and electronics, evidenced by her working circuitry in a few games and by designing her own gunships, doing precision welding jobs with her broad-barreled arm cannon, energizing dead systems... hell, just being able to operate that walking death mobile she's clad in has to count — but the stand-out moment for Aran has to be her constructing a Chozo WMD called a Theronian Bomb out of a floating city's infrastructure, rewiring the engines to float a section of said city over to the Leviathan Seed's shield generator, all the while fending off dozens of pirate drop ships before leaving in a sabotaged escape pod that she quickly repairs; the munition is dropped and the atmosphere is ignited in nuclear fire.
• Glass Cannon:
  • In Fusion, her Fusion Suit is this. While she can still dish out the pain just as well as she could with her standard Power Suit (depending on your loadout and number of items collected), the more powerful foes can deal at least 2 Energy Tanks worth of damage to her. Alternatively, this can also be explained that due to her surgery, she wasn't in top condition, but that won't stop her from facing the last two bosses to the death. In one way she dishes out more damage than before, as super missiles stack with the regular variety in this game, giving Samus a larger supply, then get further upgraded with ice and diffusion.
  • Metroid Other M has several quick time events that will result in instant death, most of which Samus would have easily survived in previously released games, such as part of a corridor's ceiling falling when her suit previously proved capable of shrugging off the weight of Kraid's footsteps, an Amorbis worm's dive, Mogenar's trampling, the BOX robot's leaps and the descent of Serris, who should be far heavier when Samus had the same or inferior defensive upgrades. She can die in an avalanche after breaking easily breaking lose from being frozen solid by Sheegoths and Thardus, "Hunters" showed she could come out fine after plunging several meters into magma, and "Super" had her come out of quicksand in the depths of the ocean with little difficulty. "MOM" also gives Samus her most impressive displays of superhuman strength in any video game up to that point, best demonstrating this trope when she fishes for and beaches what is essentially a lava whale that can kill the player in one hit prior if they don't press the right button at the right time.
  • In Samus Returns, even on the easiest difficulty setting, many enemies are still capable of dealing a full Energy Tank (or more) worth of damage, and proper dodging and counterattacks become crucial for survival. The amiibo-locked hardest difficulty mode of the game is actually called Fusion difficulty in a nod to Fusion, which has Samus donning the Fusion Suit... as well as taking quadrupled damage.
• Good Is Not Dumb: Samus always approaches her missions with immense levels of intelligence, observation, resourcefulness, and patience, calmly accruing enough resources and knowledge of whatever hostile environment she finds herself in to succeed. As mentioned under Genius Bruiser, her logbooks indicate that she has more than a passing familiarity with advanced fields of science and mathematics, not to mention whatever other expertise one would need to effectively wield her Power Suit. She also quite the Combat Pragmatist and isn't easily fooled, never lowering her guard around any individual she comes across even if they first appear to be non-hostile, while also not being so cold-hearted that she won't hear them out before deciding if they can be trusted. This is best shown in Prime 2, where upon meeting the first friendly NPC of the game, a Luminoth named U-Mos, she keeps her gun pointed straight at him while he explains himself. After crash landing on his Death World of a planet and dealing with the aftermath of a mass slaughtering of Federation soldiers and strange, shadowy monsters using their bodies as puppets could anyone blame her for giving him a less than friendly reception? Once it's clear that his story adds up with what she's seen and is desperately in need of help, Samus thinks nothing of single-handily saving his civilization from the brink of annihilation.
• Good Is Not Soft: One of the best examples in all of fiction. The first time she spares the life of a child-enslaving pirate overseer; is so she can interrogate him. Furthermore, according to the backstory of Weavel in Metroid Prime Hunters, Samus beat him up so badly that the only parts of his body that weren't beyond repair were his brain and spinal cord.
• Gun Fu: Seen especially in Other M, where her Overblasts and Lethal Strikes have her throw hands up-close with aliens before hitting them with point-blank cannon shots. She's gotten more and more hands on since then, such as the Melee Counters in Samus Returns and Dread.
• The Gunslinger:
  • The auto-lock is not technological. Revamped straight over into Improbable Aiming Skills in the manga. When five pirates are about to execute a girl. They all fire simultaneously while encircling her. Aran deflects all of their shots away with her own beam, With four inhumanly quick shots of her own.
  • Also an accomplished Quick Draw. And by accomplished, we mean she can take down multiple opponents and make it look like a single shot. This, with a weapon that's effectively an artillery piece.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: A gorgeous blonde, and about as kind of a mercenary as you could possibly know. She has to be an optimist to endure what she's been through.
• Hammerspace: Apparently, Chozo tech can store physical mass as energy, allowing her to manifest her armor from thin air. Presumably, this is also what lets her carry around 200+ missiles without so much as a pocket. However, when she is not wearing the armor and her ship is totalled, her armor is destroyed, suggesting it's physical manifestation is teleporting it in and out of a vehicle's compartment. This still applies, as the "Hunter Class Gun Ship" of "Prime 3" can have a much higher missile payload than its size suggests. A payload that can be restored by grabbing ammunition in her armor miles away from the vessel.
• Happily Adopted: Her second family foisted her with an unforgettable legacy. Defend the Universe as the Entrusted One, at her request they allowed her to claim their nearly lost arts of destruction in order to avenge her home and birth parents against the forces of chaos. It's quite clear that this orphan received the best break possible after such a rotten start to life, cherished by both her foster-fathers in their dying moments as the supreme exemplar of both humanity and the Chozo. Specifically, Samus was adopted by two Chozo, who took her to Zebes. Old Bird, the scientist behind Mother Brian, and Gray Voice, who donated his DNA to Samus so she would be able to survive the harsh environment of Zebes.
• Harmful to Minors: The Space Pirate raid of K-2L, which involved Ridley killing her mother right in front of her, happened when she was only three years old.
• Hartman Hips: Other M redesigned the Power Suit to make it impossible to mistake Samus for a man in the suit as it emphasizes an exceedingly feminine wasp waist, which continued with the design for Samus Returns. Dread took it much further, as the suit's post-Fusion appearance eschews bulk for a sleek and thin shape, and is so form-fitting that anyone can tell she is a woman with a toned stomach◊, muscular thighs◊, and a particularly wide set of hips◊ without even removing the suit. Even in shots where those aren't the focus, these areas are where the armor's color is predominantly white, and the human eye is naturally drawn to white space, making these parts of her body very noticeable in almost all instances.
• Heartbroken Badass: So far her family, adoptive family, the Metroid hatchling, mentors and many close friends have all been horrifically killed, with her often unable to do anything about it.
• Heinz Hybrid: She started out fully human, but in the end, she's anywhere from as much as 95% human to as little as 10%. For most of the series, she's a human with enough Chozo traits to survive where they resided, but then Fusion brings in the vaccine made from the infant Metroid cells; which her unique organism adapts much in the same way her suit can adapt modular, alien technologies in order to fight off the infestation. From there, fans debate about whether exposure to absorbed X Parasites when recovering her arsenal has messed up her genes further; Nintendo itself has been silent on the matter. The game shows that the X Parasites were destroyed by her Metroid vaccine. Metroids eat life energy, not solid food, so she's not integrating absorbed X physically into herself, but it's implied that the X she gets abilities from had them biologically, rather than mechanically, so fans understandably still argue. Come Dread, Samus’s Metroid genes are revealed to be overtaking the other ones, meaning she’s gradually transforming into a humanoid Metroid; by the end, her powers have awakened in full force, becoming the most powerful Metroid.
• Heroic BSoD: The holocaust of K-2L left painful, emotional scars for Samus.
  • She suffers a horrific one in the manga. When she encounters Ridley again on Zebes, she becomes paralyzed in fear. Ridley realizes who Samus is and proceeds to beat her senselessly, sadistically telling her how he survived on K-2L by eating the corpses of her friends and relatives, particularly her mother. Suffering a relapse of trauma, Samus loses control of the mental link between herself and her Power Suit and goes into a catatonic trance, hyperventilating, eyes rolled into the back of her head and screaming repeatedly to be killed by her own allies as her fear is all-encompassing and overwhelming. Although she later 'overcomes' this breakdown in about the most cathartic way possible, she is implied to still suffer PTSD-induced nightmares many years after the fact.
  • An infamous one in Other M. Normally, Samus has fought Ridley several times without giving into fear despite what he represents to her. However, the repercussions of Super Metroid left her unprepared for Ridley's inevitable return. Samus believes that she had killed Ridley for good this time, helped by the fact his pieces were still on Zebes when it exploded. She did not anticipate to see Ridley alive and well^note It's later revealed to be a clone. in the Geothermal Power Plant, and the sight of seeing her parents' murderer Back from the Dead causes her to relive the K-2L genocide, mentally reverting her back into a scared child. It took the sight of her friend Anthony Higgs being knocked into a molten pit by Ridley for Samus to snap out of this state, and she delivers a world of hurt for the resurrected Space Dragon. Samus's breakdown was intended as a reference to her PTSD and the above scene from the manga, but players (particularly those of Western audiences) may not have read it and may not be aware of just what Ridley's sudden reappearance meant for her, making the scene seem incredibly out of place and out of character for Samus — especially considering she had gone toe-to-toe with Ridley multiple times in the past, while (at least mentally) seeming none the worse for wear. Even his (chronologically) later appearance in Fusion as an X-clone yields zero reaction from Samus.
• Heroic Build: Samus is depicted this way Depending on the Artist. Some games, such as Super Metroid, Fusion, Samus Returns, and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate depict Samus as being more muscular. Other games, such as Zero Mission and the Super Smash Bros. series before Ultimate, give Samus a more conventional lean, physically fit supermodel-like build. Other M, uniquely, depicted her as even more slender than in other games. There's one particular image that can be viewed with a linked "Fusion" and "Zero Mission" where Samus's arms are about as wide as her waist.
• Heroic Mime: Zigzagged, actually. Save for Other M, Super Smash Bros. and Dread, Samus is almost always stoic and silent, except for occasional grunting and death screams. The single line of dialogue she has in Dread is spoken in Chozo, and much later on during the ending, she screams out of rage rather than pain.
• Horror Hunger: She begins to show it in Metroid Dread as her awakened Metroid DNA sets in, as after counter-hitting an enemy that tried to attack her and stunning it, she instinctively makes to consume it with her new power. She has to physically restrain herself to finish it with her Arm Cannon instead, the effort leaving her visibly panting afterwards. Unfortunately for her, Raven Beak creates another situation for her to use her new feeding ability, and as it's against the Power Bomb-wielding E.M.M.I., she has no choice.
• Heroic Willpower: Yoshio Sakamoto said in an interview that Samus's second Power Suit from Zero Mission manifests though inhuman levels of willpower and concentration. Other M shows it can dissipate if she falters. Sakamoto compared her losing her suit to a salary-man losing his tie in a bullet train.
• The Hunter Becomes the Hunted: Fusion and Dread have the SA-X and E.M.M.I. respectively reverse the role of Samus as an unstoppable hunter. They're completely invulnerable to Samus's default arsenal and fast and powerful enough to quickly kill her given the chance, forcing her to spend most of the game running or hiding from them when faced.
• Hyperspace Arsenal: Her suit can hold over 200 missiles, even in the NES game. Later games not only retain this missile carrying capacity but add things such as power bombs and ammunition for much stranger weapons.
• An Ice Person: Her most prominent power in terms of taking on Metroids is the Ice Beam, taking advantage of the Metroids' natural susceptibility to cold. Flipped on its head in Fusion, where Samus fears the Ice Beam as a result of the Metroid vaccine and can't use it herself until the very end of the game. Some games also have Ice Missiles, independent of or added to the Ice Beam, and Super has a Power Bomb Ice Beam combo. Samus can also use the cold plasma-based Judicator in Hunters, though since it's not her affinity weapon, she doesn't get as much mileage out of it as Noxus (who can release a freezing blast by charging it).
• Iconic Outfit: Her Varia Suit has become her signature form in most of her appearances. Her Zero Suit later became her other major apparel.
• I Let Gwen Stacy Die: She lost many people she cares in her life, and she feels personally responsible for their deaths.
  • In a flashback scene in Other M, it's revealed that Samus was prevented by Adam Malkovich to go rescue Ian Malkovich, his younger brother, because he refused to risk many more lives to be in jeopardy. This became the catalyst for her to leave the Galactic Federation and become an independent bounty hunter.
  • In Super Metroid, she intended to rescue the Metroid hatchling from the clutches of Space Pirates. However, she was overwhelmed during her battle with Mother Brain, and could only watch as the baby Metroid performed a Heroic Sacrifice to give Samus the winning edge. Given that she spared the newborn Metroid out of sympathy in first place, which nearly allowed the Space Pirates to gain an army of Metroids, she was personally affected by its demise, leading to self-doubt and depression that contributed to her sudden, passive personality in Other M.
  • While she's not voiced or anything in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, the deaths of Rundas, Ghor, and Gandrayda clearly weigh heavily on her, especially during Gandrayda's death scene where she has no choice but to turn away as Dark Samus absorbs her. The ending shows her sadly mourning her fallen companions.
• Implacable Man: A heroic example. The Space Pirates fear her as a force that they cannot turn away, no matter their numbers. Gets especially bad in Metroid Prime 2 where the Pirates already have their hands full with Dark Samus, and then the genuine article makes planetfall and things go From Bad to Worse for them.
• Insistent Terminology: Since the very first game, Samus has officially been a bounty hunter, even though she's clearly a mercenary, and never does any actual bounty hunting. This may be an artifact of her similarity to Boba Fett, who, like Samus, is a "bounty hunter" who functions more as a mercenary.
• It Gets Easier: In Metroid Dread, after fighting the urge to use her new Metroid feeding ability after her Metroid DNA fully sets in, she finds herself forced to use it when ambushed and pinned down by the orange E.M.M.I. wielding her Power Bombs. After being made to use it out of necessity, she quickly becomes too comfortable with it, immediately thereafter flaunting it to consume a Chozo X Parasite and returning to finish off the E.M.M.I. right afterwards to take her Power Bombs back. This ends up working against her, as fostering this power is precisely what Raven Beak wanted her to do.
• It's Personal with the Dragon: Zigzagged; while Ridley is Samus' primary Arch-Enemy, Mother Brain has more than earned her personal emnity, with such actions as betraying Samus' adoptive caretakers for the Space Pirates and killing the baby Metroid that formed a bond with her.

J-O

• The Juggernaut: The Lightning Armor Aeion Ability in Samus Returns makes her into this. Most forms of damage that would go to her energy is instead taken by her Aeion reserve, and she suffers no knockbacks while it's active, allowing her to plow right through whatever gets thrown at her so long as the Aeion lasts.
• Knight Errant: Running down the checklist, the only real reason not to consider her one is the scope of her adventures. And, as the narration occasionally reminds us, even a single planet is often just a drop in the cosmic bucket.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: Despite her skill as a bounty hunter, Samus knows when a situation is hopeless. When she realizes that her attacks cannot harm an E.M.M.I, she turns tail and runs.
• The Lad-ette: Implied. While Samus isn't often seen engaging in overly "frat-boy-ish" behavior, she is seen wearing a tank top and hanging out at a bar◊ in one of the ending scenes of Zero Mission.
• Lady of War: On the contrary to the prior point, she cracks skulls and does it with obscene poise and grace. She embodies this especially with the Light Suit in Prime 2. This is much more apparent in the later games that introduce counters and melee moves from her, namely Other M, Samus Returns, and Dread. She parries blows and finishes her enemies decisively and swiftly, all the while nimbly dodging attacks in a fluid yet surprisingly ladylike manner with a minimum of wasted movement, especially as she somersaults and backflips like a world-class gymnast.
• Last of Her Kind: Thanks to the Metroid hatchling vaccine and the destruction of all known genetic labs dedicated to cloning the Metroids, she is the last known source of Metroid DNA. In fact, she is considered to be very last Metroid as the DNA infusion has been transforming her into one herself.
• LEGO Genetics: Samus' genetics get increasingly screwy over the course of the series thanks to multiple incidents.
  • During her childhood, she received genes from the Chozo so that she could survive on the non-Earth-like living conditions of the planet Zebes. This also is what allows her to use her Powered Armor.
  • In Fusion, a last ditch effort to cure her of an X Parasite infection leads to her being injected with Metroid genes. This works, and she inherits the Metroids' immunity to X Parasites, their ability to consume them, and their enhanced cold vulnerability.
  • Near the end of Dread, Raven Beak reveals that her Chozo genetic donations from her childhood involved genes from two genetically different Chozo tribes. Also, her Metroid genes start going into overdrive and mutate her armor into a Metroid-like appearance, which only get calmed when she absorbs the genes of Quiet Robe — a member of the Chozo who can control Metroids.
• Leitmotif: Samus has had three theme songs over the years.
  • Samus Aran's Appearance Fanfare marks her entrance in every Metroid game to date, with the sole exception of Metroid II: Return of Samus (and even this instance was rectified in the remake). Even Metroid Prime: Federation Force, which hardly reused any preexisting Metroid music in its soundtrack, used this fanfare as Samus's leitmotif.
  • Crateria was originally titled "Theme of Samus Aran, Galactic Warrior" on the Super Metroid: Sound in Action CD, indicating that this was intended to be her official leitmotif. This makes more sense in light of the theme's triumphant reprise during the final battle. However, this theme was never used again after its debut in Super Metroid.
  • Theme of Super Metroid, on the other hand, has appeared in almost every Metroid game since its debut in Super Metroid. When it was remixed for Super Smash Bros. Brawl, it was given the new title Theme of Samus Aran, Space Warrior, supplanting the original Crateria theme as Samus's new leitmotif. To settle any doubts, the remix heard in Samus Returns is also officially titled "Theme of Samus" on the Samus Archives Sound Selection CD.
• Letting Her Hair Down: Finish Metroid II Return Of Samus in under three hours and Samus will remove her armor, and then undo whatever was in her hair so that it will fall.
• Life Drinker: Gains this power in earnest towards the later half of Dread as she fully turns into a proper Metroid hybrid, but upgrades into full Energy Absorption by her rematch with Raven Beak as she effortlessly absorbs ANY energy in proximity to her, including inorganic such as the fortress ship's energy reserves.
• Life Energy
  • This is apparently how the health and ammo pickups work, according to the first game's manual. The Prime series lets you find them from crates too though, suggesting it might just be general matter/energy conversion (or that Retro wanted to make things easier).
    NES Metroid instruction manual: "Even the Space Pirates fear his space suit, which can absorb any enemy's power."
  • This is seemingly how Samus gets the Hyper Beam in Super and Phazon Suit in Prime; both involved an almost deceased monster falling on and getting partially absorbed by the suit.
• Light 'em Up: The Light Beam from Prime 2. An effective solar ray. Or even the wandering matter of the Luminoth's planetary energy that sustains them.
• Lightning Bruiser: Can plow through enemies with mach speed shoulder charges, possesses enough razor sharp reflexes to dodge gunfire while stationary and can tether, hook line and sinker, then beach a gigantic alien beast that can swim in lava. Even without the suit she can jump about ten to fifteen feet straight up in the 1.36g gravity of Zebes. Imagine what she could do to you if she kicked you while on Earth.
• Living Legend: Samus is explicitly described as such. She’s so powerful, so benign, and so elusive, that she’s often thought of less as a human warrior and more an avenging angel, that some people don’t even believe exists.
• Locked Out of the Loop: One interpretation of this before she arrives to SR388 is that the Chozo never told her why the Metroids were created in the first place, considering she nearly died in the opening of Fusion. Judging by the Chozo Memories in Samus Returns, only a few knew what happened and the direct witnesses were killed.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: In the manga, Mother Brain tries to pull this on Samus only to get shot as Samus proclaims Rodney, Virginia and The Chozo to be her only parents. Then Grey Voice turns out to be the donor for Aran's infusion of Chozo DNA, making at least one Chozo more than just a figurative, adpotive father. In Metroid Dread, it turns out that the Big Bad, Raven Beak, was also a donator for the Chozo DNA as well, effectively making them related to each other in a way.
• Macross Missile Massacre: The seeker missile upgrade lets Samus fire five missiles at once, whether at a single target or several.
• Make Some Noise: The Annihilator Beam, the energy let off from a matter-antimatter annihilation, happens to have a "high powered sonic aspect" and outright becomes a noise weapon charged to fire what is cutely dubbed a "disruptor". Add five missiles to the "disruptor" and you get a "sonic boom" that temporarily cracks reality.
• Male Gaze: She gets many butt shots in certain games. She gets three blatant ones in Metroid: Zero Mission despite the very few cutscenes, another blatant one during her introduction to the Subspace Emissary (story mode) in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, a few notable ones in the promotional material for Super Smash Bros. for 3DS / Wii U, and too many to count in Metroid: Other M.
• Mama Bear:
  • Ask Mother Brain what happens when you mess with the baby Metroid. Oh wait, we can't, it suffered Samus's rage after it killed the grown up Super Metroid while it was protecting its perceived mother figure.
  • Just when she was about to take the newly hatched Metroid infant with her away from SR388, Ridley literally comes out of nowhere to snatch it from Samus' hands. She goes as far as snatching the Metroid and shooting him at the same time. The feeling is very mutual for the hatchling as it goes on to save Samus.
• Man of Kryptonite: Aside from her Ice Beam, which is a perfect counter to the cold-hating Metroids, in Fusion Samus is transfused with Metroid DNA. This makes her the only being in the universe immune to X Parasite infection, as the Chozo specifically created the Metroids to be the X's natural predators.
• Manly Tears: In Other M, when Adam sacrifices himself.
• Meaningful Appearance: In Metroid Fusion, her suit gains three nodes on her back in the pattern of a Metroid nucleus, signifying her infusion with Metroid DNA. These eventually return as her suit matures in Metroid Dread, and when her Metroid infusion fully awakens and she heavily abuses her new siphoning power, her suit becomes akin to a humanoid Metroid, and the pattern on her back changes to resemble the Queen Metroid's eyes.
• Meditation Powerup: On a technological scale. The Chozo's energy-matter conversion mechanics are heavily implied to be powered by a fusion of fully understood spirituality and as yet unexplored science. This is how Samus can recover shield energy and ammunition through Chozo statues when using the Morph Ball. (Astral Projection is a frequent fan theory as to how she's able to steer the Morph Ball in the first place, going off of the meditation technique train of thought.)
• Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds: Samus tends to leave the space stations or planets she visits in ruins or as clouds of debris. It's not always her fault - her enemies like to rig their bases to self-destruct if she defeats them - but if Samus shows up in your neighborhood, chances are that the area or planet is going to explode.
• Monstrous Humanoid: In the final battle of Metroid Dread her Metroid DNA overtakes her and turns her into a humanoid Metroid, with her Power Suit transforming into a green-and-red exoskeleton with claws and spikes. The X-Parasite-consumed Quiet Robe restores her humanity by infusing her with his Thoha DNA.
• Ms. Fanservice: Averted most of the time since she spends the majority of the games in her Power Suit. However, it is played fully straight at the end of most Metroid games. If the player manages to beat the game under a certain time, Samus will take off her Power Suit and shows just how beautiful she is. In earlier games, she is usually depicted in a leotard, bikini or tank top. In later games, it's the Zero Suit. She also gets quite a bit of Male Gaze in Zero Mission, Other M, and the Super Smash Bros. series. These aspects of her are severely downplayed in the Metroid Prime games, Samus Returns, and Metroid Dread, where while she is still stunningly beautiful the games do not emphasize any of her sexual aspects in any way. In the grand finale of Metroid: Samus and Joey EX, we get an image of her naked body as she was bidding farewell to Joey.
• Multi-Ranged Master: She's used a great variety of ranged weapons, and she's a crack shot with all of them.
• Nerves of Steel: If courage has a name, it must be Samus Aran.
• Never Trust a Trailer: All promotional material for the first game outright lied and said that Samus was a male cyborg. This extended to the game manual itself. Of course, this was to preserve the surprise at the end.
• Nice Girl: While she isn't the most social person or prone to emotions, she is shown to be a compassionate and gentle woman who wants to make the galaxy a better place. For example, instead of coldly killing the Metroid hatchling, she spares it once she realizes it isn’t hostile, protects it from Ridley, sees that it is used solely for beneficial research, and fights through all of Zebes to get it back. She also took the time to rescue the Etecoons and Dachora before Zebes was destroyed and saved planet Aether and the Luminoth from the Ing of her own volition and with no expectation of reward (though U-Mos does state that the Ing will most likely turn their attention to the rest of the galaxy if they conquer Aether). In Dread, after taking the time to listen to Quiet Robe's plight, she reassures him in the Chozo language that she will stop Raven Beak's plans to conquer the galaxy.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Her mission in Metroid II: Return of Samus is what facilitates the predicament she ends up in during Fusion as killing off the Metroid population of SR388 means the X Parasites can now live without fear of their artificial predators.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Increases with every installment. At this point, she can be described as "alien human bird paladin".
• Nonchalant Dodge: In Metroid Dread, Samus frequently makes unfazed, nonchalant dodges against an enemy attack and then just casually pops them in the face with her beam or missiles.
• No-Nonsense Nemesis: In cutscenes, especially in the Prime series, Samus will usually point her cannon but not shoot it until she is sure the target is hostile. When they are she deals with enemies and bosses efficiently, often leaving them dead or in critical condition if they're lucky.
• No-Sell: In the prequel Monthy Magazine Z manga's second volume, Samus ignores Ridley after getting the varia suit, letting his attacks skirt off of her like grains of sand before mocking him for thinking he could beat her again and obliterating him. The player cannot emmulate this strategy in any of the video games(even if you hack up her defenseive values to take no damage she'll still flinch).
• Not Quite Flight: The Space Jump in the 2D games lets Samus jump at any time, even in midair; downgraded to a Double Jump in Prime, but then you get the Screw Attack in those games and she's back to jumping canyons. The Shinespark also qualifies, enabling Samus to dash through the air until she hits a wall, physical or invisible.
• Not So Stoic: Even as a professional bounty hunter, Samus is still capable of emotions while she's on the job. Sometimes letting her emotions get the better of her:
  • After defeating Gandrayda in the Space Pirate homeworld, Dark Samus comes and absorbs her while Samus watches. Samus clenches her left hand in anger having seeing this happen.
  • Towards the end of Dread, when finally confronting her 'father', Raven Beak, Samus visibly loses her cool and slips into a rage that awakens her Metroid powers fully before violently draining Raven Beak of his life, all the while letting loose a bloodcurdling scream of rage that increases in volume as she overpowers the Tin Tyrant. Even before then, she's shown giving increasingly vicious Death Glares as she comes to understand what a horrible person he is.
  • On a more lighthearted note, she isn't above making dry comments in her logbook nor celebrating a job well done with a victorious fist pump or by dramatically flying near a Federation fleet and giving them a thumbs up. She clearly has a more humorous side to her, she just doesn't show it much while on the clock.
• One Riot, One Ranger: Send her in to enemy-territory and on impossible missions to do what no one else in the universe can. She's done this eleven times in the series so far. Five of which were in a single game!
• One-Man Army: She was called in to Zebes to solve what orbital bombardment could not. Generally speaking, her Power Suit, arsenal, and enhanced agility, strength, and reflexes make her difficult to manage even with a group of enemies. Space Pirates, as shown in the Metroid Prime games, are terrified of her, and are actively researching her weapons to even stand a chance against her.
• Only the Chosen May Wield: The Power Suit obtained in the Zero Mission epilogue after her first was destroyed. If hit by a Rezbit virus and rebooted one can see "SA" in the model number.
• Organic Technology: Samus's suit appears to be wholly technological in nature, but is possessed of its own subdermal biology, and is intrinsically linked to Samus's own albeit without a direct physical bridge of contact. This nature ends up on display when the Galactic Federation have to perform surgery twice on it when, due to this very nature, it ends up infested by Phazon and an X Parasite.^note And even after being extracted, the fact the suit's components possess organic qualities allows the SA-X to be born from the excised pieces. The removed plating reveals tissue, and even in Dread as the suit "heals" from its operation, tendonlike extensions are clearly visible.

P-S

• Parental Abandonment: Not by choice, mind you. Both Rodney and Virginia Aran perished when Samus was three years old. They were killed by Space Pirates, with Ridley being the one who incinerated Virginia before young Samus's eyes.
• Le Parkour: Supremely gifted at navigating treacherous environments at a constant sprint. As well as performing an assortment of jumps, flips and tumbles that would make an Olympian gymnast green with envy. In Other M, Samus Returns, and Dread she can now do combat counters and moves in addition to her firepower.
• Partial Transformation: In the manga, Samus is capable of manifesting her suit's Arm Cannon without the rest of the suit.
• Person of Mass Destruction: A one-woman army in the most advanced piece of Power Armor in the universe, possessed of enough power to level almost anything: man, beast, army, world, ghost or Physical God. She explicitly becomes this by regard by the end of Dread, having not only become the last Metroid specimen remaining, but the most powerful form of Metroid in history, openly said by Raven Beak masquerading as ADAM that her mere existence is a threat to the galaxy in its entirety — and when her Metroid genes begin running amok, she consumes energy on a scale unhitherto by any Metroid before her.
• Pet the Dog: The original game presented Samus as a silent Bounty Hunter and not much more. Metroid II offers players the first glimpse into her capacity for kindness by showing her sparing the final Metroid hatchling and taking it with her.
• Phlebotinum Rebel: Becomes this temporarily in Metroid Prime 3 when Dark Samus infects her with Phazon corruption. She was supposed to become another obedient servant of Dark Samus like the other 3 infected bounty hunters, but thanks to her Heroic Willpower Samus manages to resist the effects long enough to use her corruption as a means to destroy Phazon forever.
• The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: Is a bounty hunter who is rarely shown doing actual bounty-hunting. Her work in-game would suggest she's more like a mercenary.
  • The first two games could be interpreted as bounty hunting: bounties specifically on Mother Brain, her cache of Metroids, and the Metroid homeworld population, but most of her other "bounties" have nothing in common with the common use of the word. She claimed to be searching for another bounty to hunt in Super Metroid, before the events of the game. But her next job in Fusion is escorting a research team. Her job after that is investigating a disturbance at a biological development laboratory. Her "bounty" after that is finding some lost robots, making "bounty" read more like "odd job" and less like "individual to be captured or killed for a reward".
  • In Metroid Prime 2, Samus actually was hired by the Galactic Federation for a search-and-rescue mission for the missing troops that had crash-landed on Aether. Of course, within the first five minutes of the game she learns that they've already been wiped out. Everything after that was of her own volition.
  • For Metroid Prime 3, Retro Studios initially planned for Samus to do some actual bounty hunting. She'd get a list of possible jobs to do, earn rewards, and use the cash to buy upgrades for her equipment. Nintendo didn't like the idea, and after some back-and-forth, Retro realized there was a language issue, and that "bounty hunter" isn't exactly the best description of what Samus is supposed to be. The Retro developers started joking that she was a "pro-bono hunter" instead.
  • Dread begins with ADAM protesting that the bounty offered for her mission to ZDR doesn't match the risks, giving indication that Samus does accept work for pay, but her nature compels her to accept jobs for benevolent purposes rather than simply for capital.
• Pistol-Whipping: Arm Cannon variant: her melee counter has her swing her gun at whatever's coming her way. It's Downplayed in some respect though, as it's better as a move to parry attacks rather than outright create damage.
• Playing with Fire: The Plasma beam is depicted as such in Metroid Prime and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. While not exactly fire, per se, it allows her to incinerate enemies (and in Prime 3, weld), and the first "Prime" allows Samus to turn it into a flamethrower by pumping missiles into a charged shot after finding the right upgrade. Otherwise the plasma beam's main function is usually a piercing attack. However in "Prime 3" the plasma beam stacks with the Nova beam, allowing the player to have both piercing and "fire". Metroid Prime Hunters instead lets Samus use the Magmaul, which fires lava grenades and can light things on fire directly by charging a shot.
• Powered Armor: Her Power Suit is one of the most famous examples in all of media. A Chozo-designed cybernetic battle exo-skeleton of quantum-locked, psionically summoned armour that is synchronized with her very being and can adapt to incorporate all known (and some unknown) weaponry. It also provides energy shielding, protection from lethal environments, enhanced strength and uncharted tactical scanning capabilities.
• Power Incontinence: While Samus starts to slowly develop her Metroid powers during the events of Dread, her sudden metamorphosis into a humanoid one during her final battle against Raven Beak makes her lose control of her energy-draining powers. When she is trying to escape the destruction of ZDR, ADAM warns her that she will just drain her gunship of its energy if she tries to take off. Fortunately, the Quiet Robe X Parasite helps Samus to return back to normal so that she can fly off the planet.
• Protagonist Title: A retroactive, and subtle version; not only did later entries allegedly state that Metroid means "ultimate warrior", one of which Samus definitely is, she becomes part Metroid in the beginning of Fusion due to the Metroid DNA that saved her from dying to the X Parasite. Come the end of Metroid Dread, it is now explicitly given that she is the last Metroid in existence, and the strongest ever produced.
• Protectorate: At least on paper. She trained as a warrior ultimately to defend others from what she had to endure, but she is not averse to proactively tracking down evil and annihilating it. And a girl has to make a living somehow.
• Proud Beauty: She seems to be very proud of her looks, considering that many of the games' best endings have her letting her hair down and posing attractively for the player.
• Psychoactive Powers: Her Power Suit is tied to her strength of will. While Other M shows this as a weakness by having it turn off when she gets scared, Samus and Joey shows it as a strength by enabling Samus to power up her suit through Heroic Resolve.
• Pure Energy: Essentially what her Power Beam is. It vaporizes targets in Prime 3.
• Purple Is Powerful: Samus's Gravity Suit, which is the strongest variant of Power Suit she can acquire in most games, has a heavy purple motif to help signify its strength.
• The Quiet One: She's not actually a Heroic Mime; while she talks a lot in Other M in her internal monologue, it's shown in Fusion and Dread that out of her head, she is extremely laconic, only speaking when she can't get something across through her actions.
• Race Lift: In a Japanese Zero Mission commercial, Samus (a blue-eyed Caucasian-looking blonde in-game) is portrayed by dark-haired, brown-eyed Japanese actress Chisato Morishita. Her appearance in Other M looks more Asian than Caucasian, though this seems to be a consequence of a more animesque art style.
• Raised by Natives: Rescued, nurtured, trained and loved by the last remnants of the Chozo.
• Ramming Always Works: While she's best known for her various beam and missile weapons, the Screw Attack and Shinespark are some of Samus's most powerful attacks.
• Rebellious Spirit:
  • Though Samus fights for peace in space, she does not enjoy being ordered around, and only works for the Galactic Federation because of how often their goals intersect. The moment their goals diverge, such as when she learns of the Feds' Metroid ambitions in Fusion, she is quick to abandon them to do what she personally believes is right.
  • Subverted in Other M, as she willingly places herself back under Adam's command in order to prove she's matured since her days of immature rebellion in the Federation Army. She still ends up working outside his orders, but comes to peace with it by the end of the game.
• Red Baron: Of all her prey. Of all her foes, the Space Pirates deem her as the one and only being regarded enough to bear the title of the Hunter. In a universe full of them!
• Red Is Heroic: Her suit has large portions of red in the armor. Even in games where her suit is primarily another color (like Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, Metroid Fusion, and Metroid Dread), her helmet and chestpiece are still red.
• Rei Ayanami Expy: Samus fits this trope in Other M, having characteristics of both Rei and Shinji. She speaks in a stoic monotone, seems to suffer from low self-esteem like Shinji, and lots of emphasis is placed on her loyalty to Adam (much like Rei's loyalty to Gendo) and her Dark and Troubled Past, both of which are the cause of most of her emotional breakdowns throughout the game (such emotional breakdowns were a staple of Evangelion). A flashback scene even gives her a bobbed haircut similar to Rei's.
• Remember When You Blew Up a Sun?: In Echoes, logs left by the troopers mention the two planets full of Space Pirates she's blown up. One of the ones who mentions the story thinks that the act was too much for a single human to accomplish...(she hadn't literally taken out planets yet, to be fair)
• Removed Achilles' Heel:
  • As a side effect of the Metroid vaccine that saved her life in Fusion, she's inherited the Metroids' trademark vulnerability to cold; this puts her at a severe disadvantage against the SA-X, which wields the Ice Beam. She rids herself of this weakness once she re-acquires the Varia Suit.
  • Zig-Zagged in Dread where, due to her Metroid abilities awakening, she regains her vulnerability to cold temperatures until she obtains the Gravity Suit.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge:
  • Implied that she has a very massive one against Mother Brain and Ridley.
  • In Corruption, the final battle on Phaaze is implied to be this as well, considering Aran's reactions to each of the Hunters' deaths, making it quite clear that by the time the final fight ensues, she's ready to rip the one responsible (Dark Samus) apart.
  • Both prior instances pale in comparison to the sheer amount of rage she develops towards Raven Beak in Dread after finding out just how many atrocities he was indirectly and directly responsible for across all the prior games. Him murdering Quiet Robe through one of his robot soldiers and impersonating ADAM and only further fuel her anger. When Raven Beak has her at his mercy and brags about how he plans to clone her in order to take over the galaxy, she snaps, screaming in uncharacteristic fury as she fully awakens her developing Metroid powers and violently drains his life away.
• Rocket Jump: Bomb jumps; as bombs float in air, it can be done at least twice in all games, and taken to ridiculous levels in some. Power Bombs can be used for this effect too in the games where they aren't explicit room cleaners. It's implied that the jets on her back sometimes do this as well. Being immune to her own explosives is important, as it helps Samus remove Personal Space Invaders from her suit. (For Competitive Balance reasons, Samus can be hurt by the explosions of some of her own weapons in Metroid Prime Hunters.)
• Rolling Attack: The Shinespark can be used in Morph Ball form in Zero Mission. In the Prime series, in lieu of the Speed Booster, the Boost Ball can be used to generate a boost of speed while in Morph Ball form in a similar fashion.
• Samus Is a Girl: Trope Namer, as the first game used this trope as a bonus for players to find out.
• Scarily Competent Tracker: All but outright stated. She tracks the Pirates that flee from Zebes to Tallon IV across space. Also, complete the scavenger hunts in each chapter of the Prime trilogy and you will most definitely feel like one of these.
• Screaming Warrior: Only twice, when she goes into full Unstoppable Rage:
  • In the manga, after obliterating Ridley for the first time and avenging her mother, her childhood home and her adoptive father, Samus lets loose over twenty years of pent-up primal fury with a roar of vindication and release.
  • The second is in Dread, when Raven Beak finally pushes her over the edge, taunting her with the idea that he is technically her Archnemesis Dad, massacring the friendly Thoha Chozo and his own people, manipulating her all mission by pretending to be Adam, and gloating about his plans to clone her to conquer the galaxy, she loses her shit, beating him to a pulp as her Metroid genes fully awaken, screeching in rage all the while.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: At the end of Fusion. With the discovery that the Galactic Federation intend to capture the X Parasites and SA-X for military purposes, Samus immediately turns on them, knowing that such plans are a disaster waiting to happen, destroying both the B.S.L station and SR388 to wipe out the X.
• Sensual Spandex: Samus Aran's Zero Suit is very tight, especially around her rear, something the camera in a few games loves to remind you of.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Grey Voice said she appeared to have symptoms of PTSD in the manga, although he stopped short of officially diagnosing her, and Platinum Chest instead explained her reaction to Ridley as her reliving her childhood trauma as her subconcious memory suppression came undone. Nonetheless according to an interview with Yoshio Sakamoto and Team Ninja Samus is poor at coping with her life's problems, despite her snapping back to her regular mood on Zebes and going dragon hunting once the space pirate raid K-2L had played out in through in her head.
• Sherlock Scan: Thanks to her Scan Visor, though she sometimes adds her own notes — and time pauses when it finishes the evaluation...
• She Who Fights Monsters: Though subverted, she almost succumbs to this a few times:
  • The 3rd chapter of the manga describes an early recon mission she has as a Galactic Federation Police Officer on the planet of Jigrad. She and two of her squad mates save a group of slaves from the Space Pirates. When confronted by Samus, the last remaining Space Pirate pleads with her to show mercy. Driven by her memories of her homeworld K-2L being mercilessly razed by the Space Pirates, Samus is about to murder the last Space Pirate in cold blood when the sound of a small girl crying snaps her out of her rage. Shortly thereafter, the small child thanks Samus for saving her, and Samus tells her that she saved her as well from becoming just as much of a merciless killer as the Space Pirates.
  • Also the ending of Metroid II. Samus is charged with the task of eradicating the Metroids once and for all. After destroying the Metroid Queen, Samus finds a newly hatched Metroid. Despite her mission, she still can't bring herself to kill a child. Specially poignant considering her own past. Metroids are not only some of her more persistant enemies but come Fusion and Dread, Samus is symbolically and literally put in a Metroid's shoes by being made part Metroid and having the SA-X hunt her down with her very own Metroid fighting technique. By the time of Dread, her Metroid DNA has started to awaken, slowly turning her into a Human form Metroid and giving her their Life Drinker abilities, making her the biggest threat to the galaxy if she loses control.
• Shock and Awe: The Wave Beam is portrayed to be this in the first Prime, where it can energize panels. In the rest of the series its main utility is instead to diffuse through materials and hit opponents behind cover. "First Hunt" would instead make the electro lob her "shock" weapon instead, while "Hunters" proper would let Samus use the Volt Driver and Shock Coil. Metroid Prime 3: Corruption would have the electrical needs handled by the grapple lasso, where it gets upgraded to turn energy shielding into electrical energy or use electrical energy to restore energy shielding.
• Shoulders of Doom: Since Metroid II on the Game Boy couldn't use color to differentiate between the different suits, the Varia Suit was given big honking shoulders to distinguish its sprite from the regular Power Suit. The design has carried over since then to every subsequent game in the series.
• Showy Invincible Hero: In Metroid Dread. Despite the opening cutscene beginning with her on the wrong side of a Curb-Stomp Battle, the rest of the game features Samus at her absolute best. In gameplay, Samus has an arsenal of abilities, weapons and counters that can allow the player to remain virtually untouched if they're good enough. In cutscenes, Samus shows no signs of panic or distress; when confronted with the towering Kraid, she stands unflinchingly as he struggles to bite and claw at her, counters his attacks and stands in his mouth firing missiles into it, and then calmly dodges his last-ditch desperation attack. There are rarely other moments in the game where she is any real trouble, but these moments typically result in her growing only more confident and powerful.
• Shrouded in Myth:
  • In the very first game's instruction manual, Metroid's Samus Aran is described as being "shrouded in mystery", supernaturally skilled, and Nigh-Invulnerable thanks to a plethora of cybernetic upgrades, encased in a suit of Powered Armor that's the terror of every law-breaker in the universe, and with his, her or its true form known to no one. Of course, when the armor finally comes off at the end of the game, the galaxy's most famous bounty hunter turns out to be a rather attractive blonde woman.
  • The legend also winds up oddly inverted, according to the logs of Metroid Prime 2. Some of the Federation Marines apparently consider the various exploits of Samus Aran, and even her very existence, to be only slightly more credible than bed-time stories:
    PFC Crany: Last night at chow, Angseth starts talking about some bounty hunter and how she blew up a planet full of Space Pirates. I told her I didn't believe in fairy tales like that, and she took it personal. I just find it hard to believe that one person took out an entire Space Pirate base, that's all. But if she wants to believe in this Samus, or Bigfoot, or Santa Claus, she can.
  • The Space Pirates, not to be outdone, have grown Samus into their cultural mythology as a one-woman demonic Grim Reaper. Every game in the Prime series features an Apocalyptic Log sequence in which the Space Pirates describe the impending horror of a raid by "the Hunter". To clarify, the Prime series shows numerous other bounty hunters, and implies that there are many more; that it is Samus alone that they call the Hunter shows how terrified they are of her.
• Signature Move: The fabled Screw Attack, usually the last major ability she gets and one of the strongest.
• The Silent Bob: In the Prime trilogy and Samus Returns, she only grunts when she takes damage and screams when she loses all her energy. Averted in Other M and Dread.
• Silent Snarker: She usually lets her body language do the talking. This is best shown in Dread, where she encounters a chained-up Kraid roaring to intimidate her, only to have an "Oh, it's you" reaction and shoot him in the face.
• Sole Survivor: She is the only colonist survivor of K-2L. A fact that Ridley resents, and the underlying motive for Samus to protect the galaxy.
• Sphere of Destruction: Power Bombs in the 3D games. They are ovals in the 2D ones.
• Spider-Sense: Prime reveals that the heads up display of her helmet includes indicators of movement and energy sources outside her field of vision, allowing Samus to react to things she cannot immediately see (Prime 2 and 3's cutscenes provide third person demonstrations even if the player never figures it out). Apparently supplementary materials suggest she has Chozo physic senses to fore-warn her of imminent danger and trigger fantastic reaction speed but the only places any thing like this comes close to being demonstrated are in the manga and Other M.
• Spy Catsuit: The Zero Suit is a skintight blue outfit that Samus wears under her Power Suit. At its introduction it was the most modest clothing she had worn outside of her Power Suit. Although it was also the first time the player was required to control her without the Power Suit.
• Standard Power-Up Pose:
  • Samus often takes a variant when she acquires a new suit upgrade like the Varia and Gravity suits. In the fully 2D entries she just stands and looks at the camera. The Prime sub-series has her T-pose. The Mercury Steam games play this straight.
  • Does a painful looking variant in Prime 3 when empowered after Leviathan Guardian bosses.
  • Samus does a much more, well, standard variation when she gains a new Aeion abilities in Samus Returns.
• Static Stun Gun: She uses her Paralyzer for protection when not wearing her armor. Brawl adds a whip mode.
• Statuesque Stunner: According to the Super Metroid Player's Guide, she's supposed to be 6'3 and 198 pounds outside her armor. However, the info in said book was mistranslated: the numbers given are supposed to be the height and weight of the armor itself. For evidence, older images that predate that guide specify those numbers refer to the Power Suit, not Samus herself. One major example is an image from Nintendo Power Volume 31 (December 1991, almost 3 years before Super was released) in an article about Metroid II: Return of Samus that specifically lists those numbers under an image that says "Samus Aran's Cybernetic Suit."◊ Then there's Metroid II's manual itself, which also gives those numbers for the suit, not Samus. However, this distinction ultimately is to no effect, as the Power Suit has since been displayed to explicitly manifest over Samus fitting to her physical dimensions so exact in stature that there's negligible difference between her being in it or not.^note Beyond this, the only game to attempt to show Samus as a smaller height than most is Other M, and even then, this created a plothole when the suit manifested the same as in all else, yet somehow created a dramatic change in stature.
  • Regardless of the numbers, Samus is regularly shown to stand taller than most human or humanoid company she keeps, which makes logical sense in having been augmented on the genetic level with Chozo DNA, an avian race who themselves tower over human heights.
  • A March 2023 interview with former Retro Studios engineer Jack Mathews revealed that in the first Prime game, Samus's character model was designed to be 5'11.
• Stealth Pun: Metroid Prime is the final boss of Metroid Prime. Dark Samus a new body it made for itself after its first was destroyed, making her a second incarnation of Metroid Prime in a sense. In the third numbered "Prime" game, one way to lose is becoming "terminally corrupted", which results in Samus being turned into a copy of Dark Samus, effectively making her Metroid Prime 3 through corruption.
• The Stoic: Samus is a professional, no-nonsense woman who is usually unable to be shaken even at her most impassioned moments, whether it be fear or anger. Even in Other M for the most part, specifically her inner monologues and the infamous Ridley scene. (What do you expect to be going on in a stoic's mind?)
• Story-Breaker Power: In Metroid Dread, it comes to light that Samus has developed the very same power that made the Metroids such a feared and indomitable force: their Energy Drain, having biologically become the final Metroid herself. This predation lets her feed on any form of energy that exists, and as is known in the series, has no existing countermeasure for — when a Metroid latches onto you, if you're not Samus herself, you're good as dead, and Samus's in particular goes beyond all others seen before in draining the entirety of Raven Beak's ship's energy reserves without even making direct contact with it. As is immediately demonstrated though, using this power to feed on an opponent threatens to invoke a Power Incontinence mutation in her, so it's too dangerous to use freely.
• Stupid Sacrifice:
  • In Other M, Samus, fresh off a Heroic BSoD brought on by Ridley's clone and concluding that her old CO Adam is a traitor, sets out to kill the cloned Metroids to prove to herself that she isn't weak. She is stopped by Adam, who points out that she'd only get herself killed due to the cloned Metroids' immunity to her weapons. Adam then restores Samus' by saying she is the only one who can stop Ridley's clone and sacrificing himself to destroy the Metroids.
  • As ADAM points out in Fusion, her initial plan to pull a Heroic Sacrifice to destroy the X-Parasites in B.S.L will not only fail to eliminate all the Xes on the station, but leave the ones on SR388 alive. Destroying herself would remove the one thing standing between the X and galactic destruction. And as Dread reveals, ZDR is also crawling with them as well. He tells her to instead destroy the station along with the planet to eliminate the parasites in both locations.
• Suddenly Voiced: While Samus has spoken in spin-offs and various offshoots such as the manga, Super Smash Bros.^note albeit specifically in her Zero Suit form and Other M, Samus finally audibly speaks in a mainline title in Dread — in Chozo, at that.
  Samus: Don't worry... I'll end this. Once and for all.
• Supermodel Strut: Averted throughout the series as most of the early 2D games didn't really focus on this since Samus is running all the time, and the Prime games spend much of their time in the first-person view. Other M started to lean into this with some of the close-up, slow-walking, Over the Shoulder camera instances. And then Dread fully embraced this trope, especially in its cutscenes where Samus sways her hips in a very feminine manner as she walks, helped by the Dread suit hugging her legs quite tightly.
• Super-Reflexes: Capable of nullifying hails of gunfire with her own shots. One of the coolest and most impressive displays of her reflexes and speed comes from the Samus and Joey manga: a Space Pirate has his weapon trained on Joey, his hostage, at point-blank range, with his weapon inches away from the boy's head◊. Samus tells him to fire, and he does◊. Samus then moves with lightning speed and catches the bullet well before it hits Joey, while simultaneously mortally wounding the Space Pirate with a shot of her own. As revealed by supplementary materials and the various manga, and implied in Prime 3, Samus' HUD's lock on just lets her keep track of her opponents. It doesn't actually lock her gun on to them. While her wave beam and missiles do have tracking capabilities, her traditional 'lock on' in the various games are just her insane reflexes allowing her to keep a steady aim. In one issue of the manga, Samus abused this by countering five bullets from a criminal with only four power beam shots at lightning speed.
• Super-Soldier: Sam's got the complete Super Soldier package, being adopted by the fantastically advanced yet consciously going extinct Chozo, who infused her with Chozo DNA to gain fantastic speed, strength, agility and sensory capacity, trained her as the last Defender (read: legendary universe-saving warrior/judge figure) and equipped her with a modular suit of Powered Armor that's the envy of the galaxy. On top of this, she's largely fueled by a burning desire to get back at the Space Pirates who trashed both of her home-worlds and left her orphaned twice over. If there's a better warrior in the series' galaxy, we haven't seen him, her or it yet. She later gets infused with Metroid DNA, and has also been exposed to the highly volatile substance Phazon repeatedly. Additionally, her aforementioned Power Suit can utilize virtually any weapon or technology it comes across, can hack into even the most secure networks just by looking at it, and can determine the weakness of almost anything, animal or mineral, by the same process. Lastly, and fittingly, the word "Metroid" in the Chozo language means "ultimate warrior", which describes her accurately.
• Super-Strength: While it isn’t as pronounced as her agility and reflexes, Samus has been shown a few times to be stronger than the average human being:
  • When someone can swan-dive and free-fall off a sheer cliff on Zebes, plummet about fifty metres, unarmoured, while performing several impossible, gravity-defying feats and come to a halt with a palmed three point landing that leaves a crater then do a happy dance after this; you definitely qualify for these. For added awesome, when Samus recalls this memory in the manga; she looks to be about five.
  • In the games proper, particularly Samus Returns and Dread thanks to the addition of the melee counter, Samus can do things like parry physical strikes from creatures and machines much bigger than her, such as Omega and Queen Metroids, Kraid, and war machines with just a well-timed swing of her Arm Cannon arm. She can also throw around creatures larger than her such as the Zeta Metroid, which she grabbed by its tail and swung to the ground midair during a successful parry.
• Survivor Guilt: She is usually the only survivor by the end of any given game. It is something that she regrets deeply, given her past as the only survivor of K-2L. The ones that affect her the most are her parents, her Chozo caretakers, the other bounty hunters in Prime 3, the baby Metroid, Adam Malkovich, Anthony Higgs (before it turns out he survived), and Quiet Robe.
• Swiss-Army Weapon: Her famous arm-cannon doesn't just shoot a multitude of different energy types and reams of Abnormal Ammo but can also tractor in free-floating energy particulates when charging up for both healing and offence, manufacture micro-missiles and not-so micro missiles of incredible strength, infuse energy types into said ballistics, whether a continuous stream or a massive one-shot release. But it doesn't end there, in conjunction with her myriad 'visors', it can switch beams over to entirely different spectrum fields of existence or even directly penetrate uncommon defences to maim in one or energize dead systems with a conductive blast. A little-known addition is that each individual beam can be combined with a power bomb in Super Metroid to create a temporary deadly-to-the-touch set of force field orbs that flit around Aran's armoured form. The cannon also possesses some sort of advanced isomorphic controls that can remotely pilot her gunship through musical application, the 'petal flaps' can open to fine-tune interface with machinery, crack security matrices and operate hidden pathways. On the flip side, the cannon can close together to project a roaring white-hot plasma pilot light that can weld damaged metal and circuitry together; or better yet, drain massive amounts of energy from planetary energy collectors and seamlessly download unlimited topographical data with a touch. The cannon even sometimes possesses its own variant of the entanglement and Less-Than-Lethal fire modes which utilise electro-magnetic grapple lines that can also be used for traversing the environment as well as subduing a live bounty. It's a truly versatile piece of equipment; so much more than a BFG.
• Super-Toughness: Due to her Chozo heritage and Zebesian upbringing. She can take shots for the team that would cause a lesser hero to crumple in one. She can stand multiple times after having been hit by Mother Brain's Laser Brain Attack. When she and her fellow hunters are incapacitated by Dark Samus in Prime 3, she is the only one who manages to get back up for just long enough to accomplish their mission before completely passing out. She will fight and win battles with a drop in the tank to spare.
• Sympathy for the Devil: In Other M, Samus expresses sympathy towards M.B. — the gynoid replica of Mother Brain — after learning how the Galactic Federation had mistreated her once she had developed emotions and self-awareness.

T-Y

• Taught by Experience: She's not the greatest warrior in the universe by dint of her technology alone. The woman has had enough time lived on the battlefield to learn some mad skills. And a lot of experience at that; the events of Metroid and Super Metroid are only two years apart ^note 20X5 and 20X7, respectively with a grand total of 8 missions over that period of time ^note Metroid/Zero Mission, Metroid Prime, Metroid Prime Hunters, Metroid Prime 2, Metroid Prime 3, Metroid Prime: Federation Force, Metroid II/Samus Returns, and Super Metroid.
• Terrifying Rescuer: In Other M, both of the civilians encountered onboard the Bottle Ship flee in terror at the sight of her. While MB is manipulating Samus with her reaction, Madeline Bergman is just plain terrified.
• That Makes Me Feel Angry: Samus in Other M often does this in her narration as her stoic demeanor doesn't express that much emotion.
• Tomboyish Ponytail: Sometimes seen with a ponytail when out of armor, especially in later appearances; for obvious practical reasons, she almost always wears this hairstyle under her helmet. It definitely helps reinforce her no-nonsense Action Girl nature even when she doesn't have her Power Suit on.
• Touched by Vorlons: Being infused with Chozo DNA in her childhood led to her growing into an adult who’s somewhat beyond human. Dread breaks it down: her Mawkin tribe genes grant her supreme physical prowess, and her Thoha tribe genes let her control Metroids, although this only manifests as her body being able to suppress the Metroid DNA she received in Fusion, barring wild guessing about the Baby Metroid’s imprinting.
• Tranquil Fury: If Samus is angry for any reason, but doesn't show it, run. Even Chozo logs finds her wrath disturbing when they saw her in their visions. The only exception is in Metroid Dread, in which her fury is absolutely not tranquil.
• Transhuman: As of Fusion, parts of Samus' suit are fused to her nervous system, and she's part Metroid and Chozo. Despite that, she still resembles a human.
• Transhuman Abomination: The Chozo blood she was infused with in the series backstory already augments many of her physical abilities to super human levels but in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, she slowly starts sliding towards this trope and can jump straight there if you're not careful with hyper mode. The end of that game resets her with the destruction of the Phazon, but she starts that way again in Fusion where she gains Metroid genetic code and starts absorbing X parasites to assimilate their powers. Come Dread, it's revealed that her Metroid abilities have fully awakened. Though she still looks human on the surface, biologically, how much human DNA she has LEFT is anyone’s guess.
• Tron Lines: Kelly green for the Varia suit, cerulean for the P.E.D. suit.
• Ultimate Life Form: As the "most powerful Metroid", she easily outdoes the Metroid universe's other potential holders of the title. On top of the high intelligence and superhuman physical abilities inherited from her Chozo DNA donors Gray Voice and Raven Beak, she gains the powerful draining abilities of Metroids inherited from the Baby's DNA. Via her suit, she also gains the ability to imitate any being she absorbs, indirectly giving her one of the signature traits of the X Parasites. Once her Metroid DNA goes into overdrive, her strength increases exponentially, and she gains the Nigh-Invulnerability of the Metroids.
• Unique Protagonist Asset: Samus is the sole known person to have the Chozo armor, a creation of the Chozo that incorporates several technologies the other factions of the galaxy don't really understand. In Metroid Fusion the infusion of Metroid cells makes her the only character that can combat the X parasite. Her encounter with Raven Beak in Metroid Dread awakens more of the Metroid powers to the point she basically is a Metroid with their signature Life Drinker and Energy Absorbtion abilities.
• Unknown Rival: Samus over the course of the series has a personal vendetta against the Big Bad of the game. This includes: Ridley, Mother Brain, Dark Samus, and Raven Beak. When she encounters Kraid who somehow survived the destruction of Zebes, her reaction and body language amounts to a disinterested "Oh, it's you", and casually shoots him in the face.
• Unstoppable Rage: At the climax of Metroid Dread, having been jerked around by her biological Chozo father, the mass-murderous tyrant who robbed her of her adopted family of the Chozo by slaughtering the peaceful Thoha of SR388, having the last living member cut down before her eyes, as well as caused even his own Mawkin tribe's death by allowing the X to infest them and corralling the X to use for his own purposes, turning her into the threat to the universe she fought and bled to be rid of, effectively being behind nearly all her life's misfortune that the Space Pirates didn't cause and showing no remorse for any of it, for the first time in the franchise, Samus Aran well and truly loses her shit in a blind, screaming rage as she gives into her Metroid genes entirely, crushes Raven Beak's helmet, and viciously drains the life out of him and the ship they're standing in.
• Vague Age: According to the Metroid prequel manga, Samus is "a few years" older than 14 during the events of Metroid and Metroid: Zero Mission. Since the exact length of the Time Skip is indeterminate, it's difficult to tell whether she's an older teenager or a young adult at this point.
• Victorious Roar: Lets off a rather cathartic one when she defeats Ridley for the first time in the manga, after being put through the ringer by her Arch-Nemesis.
• Villain Killer: Samus Aran is an intergalactic bounty hunter, and she lives up to her reputation by accomplishing tasks thought impossible. For instance, some of her most villain kills include a Metroid mutated with Phazon to become a massive spidery monster that could imitate her armor to save its life, the destruction of the Metroid species in its entirety, two counts of detonating a Space Pirate base (the latter taking the entire planet it was on with it), and a nigh-immortal sadistic Space Pirate commander that even recovered from Phazon corruption. There is a reason that Samus is feared throughout the galaxy.
• Walk, Don't Swim: How Samus handles water; becomes less of a problem with the gravity suit or gravity boost.
• Walking Armory: When fully equipped, Aran totes more firepower than all of our world military's combined.
• Wall Crawl: The Spider Ball. It is limited to magnetic surfaces in Prime, but since Samus can combine it with the Boost Ball to force herself away from one place and stick to another, it was necessary.
• Wall Jump: Generally becomes redundant when she gets the Space Jump, except for Prime 2 and 3, where the Space Jump is limited to just being a Double Jump, and it is combined with the Screw Attack for wall jumping.
• Warrior Poet: Introspective, calculating and spiritual. That one silent scene of Samus surveying the burning, destroyed Chozo Temple at the end of Prime before closing her eyes with some curious, subdued emotion; cements her forever as one of these.
• Weapon Across the Shoulder: When at rest, or to show confidence. Sam likes to rest her cannon back over one of those big spherical shoulders of hers.
• What You Are in the Dark: Throughout the series, Samus is faced with moral dilemmas that she has the opportunity to simply walk away from. Of course, this is Samus, so walking away is never an option:
  • One of the most iconic examples occurs at the end of Metroid II. Samus was hired to exterminate all of the Metroids on SR-388, yet after killing all of them and defeating their queen, she witness a final Metroid hatch from an egg, which then imprints on her. Instead of simply eliminating the creature and collecting her reward, Samus spares it and takes the Baby Metroid to a (seemingly) secure research facility.
  • In Metroid Prime, Samus was hired specifically to stop the Space Pirates' operations and she pursues Ridley solely for personal reasons. However, even after achieving both goals, she concludes the game by heading into the depths of Tallon IV and destroying Metroid Prime to save the dying planet, simply because it was the right thing to do.
  • In Metroid Fusion, she's hired to figure out the cause of an explosion on BSL Station and nothing more. She accomplishes this goal about halfway through the game, but discovers that the Federation has been breeding and weaponizing Metroids, and that they intend to do the same with the X-Parasites. Rather than simply taking her payment and leaving as instructed, Samus rejects the bounty altogether and defies the Federation by destroying the entire station to keep the creatures from spreading throughout the galaxy.
• When She Smiles:
  • It was worth the wait for the end of the 'Samus and Joey' manga just for this◊.
  • The Stinger for Dread has her staring right at the player, eyes crinkled.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: An unusal variation of the trope. She is undeniably a Woobie. Having lost practically everyone she's ever loved (multiple times!), been used and manipulated by the Goverment she works for and using The Power of Hate to dull and cope with the pain. She's even literally a Destroyer Of Worlds who has blown up Planets in her more emotionally triggering missions, granted it's mostly collateral but with the exception of Dark Aether, she did it due to fighting VERY personal enemies. The other main twist is that she's The Hero of the series rather than an Anti-Villain.
• World's Best Warrior: Highly regarded as being so; very few can stand against her and hope to live. Even the few able to legitimately challenge Samus^listMother Brain, Ridley, the SA-X, Dark Samus, The E.M.M.I. and Raven Beak meet their end at her hand, multiple times in some cases.
• Wrestler in All of Us: Other M has her pull out flying one-armed guillotines on giant chameleons, hurricanrana pins on winged bio weapons and charge-cannon meteor drops on Kaiju-sized monstrosities.
• Yin-Yang Bomb: What the Annihilator Beam, and especially its Sonic Boom charge combo is, in addition to the above; being a matter-antimatter weapon and all.
• You Killed My Father: Her enmity against Ridley is due to this. Especially her mother, who was killed by Ridley's plasma breath when she pushed Samus out of the way.
• You Don't Look Like You: Samus's appearance in the post-game screens from Fusion looks radically different than the appearance established in Zero Mission and the Prime series, with much lighter (and wilder) blond hair, and an almost completely different build. Some fans speculate it is a result of the Metroid vaccine and the absorption of X-parasites while others believe it to be Depending on the Artist.
• Your Size May Vary: Her given height in supplementary materials is around 6'3" without (or with depending on translation) the Power Suit on. She looks a bit shorter than that in Other M.

---