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Samus Theories

Samus is sterile

After all the genetic mucking about she's had done to her, I wouldn't be surprised. Even if her eggs have been miraculously untouched after she had been given chozo DNA, infected by X DNA, cured with metroid DNA, and absorbed the DNA of everything ever absorbed by any X she absorbed, her reproductive system is probably not untouched.

Either she's sterile, or any offspring of hers will be a horrifying/AWESOME hybrid of human, Chozo, X, and metroid, growing up to become an unstoppable warrior.
- Don't forget about the horrific mutations (and associated potential superpowers) caused by genetic damage from prolonged phazon exposure and corruption!

You All Fail Biology Forever. Samus is a woman, and so was born with all her eggs pre-forged. Her kids will be half-human, half-whatevershefucks if Nintendo stretches the laws to Gohan levels. Most-likely they'll be purebred humans, if they ever exist at all! The Phazon corruption-induced sterility is a definite possibility, radiation and whatnot. And she was infected by X parasites, not X DNA.
- There's no telling how being infected with DNA from sci-fi aliens with only vaguely-explained properties would affect a human being's ova. Under normal circumstances, yes, the only real options are that they're unaffected, sterile, or mutated from radiation, but for all we know Metroid and Chozo DNA could've gotten into them somehow.
- Actually my point wasn't about her eggs, though who knows what they've been through. My point is that her body might not even have the right hormonal cues or possibly even physical mechanisms to carry a child to term anymore. While she at least outwardly looks fairly normal, the endocrine system is a delicate thing, and her genetic alterations, with one possible exception, have never been really gentle.
~~The Expanded Media for Super Metroid (As well as Other M itself) suggested~~Metroid: Other M shows that Samus had a strong, affectionate relationship with the baby metroid, like it really was her child. Since the metroid had chosen her as its mother, it's possible she is finally letting loose the repressed effects of her (once thought to be pointless) biological clock.
Even if she's not traditionally sterile, the Metroid vaccine would probably have enhanced her immune system to take care of, not just X, but any parasitic infection. Even if she managed to conceive...well, we've seen what happens when a fly hits a bug zapper.~~preeclampsia~~
This troper thinks that Samus will probably reproduce the same way that a Metroid does, now that she's got their DNA.
- By laying Metroid eggs?
  - Or Chozo eggs, or something partway between the two. Either way, they'll probably need external fertilization by a compatible male.
- That reminds this troper of some rather disturbing fan art that involved an exhasted Samus sitting near a load of unhatched (presumably metroid) eggs.
- I actually meant multiplying when exposed to beta rays.

Samus has autism.

It's the reason she works alone as a bounty hunter on often deserted planets, rarely speaks (exept to herself), lacks well-developed social skills, remains unwedded (lets's be honest, she could have ANYONE she wanted), works under her own volition, possesses lighting-fast thinking, calculating, and problem-solving skills, and remains calm even in highly-strenuous situations (eg: having little trouble taking down Ridley while falling down a reactor). Then again, this may not be the case because of, well, you know.

If not by nature, then she's certainly autistic-ish by nurture. Being raised by a bunch of aging 500-pound canaries seems counterproductive to learning how to deal with other humans. (And hell, that breakdown could have been compounded with Ridley's sonic frenzy ability - sensory overload heightens emotions, and heightened emotions make it difficult to process all the sensory input.)

Samus had depression as a child.

Duh. But also, pay attention to her end game outfits. As the technology's grown to show her arms in clearer definition, she's taken to covering her wrists. Even in flashbacks to the age of ten or thereabouts.

Samus keeps losing power-ups because she's been selling them.

She never actually makes money from her little one-woman wars against the pirates, and, save for Prime Hunters and Prime 3, puts a lot of effort for no reward — and she no doubt has injuries, damage, etc, that need repair afterwards, as well as maintenance fees and such. Given that all the powerups are universally either Space Pirate prototypes or ancient artifacts, it makes sense that she would sell them after each adventure to recoup her losses, as, although she usually gets a personal victory, she really gets shafted financially each time, effort, time, and resources wise. She doesn't mind losing the firepower because she knows that she'll pick up new ones next time she really needs them.

It follows that the Chozo anticipated this, and set up the powerups all over the place as a means of providing for their surrogate daughter.
There's no evidence she ISN'T paid. I mean, she gets missions from the GF, and any group that would fail to pay our one woman army is really, really stupid.
- When she gets involved with them, sure. But several times — such as Prime 1 — she doesn't get involved (with them) at all, or like in Prime 2, the task done for them was minuscule compared to what she had to do overall — business sense dictates that price be agreed upon beforehand, so she can't exactly raise it because she felt like, say, helping the Luminoth and fighting her main/Evil Twin. And she kinda failed in Super Metroid, where she couldn't save the Last Metroid, which musta pissed them off given what they wanted to do with it.
  - And in Fusion, she outright defies them and destroys what must be billions of currency units' worth of research and technology. She even admits that she's probably a fugitive now.
Later games have gotten away from this trope entirely (Hunters) or come up with reasons why her power-ups are unavailable — broken by hitting a lift wall in Prime, suit-jacked by Ing and then had to return the Light Suit and its attached weapons to the Luminoth in Prime 2, Phazon weaponry/armor stopped working when Phaaze blew up in Prime 3, hopelessly corrupted by X in Fusion. It's not a bad theory, but it's well on its way to being Jossed.
- Ah, but in the start of Prime, before hitting the lift wall, she started off with nowhere near her full arsenal, so she must have sold off everything seen as nonessential. Same with the start of Prime 2, before the Ing attack. Then, not all of the gear attached to the Light Suit was Luminoth tech — quite a bit was stolen from Space Pirates, and wasn't there in 3. Finally, not all of her gear in 3 was phazon based, and it was still all MIA come her next mission.
  - Actually, if Prime happened after Metroid 1, then her arsenal really wasn't that big yet to begin with. Granted, she still would be missing a LOT, mostly in missiles, but her arsenal in the end of Metroid 1 was 255 missiles, Varia suit, morph ball, bombs, screw attack, high jump, long beam...(which she basically never lost ever after that...) and EITHER the Wave or Ice Beam (logically speaking only the Ice beam), since she couldn't yet stack them up. The hi-jump boots become the space jump boots, and she starts off with the Grapple Beam and CHARGE beam, which technically she shouldn't have even had "yet". So in an odd twist she may actually have started Prime BETTER OFF than she ended Metroid... save for the lack of Screw Attack and Ice/ Wave Beam. THEN lost it all to an explosion anyway.
- This Troper was always under the impression that her powerups were breaking down from wear and tear. While she could repair the basic power suit, the stress of being hit by lasers and missiles and dunked in lava and acid and then gnawed on by all sorts of monstrosities was too much for the optional parts.
- In Fusion, several major suit upgrades appear to be nothing but software. Perhaps the powerups are a free trial version?
  - I was under the impression it was just because the Fusion suit was biological and could be made to replicate weapons based on the download data.
  - I'm partial to the suit upgrades having a physical component and a driver component. The X infection had corrupted the software (stored in the organic components of the suit), which needed to be quarantined from the rest of the system. The downloads were simply clean versions of the drivers. It also fits with Zero Mission, in that Samus has the physical upgrades for the Grav Suit, Plasma Beam, and Screw Attack installed, but until she upgrades to the MK II suit, it simply wasn't capable of supporting those suit functions.
From the way a logfile in the first Metroid Prime suggests that Artifacts are carved specially, to the 'totems' that represent the powers of the powersuit's modules, this troper has formulated the not unreasonable WMG that the powerups really do take the form of emblems (Screw Attack), or statuettes holding emblems (Beam icons in Super Metroid). Thus, some of the lesser powerups may have been auctioned off to art collectors, and the older Artifacts may have stopped functioning after their material degraded too much due to the punishment Samus takes on a regular basis in combat or from environmental hazards (like the time her Missiles and Morphball failed in the first Prime — the force of being thrown into the elevator was too much for the old Morph Ball artifact plugged into her 'suit, so it finally shattered and was lost).
Perhaps Samus decides how many power-ups to bring to each mission beforehand. Having her suit damaged enough to lose them is a very real threat, so it'd be unwise to take everything every time. In Super Metroid, Samus's original mission was simply to deliver a piece of cargo to a research station, not invade a Space Pirate stronghold, so she didn't suit up. On the other hand, at the start of Fusion, Samus was doing an Escort Mission on a planet she'd previously experiened the danger of, even without Metroids, so she went in with full equipment. Likewise, each of the three Prime games start with a much less hazardous mission than what each evolves into.
This troper theorises that the more powerful upgrades don't draw all of their power from the Power Suit, but are somehow at least partially powered by the planet where they are found itself, which provides a different form of energy than the Power Suit. Therefore, whenever she leaves, they'd be useless, so she just leaves them behind. Later upgrades to the Power Suit's core systems (such as the ones in Zero Mission's second part) allowed it to supply that other type of energy, so she could bring some of the upgrades that used it along with her. The ones she couldn't bring? They're designed with a security system that causes them to cease to function when they're no longer in the vicinity of the planet where they're found, so they're still useless if she brings them along, even if she already has the upgraded Power Suit. (I've posted the original version of my theory online somewhere else, and I have to check it again to see if that's everything, but I think that's it.)
- Except this doesn't make sense either. The components that work with Samus's suit (and the suit itself) were designed by the Chozo, a species known for propagating throughout the galaxy. It would be incredibly useless if their most powerful weapons technology only worked on a single planet, especially when they've been shown more than technologically advanced enough to power similarly energy-demanding devices without needing to rely on the energy of the planet. More importantly, it ignores all the times Samus DOES bring her weapons with her between planets, and even between stories. As stated above, Samus never loses the Long Beam power up between Metroid and any of the other games, she starts off with MORE equipment in Metroid Prime (though she promptly loses it in an explosion), and two games (Other M and Fusion) don't even take place on planets. Furthermore, Fusion starts off with Samus having all of her weapons and armor. We know this because, when she's attacked by the X, SA-X gains all of her abilities, with the possible exception of the Gravity Suit. It wouldn't make sense for Samus to bring that equipment along if it was useless.
  - I couldn't find it online anymore, it seems the original location may have shut down... but I said some of them would still be useless if she brings them along, not all of them. Case in point, Fusion: Why does Samus seemingly leave the Gravity Suit behind when she returns to SR388, but bring the Varia Suit? Because the Gravity Suit has the security system, while the Varia Suit doesn't. Perhaps, if this is the explanation, then the older ones use this wonky system, while the newer ones don't?

The real reason Samus loses her upgrades between games: Gun Control (And maintenance issues)

Here's an Other M and Fusion influenced WMG (I can hear the "BOO" already)

The Federation has strict gun control laws that require extremely stringent licensing to own them, with the Power Beam and the pistol Samus uses with the Zero Suit being the only weapons she is actually licensed to own after years of strict background checks and previous military service. The only loophole to this is the contracts she is sent to fulfill conferring her the temporary privilege to use any equipment procured on site in hostile territory - Which is revoked upon returning to peaceful space, requiring her to turn over all unlicensed equipment over to Federation quartermasters before she is paid, especially high powered plasma weapons and anti-personnel missiles that don't belong in civilian hands.

Any weapon she brings with her at the start of a mission that isn't the Power Beam (IE, the Missiles in Metroid 2) is something she has been granted a temporary license to use during briefing and been issued by a Federation quartermaster before departure. During the Prime era where Samus often starts with a handful of items it was because her licenses were being automatically renewed due to her constantly being on the clock as a private contractor for the Federation as well as heightened Space Pirate activity during those years.

As for non-combat suit upgrades - They're non-standard equipment that lack publicly available documentation, and with that, there are no notable technicians out there who can perform maintenance on them. The Varia and Gravity (And other Hazmat suits) systems were more than likely supposed to be recycled and replaced completely for safety reasons when experiencing long-term wear and tear rather than be reused over a long term due to the extreme conditions they were meant to protect against. Samus is putting them and other Chozo equipment through several months worth of usage, in addition to them being damaged by attacking wildlife and armed pirates. The Federation doesn't mind Samus having these (Though in a civilian work environment they'd probably require strict Union certifications. Assuming the Federation hasn't Right-To-Work'd Unions out of existence.), but by the time it's time for another mission, they've likely experienced too much wear to be reliable, prompting Samus to discard them and look for on-site replacements rather than risk them failing at a critical moment and potentially getting her killed.

Samus's figure changes between games because she's gaining or losing weight.

The first time Samus really had to do a lot of fighting outside her suit was in Zero Mission, where she had a very curvy figure. She functioned just fine without it because she's pretty strong just from hauling the suit around (and from the Chozo DNA, and whatever workout she was already doing), but had a decently high body fat percentage. After Zero Mission, she figured she should get in better shape unless she had to do something like that again, so she stepped up her workout game, slimming down to the proportions she has in the Prime series. Then, after Super Metroid, she lets herself relax now that the space pirates are destroyed and puts the weight she has in Other M back on.

Samus's facial features change between games because she gets identity-concealing plastic surgery.

As seen by the ending images of Zero Mission, when she's not destroying space pirates Samus likes to do normal human things in casual clothing. That'd be hard to do if everyone she met recognized her as the most feared bounty hunter in the galaxy, so she gets minor facial reconstruction occasionally to keep the paparazzi off her trail. That probably wasn't always an issue (I figure that at the time of the first game, most of the galaxy thought she was a man) but as her reputation grew she became more recognizable. In Metroid's high-tech universe, getting such surgery is probably quick and relatively painless, and she can certainly afford it with all the space pirate bounties she's collected. She also dyes her hair, thus explaining why it was brown in Metroid.

Samus is a trans woman

As most fans know, the creator of the series has already "joked" about it being the case, but there's nothing in canon that contradicts it. She was fairly androgynous as a child, and could easily have began to transition socially at the time of the space pirates' attack, or come out after being adopted by the Chozo. The Chozo, being an advanced race, probably had no trouble understanding the concept philosophically or from a medical point-of-view. This could also tie into the fact that she likes to present in a fairly feminine manner even when she's alone on her ship (like many trans women, she dresses that way for herself!), that she's taller than average (obviously not universal, but a source of frustration for many trans-feminine individuals) and that she's dressed in clubbing gear outside of bounty hunting.

Samus is left-handed.

Not sure how wild a guess this is. You could make a case either way, but I'd say she's a lefty who trained herself how to shoot with her off hand due to the way the Suit works - with her off hand firing the weapon, she can use her dominant hand for more precise tasks like typing and so on.

Samus is always seen gripping her cannon arm with her left while aiming and as none of the weapons seem to have any recoil this seems to be correct.
- On the other hand she could just use her left hand as a support for the arm cannon to increase stability, in this case she'd be right handed. Though considering how much she uses both arms for various tasks I'd go with ambidextrous, either naturally or through training.
- I always assumed that she was holding it with both hands to make it easier to hold stable (even without recoil it's not easy to hold a weapon perfectly straight).
- Judging by the Zero Mission sprite sheet, Samus fires the stun pistol right-handed, stabilizing it with her left hand — in fact, while standing still she adopts a somewhat "goofy" Weaver stance, with the grip reversed (pistol in non-dominant hand, with the dominant hand stabilizing) but with the posture correct for a leftie (right foot out ahead of the left) and modified for a weapon with no meaningful recoil (torso squarely over the hips, rather than leaning forward to absorb recoil). Given all this, I'm guessing she's left-handed but that her right eye is dominant, a somewhat tricky situation in which, in order to achieve accuracy at any meaningful range, she'd need to shoot with her off hand. This doesn't explain the way she uses a handgun, given that handguns aren't accurate at range anyway and she could therefore just as well use a conventional left-handed Weaver stance without the lean, but perhaps she's just really used to aiming with that eye and it was easier to modify the stance than to spend a lot of time and effort learning to shoot all over again, especially just to get the best out of a holdout weapon she hardly ever uses anyway — as we see in Zero Mission, when the stun pistol comes out, the situation is bad enough that finesse really isn't a major concern.

The Power Suit requires concentration to turn on and recharge but otherwise works normally.

There were Word of God statements around the time of Zero Mission's release about how Samus requires a massive amount of mental energy to activate, but never did anyone say concentration was needed to keep the suit on. Ever since Super Metroid her suit has automatically turned off whenever the sheilds are depleted, maybe whenever her suit deactivates, whatever the reason (the pirates in Zero Mission, The wall in Prime, the Ing in Prime 2,Ridley in Other M and Adam in Other M)is just completely beating the shit out of her, to the degree it depleted all of her energy.(At which point she would have to concentrate to turn the thing back on.)

Concentration being necessary to keep it on is evidenced by the suit's deactivation upon her seeing Ridley. Unless you think she saw her greatest enemy back from the dead and DECIDED to deactivate the suit.
- Problem is, this violates things already established in the series, namely Metroid Prime 3 and Fusion, where the suit stayed on while she wasn't even conscious, much less concentrating. Hence the wild mass guess.
  - Original Poster, I never said anything about her deciding to turn the suit off, I mentioned that in all of the 2-D games since Super, her suit always turned off when energy reached zero, then resulting in game over. At no point is concentration indicated as required to keep the suit on, as during the Ridley scene he has his claw around her, is squeezing her, and hits her against the wall a few times, things that do damage, reduce the energy tanks to zero, and turn off the suit; like in SM, Fusion, ZM, and Other M itself. The suit doesn't turn off when she sees Ridley, it turns off after he grabs her.
If he was squeezing hard enough for Samus's suit to shut off she should have died once she was in that grip unarmored. Ridley drags her on the wall during the battle anyway (if you let it happen), not during the cutscene (the opposite of Brawl). You can tell because her suit actually stays on despite the damaged caused by the wall drag attack and in the cinematic Ridley does not fly further away or closer to the wall while he holds her. Those are just particles of the suit fading away, which look different from the wall friction sparks when Samus is actually dragged against it.

Samus has some major PTSD after seeing so many things die just because of her presence

But since she was raised by another species for most of her life and rarely interacts with humanity has no idea how to properly deal with it, giving her a sort of dead look in her eyes. She chooses to move past it as best as she can since the galaxy needs her, and she delivers, she still visits the Federation for medical and psychological aid.

The person writing the entries in the Logbook is Samus herself.

She's writing them for the benefit of anyone who follows in her footsteps, should she die in combat. This would explain where the tactical data on never before seen creatures is coming from, and why those entries always focus on how to kill them. She's probably compressing the information she downloads from the computers she hacks to what she considers the most relevant parts, as well.

This is possible, considering that, in Fusion, she does keep a "journal" of sorts... and the "voice" in both the logbook entries and the journal entry is pretty similar.
Some log entries include Samus' notes on particular creatures, upgrades, etc. in addition to the standard log data, so this doesn't entirely hold up. More likely, her suit and/or ship computers are doing the tactical analyses, to which Samus is appending her own thoughts.

Between missions, Samus likes to go clubbing.

Her off-duty outfits seem to consist mostly of gogo boots, short shorts, and tank tops. Or less.

I can't justify the boots, but it seems possible that she's more comfortable in less-restrictive clothing.
- Considering her post-Fusion thermoregulation problems in conjunction with the typical, ahem, female physiological reaction to cold, Nintendo's artists may want to get away from this image in the future. Or not.
- It is entire possible that Samus needs to maintain a generous amount of direct skin contact with the inner layer of her powersuit, hence her liking for skimpy clothes. The Zero Suit was a specially made form-fitting suit that had the direct skin contacts inside its inner lining, and meshed perfectly with the powersuit's own skin-contact systems.
I'd say this is confirmed by the ending screens of Fusion and Zero Mission. Both show Samus in makeup and sexy outfits, in urban environments; in one case an actual bar. This troper just had this discussion with some friends, and thinks it makes her character more interesting. Instead of a female Boba Fett -cold, dark, and mysterious-, she enjoys a social life when she's not on a job. I mean, if Samus wants to look sexy, she really has every right to.
If this overlaps with the entry further down the page suggesting multiple BSoDs, it might also be a case of Drowning My Sorrows.
We have no idea what's fashionable in the Federation, since all we ever see are military personnel and other bounty hunters. Maybe the crop-top and shorts are just the "in" look this galactic cycle.

Samus' suit is heavily shielded against radiation, and there's another reason why she sees her own bones.

This is something that's been discussed before, that Samus' suit must not be shielded against radiation because x-rays from her visor can penetrate her armor and reveal the bones in her arms. There is another explanation for this visual that does not involve eliminating a crucial level of protection for anyone who spends as much time in space as Samus, let alone the other crazy stuff she does. The theory is this: in order to keep the visuals Samus sees consistent (keeping distractions and inconsistencies to a minimum, maximizing the usefulness and ease of information processing she needs to do in demanding situations), her armor digitally represents what Samus would see with her x-ray scope and puts it up on her visor display. Samus' armor is clearly advanced enough to do something like this, and it makes a lot more sense than having such advanced, extremely protective armor missing a crucial safety feature.

Samus is a former Bounty Hunter.

She started out using her power suit and weapons to bring in petty criminals to develop her combat skills, and then took on government contracts and Space Pirate hunting as a more lucrative enterprise (plus the whole saving the universe thing). She keeps the title for the same reason she was given it in the first place — it sounds cool.

That's a lot of backstory for her (apparent) age, considering she was also canonically a Federation policewoman, after being raised and trained by the Chozo, who also had time to become Precursors. Still, I suppose she had the time to bring in a few bounties, at least, and may continue doing so when there are no mercenary contracts to be had.
- Maybe her Chozo blood slows the rate at which she ages, making her Older Than She Looks. She could be in her mid-40's, but physically and appearance-wise, she's in her late 20's.
- The impression I had was that the Chozo were in a long period of decline. The Zebesian Chozo were sort of like late Qing China or the pre-WWI Ottoman Empire — still prominent, but their heyday was clearly past. That decline might even have been the impetus for the Tallon IV colony, as an attempt to get back to their roots and reinvigorate their society. Certainly, the Bryyonian civil war seems to have happened a very long time ago, and the Chozo were depicted as still very much at their height during that time. So all the precursor stuff would have come and gone by the time the remnant rescued Samus.
Nope, she's still hunting. See the opening text crawl in Super Metroid: "Satisfied that all was well, I left in search of a new bounty to hunt..." However, it's probably safe to say that she doesn't bother with run-of-the-mill skips anymore; she would probably only take a contract if it involved some Most Wanted criminal or paid big bucks.
Or if the bounty is Ridley or the Space Pirates.

The Power Suit runs on life energy, or alternatively can harness any type of energy like the Metroids

That's why you get energy for your suit from enemies.
- This makes sense, as the chozo created the metroids too and Samus's power suit. Her suit can detect the residual life energy from enemies and shows the location of the energy on her HUD. This is why large enemies like bosses drop more life energy, because they need more for their increased mass. Metroids drain life energy, and they drain Samus's sheild without getting sick, so it is not artificial energy, as it is said in Metroid Prime 2 logs that they get sick from artificial energy sources. The missiles are more complicated. Samus's gun ship has a "micro factory" as described in the Prime trilogy in scans, to refill ammo. Maybe her suit has a smaller but more limited version of this, where her suit absorbs particles from the environment and manufactures what are needed to create missiles on a molecular level, and when they are near completion and the suit detects the last that is needed to create the missiles, it shows them on her visor. Both of these would explain how they are dragged in with the charge beam in the Prime games, as it works by dragging particles into the arm cannon and releasing the resulting charge, which would also attract life energy or molecules for manufacturing missiles, and phazon like in Prime 2. The power bombs in Fusion can also drag the X in on its collapse, since they're micro-organisms. That's my theory anyway.

Samus and Gandrayda had a lesbian relationship

Perhaps this troper is reading too far into it, but the subtext points to this possibility.

As you walk into the GFS Olympus' briefing room in the very beginning of the game, Rundas and Ghor are standing around talking, while Gandrayda is doing her best Samus imitation - i.e. turning herself into a perfect copy thereof. Admiral Dane yells at her to knock it off, and she breaks up laughing. Though you can't see Samus' expression, the fact that she doesn't go nuts upon seeing a clone of herself (and heaven knows she would have good reason to) argues that she's seen this routine before.
- Alternatively, she could have assumed that, since there was a copy of herself there, in a heavily militarily guarded zone, and nobody else was doing anything about it, that it was perfectly friendly. Samus seems like the kind of girl who can keep her cool in pretty much any situation, regardless of how dire.
While trying to reactivate the second generator on Norion, you're assaulted by a squad of Phazon-enhanced Space Pirates. However, one of them turns on the others and kills them all, and of course, it's Gandrayda in disguise. She returns to her normal form and comments in a rather seductive voice that Pirate grey really doesn't suit her, and neither does machinery, so would you be so kind as to finish turning the generator back on? She then sashays out of the room with a wink and a "Thanks, Sammy," to which Samus just stands there gaping at her. What she's staring at is left to the gamer's imagination, but it probably isn't the generator.
- Samus's reaction could be attributed to pure WTF at Gandrayda's attempt at flirting.
Gandrayda's atomic glomp attack. Need I say more?
- Made even worse by the placement of her lower body relative to the victim's during said attack. Does This Remind You of Anything??
- Gandrayda's reaction if not shaken off by Samus is that of immense sexual pleasure and arrousal.
- Not to mention, the Screw Attack is the quickest way to bring Gandrayda to her knees.
- So Gandrayda is turned on by draining/overloading things, and or the thought of killing her rival face to face? That doesn't necessarily indicate a past relationship. Screw attack works yes, but the CPU still directs Gandrayda to avoid it.
When Gandrayda finally dies, she morphs through all the hunters' forms before reverting to her true shape. She crawls a few steps toward Samus, reaching out to her, and then dies in a cloud of Phazon. Samus can't watch, turning away with her eyes closed and one hand clenched as Dark Samus drains whats left of her Phazon Body. She didn't look anything near that upset over having to kill the other two hunters, both of whom did a lot more to help her in the game than Gandrayda ever did.
- Samus seemed upset/angry enough to shoot (ineffectually) at Dark Samus when she was reclaiming Ghor.
  - Yes, but remember what Ghor and Rundas did. Rundas takes down 4 Space Pirate vessels, kills the survivors, turns on one of the generators all by himself, and saves Samus from being dropped into the incinerator with Ridley. Ghor single handily fights a Berserker and then holds off Pirates so that Samus can get into the Generator. Gandrayda just kills a few space Pirates that Samus could have easily taken down herself, and walks off leaving Samus to do all the work. While it is unsafe to presume Samus doesn't have a heart, I'm fairly certain any warrior worth his/her salt would be more upset at losing Rundas then Gandrayda.
  - Also note the emphasis in that scene with Ghor: all the focus is on Dark Samus. Samus doesn't really react at all until Dark Samus shows up, and she seems more angry that Dark is desecrating the dead than she is about the actual dead person. Contrast Gandrayda's death scene, where the upset reaction starts before Gandrayda is actually dead, and appears focused on Gandrayda's agonized expressions pre- and post-Shapeshifter Swan Song. Dark's appearance is more or less an afterthought - this time Samus is upset over the death itself. Hmm.
  - This troper thought that was just Gandrayda being a bitch. What better way to remind Samus that she failed to save her comrades than by forcing her to watch them die again. Ending with Samus herself was just downright sadistic.
  - Re: Samus' reactions, depending on how you look at it they're either survivor's guilt or a growing sense of grim inevitability. Four bounty hunters working for the Galactic Federation, all of them corrupted by phazon, and all equipped with PEDs as a method of controlling the corruption. Three of the four succumbs completely to the corruption, and the fourth is (at the time of the death of the third) also fairly heavily corrupted. Now, when Rundas is encountered and killed, it wasn't strictly clear that the other two had been corrupted, or if so then there might be a chance to save them. Ghor is encountered and reinforces the fact that they were all corrupted, and Samus fails to save him as well. Then Gandrayda is finally encountered, and also falls due to the corruption. Now Samus has just seen three good friends (At the very least, Hunters should have taught her that a bounty hunter not actively trying to kill her counts as a good friend) succumb to the exact same corruption that she's suffering from without any hope of being saved. Yes, it's likely that she's upset by those turns of events, especially since she doesn't have a crystal ball at that point that tells her that destroying Phaaze will cure her corruption rather neatly.
  - Samus doesn't really freak out and look away until Gandrayda takes her exact form. Who would want to watch themselves die?
  - I saw it in a much different way. When Rundas died she was too stunned by Dark Samus appearing out of nowhere to do anything but watch in horror as Rundas was absorbed. When Ghor died she was ready for Dark Samus to appear, so she began shooting, but that proved futile. By the time Gandrayda was dying she knew that there was nothing she could do.
Let's also not forget what Samus thinks at the end of the game. When she sits on Elysia, remembering all her friends, she remembers how Rundas and Ghor saved her life - but when it comes to Gandrayda, Samus thinks specifically of when Gandrayda takes her shape - in other words, she remembers Gandrayda not as a warrior, but as a friend...in the least.
Considering that the scans imply that, whilst her age is is impossible to determine physically, she's mentally rather juveline, that adds a solid layer of Squick to this theory. Also, her mirthless killing of disloyal pirates makes her a very sadistic personality. BDSM much ? ... I wonder why I never realized all those implication (the juvenile Gandrayda becoming so sadistic and cruel as result of corruption, not the Les Yay) whilst playing. Then again, I played the Giygas battle without nightmares.
- That's a key point. The in-game logbook notes that Gandrayda has a 'high degree of youthfulness'. There's no real homoeroticism present. Samus doesn't react, and Gandrayda makes a lot more sense knowing that emotionally, there's an eight year old in there. That's why the pet name 'Sammy'; Gandrayda is highly capable, but psychologically, she's a little kid. Notice how of all four hunters, she takes the mission the least seriously. And the random killings of Space Pirates? Kids pull wings off butterflies. Beyond that, we can be pretty certain that Samus didn't have a relationship with Gandrayda because Gandrayda is of unknown origin. Samus didn't know who Gandrayda was at the start of the game. Hell, Gandrayda is a shapeshifter from a completely unknown species. We don't know how her species reproduces, and considering how Metroid has avoided Rubber-Forehead Aliens with such aplomb up to this point, who's to say they reproduce sexually in the first place? Combine that with her child-like demeanour and naivete and there's your explanation for any lingering doubts.
The 'Shake Off Gandrayda' attack shows Gandrayda taking immense pleasure if she overpowers Samus, however. It seems odd for Gandrayda's reaction to be that of arousal if she behaves like a child. Her reaction points to some sub-text between the two hunters, albeit though, not necessarily a relationship. Maybe it just means Gandrayda found Samus to be attractive?
- Gandrayda does not display "arousal" (or energy draining/overloading for that matter) during the shake off segments. She tries and fails to turn Samus's head, claws at the visor, slaps Samus, pounds the visor with her fist, taps the visor with her finger, and fogs up the visor with her breath, laughing at you if you fail to shake her off, but that's it.

Samus doesn't swing that way - nor the other way.

Having been raised, and genetically modified, by the Chozo, Samus has no physical attraction to members of her own species. And since the Chozo are either extinct or departed forever, there will never be a romantic sub-plot in any Metroid game ever.

I don't think her genetic modifications, or being raised by Chozo is quite enough to completely eliminate all biological urges. Knowing her luck, she probably runs into No Guy Wants an Amazon.
- Could be worse, though. I forgot to take into account her newly-acquired biological modifications in the final installment. There's an uncomfortable amount of Samus-Metroid shipping on the internet.
This could be true, since she was taken up by the chozo pretty early. Psychologically speaking, emotion is derived from labels we give to certain things. If Samus never learned to get...excited, shall we say, by certain parts, it's doubtful she ever would.
- OK, but why would she need telling any more than any other human? Very young children quite routinely discover sexual arousal entirely on their own, with some especially precocious infants having been observed via ultrasound to masturbate while still in the womb. I don't like to chance encouraging the more wild-eyed fans, of course, but there's no obvious reason to assume that Samus is totally asexual, rather than that whatever arrangements she chooses to make in that regard have been treated by canon authors as no damned business of anyone else, and quite rightly so.
Alternatively, this might be because if she DID find someone to love...they will almost certainly die, considering she's lost everyone and everything she cares about.
I was always under the impression that she was too busy with her job to be in a relationship - after all, she's never stated to age in any of the games, so it's entirely possible that she does enter a relationship at some point...it's just one we never see.

How Samus' default Power/Normal Beam works

I genuinely believe it works by annihilation of matter and antimatter. My evidence is twofold: the golden color, which is how matter and antimatter look when annihilating, and that it is the only thing to damage Chozo Ghosts, which are only harmed by unnatural energy. What's more unnatural than antimatter? The Annihilator Beam works by annihilating something else, maybe normal and dark matter, rather than antimatter.

Or the annihilator beams simply gets more energy out of the annihilation reaction by making use of the light of Aether and Dark Aether's atmosphere. Keep in mind the both do "neutral" damage to creatures and structures on both sides, the Annihilator beams simply does more of it. Also, the annihilator beam has homing properties and is designed to work with the Echo visor, so its coloration could reflect the fact there is just a little more in it than the power beam.

Samus has dual personalities.

Inside the power suit, she's tough, brave, emotionless, intimidating. Statuesque, as put by Moviebob. But outside the suit, she's scared, dependent, and rather clingy. This lesser personality breaks through every so often if something rattles Suit!Samus badly enough. It kind of evokes a bit of Fridge Brilliance when Super Smash Bros. Brawl made Samus's power suited and zero suited selves separate characters.

I can sort of see that, actually, between having been raised by Chozo, and having had the power suit since roughly age fifteen — the period of one's adolescence which most teenagers at least theoretically spend learning to interact with one another on something resembling an adult level, Samus spent learning power armor acrobatics and how to reduce anything that crossed her into a fine pink paste. The Chozo were good teachers, and she was an excellent student, but between this somewhat specialized course of instruction and the lack of anything resembling peers for almost the entirety of her youth, she's badly ill-equipped for situations where the "fine pink paste" option isn't viable. Moreover, she's never had to cultivate the inner reserves which ordinary humans use to get through times of stress, when we do. She's instead learned she can rely on her power suit — so, when it's unavailable for whatever reason, she finds it difficult to cope. I can even see how this line of argument might serve to excuse one or two of Other M's more egregious enormities, although I'd be perfectly happy not to see anyone use it for that purpose, thanks ever so.

The Metroid DNA infusion has given Samus the power to eat life-energy like a Metroid.

Never explicitly stated, but I think it's pretty logical. That may be the whole reason Metroids can survive and even eat X Parasites - by draining their life-energy instead of simply ingesting the things, they truly kill them and don't allow an infection to take hold. Samus does the same thing in Fusion, and may, hopefully, retain this power in future installments along with her new sensitivity to cold.

Yeah, it makes perfect sense, but I'm not sure how it could be incorporated into future games.
- 'Power Drain' attack? C'mon, use your imagination.
  - Well, a melee attack would be useful...
  - Or she could receive power-ups this way.
- Actually, thinking about it, Prime 3's Grapple Voltage is a pretty good blueprint for how Metroidy energy drains could work.
- If it didn't exist in every single game, it could have been a perfect explanation for the health powerups foes drop.
  - Actually, since the Chozo made the suit and the Metroids, the health is likely the same stuff Metroids eat. She's been doing it the whole time, only now she can do it outside the suit.
  - Likely nothing, that is what the suit had been doing the entire series up until Other M, according to the first game's manual!
  - This is assuming Nintendo ever gives a crap about Fusion ever again.
CONFIRMED in Metroid Dread! And it's played for as much horror as possible.

Samus is of Irish descent

Samus and Aran are both Irish names - Samus being the feminine version of Shamus, which makes Samus Is a Girl a rather obvious trope. Aran is also a traditional unisex Irish name that Nintendo somehow thinks is a non-standard spelling. Earlier versions of Samus' armourless sprite depicts her as a redhead rather than the blonde she is now.

It was more brown than red (at one point green) and the NES cannot do the color yellow well. Princess Peach used to have a similar hair color.
The reasoning behind this has been debunked. Samus Aran is a corruption of a Portuguese name Edson Arantes do Nascimento, aka famous Brazilian footballer Pelé. However, it possible this corruption is the result of Irish parents butchering a male Portuguese name into "female" World Salad given in our world it's the result of Japanese doing so. It's also possible Samus is of Brazilian Portguese and Irish descent.

Samus is older than she looks.

Samus is actually somewhere in her mid-20's during the events of the original Metroid, as supported by her model in Metroid Prime. Given advances in medical technology and her distinctly weird genetic makeup, she might actually be even older. Don't care if it's been Jossed, Nintendo; there is no way she was frickin' 17.

Alternatively, maybe she was 17... in Zebesian years. This troper hasn't read the manga (yet), but if years are longer on Zebes than on Earth, Samus could have been 20 or more Earth years old, but still technically 17. Or maybe it's K-2L years that are longer than Earth years, and she uses them instead of Zebesian years or Earth years to determine her age. Or maybe this troper is too much of a nerd for his own good.
- It makes more sense for her to have been still developing as a teen while and suspected of as male for the simple fact that she was flat and more muscular than anything. Plus, the way the series is pretty far set apart. By the end of the game series so far, she has to be pushing late 20s to mid 30s. What you should really bring up is that she disappeared for a few years before her first mission after serving with GF. Meaning, she knew Malkovich when she was 14. Ship that.
  - Even if flat and muscular, females have a different body type than men...but then the right clothing could obscure that, perhaps the police uniform did.

Samus Aran is the Audie Murphy of her time and the Metroid series is a collection of episodic biopics more or less faithful to the memoir she wrote after retiring.

After a successful career as a bounty-hunter/soldier/planet-destroyer/nightmarish-personification-of-retribution, a retired Samus Aran decide to write her memoir. The memoir is an instant hit, and eventually someone buys the rights to adapt her book. Except that:

In the future, video games have completely taken over the silver screen, so instead of a biographical film, we have a biographical game.
So much happened in her life and her memoir is such a Doorstopper that a single game would be overwhelming.

So in the end a whole series of biogames is commissioned:

The first episodes are made under the careful watch of a classical director and maintain a somewhat conservative approach of describing the events and only the events: those are the first three 2D Metroid games.
- Said director then dies in a tragic spaceship accident near a chronically overcrowded hyperspace crossing.
Eventually, the adaptation is given to a young team of ambitious yet nerdy developers from another planet. Turns out that Samus was a very knowledgeable badass (being raised by Sufficiently Advanced Aliens can do that) and included tons of footnotes in her memoir. Trying to do justice to that, the new team includes them in their games in the form of the scanning ability (hacking into the Space-pirates' computers was never a gimmick of Samus' armor; she was just that good).
Fearing that the critically acclaimed approach of the second team of developers might grow stale, the studio which holds the rights to the adaptation decides to choose a third team. This team decides that the first approach (only the events) too dry and the second one (footnotes, footnotes, footnotes) too nerdy. Plus, a lot of her memoir includes the now old and retired Ms. Aran doing a lot of introspection about her past deeds, introspection which was never at the core of the previous episodes of the biogame. The third team decides then to put a bigger emphasis on it, except that it turns out that the audience was not that interested about the doubts and questions of a Retired Badass and wanted to see more of her numerous impressive feats of badassery; worse, the installment's writing staff misread Ms. Aran's memoir to say that such moments of introspection and self-doubt took place during times of brutal combat and deadly danger, rather than long afterward. This results in severe Adaptation Decay, which leads fans of the biogame series to sharply criticize the latest installment, and may also have put the project of adapting her complete memoir in jeopardy.
Evidently the public was still intersted in playing further adaptations of the memoir, but at a loss of how to continue on the studio attempts to appease fans by having them play through the missions of an experimental special forces unit that just so happened to cross paths with Aran at several points in the Bermuda System. The Project Golem Marines are not held in nearly as high regard among the public however, being remembered fairly or not as a clumbsy attempt to replace Aran. Putting Aran's biogame on the side in favor of focusing on them naturally makes these feelings even stronger, moreover, the director's approach to the Bermuda System conflict is chastised for being far too lighthearted and comedic for the subject matter.
Still weary of the nerdy footnotes, but looking back on their last critical and financial success, the studio seeks new directors to contiue from the "phazon crisis sections of the memoir while hiring yet another an off world team specializing in unothordox combat to cover Aran's hunt on ZDR. The ZDR episode encourages the studio, bringing the most positive reception for the biogames since the second team's work and renewing hope the series can be finished.

Guys, don't panic. This may sound crazy, but I think Samus Is a Girl

Think about it. It just seems to make sense. The long hair, the feminine name, the female voice actor, the boobs. It really kinda makes sense if you think about it.

Surely not.
- Even for Wild Mass Guessing, this seems ludicrously farfetched.

Ridley Theories

Ridley will never truly die, and will eventually become THE Big Bad and Final Boss in an upcoming game.

Let's face it, Ridley's cells were presumably used post-mortem to create his cloned body, which was then destroyed and absorbed by the X parasite, which became Neo Ridley, which Samus fought and absorbed. Eventually, the cells will escape Samus' armor and regenerate as Ridley reborn, with new abilities as the new Big Bad. Let's face it, it's about time he became the Final Boss, not counting Mecha Ridley.

Partially confirmed in Samus Returns. Ridley is the Final Boss of the game (taking the alias of Proteus Ridley), but is not the Big Bad of a Metroid game just yet.

Ridley is a bird, not a dragon.

Ridley is frequently referred to as a "space dragon", but he's actually more like an anthropomorphic bird creature. His "little birdie" infant form from Other M kind of confirms this, but the evidence has been there all along. Dragons are more reptilian in appearance, but Ridley has always had more avian traits: He has a bird-like beak, he has a long and flexible neck like many birds do, his feet resemble the talons of a bird of prey, Super Metroid sees him pick things up with his feet the way a bird does, and his general posture (in the 2D games at least) is very bird-like (reminiscent of the way birds "perch" on things). The only things dragon-like about about Ridley are his tail and his ability to breath fire. In a bit of Fridge Brilliance, this would set him up as an Evil Counterpart to the Chozo, who are also anthropomorphic bird creatures.

Expanding on this idea, what if Ridley is a Chozo - or rather, was a Chozo? He's got the strength and the ridiculously long lifespan of one. There's a lot of variety in Chozo morphology, so it's not impossible that one could be skinny with a long neck either. Maybe he was part of the violent Chozo caste that splintered off years ago? Maybe they all evolved or altered themselves into more combat-oriented bodies, such as Ridley's? He's the last one left? Throwing ideas out there.

Ridley is telepathic

When he "talks" in the manga, he is telepathically sending messages through others' minds. In the games, he does nothing more than growl and grunt.

Could just be that Ridley, unlike a lot of villains, doesn't see much point in chatting it up before he tries to kill his foes. Hell, maybe that's what his All There in the Manual super intelligence is referring to.
- Heck, that would explain why he's conveniently waiting for Samus at the Artifact Temple in Metroid Prime. He knew that Samus would collect all the Artifacts, and so waited at the temple for her to unlock the Cipher so that he could kill her and gain access to the Impact Crater (it would have worked to if he had kept his big mouth shut).

Ridley's cells contain both his memories and his mind / soul.

Therefore, when he was killed in Super Metroid, his remains showered all over Samus and his cells remained on her suit when she escaped. The Federation Scientists took his cells and revived him through cloning technology, marking the first time he was "reborn". However, "Clone Ridley" is not simply a copy of the original - that would mean the original is dead forever. He contains the cells, memories, and "soul" of the original, therefore he is still the same Ridley. Why would he recognize Samus instantly (even as Little Birdy) if he were a clone who had to start from the beginning of his life - which should be without any memories? This leads to my next theory below.

Ridley's screeches contain frequencies meant to trip psychological triggers

Ridley's screeches/roars contain sonic wavelengths meant to set off the fight-flight-freeze reflex. This would be extremely advantageous in a field commander, able to egg on his own troops and incapacitate the enemy. Imagine a force of pirates that would never retreat or hesitate in the face of overwhelming odds, driven on in a murderous frenzy to do as much damage as possible. Imagine the defenders brought low against that force as the cry is brought to bear against them, making them break ranks and flee in blind terror or freeze up.

This could also justify the infamous scene where Samus freezes when she encountered him. In her previous encounters with Ridley her armor was the hyper-advanced Chozo version, complete with sonic shielding, but here she had just come off of a Federation medical table. Given their other actions, they wouldn't be above trying to slip some seemingly redundant parts off and claim they were destroyed in the fight with Mother Brain. The end result: Samus faces down Ridley with out the normal protection against his cries, and as a result is temporarily incapacitated when he opens with the roar.

Somewhat confirmed. His screeches do have some sort of rage-inducing quality on other creatures, as seen when he calls other bioweapons to attack Samus on multiple occassions in Other M. It's unknown if this has any effecy on humans, since the GF marines seemed pretty unhindered by it, and Samus was doing fine until she saw Ridley himself in his adult form.

Ridley is the reincarnation of Samus' father.

Ridley was the father of Samus and he was abusive, alcoholic, and violent. When Samus could stand it no longer, she killed him, but Ridley was a satanist, so he was reborn as the immortal Baal. That, or he's a very popular character who can't be killed off.
- It's established canon that a) Samus cared quite deeply for her parents, b) She was orphaned at a young age and raised by the Chozo and c) It was Ridley who orphaned her (although the later was only in the metroid manga and might not be canon).
  - Word of God is that the manga is canon.
  - Since when? And how does Word of God explain the fact that the manga completely contradicts both the original Metroid and Zero mission? Are they not canon now?
  - Those were really Samus's adopted parents and she suppressed the memory of killing her father. Alternatively, her mom killed him and Samus was too young to remember or Ridley is too popular not to come back.

Ridley is a mutated or otherwise altered Omega Metroid

There are many similarities shared by Ridley and the Omega Metroids, especially since their depiction in Samus Returns. These include: being a large reptile, using tail, claw, and plasma breath attacks, and having a weak point on their chests. The bass lines of their battle themes are even pretty similar. It's possible that Ridley is some sort of mutated version, or his species is a distant relative of some kind.

Each and every nucleus in a cell from Ridley's body functions as a black box

Other M is a real discussion starter and there have been several speculations about whether or not Ridley has genetic memory. Well I think that his cells store some information about the most dangerous thing he's ever met. The information would be such things as what the thing, whether it's a predator or a sheet, looks like as well as how they're dangerous to him and what stage of the life cycle he was in when this threat was encountered. This would serve a very good purpose when breeding. This is because the data would probably be in the offspring's memory and make the newly born "Little Birdie" able to know about some things that it shouldn't even try to engage until it has the abilities requred to stand a chance against the threat in question. This also means that if you clone an individual by putting the nucleus from one of it's cells by transplanting it to an ovum of the same species or a species with almost the same cell structure this black box info would still be there. It goes without saying that the same thing occurs if you use the slightly cooler cloning method of simply making cells massproduce and recreate the individual that way.

This explains why the "Little Birdie" encountered in Other M doesn't just attack Samus on sight, it knows that it'd get shot to bits as the source of his information was mature and still lost. When he reaches his second stage of the life-cycle he sees an excellent chance at disposing of Samus by pittinging monsters on her much weaker allies and forcing her to come out followed by pinning her to the ground and try to stab her with his tail. Then when Anthony fires off his Plasma Gun he gets registered as the new biggest threat to Ridley's existence because he had Samus more or less at his mercy. This is why he doesn't just kill Samus immediatly when he's encountered in his adult form. So why did he attack Samus first then? Well he doesn't know that the GF-trooper with her is Anthony yet and he hasn't really done anything threatening yet. But when he shoots Ridley again he realizes that the yelling GF-trooper isn't yelling because he's afraid of him, but instead yelling because he wants to fight and kill Ridley and therefore it must be his largest threat that's back. So once Ridley is back on his feet he immediatly goes for Anthony who's a bigger threat than Samus now. When Anthony is defeated and probably not coming back he sets his focus on Samus yet again and soon realizes that Anthony couldn't hold a candle to her when she fights Ridley in more even circumstances so he flees. He does this in order to preserve his own existence and maybe get to try and rid himself of his biggest threat once more or just escape from it altogether. Then he meets the Metroid Queen that drains all of his energy and automatically gets imprinted in the black box as the biggest threat because it actually killed him. Then when he gets infected by the X-parasites in Fusion the X get to know that the biggest threat that this life-form has encountered is a Metroid Queen and that the person with a red helmet and greenish arm cannon is really dangerous as well. This gets taken even further in this game as Samus has Metroid DNA in her now and that DNA happens to be the DNA of a future Queen so a she's basically two threats in one and gets highest priority on Ridley X's kill list.

Ridley has a healing factor.

While it is established that the Space Pirates have cloning technology, it alone cannot explain why Samus fought Ridley six times over the course of the series, while Mother Brain and Kraid only got two battles. In addition, she fought him twice during Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, in deadly skirmishes that took place a mere month apart. And, after his body was blasted in two and the planet Zebes (the sole remaining Space Pirate base of operations) was blown to smithereens at the end of Super Metroid, he was still able to be captured by the Federation in Metroid Fusion! The only way this makes any sense is if he can recover from a fatal injury without the need for cloning. While the Space Pirates fooled around with his body for purposes of adding mechanical attachments, he didn't need them to live. Also, if he was cloned at any point in the series, it was between Corruption and Super Metroid, largely due to the nature of being a Leviathan guardian and the subsequent destruction of Phazon in its entirety.

Confirmed here with a twist... he has to eat flesh from dead bodies to do so.
- Big deal, I do that every day.
- Assuming the manga is even canon. Besides, the Bottle Ship crew clone him from traces of blood that got on Samus' suit during Super. It's likely that he's revived via a combination of cloning and Brain Uploading.
  - Word of God stated the manga is canon, as noted above. So confirmed, Ridley does have a healing factor.
  - And as noted above the manga contradicts the original Metroid and is further contradicted by Zero Mission so either word of god did not know what it was talking about or as since been made obsolete with Zero Mission's release.
  - Metroid is not a consistent series, plotholes and retcons show up all the time, it is confirmed in game he has a healing factor now that we see proteus Ridley, literally meta ridley shedding his cybernetics as his organic parts grow back
This may explain why you find him in a freezer in Fusion. Cold may slow down or stop his healing factor.

Ridley has a terrifying fear of the number '2'.

He appears in neither Metroid 2 or Metroid Prime 2.
Possibly Jossed: He's in the Metroid 2 remake, Metroid: Samus Returns.
- Yes he appears, after they removed the number 2 from it

Ridley isn't being cloned, and he isn't immortal. He's just really lucky/smart.

While it's obvious Ridley has a high degree of durability and regenerative capabilities, his multiple appearances are the result of mostly luck, and one ingenious plan. Ridley's reappearance in every game has been accounted for, save moving from Metroid Prime 3 into Super Metroid. Metroid to Metroid Prime, his remains are recovered and he's repaired. Same with Metroid Prime to Metroid Prime 3. True, both defeats left him almost utterly obliterated, but it's clear that the provided explanation is supposed to be sufficient. But at the end of Prime 3, he's literally vaporized. How could he return?

So here's what I think happened: Ridley, being the only other Leviathan guardian with sentience (he's also said to be incredibly intelligent), did the exact same thing Metroid Prime did: use Phazon to reconstitute a body. The difference here being that he always planned to do this.

Dark Samus takes over the Colossus, takes it to Phaaze, and then invades the Pirate Homeworld, where Ridley is chillaxin'. He smells an opportunity to restore himself to full combat potential, and so agrees, willingly, to follow Dark Samus (note that he has none of the telltale signs of corruptions all the other Pirates do, such as emaciated forms and Phazon deposits on their flesh). Later, at the invasion on Norion, he puts up a token fight with Samus for good show, and then allows her to escape (this makes more sense than him not turning around and flying back up the shaft). He returns to the Pirate Homeworld, and merges himself with the Phazon there, anticipating two things: that Samus will come and murder him, and that she will then go on to murder Phaaze. In the interim, he can construct a new body, made entirely of Phazon, and when it's all rendered inert, all that would be left would be his original, organic body. He cannot simply kill himself, though, because Dark Samus will sense his motives and murder him as a challenge to her authority. And the reason the fight with him is so intense if he wants you to kill him? He didn't anticipate just how strong the will of Phazon was, and was briefly lost to it, but regained control after his corporeal death.

With his organic body, he regroups the Pirates, relocates them to a now empty Zebes, and builds his power base, anticipating the day when he'll fight Samus again. Along the way, they steal an Aurora Unit, upload a backup of Mother Brain, and learn when Samus has taken the last Metroid. Cue Super Metroid, and another devastating death for Ridley.I guess from here it depends on whether we learn more in Other M, and whether or not the very odd looking X had indeed infected Ridley or just another of his species.

Other M was a clone, so if this wild mass guess turns out correct then it would be the first time he was cloned.

Ridley will be Suddenly Voiced in a future Metroid game.

And he'll be voiced by Diabetus. "It's a livin'!"

I love you.

Samus has never fought the real Ridley. She's been fighting X-Parasite clones.

Think about this: What if the reason Ridley always comes back isn't that he's got a Healing Factor, or that he's being cloned or rebuilt or whatever, he's an X parasite. The original Ridley went to SR 388 to lead the effort to collect some Metroids, but was infected. He was able to somehow keep the parasites from completely absorbing him, possibly due to sheer badassitude. The parasites entered a symbiotic relationship with Ridley, gaining sentience from him in exchange for giving him a Healing Factor. When Samus fought him, he was already a hybrid, no longer the real Ridley. When she defeated him, he was no longer strong enough to resist the X, and they took over completely. The Ridley-X, which had also absorbed at least one Space Pirate, then reproduced, with one of the spawn becoming a Ridley and at least one becoming a Pirate. The Pirate-X then went on to cyber up Ridley-X, who Samus fought in Prime; he also constructed a robotic Ridley, or perhaps activated one the Pirates already had, for Samus to fight at the end of Zero Mission. All Ridleys fought since have been descended from this X. The body stored in the BSL station isn't Ridley, but a different member of Ridley's race, possibly the only surviving member after Ridley was X'd. It too is taken by the parasites, completely wiping out the species. This also means that: 1) Ridley will be Samus' eternal foil, and 2) that she's more prepared to fight him than ever, now that she's part Metroid.

One has to wonder, though. Given that defeated X Parasites simply return to their parasitic form when defeated, why didn't they just infect Samus upon Ridley's defeat (as the parasites from the Hornoad did when Samus first returned to SR 388 at the beggining of Fusion)?
The easy explanation for that is that Ridley never fell to the X, and instead hijacked their abilities for himself. If the X copied his intellect, he could presumably take them over by shear willpower (or possibly his trick in Other M was involved somehow). Once he'd worked out what he'd been infected with, he could have seen the potential for immortality, and simply kept the X a very closely guarded secret. the X don't attack Samus on his death because Ridley does not have any reason to reveal his secret yet, or possibly did not have enough control to risk infecting something. So instead he just floats off somewhere quiet and remakes himself

Ridley is a Federation spy

At some point after leading the attack on Samus's home planet, Ridley defected to the Federation, and has been deliberately sabotaging Space Pirate security ever since. This is both why Space Pirate security systems seem to be custom designed for Samus (that is, they actually are) and why Samus has yet to finish him off permanently.

The dragon is a spy!!!

The actual Ridley exists as a CPU program, and has had his mind uploaded into each of the Ridleys fought in the series.

It's highly probable that, if the Federation has mind-uploading technology, then the Space Pirates have something similar. The only question is when exactly this process began. Was it after the first Ridley's death in Metroid, or has this happened many times in the past? It may well be that Ridley's mind has existed for generations, serving as the Pirates' leader for countless of years. Regardless, this would mean that the final battle in the series could be against the Mother Brain-like Ridley CPU and an army of Ridley clones...

DO. WANT.
I have a similar theory. In a recent issue of Action Comics, the mind-controlling space catterpillar (yeah, don't think too hard on that...) Mister Mind is pretty much immortal not only through clones, but because even naturally, thoughts are transferred to the child. What if Ridley does this? Makes sense, considering how many times he gets killed and comes back as regular Ridley after resurrected Meta Ridley dies.

Ridley has "genetic memory"

This may explain how in Other M, after being cloned by the Federation, he exhibits adult-level intelligence even in his "baby rabbit" form (tricking and killing a scientist to escape captivity), and seems to recognize Samus thoughout the game, to the point of focusing on her exclusively and ignoring the other Space Marines in his juvenile lizard form.

Ridley is a malevolent spirit, transcended either by Chozo technology or by being Chozo himself, who can possess Space Dragons or at least monsters with a specific genetic code.

This is how Ridley can survive fatal injuries and keep coming back from the dead. When Samus fought the Ridley Clone during Other M, he truly was in control all along and not just a clone. Ridley can only truly stay dead if you systematically eliminate all possible ways for Ridley to interact with the mortal realm.

Ridley is a ghost

Whenever he gets cloned, he rejoins his body like nothing happened. Presumably he must have learned that trick from Mother Brain, who would know all about the Chozo's ascension. What? It makes as much sense as nanomachines!

Ridley is not a Space Dragon, he is a Space Phoenix

While Ridley is known to have a healing factor, it is not good enough to save him from complete destruction, often via bodily explosion (ie: bursting into flame.) But, it is now known that Ridley has several developmental stages, which mature at a ridiculously fast rate, apparently tied to flesh consumption just like his healing. If Ridley is in fact able to rise from ashes, taking the form of a harmless creature that nontheless can tear a human to pieces would be a perfect way to escape, especially since it seems to retain his intelligence. This would allow Ridley to live indefinitely, being reborn whenever killed, and possibly allowing him to gain new abilities (like the cloaking he does in Super Metroid) or become stronger, depending on how he chooses to have his immature forms develope. While he isn't exactly on fire constantly, his fire/plasma breath could be a result of his nature.

Adam Theories

Adam's not dead.

We all know the basic story to Other M. Samus comes across a distress signal leading her to a Federation ship where she runs into her former commander, fights cloned enemies, uncovers an illegal weapons experiment, faces off against a traitor and arguable acts out of character, possibly due to an abusive relationship with Adam. In the end the ship is destroyed, Ridley and Mother Brain are dead again and Adam has sacrificed himself to save Samus and destroy the Metroids... or has he?

After all we don't see the destruction of Sector Zero, all we see is the inside of the Bottle Ship as it's rocked by the explosion. An explosion that could have been caused by anything. We assume James Pierce is the "Deleter", the traitor that's in the squad, but the game never confirms it. No, the truth is far more insidious.

Adam is the traitor. He's a high ranking member of the shadowy Federation group that's been performing these experiments. He was sent out to find out what happened on the Bottle Ship when things went all to hell. Unfortunately he runs into Samus. That's why he's so insistent she follow his orders. He kills off his own men to eliminate any witnesses. He tries to kill Samus both directly and indirectly (the infamous 'hell run') but fails. Realizing how out of control the situation is, he does his best to save the experiment. He enters Sector Zero 'claiming' he's going to set off the self destruct sequence, but in reality he separates it from the Bottle Ship, fakes an explosion and takes off. Leaving Samus, assuming she survives, to report his 'death'.

Now that the Federation in general think he's dead, he's free to continue the experiments, including the one we see in Metroid Fusion. He'll show up alive and well in a future game, allowing Samus to learn what a scumbag he really is, as she frees herself from their relationship and wipes the smug smile off his face. While gamers everywhere cheer.

Adam was being Genre Blind on purpose

Adam and Samus obviously parted on less than the best of terms, maybe when he sends her with less than ideal equipment it's to make sure she doesn't feel like she can get away with everything anymore (which isn't to say he's trying to hurt Samus, he knows she can handle it, and, in Sector 3 for example, when it gets too much for her to handle, he relents for her safety).

Consider that Adam was formerly a general, but was recently "promoted" to a commander, a lower ranking position in a different branch of the military. Likely, he screwed up pretty badly somewhere in between Samus's leave to go bounty hunting, something he never approved of, to their reunion and probably blames her for his troubles. He never seemed to like Samus much to begin with, even in the flash backs and was probably using her talent, super human ability and superior technology to advance his career, which eventually plummeted without her. Now he's abusing her to make himself feel better.
Furthermore, Samus says Adam is against "tampering" with life no matter what form it comes in. Now does anyone remember exactly what Samus is? It is possible he had at least subconscious contempt for her, as her very being is a defiance of his world view. The good new is that he might be nicer now that he's a machine.

Adam was always a member of the pro-bioweapon Galactic Fedeartion conspiracy

Adam wrote a report on Metroids, arguing against their use as a weapon, so thorough that it allowed the ringleaders behind the shady business in Other M to fully develop a Metroid cloning and training program. That's just silly. Wouldn't it be far more likely that his report was so thorough and detailed because it was in favour of using the Metroids as bioweapons? Because if Adam really was opposed to using Metroids all along, then it makes absolutely zero sense why the conspirators in Fusion would not only choose him specifically as the uploaded mind in charge of keeping Samus on a leash and protecting the 2nd Metroid breeding program. No, far more likely that Adam was chosen to be Samus's AI watchdog because Adam was always a loyal member of the conspiracy to use Metroids as bioweapons. The alternative would be that the bad guys specifically hand-picked the person responsible for ruining their previous plan and put him in charge of upholding their new plan, which is just plain ridiculous.

Now just because Adam is pro-Metroids, doesn't mean he's in favour of a bioweapon-caused armageddon. He genuinely was willing to die to stop the Metroids in Other M and he was in favour of blowing up SR 388 in Fusion, but only because the risk became to great. If things hadn't gone so far out of hand in Other M he would have stayed with his original plan of stalling Samus with incredibly bad orders and keeping her as ineffective as possible without actually killing her, all the while he worked to secure the Metroid data without her ever finding out. The Deleter was probably not Adam's idea, but rather the work of a different member of the conspiracy who didn't want quite so many witnesses. After all, we get to see the Deleter confront Adam, and then something offscreen happens and Adam is unharmed while the Deleter continues his work as if nothing happened. Which likely means the two realized they were on the same side, and resolved not to fight. The theory that Adam was intentionally sabotaging Samus's efforts is strengthened by the fact that AI Adam was doing exactly that and freely admitted as much towards the end of the game. AI Adam never once said anything to suggest he felt his actions protecting the Metroid breeding programme was wrong, he merely agreed that the X were too big a threat to try to contain.

But do I think this is what Sakamoto intended? No. I think he genuinely thought he was writing Adam as a good and noble person, and just completely forgot about the contradictions that Fusion's plot would cause. I do, however, think this theory makes a lot more sense than what we're presented.

The Adam AI is more than an AI.

Samus' gunship is not just an upload of Adam; it is Adam. In the manner of The Ship Who..., the computer actually uses the recovered central nervous system of Adam Malkovich as its CPU. This is particularly likely because there are no non-organic computers in the Metroid series, but plenty of computers and robots with organic cores; both the Aurora Units and Mother Brain are organic, and even robots like B.O.X. in Metroid Fusion have organic cores for no readily explained reason. It seems likely that non-organic computers either cannot be built (perhaps the Metroid groups don't know how to), or there are laws or other restrictions explaining why they don't. There's ample precedent for injured war heroes having their brains recovered and used as the central components in robotic bodies, as both Ghor and Weavel demonstrate, so depending on the circumstances of Adam's death, which ~~remain unknown~~ we know from Metroid: Other M, it's entirely plausible that it's actually him in there.
- It's never said that nonorganic computers don't exist. We see plenty of smaller terminals scattered throughout many of the technological areas, and no sign that any of them are biological in nature.
- There are non-biological computers, the biological ones are just much more powerful.
  - Er, terminals and the like are fine, but I was thinking about intelligent A.I.s. The only non-biological computers are 'dumb' computers, which store data but are incapable of acting on their own. All intelligent computers seem to be organic. True, it's never said that they have to be, but there is a pattern, and as this is Wild Mass Guessing, who needs conclusive proof?

Samus and Adam had an intimate relationship.

Certainly Samus seems closer to Adam emotionally than she does to any other character in the entire series (save her parents and some of the Chozo in the manga), and they seem very familiar. We don't see Samus getting close to or feeling truly comfortable around anyone else. Adam appears in the earliest Metroid canon chronologically, in the manga. He looks set to appear in the flesh in Other M, set after Super Metroid, so we know Adam didn't die in the battle in the manga. And then he appears in Metroid Fusion, the final game. I imagine an on-and-off romance between the two of them that runs throughout the entire series, beginning to end. It's a sweet thought, isn't it?
- Yes, especially if Adam gets a new robotic/partially organic body.
- I always interpreted their relationship as nothing romantic and more like Adam was a paternal figure for Samus. Keep in mind, just from what we see in the manga and the Other M trailer, Adam was much older than Samus (although far be it from me to stand in the way of a good May–December Romance), and met her when she was in her early to mid teens. Just from the manga and his revelation speech in Fusion, I got the idea that Adam was a tired old veteran who had given up hope that the war would ever end, until he met Samus and she restored his hope. At the same time, from his last conversation with Samus from the manga, you learn that Adam was pretty much the last person left in the universe who saw Samus as more than a tool or a weapon, and was worried that in slipping too much into her lone wolf warrior persona, she was losing herself. ("Remember that you're a lady. That's something that's lost on you lately.") The manga also shows that Samus was a hotheaded, rebellious teen (like most teens) who didn't like listening to authority figures and didn't seem to understand just how much trust and leeway Adam granted her. Not until it was too late, and he was gone, if the reflections in Fusion are any indication (and even there, Samus originally notes that it's his abrasive commanding tone that makes her associate the AI with Adam, possibly digging up memories of their relationship when she was a kid. As she reflects on it more, her memories of Adam become more positive and respectful).
Unfortunately for the romantic aspect, Other M seems to have put paid to that idea, with Samus repeatedly referring to Adam as a father figure. On the plus side, just about everything in the above paragraph was confirmed. And either way, she still cared very deeply for him in one way or another. As for his nervous system being recovered, though, it seems unlikely given that his entire body was most likely vapourised when Sector Zero went kablooey.

Sylux Theories

Sylux is a flash-clone of Samus.

The Galactic Federation has always desired to have their own personal Hunter directly under their control. Though Samus operates fairly consistently for the Feds, the brass has always felt uncomfortable with the possibility of her learning too much (Which pretty much happened during the events of Fusion). Before Zero Mission, the Feds secretly begin working on a supersoldier program, codenamed SYLUX. The first was a flash-clone of Samus, less of a prototype, more of proof-of-concept. Sylux to begin with is very emotionally unstable, having been forced to reach full maturity within a few years and being treated as nothing other than a weapon. Eventually, when they were to terminate the original and begin full-scale production, Sylux became consumed with rage and devastated the entire facility, stealing the prototype suit and gunship in the process. The project was covered up and never heard about again. The Feds, now knowing what kind of power they were dealing with, decided to move on and attempt to capture and control Dark Samus, and failing that, moved on to the SA-X.

Sylux is Samus from the future.

Samus, after what happened on the Bottleship, and BSL, is being hunted by the GF. Unfortunately, Adam's AI in her ship has limited functionality due to a fail-safe built into the ship by the Ringleaders. It is revealed that the entire reason why they allowed her to go to BSL in the first place was because of the ship being modified not only to allow near-total remote control of the entire station, but also the inclusion of multiple fail-safes, including a self-destruct. The Ringleaders want to capture Samus to make use of her battle armour and so do not activate the self-destruct, instead setting it to activate should the ship not receive a code from them every day; this prevents Samus from escaping GF space. In an incident involving a wormhole, Samus' ship, and several GF fighters, she is sent back in time; due to not receiving the code not to self destruct (the code was not broadcast as it was before it was even created), Samus' ship will blow up in one day. Adam warns her about the self-destruct, and gets really pissed off at the GF due to this being, effectively, the second time he would be killed because of the Ringleaders. Realizing she needs to find a way to stop the Ringleaders and get a new suit (her fusion suit, being made of the organic components of her Chozo suit, begins to have issues due to the massive amount of DNA modification induced by the Metroid DNA), she spends this day getting Adam to hack into GF databases, getting her access into one of the Ringleaders' black-op projects, specifically an attempt to create battle armour like Samus' — the name of the project prototype is "Sylux" and has the ID 024-105, as when compared to "Samus" using an a-z alphabet with the letter after z being a, forming a cycle, the minimum difference between each letter is 02105, as in the year 2105, when the project began, (GF was founded in 2000, so it's a reasonable time period for the game). Additionally, "sylux" minus "samus" is 024-105 (the '-' is formed by '-1', hence the ID). Just before her ship blows up, Samus manages to copy some of Adam's Program to an external storage device and escape. She then proceeds to use the access gained by Adam's hacking to enter the research facility where "Sylux" is and steals it along with the 'Delano 7' in which she installs the partially copied version of Adam (though as it is only a partial copy, it's effectively insane). After some time, she receives the message from Gorea that starts Metroid Prime: Hunters and heads there in the hopes of warning herself about the Ringleaders; however, upon finding herself, her past self opens fire, assuming her to be another hunter searching for the Octoliths. She is forced to fight back, calling the 'Delano 7' to escape, and Adam, being crazy, attacks Samus' past self, stopping only in a brief moment of lucidity caused by being repeatedly shot in the ~~face~~ ~~appendage~~ turret, and eventually escapes. For the rest of the game, she spends all her time trying to tell herself about the Ringleaders. After Hunters, she continues looking for herself; due to having had to escape the Oubliette she lost herself (this confusing anyone yet?). In this time, she upgrades the 'Delano 7' to the 'Delano 9' (hmmm... 7, they really like 7... maybe there's a connec... back to the WMG) using surviving parts from her old ship, and at the end of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, well, you know the rest.

Sylux is Samus's daughter from the future.

Worth a shot. We'll end up playing as her in the next main series game. That's all I've got.

Sylux is the last Chozo

Born not on Zebes, Tallon IV, or any other Chozo colony but in space, Sylux's parents survived with the last handful of Chozo in physical space and brithed him. As a hatch-ling coming into maturity he witnessed the death of his race as eventually genetic dead ends, disinterest in reality, and time took their toll and he was the only one left. Sylux's hate for Samus and the federation doesn't come from any ill will towards her as a person so much as desire to return the power suit to it's "Rightful" owners IE him and those past as well as his frustration that the two constantly stand in his way of doing so, or perhaps he knows about the whole X parasite thing and is disgusted by their attempts to destroy the ultimate warrior, but not enough to try and stop them. Either way, he doesn't care about the squabble between the federation and the pirates. He Has no interest in Hunting bounties beyond gaining weapons to survive long enough to fulfill his task and making enough money to get by in a galaxy that he doesn't belong in anymore. He just wants to take the power suit, return to the temples of Tallon IV and pay respect to a race that was once mighty, but is now gone.

The persistence of the Mawkin tribe all the way into Dread makes this unlikely. Maybe he's the last Chozo of a certain tribe, but not the last Chozo period.

Sylux is Ian Malkovich

Perhaps that is the real reason that Sylux hates both Samus and the Galactic Federation so much? He blames them for not coming back and saving him.

Damn, that's pretty deep. And heartbreaking.
- You got your Event Horizon in my Metroid.

Sylux will be the Big Bad of a future Metroid game.

In Metroid Prime: Hunters, a lot more detail is given to Sylux than the other hunters. Sylux gets a Cool Ship, more scan info, and Sylux's backstory goes on to establish this particular hunter as having a specific beef with Samus. While this could also be true of the Space Pirate hunter, he doesn't get said Cool Ship or the same sort of "puzzle fight" Sylux gets. Also, in interviews, the developers specifically said they wanted to do more games with the Hunters. While they did use Noxus' race again in Metroid Prime 3, it doesn't seem unlikely to me that they could use Sylux as their next Big Bad — given that it's been established that the Federation wants Sylux gone too. Also, since all the other potential bad guys are Deader than Dead, it seems like the best option. Well, better than making ANOTHER Samus clone, anyway. Which leads to my next theory...

Weavel's ship is seen when you board the last level, and he actually has more to work with with his given backstory. No puzzle fight because he was early in the game.
This seems very likely seeing that in the 100% ending of Metroid Prime 3, a ship that looks just like Sylux's ship warps in right after Samus' ship warps off and then follows after it.
Maybe not the next console Metroid game. If they decide to make a Prime game for the 3DS, probably.
Word of God states that was indeed the Delano 7 we saw at the end of Corruption. Kensuke Tanabe, the Prime series producer, says he wants to build around their story, as something is going on between Samus and Sylux. Not an exact confirmation, but an idea along these lines appears to be conceptualized, if not in the works.
Or maybe Sylux could ally with Samus seeing as she is a wanted criminal as of fusion.
Since Prime 4 is confirmed, they may show up once again although their motives are uncertain.

Sylux is a girl.

I realized as I was reading up information about the game (and the in-game info as well) that both go out of their way to avoid pronouns when talking about Sylux. Sylux is almost always referred to as just "Sylux," and I do believe the one time they had to stoop to pronouns, they just went with "it." While it's true that Sylux's identity is supposed to be secret, it would be a massive WTF moment if the Metroid series managed to pull off its own favorite trope not once but twice. Since nobody would be expecting it AGAIN, it'd be even more surprising — or something. To make matters even weirder, perhaps Sylux is another refugee of the attack on the colony Samus came from, only adopted by the Space Pirates instead or somesuch. (No, I can't figure out why they'd do that. Maybe to experiment on her.) Also, if Sylux were to be the Big Bad, it would be almost contractually required for her to be female — the Big Bad in every Metroid game is almost always female in some fashion. (The first Metroid and Super Metroid had Mother Brain, though to be fair she could be genderless. Metroid II had the Queen Metroid. All the Prime games except Hunters had Dark Samus, though she's still in her naescent form in the first — she and the SA-X from Metroid Fusion are both Samus clones, so of course they're female.) Yeah, OK, so it's a bit of a kludge, but it's the best I got.

The last boss of Fusion was the Omega Metroid (gender unspecified) and and the last boss of Zero Mission was the robotic Ridley (genderless, but based on a male creature). Other than that, this theory seems quite likely.
While reading this, I got a mental image of a girl in Sylux's armor sans helmet, similar to Samus, but with black hair and a nasty scowl. That would be awesome.
Furthermore in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Sylux's trophy entry avoids using gender-specific pronouns, calling Sylux "it" instead of him or her. Every other hunter, even the very nonhuman ones, are referred by gender-specfic pronouns.
Do we know that Samus is an only child?
- If you go by the manga, then yes, she is.
Further proof? Look at this picture◊ of Sylux. It's downright wasp-waisted, and it has Hartman Hips. Hmmm.... Also, the Metroid Wikia seems to have this same theory.
Addition to this theory: Sylux is a very short human female. to get that waist with those legs, Sylux would have to have removed half of hir internal organs. If she is just very short, especially considering that Samus is 6'1", she could be in a very small giant mech instead of a powersuit, with her arms and head inside the chest of the suit and her legs only in the suit's "thighs". This also reasons why the head is so small: it's just a closed-circuit camera.
- Now, the proportions of the Metroid universe aren't very good indicators. Compare Samus' shoulders in and out of her suit. While only wearing a jumpsuit, her shoulders look fine. But inside the suit, they appear to become several inches wider, judging from the arm placement. Also, look at the Fusion suit.
A girl, maybe, but not a human girl. Unless the federation added a sci-fi movie monster synthesizer into their suit for no good reason, then human beings typically don't make those kind of sounds... then again, the Metal Gear roars for no good reason...
- Intimidation value?
- Identity protection. The sylux powersuit has seriously advanced technology compared to others of its kind (Lockjaw, anyone?); you can't mass produce that sort of thing easily. No doubt the intended owner would have been some kind of GF black ops or special forces agent. In which case, for the sake of protecting both them and their loved ones when off duty, as well as allowing them to go undercover, you cannot reveal even what species they are.
- Or Sylux herself put the darn thing in for the sake of not appearing human. She hates Samus. Anything she can do to remove or conceal their similarities is welcome.
- OR could just be an exaggerated quirk of the suit. Samus's death scream in that game sounds barely human.
Interestingly, the series producer refers to Sylux as a "he." This could, however, be an effect of translating whatever pronoun he used to address Sylux into English; it could've been something gender-neutral originally, for instance.
Alternatively, Sylux is both a boy AND a girl - namely, the suit is used by two different people (think something along the lines of the Ixa System), one user being male, the other user being female (think Kamen Rider Double except the user alternates each time). The female user is the one whose physique is the larger of the two, hence the reason why Sylux's armor has the aforementioned Hartman Hips. My reason for thinking this theory is, aside from the aforementioned ambiguous pronouns, nothing I've read about the weapons Sylux stole said that they could only be used by one person.

Sylux is an AI

Or at least a biomechanoid a la Mother Brain. Sylux has no gender and Prime Hunters uses "it" is an acceptable pronoun. Sylux's physiology is also somewhat inhuman. Dude's got a reaaally thin waist, and its Lockjaw form is literally just two pieces of metal and a ball of energy - it'd have to be some impressive tech to squish a living thing into that form. And a rogue AI would be a perfectly acceptable backstory, since we've met the AI Adam in Fusion.

Odd that AIs like Adam and Mother Brain have genders but Sylux doesn't...
The game says they're from Cyclosis, meaning they were born. Maybe they were just programmed there...?
Samus can curl up into the Morph Ball, and she appears to turn into energy of some sort when she does it too. Maybe the GF was trying to replicate it with the Lockjaw.

Sylux isn't evil

What indication do we have that Sylux is is necessarily evil? That Sylux hates the Galactic Federation, attacking their troops and taking their stuff? Remember that the Federation is a group which has been shown to be not very nice itself (Sylux mainly opposes Samus because she works for them). Plus Sylux's actions are nothing Samus doesn't do to her own enemies, such as the Space Pirates, all the time.

Sylux could be someone whose life was ruined by the Federation. Sylux is an extremist who wants revenge. Maybe it'll be able to sway Samus to its side, since Samus isn't that big of Federation fan either since Fusion.

Sylux is a Humetroid

Sylux was created by the GF or the Chozo to be a Super-Soldier with metroid-like abilities, but it rebelled, stole the armor and Shock Coil, and started battling the GF. he can drain health from enemies with the shock coil(his signature weapon) because it modified it to attune with its life-siphoning power. it hates Samus because she kills its kind.

Sylux was a prototype for the GF's mind-uploading program.

Sylux was originally a member of the GF who was selected to have his/her mind uploaded (like Adam, he/she was probably a high-ranking member of the military). It was decided to upload his/her mind into a suit, so that Sylux could continue physically as well as mentally assisting the Federation. Something went wrong in the process (perhaps the suit was partially organic like Samus's and messed with or destroyed Sylux's mind), leaving Sylux a wreck of its former self. Then, Sylux either swore vengance on the Federation for corrupting its mind, or the suit's AI is Ax-Crazy and is fixated on the Federation because that's where it was constructed. Samus would also be a main target for her prior assistance of the Federation. (Yeah, this is kinda out there...)

Sylux is a result of the "Living Body Arms Development Lab" shown in the Other M trailer

The project gave Sylux powers similar to Samus, but something went wrong in the experiment, giving Sylux a reason to despise the Federation.

That actually makes sense, and would justify their anger at Samus.

Sylux is an orphan like Samus who was taken in by the renegade Chozo (Mawkin).

They're the opposite of Samus. While Samus was adopted by the peaceful Chozo and given a Power Suit to maintain order in the galaxy, Sylux was adopted by the warrior Chozo (from the Samus Returns memory and likely Dread) and given a stolen GF suit to wreak havoc on galactic civilization.

A fun idea, but why would the renegade Chozo give them a GF suit when they could just make their own? They seem too proud of their military might, they would've just given Sylux a Power Suit of their own. Also Sylux has really never shown themself to be evil, but rather a wild card who doesn't play by the GF's rules. He's still a "bounty hunter" looking to do business.

Sylux is a robot that was created by the Galactic Federation, but was reprogrammed/infected with a virus that made him betray them.

It would explain how he got Federation tech so easily: they were originally intended for (and possibly built into, save for the Delano 7) him. Also, he's blue, a color commonly associated with the GF.

Sylux is a robot made by the Exelion Star Corporation as a "replacement Samus" for the Galactic Federation.

That's right, the same guys who made the E.M.M.I.s made Sylux. Realizing that Samus is an individual with her own thoughts and agenda, they decided to create a robot that could serve the same purpose while following orders unquestioningly. The Galactic Federation loved this idea, especially the corrupt faction, but the project goes wrong somehow and Sylux ends up a rogue player. Now he's bent on destroying those who were to be his masters.

Then the experience inspires Exelion to instead create the E.M.M.I.s, robots that utilize Samus's power-ups but have more rudimentary AI that are less likely to go rogue (though they can be hacked, as demonstrated by Raven Beak).

The baby Metroid that Sylux stole at the end of Federation Force imprinted on Sylux.

Sylux was the first thing that Metroid saw, just like with Samus and the Baby (although that hasn't happened yet at the time of the Prime series). It remains to be seen whether this Metroid will grow to the size that the Baby did, but either way Samus will likely end up facing both it and Sylux in combat, possibly at the same time.

Sylux is a robot with a copy of Samus's mind uploaded into it.

As we know from Fusion, the Federation tends to upload valuable people to computers before their deaths. And who's more valuable than Samus Aran? At some point, the Federation managed to scan Samus's brain and copied it into a humanoid robot equipped with GF knockoffs of Samus's gear. As with Adam, the Federation mistakenly believed that this creature would be completely loyal to them. But Sylux inherited Samus's rebellious streak and went rogue. Now it has sworn vengeance against the Federation for their mistreatment of it, and it intends to kill Samus to cement itself as the "real" version.

Sylux is a survivor of an extremist federation faction attack that decimated Cylosis.

Assuming that the landscape where we see Sylux face federation troopers is actually Cylosis, it's highly possible that the planet was annihilated due to the Federation. Metroid Fusion suggests that there's a rogue faction within the ranks of the Galactic Federation and Sylux might have a vendetta against that specific branch.

Metroid (species) Theories

The giant baby Metroid in Super was about to become a Queen

In Other M it says that the Queen fought in the ending was an "unaltered" clone of the Baby, and that only certain Metroids can become Queens. Maybe it was about to evolve and that's why it grew so big.

Metroids can only complete the SR388 life cycle in SR388 enviornments, so no, that's not what was happening. Turning giant might be what "certain" Metroids do on Zebes though.

Metroids drain electrical charge from their prey.

In Metroid Prime, it's said by Space Pirate researchers that those drained by metroids don't lose fluids or any other material; in Super Metroid we see enemies drained by the giant metroid remain intact, but end up desiccated and crumble easily. If metroids drain electrical charge then the electrons of atoms slip down into lower orbitals as their energy is taken. This causes molecular bonds — mostly covalent — to weaken because electrons are no longer being shared. Desiccation is a side effect from the water molecules separating into hydrogen and oxygen atoms — which promptly evaporate.

One theory is that Metroids drain the prey's soul. Or separate their soul from the bodies (seeing that they were created by a technically pacifist and very spiritual race, making them kill the target's soul might seem a bit excessive.)
Also makes sense given that metroids seem to preferentially latch onto their victims' heads when feeding. Presumably they're tapping the electrical output generated by the victim's brain. That means they're capable of feeding from inorganic sources, such as the Power Suit's shielding system, but they don't like doing it (a scan in the Phazon Mines of Metroid Prime revealed this — they don't do well in captivity unless they're fed live prey, and straight electricity actually makes them sick).
Alternately, they can absorb any form of energy (including electricity) but prefer to feed off life force (especially that of the X parasite). Perhaps the ability to drain life force was the only sure-fire way for a Metroid to deal with any X-parasite that would try to infect it (the little buggers are microscopic, after all). This could also explain why they're so vulnerable to cold, as well, since cold isn't a type of energy; it's a lack of thermal energy.
- But the problem being (which is what I assume led to this very WMG) WHAT THE HELL IS LIFE FORCE?
  - Not a problem, life force is something that exists in the setting that less advanced civilizations like the Federation and Space Pirates don't fully understand, as evident by the scans of ghosts, Gorea, and Metroid feeding.
The whole energy draining may be directly draining ADP/ATP (Adenosine Di/Triphosphate) which is needed for all biological reactions or directly converting that into thermal energy, however by doing so, the host overheats because to acquire more ADP/ATP one needs to accelerate the metabolic cycle of living things; and the only other way to do that aside from enzymes is by increasing the temperature for chemical reactions in the host. Most likely the fangs a Metroid has releases an Enzyme or biochemical which accelerates the reactions in the body to trigger ADP/ATP reactions. However one problem exists with this theory: the Metroid Hatchling restoring Samus to full in Super Metroid.

Metroid Prime is the inspiration for the other Metroids.

According to the manual, Metroid Prime (the end boss of Metroid Prime 1) is a Metroid that was enthralled by the Leviathan of Tallon IV and turned into its Guardian, then subsequently sealed away by the Chozo. But there's several problems with this in the greater canon; there's no real reason for Metroids to be on Tallon IV (they were created to keep the X Parasite population on SR388 in check), Metroids probably didn't even exist when the meteor hit Tallon IV, and there are Phazon Metroids (including husks of creatures that look identical to Metroid Prime's armored "Spider" form) native to Phaaze.

The theory is thus: the "Metroids" of Phaaze, including Metroid Prime, are native lifeforms that evolved on said planet with a similar niche (a top-level predator that could absorb Phazon/life energy from other creatures), but are otherwise unrelated to the Metroids created by the Chozo. If we assume that Metroid Prime is a Metroid that hitched a ride from Phaaze, we can assume that "the Worm" that appeared before the Chozo was a Miniroid or Phazon Metroid, and it only developed its armored "Spider" form later on.

In any case, after sealing it up, the incorporeal Chozo of Tallon IV spread the knowledge of Metroid Prime to their corporeal brethren elsewhere in the universe. When another group of Chozo stumbled upon SR388 and realized the threat of the X Parasites, they created the Metroids in response, directly inspired by Tallon IV's resident Sealed Evil in a Can. Like Metroid Prime, the Chozo-created Metroids mature from a semi-translucent larval form to a heavily-armored, vaguely insectoid behemoth, but the later stages of Metroid development lose the ability to drain life energy, possibly as a precaution to prevent them from being too overpowered.

Later, after the Space Pirates get a hold of Metroids, they start exposing them to Phazon. These mutations initially lead to Hunter Metroids, and later to Phazon and Hopping Metroids; though unrelated (at least according to this theory), Phazon mutation has brought the SR388 Metroids closer to their Phaaze counterparts. Given time, the Hopping Metroids may have even developed into full "Spider" Metroid Primes, which would be extremely bad for Samus and the Galactic Federation; fortunately, all of the Phazon-mutated SR388 Metroids and Phaaze-native Metroids were wiped out, leaving only the pure-strain Chozo-created Metroids (that would later be wiped out during Metroid II).

The Metroids aren't extinct after Super

Due to one or all of the following, Metroids weren't truly wiped out in Metroid 2 and Super Metroid.

1) The Space Pirates were breeding Metroids and carrying them along all over the place throughout the Metroid Prime Trilogy, and it seems unlikely that Samus would happen upon every single Space Pirate expedition and base containing Metroids prior to Metroid II.
2) As referred to above, the Chozo aren't really extinct either, and so continue to breed Metroids as a safeguard in case the X get loose.
3) The destruction of Phazon canonically didn't instantly kill corrupted beings, as demonstrated by Samus herself. There's swarms of Phazon-enhanced Metroids that revert back to normal Metroids post-Prime 3.
4) It's not like Samus killed every single non-Phazon corrupted Metroid on Tallon IV, either.
- Though most of these are on Elysia, where they have very little in the way of live prey.
- In addition, even the Galactic Federation has backups of Metroid DNA and BSL certainly wasn't the only installation.
  - It is always a possibility that the entirety of Metroid II isn't the only act of destruction the GF are doing. They might have just sent Samus on the most difficult eradication mission, where teams are sent to other parts of the galaxy to clean up other remaining Metroids.
  - All this proves the second game's plot hole. The Pirates intercept ONE load of the parasites and then the federation decides Metroids need to die forever? The Prime trilogy adds populations of subspecies in several different places throughout the setting. Our shero doesn't get around to exterminating them completely either. The whole phazon thing sends the pests flying through space and even when phazon is gone there are still a bunch of flying parasites all over the Federation. That's what happened between the first two games that made the Feds decide they wanted the pests gone forever! Since the ones from the planet SR388 are tougher than the strains elsewhere, they send Samus to deal with the toughest.

Metroids are docile and friendly at birth, at least towards the Chozo

Almost all of the Metroids in the games are either raised by someone evil, a military organization or just in the wild. There is one Metroid that had something that didn't immediately try to murder everything, and that's the one that imprinted on Samus. Although most metroids from dangerous backgrounds behave according to their predatory instincts, this Metroid imprinted on Samus, something that hasn't seemed to happen to anybody else. Metroids were created by a peaceful race to stop a parasite. It stands to reason that anything they would create would be tameable.

This is all but confirmed by official canon. It was even mentioned in one of the games that using the gamma rays that the Space Pirates used to mass-bread them is unsafe because it just really pisses them off.
Given that the Chozo created Metroids, and that Samus goes everywhere in a suit of battle armor which is obviously of Chozo design, it seems trivially obvious why the Metroid neonate imprinted on her. (While the encounter in Return of Samus isn't the first time Samus has been present for a Metroid egg hatching, it is the first such time when the egg has developed naturally; those in the Prime series were either infused with Phazon, or otherwise interfered with, or both, at the hands of the Space Pirates.)
- Partially confirmed in Metroid Dread. The Metroids are programmed to submit to Chozo of the Thoha tribe, which were the denizens of SR 388 which created them (and possibly also Zebes, since Samus's Chozo DNA is apparently partially Thoha; that also explains the baby Metroid imprinting on her). However, they are also programmed to consider Chozo of the warlike Mawkin tribe as enemies.

When Metroids transfer energy to an organism, it's more than a simple health boost - it fundamentally changes them.

After being healed by the Baby in Super, Samus momentarily gained the Hyper Beam. While the effects of the Hyper Beam apparently wore off over time, Samus is much more acrobatic and lithe in the games that follow, using SenseMove in Other M and climbing on walls and ceilings in Fusion. She is more ferocious, more instinctive, more animalistic even. During the training sequence in Other M, Samus even wonders "if this too was a result of the power the Baby gave me." ^Note Why do us fans skim over that line so much? She is implying that the Baby's energy literally changed her body.

But what if the influence of Metroids can change more than one's body? What about their mind? In Other M, we see that MB only became self-aware and began rebelling against her GF creators after she began interacting with the Metroids. Samus notes the similarity to the situation with Mother Brain, since Mother Brain only began developing her own consciousness after interacting with the Metroids too. It's highly likely that Metroids, while not on the level of Phazon, also have some sort of mental influence over those around them.

Chozo Theories

The Chozo have made contact with Earth long in the past

In many of the games (Most noticeable in Zero Mission), there is an Egyptian motif. If you look at Samus when she is not (in the 2-D games) facing the camera, she is in perfect profile, just like a hieroglyphic painting. The architecture is also quite Egyptianesque, with lots of pillars. The Chozo themselves resemble the Egyptian sun god, Ra/Re. The Chozo came to Earth, were met by the Egyptians, who mimicked their architecture and art, and worshiped them as gods.
- The hieroglyphics-like marks on the walls in the desert-like Chozo Ruins support this theory, and could even imply that the Chozo taught the Egyptians how to write and read.
- A corollary of this is that the pyramids, Valley of the Kings, and possibly even museums in Egypt are filled with hidden power-suit compatible upgrades and technology left for Samus.

The Morph Ball was inspired by the Chozo's eggs

This goes on from the previous WMG regarding why Chozo statues are posed the way they are (which concluded the claw shape is to hold eggs). The Chozo developed the morph ball from the way they're folded up while forming in eggs. This would explain where quite an odd concept came from (they're essentially turning themselves into an egg by rolling up into an armoured ball). This might also explain why the pirates have so much trouble replicating it; not only don't they understand the concept of eggs as well as the Chozo did (since they presumably clone most new pirates they probably only think of it as something animals hatch from), but it might require some quirk of Chozo physiology (it's possible that a Chozo could fold up as if they were still in an egg in the same way a human can assume the fetal position; the modifications to Samus' physiology could have included changes to her skeleton and joints, plus as bird people they likely had more flexible, lighter bones) to avoid breaking all your bones.

Ridley & Kraid are somehow related to the Chozo.

Think about it: both of them look like dinosaurs to some degree & the Chozo are birds (which evolved from dinosaurs). Perhaps they're Chozo who were born with some kind of extreme atavistic disorder that caused them to be shunned from society & turned them into the vicious warlords we all know & love. Maybe it was intentional & they're the results of biological experiments to create a super soldier by unlocking genes left over from their primitive ancestors. We know that in spite of their peace-loving appearance, the Chozo dabbled in some pretty nasty stuff with the Metroids & even created Mother Brain, so it's not so far fetched. Or perhaps they're the last survivors of an ancestor species out for revenge for driving them to extinction.

I remember reading that Kraid is actually from a planet like earth but where the dinosaurs didn't die off and after a civil war became the leader of the planet and that Ridley is the last of a species of dragon-like creatures native to Zebes.
- Ridley being a creature native to Zebes is mentioned in the manual of the first game, but later background seems to contradict this, as Ridley was the leader of the Space Pirates before they conquered Zebes. Of course, he could be a member of a species that lived on the planet before the Chozo came and was driven off by them. That would make him very old (potentially several thousand years old), but then again, dragons are known for their long lifespan. In the manga it's implied that the Chozos have at least had some contact with his species at some point.
Problem here is saying the Chozo are birds. They resemble birds. They are nothing like any Earth-based creature. And it is also unwise to assume that evolution on any other planet would even remotely resemble that of our fossil record, so the fact that they "look like dinosaurs, and birds evolved from dinosaurs" probably has no bearing in any other place in the universe. Except Star Trek: Voyager.

SR-388 is a barren wasteland because of Chozo scientific experimentation.

SR-388 is the home planet of the metroids. But wait! Metroids are artificial life-forms, created by the Chozo! So what this actually means is that the metroids were created on SR-388.
So, why is SR-388 a barren wasteland? Was it that way originally? Or did the Chozo turn it into one with other, more dangerous experiments?
SR-388 is also the original home of the X, which is why Metroids were created. If the X didn't kill every living being before the Chozo arrived, then the Metroids sucked the planet dry after the Chozo created them to fight the X.

"Varia" is the name of a female Chozo warrior hero.

The Varia Suit is named after her. Samus grew up admiring Varia's strength and intelligence, because her revolutionary discoveries on temperature regulation helped generations of warriors survive more battles. Hence why the Varia Suit is so iconic and memorable; it's not only a testament to Chozo ingenuity, but also a result of Samus fangirling over her childhood hero.

alternately, do to the fact Varia is simply a mistranslated of Barrier, its possible it was a rank or military title, similar to a Shield maiden, hence why it has enhanced defenses , the Varia were literally there to defend there comrades and civilians, even if it means using there own body as as shield, or diving into hazardous material for rescue missions, of course these two theories arent incompatible, its possible Varia was such a legendary warrior many future warriors used her name as a title to carry on her legacy

The palm of a Chozo's talons is an erogenous zone.

More than 80% of the time that you see statuary of a Chozo, it is either holding something or designed to hold something in its talons. These objects are usually round, allowing its talons to make contact with the entire surface. Such objects include but are not limited to powerups, the spheres at the end of a throne's armrests, the universe...
There isn't a single depiction of a Chozo rolling into a ball, yet it is one of the two most central design functions of the armor that they gave to Samus. Combine this with the reaction of many statues to the Morph Ball form, and it almost seems as if their main interest was giving themselves the ability to hold her comfortably in their talons.
- The morph ball was probably a central function of the Chozo warriors' Power Suit. We simply never see one because Samus is the first "Chozo" in generations (possibly centuries) to choose the path of the warrior, and thus utilize the armor. Note that the Ruins Test at the end of Zero Mission appears to be wearing a form of the Power Suit, likely its original design, meant for an actual Chozo.
As they began to evolve past the need for material goods and physical forms, they became particularly philanthropist, spreading their inventions across the galaxy. One particular statue in Bryyo depicts a Chozo handing an object to a Bryyian. Perhaps for them, the most satisfying form of benevolence is to hold something in your talons and then give it to someone else.

As wonderful as the Chozo were, this recurring theme almost borders on obsession. Perhaps there is an underlying biological cause for it.

This theory has... Unfortunate Implications, considering the Chozo thought of Samus as a surrogate daughter, especially in Zero Mission where the talons are save points.
- Not necessarily. It could be a bit like receiving a kiss from a family member, having someone rub your back, tickle your feet, clean your ear, or even having someone wash your hair. Pleasant, and a definite sign of affection, but not necessarily sexual.
Alternate theory: Given that Chozo are bird-like, one might assume that they lay eggs. Perhaps, for the Chozo, the natural way to care for/carry an egg is in their palms, which they curve around the bottom of the egg and carry close to their chest. As time passed, the symbol of a Chozo with their arms cupped around something became a symbol for protection and nurturing. The items the Chozo statues hold are their way of offering "protection" to their Hatchling. When Morph-Ball Samus sits in their hands, it's analgous to a child being cradled protectively by her parents. Or something.
- Aww...
  - That is now part of this troper personal canon. Because, holy hell is it ever freaking d'awwww worthy.
  - Apparently Brawl in the Family got the same idea.

The Chozo were capable of using Morph Ball.

This would explain all of the convenient Morph Ball-activated pathways, puzzles, generators, and traps everywhere, especially since the Chozo apparently had civilizations most everywhere Samus has visited so far. We know Samus was infused with Chozo DNA, which is how she got some of her superhuman abilities, and they designed her suit for her. The manga shows that the Chozo themselves possessed armor not unlike her own. Morph Ball is only unique to Samus now, with the Chozo all gone (or if any remain, their fate is largely unknown), and why it wouldn't be something you see every day.

That seems to be fairly obvious. I mean, why would they have build Morph Ball shrines on at least two of their worlds if they couldn't use it themselves? Plus, it's been mentioned elsewhere that the Morph Ball was originally used as a meditation aid by the Chozo.
- The only place the "meditation aid" thing has ever come up is in the fancomic Metroid Third Derivative as a fanon explanation for it.
Confirmed by this picture◊ from Zero Mission artwork.
Also confirmed via Fridge Brilliance in Prime 2: Echoes. Whenever the Power Suit reboots, the BIOS lists various information relating to the restart process. This includes the Power Suit's model number: "Chozo Battle Suit ver. SA1-4468-VM6-P" Therefore, it's a Chozo Battle Suit specially designed for Samus Aran. This means, by extension, that there are also Battle Suits designed for Chozo warriors. As the Morph Ball is compatible with the Power Suit, logic dictates that it should be compatible with all models of Chozo Battle Suit; it appears to work by turning the user into energy and containing them within a two-piece shell, so there's no reason it wouldn't be compatible with all Battle Suits.
- Seconded. One of the life paths that young Chozo are offered is "Warrior". Samus was merely the first to choose that path in a very long time. Generations earlier, it was likely that there were many warriors, who wore Power Suits like Samus.

The Chozo all suffered from a highly-communicable doom-virus

That is to say, a virus that causes anyone infected by it to be completely and utterly doomed, which is why they're all either dead, MIA, or disembodied, and their friends the Luminoth, Bryyoans, and those robots they left at Elysium aren't much better. They gave Samus enough of vaccine to keep her alive, but she still spreads the virus, which is what happened to her squad from her early Federation days, Adam, the Infant Metroid...

The Chozo are facing extinction because there are no females left.

We really only see male Chozo throughout the series, whether the manga or in Dread. Maybe this is why they seem to be so endangered and secretive.

Samus knows where the last remaining Chozo are.

She doesn't search for them... and also doesn't tell a soul. There's a Hidden Elf Village out there somewhere that is trying its hardest not to get wiped out again.

Knowing the Chozo, they're preparing to wipe out the Space Pirates. Or, just observing and making minor adjustments to the universe. I'd feel sorry for anyone that tried to wipe them out.
- Knowing the Chozo, anything that wipes them out will propably do so purely by accident. It seems that the Chozo lifecycle is: Find a planet, settle on it, scatter a few relics for the protagonist in a videogame to find and make use of, and then get their shit utterly ruined by Space Pirates/circumstance/their own meddling, any survivors repeating the cycle. Seriously, name one planet that has had any significant Chozo presence that hasn't had the local chicken population utterly decimated. Zebes, SR388, Tallon IV, Elysia, Bryyo... The Chozo landing on your homeworld is pretty much indicative that something horribly, horribly, horribly terrible is going to happen in the future. Samus Aran, Destroyer of Worlds? Pfah, the Chozo tend to royally mess up planets without firing a shot. No, if there is a hidden Chozo planet out there, it's already Doomed.
  - Judging by public opinion of the Chozo, it sounds like their influence converts every civilization they meet to "too-good-to-last" status.
  - Since you asked: The Zebes colony were pacifistic and had less than 50 Chozo there, and most of them left before the Pirates got there. SR388 never had a Chozo population, they dumped the Metroids and some defenses (that metroids couldn't bypass) and left. Tallon IV was circumstance, but they solved the problem while ascending to a higher plane of existence (they left). Elysia, they built some robots and left. Bryyo, they gave some advice and left. In nearly all of these instances, no Chozo actually die, and they weren't there at the time. However, the universe has it out for them, and their record implies they themselves have escaped it every time. This hidden colony is already empty, and whoever finds it is the one that is doomed. The Chozo are Doom Magnets, but they have realized this and have ceased all contact with anyone.
  - My thought is that as long as there's no trouble, there's no game about it.
  - It might not be that they're avoiding people intentionally, although it seems likely if they're Doom Magnets to the Nth degree. The manga and other places in the games state that the Chozo are nomadic. They don't have a homeworld and don't believe in co-opting another planet as their own unless it's only temporary (the ones on Tallon IV took it to its extreme and refused to disturb anything during their stay). Their colonies are only established long enough for them to accomplish what they intended, and then, as stated, they leave. Elysia was where they built an observatory, and they constructed the Elysian drones to maintain it so that they could leave; Zebes was for bioresearch and bioengineering purposes to create things to protect the universe, and while its possible adopting Samus caused them to stay longer than they intended, I have no doubt they always intended to leave even before the Pirates ran them off (as for Mother Brain, Elysia also had an Aurora Unit. She was probably as much for Federation use as theirs); Tallon IV was where they stopped for meditation and to learn about living in tune with nature to ascend to a higher plane of existance. So it might not be so much that they're being driven into hiding so much as they're just naturally like that: a nomadic race that pops up, does its job, and fades into the night until they do it again.
Alternatively, the Chozo no longer physically exist in the galaxy, but have all transcended.

The Chozo planned everything!

Ok, bare with me here. We know the Chozo are able to see the future, or atlest snippits of it. With that in mind, when they found out about the X Parasite they decided to do something about it. So they decided to make the Metroids, which means "Ultimate warrior" in their language. This is all well and good, but they put a major weakness into their Metroids. A weakness to ice. From a normal standpoint, thats them avoiding their creation turning on them and being indestructible. But consider this.

Later on, in Fusion, Samus must be infused with Metroid dna, making her have their weaknesses. A weakness to cold. She gets something LIKE the varia suit in that game, protecting her from the cold, but not letting her use the ice beam. But at the end of Fusion, SA-X makes a sacrafice, giving its true varia suit to Samus. As such, Samus can use the ice beam now, despite being a Metroid. In essence, she has become a Metroid that is completly indestructible. She also destroys the X Parasites completly. Which is exactly what the Chozo set out to do.

Talk about foresight on the Chozo's part, huh?

You're forgetting all the necessary parts of the plan that would be necessary to have it carried out completely successfully while not getting Samus killed. The two big ones are that they would have known Samus would have broken her ship during the infection of the X resulting in her getting the one AI commander that would assist her in directly rebelling against the Feds and that she would save the animals in Super Metroid. Then there is that she would have to kill off the Metroids so the X would reveal itself. Then there is the they would need to have to predict the immediate response from the pirates to the capturing of the hatchling and all the events that happened in super Metroid that led to them being unable to use the Metroids for energy production allowing the Feds to be able to hide their project from Samus as Samus would've been away from the BSL and would allow them to carry a Metroid sample. They also would've had to known the BSL would be stationed next to a planet with a viable atmosphere capable of supplying a large enough explosion to destroy the X after the collision

Jossed by Dread. Once the Thoha tribe lost control of the Metroids, they decided to just cut their losses and end two potential threats to the galaxy by blowing up the planet themselves. Unfortunately, Raven Beak showed up with his Mawkin tribe and killed most of the Thoha before they got the chance.

The Zebes Chozo were part of the Thoha tribe, like the SR 388 Chozo

Samus has Chozo DNA from both the Thoha and Mawkin tribes. Raven Beak was the genetic donor for the Mawkin part, but the only other known genetic donor was Gray Voice. This suggests that he, and by extension all the Chozo on Zebes, were of the Thoha tribe.

The spheres Chozo statues hold are supposed to represent eggs.

The Chozo are birdlike, so it seems likely that they lay eggs (I remember seeing something where Samus was referred to as "the Hatchling," implying that the Chozo are in fact oviparous), and, as a species with many great scientists and engineers, they might feel the same way about their inventions as they would their chicks.

This might also explain why, in some of the manga adaptations, Samus is so fascinated with round objects: Her Chozo DNA is telling her to collect and "protect" these "eggs."

There were good Mawkins helps Thoras migrated to other planet.

Consider some kind of human history have some kind of glorious humanity movement, like the Egyptian Princess who saved Moses, Oskar Schindler, and even The Russians who under arrested by against their nation invade of Ukraine... I believe that's why we can find (at least) three planets had Chozo ruins in Samus' adventures. If didn't have some brave Mawkin be risked death to took an action in the past, Samus won't being a galaxy warrior forever.

Space Pirate Theories

Mother Brain can't bring herself to hate the Chozo.

In the manga, Mother Brain comes to resent the Chozo for believing she is defective and potentially dangerous. Of course, she confirms their fears by unleashing the Metroids and allowing the Space Pirates to invade Zebes. But this troper believes it was just her lashing out due to insecurities - she truly does love the Chozo, and was rebelling against them like a teenager. She now wants to carry on the legacy of the Chozo by taking over the galaxy, effectively surpassing her superiors and proving her worth. But she can't bring herself to dispose of their old artifacts left all over Zebes... which is convenient for Samus' search for power-ups.

The Space Pirates started off as bioweapons created by the Chozo.

They have several planets where they have established extensive bases of operations (Zebes and the Pirate Homeworld/Urtraghus), but the lore states that none of them are the true homeworld of the Pirates; this mirrors how the Chozo have several colony worlds (Zebes, SR-388, Tallon IV, Elysia) but no clearly established homeworld. Furthermore, the Pirates are utterly obsessed with altering themselves through genetic engineering and cybernetics, something that might be inborn into them from when the Chozo artificially created them. The aforementioned speculation that Ridley and Kraid were originally heavily mutated Chozo might tie into this; along with the established lore that the Pirates need a strong leader with psionic abilities such as Mother Brain, Ridley, or Dark Samus in order to function properly, it's possible that they're specifically programmed to take orders from either a Chozo or something of Chozo origin. The Pirates may have been a primitive "dry run" for the Metroids.

The Space Pirate Homeworld is not their true birth planet.

It's just another planet that they conquered. If they had originally evolved on that planet, then they wouldn't need advanced suits to survive the acid rain.

Confirmed - it's just one of their homeworlds. But the acid rain doesn't really matter here - we have things like volcanos and torandos that can kill us on Earth, it's fine if they have to protect themselves from acid rain.

The Space Pirates are still active post-Super Metroid

They have been shown to have multiple bases of operation and their own government, so it isn't likely that the Pirates were completely wiped off the map as soon as Zebes was blown up. However, because Metroids - their living WMD of choice - are now extinct and Ridley was Killed Off for Real, they have suffered a very crippling blow and are no longer the galaxy-threatening terrorists they used to be. Phantoon may be one of these remnants and it co-opted the Bottle Ship conspiracy as a way to rebuild their forces back to greatness.

The Space Pirates look so different from game to game because they keep genetically modifying themselves

Each time Samus defeats the space pirates, they attempt to improve themselves genetically in the hopes that the next time they'll become strong enough to defeat Samus. Hey, it makes as much sense as any other theory...

The Prime games outright say that the Space Pirates are constantly bio-engineering themselves, explaining why they are dozen different types of pirate per game. Making this neither wild nor a guess.
It's also possible that the differing appearances are the result of different phenotypes of the same species, or even of different equipment (and in the case of Prime 3, Phazon mutation).
It's also said the the pirates aren't one species, just a collection of different, notorious species working together. It may just be that when one species gets annihilated by Samus, they bring out another. Makes sense considering how long they were around, and that the end of Prime 3 pretty much spelled death for most of them.

The Metroid-cloning plan on Zebes was just a distraction to keep Samus and the Federation away from Tallon IV.

The pirates needed to buy some time to set up their base on Tallon IV, so they created a diversion on the planet where Samus grew up to make sure she went there instead. That's why there weren't any pirates in the Zebes caves; they had all snuck away on the Orpheon. The only ones who stayed behind were Kraid (who was probably too big to move), Mother Brain (attached to her tank), and Ridley (as bait for Samus). While the Feds were distracted dealing with Zebes, the rest of the pirates had plenty of time to construct their elaborate Phendrana research facility, the geothermal power plant in Magmoor, and the Phazon Mines. Phantoon and Draygon laid low, only to emerge from the shadows and put things back together once the Federation's eye was elsewhere. The pirates cloned/built new bodies for Ridley, Kraid, and Mother Brain, Phantoon put their souls back in them (see the above WMG), and the Zebes base was back in business.

Probably jossed. The manual for Prime says the Pirates split into two after Zero Mission - one faction began rebuilding Zebes and resuscitating Mother Brain, Ridley, and Kraid, with the other faction searching for new power to make a comeback (which ended up being Phazon). The operation on Tallon IV was a reaction to their defeat.

Ridley and Kraid are the names of their respective species

That's basically it. It explains the Ridley thing better than him having a healing factor, and it fits with what we know about the way pirate society works. This also means that at any one time, there are multiple Ridleys. Which begs the question, why not just clone an army of Kraids or Ridleys or even both? Simple; cloning takes resources, and Ridley is too big a clone for it to be cost effective for there to be more than one or two of him at the same time. Doubly so for Kraid, and eventually they just stopped because Ridley was more useful.

Also explains how some Ridleys remain fully organic, while others receive cybernetic augmentations.
- This is just because the games are not released sequentially. It goes Metroid (Zero Mission), Prime, Hunters, Prime 2, 3, Metroid II, Super Metroid, Other M, and finally Fusion. So he's organic, then gets upgraded, then gets Killed Off for Real, then returns, gets killed again, get X'ed.
- Actually, I just realized what's wrong with that: He's organic in Super, which is after Meta, but before the Killed Off for Real part.
Not a bad theory, except the scan data for Ridley seems to suggest otherwise.
Ridley is very, very heavily implied to be a single creature, what with the animosity he has towards Samus/her reaction towards him, his species having a designation other than Ridley, the fact he's a commander of the pirates and not an average footsoldier, and the fact that from the Manga — which was declared canon — we know Ridley has a healing factor that's capable of reviving him from the damage of an exploding planet. And think about it, if there were multiple Ridleys under the pirates command, considering they're frightfully effective at everything else, don't you think they'd deploy multiple of them? As to why he was organic in Super, well, with the graphics of the era, he could possibly have been in Meta form, or simply have regenerated back to basic Ridley after Omega was destroyed? Can't say much for Kraid, however...

The Pirates are the Mongol Hordes of space

Dummied Out scan data from Prime 3 mentions Pirate society is made up of clans who constantly jockey for power and influence in their civilizational hierarchy, best evidenced by possession of Marauder-class battleships that afford status. It can be inferred that Space Pirates, as a nomadic people group, have had frequent interclan conflicts with each other as they travel the stars and fight over what little resources they can scrounge from the planets they settle on: both Prime 1 and Prime 3 show they have little care for environmental management considering how callously they treat the Chozo Ruins on Tallon IV and how polluted their own "Homeworld" in the third game is. This also helps clarify a seemingly contradictory plot point: both the manga and Other M mention Pirates need a leader to make them a threat. This makes them seem like Bee People who can't do a thing on their own^note, which is outright contradicted by individual Pirates in the manga and the presence of High Command in the Prime games. But this makes more sense if this is interpreted as that they need a leader to unify their warring clans together and redirect their destructive impulses towards external targets instead of being at each other's throats all the time (which also ties into their obsession with power at any cost: if your existence is constantly being threatened by a clan next door who will kill all your mates and steal all your possessions in the blink of an eye, that would easily produce a society focused on one-upmanship and striking first). Add the fact that the leaders they rally around being from foreign species (such as Mother Brain and Ridley) may be very necessary, as their status as outsiders means interclan politics are not an influence on them, a sort of inverse of the Cadre of Foreign Bodyguards situation.

In short, the Space Pirate threat to the Federation is basically what Europe and Asia in the real world faced from Genghis Khan and his descendants' hordes for centuries throughout the Middle Ages: a clan-based nomadic people who managed to unify around a small number of powerful leaders and then redirected their warring impulses from killing each other... to slaughtering everyone else out there.

Kraid's species is from Bryyo.

The Reptilicus on Bryyo are vaguely-anthropomorphic reptiles with three eyes, like Kraid. They also have giant golems that are nearly the same size as him. Biologically, they just seem to be quite similar.He could be a Reptilicus that was genetically engineered by the pirates using stolen chozo tech as part of a weapons program. They're known to do that and it would fit the timeline.

Galactic Federation Theories

There are pro-bioweapon and anti-bioweapon factions in the Galactic Federation.

Whatever else you say about Other M, it did give players more of a look at Gal Fed politics. We saw both that part of the Federation wants to use bioweapons, but also can't act openly. Aside from the difficulty of disguising their weapon development programs, Samus Aran is going to blow the hell out of any program she comes across, as she did on the Bottle Ship.

So, when Samus next ends up in a bind, and needs their help, they're a bit obtuse. Slow with giving her equipment. Saddle her with an AI that reports back on her, and keeps her in the dark. And rewrite the personality of Adam to take him from Anti- to Pro-Bioweapons. If she hadn't managed to convince Robo Adam to help her, he was probably going to try to attract an SA-X or two.

Whether the Federation as a whole will turn against Samus is unknown, but it's unlikely that the Pro-Bioweapon faction is going to forget about her after blowing up a second installation.

This is pretty much confirmed when you look deeper into the lore. Samus talks about the "ringleaders" in Other M quite a bit. It's assumed that these are the same people who sent the Deleter, and maybe even employed the colonel who shows up at the end. It's pretty clear that these are not the same kind of people like Adam and Anthony who oppose bioweapons.

The Federation is secretly collaborating with the Pirates

Continuation of the above theory. There's a lot of Pirates on BSL, and they have Ridley's body in sub-zero storage. And the Federation seems to know an awful lot about Metroid biology all of a sudden. There are clearly some unscrupulous people in the Federation government, as the Metroid breeding program and their desire to use the X parasites as weapons proves. It seems likely that after the Pirate threat was largely neutralized (with Zebes destroyed and their homeworld located), some members of the Federation made some sort of deal with the remaining Pirates, gaining their knowledge of Metroid biology and bioweapon technology, as well as some biological samples (Ridley's body, or at least a clone, and the pirates seen on BSL). What the Pirates got in return and for what exactly the Federation needs Metroids, X parasites and other bio weapons they were clearly developing remains to be seen.

The pirates on BSL were X-infected doppelgangers like everything else. There might have been real pirates there before, but not necessarily.
- The X might also have acquired knowledge of the Pirates back when the original Pirate raiding squad picked up its first metroids from SR388. Remember that X reproduce asexually and retain the DNA and knowledge of species they've infected in the past, hence any one X can mimic any species its predecessors encountered in addition to those it itself has encountered. One X infects a Pirate and goes on to reproduce; its progeny later wind up on the BSL station. Instant Pirates, just add water.
If the X infected a pirate way back then, why aren't there X parasites infesting all the pirate bases? The parasites don't just copy the host, they also devour it and spread to whatever's nearby.
- Because the pirates have been breeding Metroids since the very start, and Metroids instinctively attack and destroy any and all X, microscopic, hosted, or otherwise. It'd be a cool mythology gag if it turned out that the hundreds of space pirates killed by Metroids while trying to train, study, or use as target practice, were actually attacked because they had X parasites in them. Of course, Metroids are aggressive enough that they'd probably attack regardless.
The Feds know so much about metroids thanks to the hatchling Samus turned over to them at the beginning of Super Metroid. They apparently had the thing under study for a good length of time before Ridley nicked it, long enough to discover how to apply its energy-manipulation properties for peaceful gain (quoted from opening text crawl), and they were smart enough to keep offsite backups.
See above re: Ridley as a species rather than an individual. The creature in the cryo-containment chamber was definitely the same species as Ridley, but probably wasn't THE Ridley.
- But... he had the theme song!
  - I've added a WMG about that.
It's more likely that the Pirates either acquired their information by decrypting logfiles stolen from raided Galactic Fed vessels, or from a corrupt inside man in the GF ranks (Prime 3 confirms they have spies embedded in the Federation, and the manga also mentioned there are Space Pirate sympathizers within the Federation populace).

The corrupt factions in the Federation are in league with or being manipulated by the Mawkin.

The Chozo were involved in the founding of the Federation and may even still be part of it today. Who's to say that Raven Beak and his cronies aren't trying to use this fact (and possibly the fact that the non-Chozo members might not know that there are different tribes with different beliefs, goals, and motivations) to influence the Federation in some way? The Mawkin believe that power is everything, so maybe they convinced some people in the Federation to make bioweapons (in particular Metroids like Raven Beak wanted to do) to become more powerful and the people who created them went with it because "a Chozo said we should do it; they're good people who helped found our organization and raised the galaxy's greatest hero who regularly helps us out, so we can trust them."

Creature Theories

The Ing are Phazon-corrupted X-Parasites from another dimension.

Dark Aether wasn't created by the meteor strike... rather, it has existed all along, there just wasn't a way to get there from Samus' reality. In the Ing's reality, there is no Samus, or perhaps she died before containing the X threat - at any rate, they've taken over the 'Dark Milky Way'. They've become smarter and more organized, what with their hive structure at all, and the general Ing template was taken from some native of Dark Aether able to stand the atmosphere there.

Take a look at their general morphology - especially the Ing Emperor, the number of legs, the way it moves.... Dark Aether is Metroid Prime's own separate copy of the planet, and just as God created Adam in His image, Metroid Prime created the Ing in Her image. Pardon the excessive religious metaphor.
This troper thinks they look more like evil, twisted versions of the Luminoth. Seriously, an Ing Warrior looks like nothing (to this troper) so much as a quadripedal U-Mos with tentacles on the back of his head instead of those two head-wing.. things. The more-advanced Ing might be something of a What Could Have Been for the Luminoth, perhaps.
This troper is convinced that the Ing are actually based off of the Phaz-Ing. Leviathans are stated to corrupt native lifeforms, luring in a particularly deadly one to be its guardian. However, Dark Aether likely had no indigenous life, so the Leviathan was forced to create its own, based on one of the Phazon-based lifeforms. The Ing in their final form was the result of exposure to Dark Aether's atmosphere combined with the highly mutagenic properites of Phazon infecting them. The fact that Phaz-Ing have a derivative name simply comes from the fact they were encountered after the dark Ing, but in fact preceeded them biologically.

Crocomire's scrapped battle in Zero Mission would have ended with his escape.

Crocomire was obviously meant to survive the battle, but not without a fair share of permanent injuries. See, in this spritesheet◊ for Zero Mission, Crocomire's skin is fit together and is a dark reddish grey. In Super Metroid's sprite◊, however, his skin is a bright red and appears to be dripping. This implies that Super wasn't the first time he was pushed into lava. How he escapes is up to anybody's guess. Perhaps he pulled that last stunt he did in Super that ultimately fried him to the bone, but didn't try to initiate a part two of the fight.

Crocomire is non-native to Norfair, and only attacks Samus in self defense.

Crocomire was a docile creature that originally inhabited a different region of Zebes before being captured by the Space Pirates and taken to Norfair to be used as a bioweapon. The harsh temperatures within Norfair melted and deformed Crocomire's flesh and caused it a great deal of pain. It never intended to battle Samus and only fought back in self defense, evidenced by the fact that Crocomire doesn't attack the player in Super Metroid until the player makes the first move.

As noted on the What Could Have Been section of the Trivia page for Metroid: Zero Mission, Crocomire was planned on being in that game at some point without the melted skin he has when encountered in Super Metroid - had this change been made, it's possible that Crocomire's actions would have been changed to him acting out of revenge.

Phantoon feeds off of the souls of the dead.

Look at all the death that occured on the Bottle Ship. The life forces of Adam, Lyle, Favreau, Misawa, James, MB, Ridley, and countless scientists and bioweapons have been absorbed into his body. That would explain why he's so gigantic and has more ghostly attacks than before. The Bottle Ship has drawn him like a fly to honey. Also, in the Wrecked Ship, he had access to much less life force to devour, and as such was smaller and weaker, as well as less tangible.

Phantoon is a decomposer specifically for psychic beings.

In the English manual for Super Metroid, Phantoon is described as a ghost that taps into Mother Brain's thought-waves for power. This makes it sound like some sort of interdimensional being who was attracted to/created by Mother Brain's psychic powers. It explains why it was so subservient to the Space Pirates on Zebes. However, Phantoon is also often associated with the dead. This opens up the possibility that Phantoon was actually feeding off the lingering thought-waves of Mother Brain's deceased first body, the one destroyed on Zebes in the first Metroid. Basically, Phantoon fills the niche of a decomposer, but for the power of psychic beings rather than their bodies.

Then, Phantoon reappears in Other M - whether it's the same one or not is unknown. But it's possible that this Phantoon was brought about by MB's psychic powers instead, since MB was made to do basically the same things as Mother Brain. MB was killed at the climax of the game, and this Phantoon came to do the clean-up job - that's why it wasn't present until Samus returns to the Bottle Ship for Adam's helmet.

All of the "infesting" villians are the same thing

Presumably, there is an Eldritch Abomination that seeks to corrupt the entire universe. It's first attempt was Gorea, but it was sealed away. It's second attempt was the X parasites, but the Chozo made Metroids to stop them. It's third known attempt was the planet Phaaze and the leviathans. It's final attempt was the Kriken Empire. It was probably responsible for killing off Spire's species.

Other Theories

SR388 is a living planet, similar to Phaaze.

Living planets are not a new concept in Metroid, and once you put the pieces together, SR388 seems to resemble one too. For example, the X-Parasites once functioned as the planet's white blood cells, cleansing it of invaders via assimilation and transformation. The Chozo used Metroids to overcome this, which ended up creating an environmental imbalance - they gave the planet a virus, so to speak, that its X couldn't handle. Then once Samus cleared out the Metroid infection in Metroid II, the X were free to continue doing their job; maybe they did it a little too well, leading to the events of Fusion. The planet is even full of a mysterious liquid, almost like blood.

The Ice Beam is actually a temporal distortion beam.

It freezes its targets in time. This is why they don't fall to the ground and shatter. The actual freezing effect is simply because an object frozen in time has a temperature of zero kelvin.

Nah, the ice beam was modeled after Rundas's species, who have the ability to generate ice as well as control the movement of the ice they generate. Samus simply never learned to do more than "stand in place" or "fall to the ground". With the right training/upgrade, she too, could be flying around on ice slides.
- her beam is technological in nature, "keep it in place" is likely the best they could program into just a beam, to give full control like rundus specieas it would likely require its own dedicated suit

The word "motherfucker" is a worse curse in this universe than "goddamn."

Consider how much "mother" is an Arc Word, especially more recently in the series, and it's not hard to recoil at pairing it with a curse word. No wonder using that password in the original game had such a damaging effect, or that it's even worse on the Virtual Console.

Phazon is an interdimensional Eldritch Abomination, and "corruption" is its way of reaching into 3D space.

It's made very clear in the series that prolonged exposure to phazon can lead to death. When Samus uses hypermode in the third game, her corruption meter fills up unless she fires constantly. If her corruption meter were to fill completely, she would become a clone of Dark Samus. The Metroid Prime's final form in the first game could only be damaged by hitting it with beams of concentrated Phazon, the same subsatnce that Metroid Prime fed off of. This eventually lead to terminal corruption in the Metroid Prime, which killed it and allowed the phazon to manifest itself as Dark Samus. Dark Samus isn't the Metroid Prime, it is the projection of a monster that secretes phazon and uses it to project itself into our universe. The Ing in the second Prime are avatars of the entity that were created as a result of Aether's corruption and subsequent split into two different worlds. "Dark" versions of other species are undergoing the process of being assimilated into the entity's consciousness and transformed into copies of Dark Samus. The entity also seems to favor Dark Samus as a projection, as Samus has shown the strongest opposition to it thus far and wishes to match her power.

It's not that all doors are designed to be opened by Samus shooting them...

But that because they're essentially modified force fields, Samus merely applies enough firepower on them that said fields fail. (In fact, when using Missiles and Super Missiles on doors, this breaks the force field so badly that it defaults to a weaker state.) Presumably, the Space Pirates themselves have to use some kind of keypad and/or ID system to get in and out of restricted areas.

This is essentially canon: Metroid Prime mentions that the basic doors have a weak forcefield to keep wildlife out that's disabled by her weapon (with other doors just having better force fields that need a different weapon to unlock) and the missile doors have blast shields, which are blown off, leaving another type of door behind. Super Metroid hints at it, too, by having the doors in the Ceres space station in the opening lack shields and instead automatically open for her. Automatic doors are also found on the Bottle Ship in Other M.
Another possible explanation is that these barrier doors are used to make doors accessible to multiple species at a time. I mean look at the hands of an alien like Rundas or Trace - they might do better just shooting a large, blue target rather than struggling to grab a bar or doorknob with their claws. Places like the Ceres colony or Bottle Ship wouldn't require access to any species besides humans, but cosmopolitan areas like the GFS Olympus, Zebes, or Aether would need to account for multiple alien hands in order to accomodate for visitors. Subsequent blast shields for Missiles or specialized Beams would definjtely be for military or security purposes, however.

Save Stations work by cloning.

The flash of light/scanning is the station storing a print of your DNA. When sensors determine you've died, the station automatically recreates you from this data.

Sub-guessing includes:

Any Samus in any post-Metroid 1 game could be a completely different Samus from the one at the beginning of Metroid 1.
- Similarly, the Samus that tells Admiral Dane "Mission Accomplished" at the end of Metroid Prime 3 might not be the same one who defeated Aurora Unit 313.
So it re-creates the entire suit with all the upgrades as well? Sorry, I don't buy it. Besides, they are explicitly referred to as "suit maintenance" by NPCs.
The stations might include homing beacons for a short-distance teleportation system, which could haul you out of trouble if your suit is critically damaged. They might even use the same mechanism as the freefall recovery system (teleports you back onto last touched platform if you miss a jump).
- It's likely that in-story, the save stations are just used for armor maintenance, since Samus has never canonically died, or missed a jump and fallen into a bottomless pit. Obviously, we as gamers are not nearly as good as the canon Samus, and so need such saving graces to prevent the game from becoming unwinnable.

Energy pickups are not gameplay abstractions - they are totally diegetic.

The Chozo created the Metroids, who can directly sap energy from things by latching onto them. What if the Power Suit has a similar function, and can indirectly sap energy from things by destroying them to make energy pickups? If so, this could even be extended to her ammunition pickups too.

Meta Theories

The Item Get! Fanfare is an In-Universe alert tone built into the suit.

Considering the suit, and upgrades, are all Chozo technology (and the Eticoons know the tune), it may even have special symbolic significance beyond "you got a thing".

Nintendo either mistranslated or misunderstood the definition of "bounty hunter"

Let's face it, folks, Samus is no bounty hunter. She's a mercenary. She is always working for corporations and never once is she working entirely by herself to hunt down criminals. Hell, her bounty hunting career is almost never even mentioned in the series. Yoshio Sakamoto probably mistook "bounty hunter" for "mercenary".

She's collecting bounties on entities labelled threats and taking commisions for specific missions. Mercenaries tend to be commanded like any other troops when you pay them.
This seems likely when you learn Nintendo really didn't like Retro's initial plans to have Samus be actively bounty hunting in Metroid Prime 3, which lead to Retro calling her a "pro bono hunter". The question becomes then, why did it take them so long to catch on and why haven't they tried to correct the "misunderstanding"?

Here are some solutions to perceived plotholes

It's often considered a plot hole that the Space Pirates were able to experiment on Metroid Prime despite it being locked in the Impact Crater. However, the exact nature of the Cipher is never explained other than being a seal that keeps Metroid Prime from leaving.

It's possible that the barrier was semi-permeable, allowing things to pass one way but not the other, or that it was specifically designed for the Metroid Prime in particular. In either of these cases, the Pirates would be able to enter the crater and experiment on it before leaving when Metroid Prime killed one of the teams and retreated to its chamber.

The other option is that the Space Pirates found the artifacts and opened the way in, then returned the artifacts when Metroid Prime fled back to the crater. One of them could only be found by beating an Elite Pirate. The hint for it even refers to being inside the pirate stronghold. Most of the rest were found either in the middle of or very close to Pirate outposts and bases.

The armor that Metroid Prime's true form was wearing wasn't actually armor per se, either: it's similar in form to Hopping Metroids that it can't be a coincidence. It's likely, therefore, that Metroid Prime is the final form of the Phazon Metroid. There's also the empty carapaces found on Phaaze, which are identical in form to the first form of Metroid Prime. One entry specifically calls out energy shields, which it used in the final fight of the first Prime game.

The Chozo and the Galactic Federation are the true villains of the series; the Space Pirates never actually attacked K2-L.

Think about it. The ONLY time we ever know of the space pirates attacking innocents is during Samus' extremely early childhood, which just so happens to be right before she gets implanted with Chozo DNA. What else could they have changed during that time frame? Throughout the rest of the series, they(The space pirates) only attack the Galactic Federation or the Chozo, a race that's responsible for just about everything bad that happens in the Metroid series. Creation of Metroids, a DIFFERENT assimilating monstrosity that could annihilate the universe, instead of just outright annihilating the X? Check. Metroids responsible for the creation of phazon, yet ANOTHER weapon of mass annihilation, which also happened to create Dark Aether for yet another race of xenocidal Eldritch Abominations? Double check. Creation of Samus Aran, who brings nothing but death and destruction wherever she goes? Triple check.

The Space Pirates are said to attack everyone (hell, you can read their own logs about looking for new targets). The Chozo only created the Metroids (and possibly Mother Brain, but that's left ambiguous and it's just A.I. Is a Crapshoot anyway). Phazon wasn't created by the Metroid Prime (the Metroid Prime was just mutated by it) and the only influence the Chozo had on Aether was apparently making friends with the Lunimoph. Also Samus is theoretically no more powerful than a normal Chozo warrior (it's just that some adopted human happened to be the only one who chose to become one), incidentally Aether was pretty free of death and destruction when she left it.
- She nearly whipped out the Ing and destroyed their planet leaving Aether, but they kind of asked for it.
  - I didn't say "The Metroid Prime" created phazon, pal. Didn't you notice the MULTIPLE Metroid Prime shells on Phaaze? It's a big hint towards the "Defective Metroids were the initial source of Phazon" theory. I'd like to know which logs you refer to, by the way. I specifically referred to indirect destruction of the Luminoth. It was a leviathan that created Dark Aether, remember? Aether was left in the hands of a sect of hypocritical genocidal space-moths, or do you think every temple filled with death and destruction wasn't around before the Ing showed up?

Metroid has a split storyline

Recently, while questioning one's opinion on Other M being a bad game, I thought of a rather odd thing: Nowhere in Metroid II, Super Metroid, Metroid Fusion or Metroid Other M do we hear or read a single thing about Phazon. This has led this troper to question whether or not Prime is canon, but then I observed Prime gets as much attention from Nintendo (perhaps more) than the main series, similarly to how Zelda games with conflicting stories did. Thus, this led me to believe the series "forked" following the events of the first Metroid game: in one, Phazon is discovered and becomes a threat so big that mobilizes Bounty Hunters everywhere; in another the Phazon has never ever been heard of and Samus is just moving on with her life.
- Further support for this theory can be found in one irreconcilable difference between the Prime games and the other Metroid games: the Space Pirates. In the Prime games, they operate like a professional army and/or terrorist organization, all the way down to having pay grades assigned and punishments ranging from things like demotions to reductions in pay and rations (like a real military). They also demonstrate strong individual traits, with some Pirates owning pets and voicing critical opinions of their superiors. However, in the Japanese-made games, they are a Hive Mind Weak-Willed Bee People who need a dominant psychic controller to organize them. In the Prime games, the Pirate High Command didn't need Mother Brain or anyone else to make them a threat.
- The subject of the Metroids themselves is also quite different. The non-Prime games treat them as a very rare life-form so dangerous that a single one could conceivably end civilization. But in the Prime games, thousands of them get deployed by the Pirates in Corruption; just look at the assault on the Valhalla. Nobody really considers this to be that noteworthy, implying that the Federation in Prime views Metroids as more of an enemy tactical weapon (a kind of organic Attack Drone) instead of a world-destroying monster.
- There is some flaws with your theory. There is word of god from both Sakamoto and Tanabe that both series occur in the same timeline just that both stories are largely unconnected at Primes major points. This is why Phazon doesn't really come up in post prime games as the other games cover other events and weapon projects that don't have much reason to bring it up especially considering it was gone by P 3 C. This is also why Zero Missions epilogue doesn't really cause any contradictions for not being mentioned. Also Other M was the only game to establish the pirates need a telepathic or Psychic leader and it is a retcon that causes holes throughout the series. In fact the canon manga(and what the manuals implied before hand) that introduced the hierarchy highlighted that this was unnecessary as Ridley was the Space Pirate Head of Command soley through being strong and a talented leader and was so dangerous he was why the GF Police Faction was headed to counter the growing space pirate threat before Mother Brain became their leader. Also the reason the newly made just for the pirates Police faction was headed against the pirates was because they were an intergalactic terrorist crime syndicate army and have pretty much always been that. The manga and Zero Mission also highlights that the Space Pirates actually are also autonomus enough to act on their own for complex missions where no nonspace pirate leader is present. It also introduces the hierarchy as a hierarchy. As in it was a system or organization in which people or groups are ranked one above the other according to status or authority and done so in the order of an army as to explain not only how the space pirates were organized well enough to be a threat to fight much larger civilizations before MB was Ho C and why she was able to transition to being their leader so easily as her abilities made her perfect for the job.Also the bee thing was a simile that came up for one line. Mother Brain explains that the pirates are naturally submissive not incapable of running themselves. This is why the first thing mother brain does when she becomes the new space pirate head of command, is restructure and strengthen the line of Head Generals and even tries to recruit Samus and some Chozo as potential Generals. High Command in the Prime games seems to actually be a representation of how the Pirates help keep their Main Leader in power and help carry out their will which is why some of their first priorities in prime are established to have been keep that high ranking potiential Ho C alive(Meta Ridley) and rebuild the old one(they even have a new MB model computer by federation force to lead them) and why we see a lot of idiot ball moments with them and Vapor for Brains comments. Essteinly in the bee metaphor they represent the system that replaces a dying queen and what helps keep a dying queen alive and aren't the head of command although they still are very important(As Mother Brain is head of command is queen bee). This actually answers why the pirates would've degenerated in other m (as they didn't have this system in place at all) but not in Zero Mission as the pirates in Other M aren't nearly developed as a social organization or species and thus would explain why only Telepathic MB could be that potential leader.
- The Federation views of fears of Metroids is really just their Viability as weaponized Species and their misunderstanding and contested belief of the situation of SR 388 where it was believed they threw off the ecosystem and pre-manga retcon were believed to have to destroyed the Chozo society there. The Reason even one is so dangerous is that there is multiple ways to clone them and use them as bioweapons and mutate them.In fact the main reason they sent Samus on a genocide run is to have her disable them as a weapon source from the Pirates who they thought were heavily disabled thanks to the Original and in retcon Zero Mission and MP3C. I mean heck the Super Metroid made several larval clones and the modified original was powerful enough to curb stomp Samus after just hours(if not just minutes) of tampering. There is a reason the Feds actively want to study them(and don't think they would die trying) in the series(Super Metroid, Fusion, How the Pirates got their Metroids in Zero Misson and the Original,Other M and the prime series) and why they don't lock Samus up for giving them one for study instead of killing it(Even though Other M really is the only thing that highlights this as something the Federation hates her for doing(Despite Supers intro seeming to support the contrary) although that would most likely be them blaming her for them not being able to hold the Baby Metroid for like 30 minutes before it gets stolen). Another Reason the metroids of prime get viewed differently is that they actually are different from SR 388 metroids which are the 2d games metroids.

The Metroid Universe takes place way, way further into the future than anyone thinks, and it explains the super-high gravity of Zebes

I think that the Metroid Universe might take place so far into the future that the celestial bodies comprising that universe are not the same as those currently populating the universe as we know it. Astronomists say that the first stars were basically pure Hydrogen and were massive, but not very dense at all because denser matter hadn't been formed yet, and planets didn't even really exist, except for possibly types of failed-star gas giant types. Currently we have stars that are still mostly hydrogen and helium, but also create heavier elements in their cores, dying when their cores reach a high enough iron content.

So my theory is that Metroid takes place so far in the future that the overall scale of matter density has shifted pretty dramatically from where it is now. Zebes is uber-massive, but it's relatively normal for its universe (all the other planet measurements in Prime 3 were similarly super-massive). The stars and planets would have abundant metals and heavy elements, and between that and the gravity, it would explain both the extreme power level of the weapons in this universe (one of Samus' weaker beam weapons is measured in teravolts, and it can't even hurt many of the enemies she has to fight) as well as help to explain how so many beings can be thriving on what have to be very resource-heavy technologies (plentiful dense metals would mean far more radioactive material just for a start, and possibly more stable high-number elements).

Of course it's more likely the mass is either an error or caused by the fact that Zebes is a heavily modified world that probably resembles its natural incarnation very little. Either way, I do think that there is some evidence for (significantly) above average gravity in the Metroid universe outside of just those wonky mass numbers; the power of Samus' weapons, the fact that nearly every technologically advanced race seems to have a lot of anti-gravity technology, etc.

Nintendo will never continue the series chronologically after Fusion.

It's kinda painful how much they have been adamantly avoiding doing this, or just plain trying to forget about it. Fusion was made several years ago, yet let's think of all the things that have been released since then. All three Prime Games, Hunters, Zero Mission, hell, even Other M seems to be set before it. It almost seems like Nintendo considers Samus ruined now that she has Metroid DNA in her, or something... or maybe it's because she spoke in Fusion? The outlaw angle is too difficult to pull off? It just seems like Nintendo REALLY doesn't want to continue Samus' story past Fusion, which is a pity, given that her physical appearance in the 100% ending of Fusion is the best of the series, by and far better than her outfit in Zero Mission, both the Zero Suit and her red tank top + shorts.
- Alternatively, it could be for the same reason Camelot took so long to make Golden Sun 3: they don't want to half-ass it, and are waiting to come up with a worthy idea. Also, it was said in interview that the creator wanted to tie Super Metroid to Fusion before going to the latter sequel. Implying that the next one after Other M would be set after Fusion.
- It should be considered, however, that, with exception of Other M, all Metroid games after Fusion were either a remake or made by a third party, being more like spin-offs.
- Personally, I think it has something to do with the fact that Fusion messed with Clothes Make the Legend. Better to continue hyping stuff with the orange Power Suit rather than spend resources making the blue Fusion Suit that iconic. (Yes, I know the Fusion Suit turned orange at the end. It's still very different from the Power Suit, and we all know Samus would lose her upgrades anyway.)
- You don't see it, do you. Nintendo will of course have Samus go on another sprawling adventure in which she exorcises the Metroid DNA and regains her suit. Problem solved. Somehow.
  - And, naturally, the act of doing so will produce a Fusion-suited evil mostly-metroid clone Samus that will be the Big Bad of that game.
- I always thought it had something to do with the fact that the Metroids are now extinct and to continue the series after its namesakes are gone would be pointless.
  - All gone... except for Samus herself, who has Metroid DNA in that game. Presumably, this means that they can be cloned from her blood, which would be an excellent story-driving plot point.
  - Which is, in fact, the DNA of a Queen metroid.
  - Hmm, Metroid: Resurrection sounds like it would be a good game!
It doesn't seem all that strange that chronologically the series would end there. Samus fought the Space Pirates and the metroids for a long time until finally eliminating the threat of both. There was a lot going on between chapters of that central conflict, but eventually that's where it ended. The metroid extermination prompted the explosion of the X-parasite population, which began to take over everything, ever. If left unchecked, there's no telling what they would have done. Samus fought one last time and this time may have destroyed the biggest enemy of them all and saved countless civilizations. The greatest threats to the safety of all have been taken out, and Samus rides off into the sunset. Not only that, but she rides off reunited with her animal friends, with Adam, and carrying the baby metroid with her in body and spirit. Can you think of a better ending? I can't. At least not with Chozodia in ruins and its people apparently lost forever. All that's left to do now is delve deeper into the story that's already been told.
- Um, except that Samus just found out that the Federation has been confirmed to be dipping into highly dangerous and probably illegal research with extremely dangerous parasites ALA the Space Pirate Command, and Samus has just blown up one research station and lived to tell the tale. If they had one uber-secret research facility for studying the X and Metroids, they can have many more. And regardless, it is all too probable that whoever was running the show there has come to the conclusion that She Knows Too Much. To just act like that is the end of the story, completely happy ending game over, is more than a little bit of a wallbanger.
- Then again, the genuine-article final game of the series wouldn't suit the theme of the series very well if it tried to pull a Happily Ever After.
  - Part of the problem may be that a game where you are evading pursuit of overwhelming hostile forces (one imagines the Federation would have more and better-organized assets — and firepower! — than the Space Pirates by a long shot) would be hard to reconcile with the slow-paced, exploratory gameplay of the series thus far, which usually involves Samus delving deeply into whatever mystery is afoot. It could be done, but future games would almost certainly have to treat such pursuit as a background element. Confronting the implications of such a plotline directly would probably necessitate a new style of gameplay, which would surely inspire a tremendous outcry from the existing fanbase.
- Nintendo already took its sweet time to release a new Metroid game that lived up to the original, (and Fusion), it's not like we should be expecting a sequel the next year. You think Valve is bad, but Nintendo always takes ages to release games and they're almost always worth every minute.
It is very likely that Fusion was meant to be the last chronologically. If you take three things into consideration you can see why this is. 1) The X are still out there, just stranded in space. The X have only been shown to be defeated by having their 'life energy' drained. The Metroid were created specifically to do this, and by having Metroid DNA Samus is able to also. So, not only is there no evidence that the explosion of the BSL destroyed the X, but there is evidence that it definitely did not. This means that the X are just stranded in space instead of completely eliminated. 2) Samus is a wanted terrorist. Even though the destruction of the BSL and SR 388 was necessary, Samus still destroyed a research facility and a large habitat of creatures. That is today's equivalent of destroying a large science lab and a wilderness preserve. Samus would be considered to be a terrorist. 3) The GF will send a large amount of vessels to the destroyed location of the BSL and SR 388. Not only will the GF be trying to track down Samus, they will also want to record and investigate what happened at the site. So, the X are waiting for something to come by that they can use to spread, and we know that the GF will come by that way. We also know that they X can go through walls, so they can get in the vessels. So we know that the X threat is not over, we also know that the only thing that can stop the X, Samus, will be on the run from the GF. By the time that the GF realize that Samus was correct in what she did, it will be too late, and the X will already be too far widespread to defeat. The Metroid Series has a serious Downer Ending.
- Fan theories. It is stated in Fusion that when explosions get big enough X can be killed by them. The X are dead until canon says otherwise.
* Gloriously Jossed with the reveal of Metroid Dread.

At some point. or another, Samus was killed, and everything afterwards is her Dying Dream.

Yes, I'm starting to think Nintendo's playing the Dead All Along card on us. This could have happened at any point where we thought Samus could have died, for instance, Dark Samus's attack on Norion in Prime 3.

Why does literally every WMG page have one of these theories.

The games are actually a series of movies.

Samus is the star, and Ridley is the director, who also plays the most recurring villain.

Nintendo is trying to do more world-building.

The reason behind why no games take place after Fusion.They are world building by establishing the Galactic Federation and cementing canon. Most likely any game after Fusion will most likely have the Federation be the villains. In order to tell a better story it became necessary to show how Samus interacted with Federation in the past. This way we can see the corruption of the Federation. In Prime 1, mostly showed a typical mission that Samus would take. Prime 2 shows us a bit more about the Federation through the Marines. The Marines are good soldiers and you can relate to their terrible fates. Prime 3 showed what it would look like if Samus worked perfectly with the Federation. Gives us a deeper look into the Federation and makes us like them, but at the same time a little bit of corruption can be seen. The Federation decided to use Phazon as a weapon despite being a very dangerous resource. The Aurora Units are introduced and seem to parallel Mother Brain a lot. Now Other M, foreshadows (or references) the events in Fusion. Showing how the Federation can cause problems with Samus and how it treats its soldiers as pawns. All this is building us up to an eventual sequel.

Future Game Theories

In Metroid V Samus will lose her upgrades due to a virus

I mean this or the Other M method are the likely choices because the fusion suit is more biological compared to the power suit and going with the above theory she also use the life drain to get her powers back.

I dunno. The Rezbit enemies in Prime 2 attacked with a virus program, and Samus could basically Ctrl+Alt+Delete the virus away pretty easily.
- That was a virus program though, computer virus. If Samus's suit has biological components it probably looks at hackers and EMPs and says "*** please" before brushing them away. Now, the cybernetic components means organic viruses should be just as ineffective and yet organic parasites, the Ing and the X, caused it trouble so maybe a virus would work too.
Dread doesn't give a solid answer on why it happened, but it seems the actual reason was that Samus's Metroid DNA awakening thanks to Raven Beak's attack is what purged her upgrades at the beginning of the game.

Dark Samus will reappear to impersonate Samus after Fusion.

Bear with me. Samus has gone rogue having defied the Galactic Fedaration. Dark Samus' demise is questionable at best. Dark Samus has been laying low, gathering her strength, and spotting weakness, makes her return and begins working for the GF claiming to be the real Samus, while Samus now stuck in her Fusion suit doesn't even look the part and is conveniently an enemy of the state. Considering Samus is now part Metroid she'd even fail a DNA test in any attempt to prove she's the genuine article.

Dark Samus pretty much fused with the corrupted Aurora, which in turn was basically made into an AI of sorts for Phaaze, which in turn was completely destroyed. I'm pretty sure it's safe to say that we've seen the last of this doppelganger.

Anthony Higgs will return for another title.

I don't have a good theory, I just really like Anthony. He's not only the coolest character in Other M - he literally saves the day by hitting the emergency brake to stop the ship's crash course, plus he saves Madeline Bergman from being subject to the Colonel. But he's also a person of color with many respectable traits and a solid connection to Samus that makes his character worth exploring more. He's smart, strong, cool, and respectable - in total, he's the ultimate friend to Samus. That's honestly the kind of black representation we need in media.

The Wii U Metroid game will be simultaneously first-person and third-person.

The television screen could show Samus from a third-person perspective where she can run around and jump in a manner similar to the 2D games and Metroid: Other M. Meanwhile, the controller will show Samus in a first-person perspective akin to Metroid Prime, where the aiming is done by means of the controller's motion controls. Thus, the main screen would be used for exploration, while the controller's screen would be used for combat.

Extrapolating further, let's say you have one of those "Finishing Blow" maneuvers from Other M. You could jump on top of the enemy and then, while up there, aim at specific weak spots around it's head and/or body. This could be helped by a Camera Lock-On akin to Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, in that Samus can strafe around the enemy while still maintaining free aiming. Furthermore, the controller's screen could be used for different visors while keeping the main screen looking normal, in order to keep a consistently immersive feel.

No Metroid game was ever released for the Wii U.

There will be a Metroid game between Zero Mission and Prime where Samus will get the grapple beam

Think about it. Sometimes the missing power-ups at the beginning of any other game are either easily inferred from the beginning of the previous game in the series, or shown at the beginning of the next game in the series. However, never has Samus started with an ability that she hasn't already obtained in a previous game. It makes more sense for Samus to keep suit components somewhere for safe storage (for room for new ones she might find and need on her next mission, or sell them as guessed previously) than it is to magically obtain it from nowhere. This makes it more likely there will be a game that takes place between the two games.

To elaborate on the upgrades: they malfunction in Prime, they are stolen by the ing in Prime 2 while Dark Samus has her phazon suit from the end of Prime 1. In Prime 2, Samus only has her basic functions but the mission turns out to be more than Samus was prepared for, and the upgrades that weren't stolen by the ing belong to the luminoth, leaving her with what she had at the beginning of Prime 2 in Prime 3 (minus the grapple beam and missile launcher for some reason). Most of the upgrades she got were phazon based which were useless later, and the hazard shield and hunter weapons, belonging to the space pirates and other bounty hunters, were likely confiscated by the Galactic Federation. In Fusion she loses them to the X. The rest of the powerups, including the games I skipped, either had no explanation or didn't have a good reason for most of them (Other M).
I really don't think they need to explain this plothole lol it's not that important.

Other M will be subjected to various Take Thats in the next game, establishing it as Broad Strokes

My bets are:

Federation propaganda that assures citizens the space pirates are mindless and can't think of anything clever, then go on to talk about the revolutionary new technology that has been seized from them.
A Pirate Log that claims Aran fears General Ridley, then either gets punished for his stupidity, or has others mock him.
- And then Ridley promotes that pirate to a higher rank while executing all the pirates that dare say Samus doesn't fear him.
  - A female federation officer by the name of Madeline Bergman (referred to as "Maddie" in all dialogue, and only given a full name if you scan her with the scan visor) is the Butt-Monkey of the game, constantly being humiliated, and being very annoying to everyone, save for Samus (who only doesn't react because, well..
One could interpret the cutscene in Dread when Samus blasts the Network Station on the Itorash after the fake Adam reveal as being a direct response to how overbearing Adam ordering her around in Other M was.

Metroid V (when it's finally made) will turn everything on its head

The Metroids are all but extinct, (there's gotta be traces somewhere) the Space Pirates seem to be a shadow of their former strength, and the Galactic Federation might be on the verge of getting too powerful for its own good. The next game will have Samus on the run, both her and Adam being wanted for the BSL incident after having witnessed what the Federation is willing to stoop to.

Now, Samus will have to ally with her former enemies, and fight her former allies. She'll have to either excise or embrace her Metroid DNA, which may be able to grant her new powers and abilities, and perhaps find an unlikely ally in the remnant of the Space Pirates, whose position as her enemies is now taken by the Federation soldiers sent to take her down. (and maybe other bounty hunters sent after her) She might even have to seek out the Chozo to help her.

If they pull that together with a great script and made it like Super, I wouldn't care if they charged $200 for it I'd be first in line for a pre-order. It seems like they were trying to set something like this up anyway, especially after you see all the hatchlings.

It's even possible that the Federation still plans to try to weaponise the X-Parasites, (and we thought the Space Pirates science team had vapor for brains) which may have to be countered by cultivating Metroids to strike back against them. And who has the facilities, the know-how and craziness to breed Metroids in captivity?

And I'm quite sure that Nintendo isn't going to just let one of their lucrative franchises sit with No Ending, especially since Other M is looking to add more foreshadowing for Fusion. And they should know better than anyone that 2D games on home consoles still sell in the millions.

The ending of Fusion has at the very least, made it so that she'll likely be on the run from the Federation. It's only a question of if Nintendo wants to go past Fusion chronologically.
Jossed. Samus and the Feds are on good terms in the beginning of Dread.

After laying dormant for years now, the franchise will be revived with a Super Metroid remake for the 3DS.

Because I can't think of a better way to bring a series like this back, honestly.

Jossed, the 3DS got a Metroid 2 remake instead.

If Metroid V is ever made, Samus will be getting along just fine with the GF

She has a history of blowing up whatever place she's sent to and they still keep hiring her. In Hunters she's described as their champion. She has a reputation that seems like a cross between a Memetic Badass and Shrouded in Myth. Maybe they'll offer her a little more leeway to explain herself than she thinks? Perhaps they'll just make that game's plot her carrying out some "community service" or taking a job to pay off the bill for a new space station?

Confirmed in Dread.
Even if they're okay with her, she won't be too happy with them.
Destroying their research station and a planet really doesn't sit well with the Fed, so Samus goes in search of other employers and bounties out of their territory, allying or renewing rivalries with the other bounty hunters. People working on the case just can't help but ask how Samus destroyed the SR388 the way she did though. An investigation reveals much illegal activity and several people get fired or put in jail. When one of her missions inevitably gets linked to a crisis, Samus must re-enter Federation space in a weakened state in range of an Olympus class battleship. She knows this will mean imprisonment or death but does it to save the cosmos. Instead she gets a shero's welcome and is publicly pardoned(or is at only has to do community service). Many rogues in the Federation still want her dead and the time she was completely at odds with the Federation still becomes the focus of many games. Their relationship is never the same but Samus does reconcile with them eventually.
- Spending more time outside of Federation Space would allow the Kriken and Kihunters to get fleshed out more.

Metroid V will use a 2.5D engine ala Fusion's, and blend Other M's cinematic approach with the older game's exploration

That way, everyone's happy. The people who want to see more cinematic from Metroid, and those who still want the open exploration. Plus, the 2D games sold much better than Other M, so they probably are gonna make it a 2D game rather than re-use Other M's engine.

Confirmed. Look up "Metroid Dread". Then come back here, and give up all the hope you just built up, because it's still a LONG ways away.
- Not so long anymore, bub.

In Metroid V, computer!Adam will get an android body.

As of Other M, the existence of androids is canon. Given how many ships Samus has gotten blown up or otherwise damaged/destroyed, she might look into some way to get Adam out of the gunship's computer so she doesn't lose him for a second time.

Adam's still a computer on a ship for the entirety of Dread.

Sylux and Samus will team up in the future

Sylux hates the Galactic Federation, and Samus is likely an enemy of them since the end of Metroid Fusion. In the next game, they'll team up together, and then Hilarity Ensues as Sylux keeps trying to betray Samus but fails.

Metroid 5/Dread will be the chronological Grand Finale of the series.

Since Samus is now a fugitive post-Fusion, the Galactic Federation are now hunting her down at every turn due to the BSL's destruction, while creating and weaponizing Metroid-X hybrid creatures For Science!. However, compounding the threat is the rogue Chozo faction from Samus Returns, resurgent and seeking domination over all else. The last of the Space Pirates had been reassembled by Sylux, seeking revenge on Samus while also wanting to absolutely annihilate the GF. With all three sides warring against each other and hunting her down, Samus must now defeat the both of them to ensure peace in the galaxy...although, she would also have to worry about a corruption rising within her; that being the essence of Ridley.

Word of God stated that Dread will conclude the arc revolving around Samus and the Metroids, but the series will continue afterwards with a new story arc—so half-confirmed.

Prime 4 will take place between Other M and Fusion

Dread doesn't seem interested in the idea of the Federation being corrupt (as this is largely due to bad localization); so maybe this will give freedom for Retro Studios to explore the "re-organization" (as said in the Japanese Fusion script) of the Federation after the collapse of the rogue faction from OM and Fusion using Sylux as a catalyst.

Metroid 6 will be an open-world 3-D action game similar to Other M and Lords of Shadow.

Maybe Mercury Steam wants to return to their original genre but in the Metroid Universe; utilizing all they have learned in a big AAA production, and perhaps even rectifying the controversial Other M. It would also provide a better balance and wider playground for Samus' newly evolved abilities from Dread.

Metroid 6 will release in the year 2040.

Tradition!

Metroid 6 will feature Samus taking care of a Little Birdie instead of an infant Metroid

Now that Samus has become the Metroid, she needs another baby alien to bond with. Why not a little evil monster who could one day become her greatest nemesis? Test the limits of her mercy!

Melissa Bergman will become the new Dark Samus.

Phantoom was not another bio-weapon created on the Bottle Ship, but rather the real deal. He was there, along with a squad of Space Pirates to gather data and replicate their forces, including their leader, Ridley. Since they have his mental template, they would be able to restore him properly, instead of creating a mindless animal. But while gathering data, they found out about MB, the unique android with the abilities of Mother Brain. While Phantoom died in battle with Samus, the rest of the Pirates were able to escape with the data. Ridley was restored in full, as well as Melissa. The Pirates also greatly reduced her Mother Brain abilities, so she doesn't take over as she once did.

Melissa was restored with all her memories intact, including her conflicting feelings for her "mother" Madeline, and her hatred for Samus Aran. Ridley proposed a way to get revenge; work with the Space Pirates and receive the power to destroy their mutual nemesis. Throughout their many encounters with Samus, Pirate scientists and engineers were working to replicate Samus's Power Suit. The Morph Ball was a failure, and with it the Bombs and Power Bombs, but aside from that, they were able to create a working duplicate of Samus's suit, and Melissa was chosen to test it out.

The suit was originally designed with a purple and red color scheme, similar to the duplicate suits from the Subspace Emissary, but Ridley had a better idea. The new suit designed had a dark blue color scheme with several blue lights. The new designed resembled a horror long thought dead. A fitting suit for Melissa.

So Melissa Bergman dons the suit, ready to enact her vengeance on the Hunter, as the new Dark Samus.

The series' second story arc will focus on the Chozo

Word of God stated that Dread will not only conclude the series' first story arc involving the Metroid, but set up what's to come in the future. We know that the Chozo general from Samus Returns will make an appearance in Dread, and the lore behind Samus Returns paints them in an ominous light. Perhaps that Chozo will lead into a larger story focusing on the Chozo race, beginning Samus' next journey.

Exelion Star Corporation will be important in Metroid 6, maybe even for the entirety of the mainline series's second story arc.

Whether as a supportive or antagonistic force, the Exelion Star Corporation is implied to have created the E.M.M.I, setting up for a potential conflict between Samus and the corp for destroying the E.M.M.Is. Alternately, they will apologize for the problems the E.M.M.Is caused her, even helping her out as a sign of good will.

The next game(s) after Dread chronologically will utilize Samus's Metroid powers

as a gameplay mechanic.Assuming that Quiet Robe-X merely suppressed the powers instead of getting rid of them altogether, Samus being able to drain energy could lead to some interesting gameplay—maybe energy capsules will be cut in favor of a Life Drain melee attack for more risk-and-reward gameplay.

After the events of Dread; the Federation will actually see Samus as an enemy.

Upon discovering her new Metroid transformation and powers they will see her as a threat that needs to be eradicated.

Raven Beak will return as a Chozo Ghost.

Granted, while Chozo Ghosts are the result of Phazon driving its victims insane even after death, Raven Beak's ghost would probably be the result of him still not giving up on his plan for galactic conquest and seeking revenge from Samus for foiling his plans.

The Exelion Star Corporation will play an important role in future titles and be revealed as the Metroid universe's equivalent of Weyland-Yutani.

You know that rogue faction of the Galactic Federation mentioned in Fusion that was Lost in Translation? Turns out Exelion had them in their pockets. And THEY were the ones who wanted to retrieve a specimen of the X Parasite to use as a bioweapon. Needless to say, they're not happy about Samus messing that up. (Along with trashing the E.M.M.I. robots)

The Big Bad of the next Metroid saga will be the creator of the X Parasites.

Basically, it would be an Eldritch Abomination about as old as the universe itself that has a sociopathic hatred for all life and seeks to assimilate it into itself so that it will be the ONLY living being in existence. To carry this out, the entity created the X from its very essence and made itself the center of a Hive Mind made for the parasites.

Metroid 6 will be about finding other surviving Chozo tribes.

Perhaps Samus' encounter with The Mawkin on ZDR motivates her to rediscover her roots and find/unite other tribes to defend the galaxy from the former's imperialist tendencies with the help of her new Metroid powers.

If the Mawkin return as the villains in a sequel, the boss fights with their leaders will be based on Egyptian gods

Ever since Zero Mission Chozo architecture/art shows heavy resemblance to ancient Egypt; bird motifs and all. It's probably not a coincidence that (Ra)ven Beak had power of the Sun

Basically that cancelled Egyptian God of War game.

Raven Beak will get the Big Boss treatment with his own prequel game.

Take an initially two-dimensional cartoon villian and flesh them out into one of the deepest and iconic anti-heroes in videogames.

How about a distant prequel set at the peak of Chozo civilization where a young Raven embarks on a rite-of-passage to a hostile planet as initiation into the ranks of elite Mawkin warriors (like the implied purpose of ZDR from gallery images). This could be used to flesh out what it means to be a "Metroid" in Raven's eyes, and give us a glimpse of what he aspires to return the Chozo to.

Crossover Theories

The Samus in Super Smash Bros. post-Brawl is really the SA-X

In Smash Bros, Power Suit Samus never speaks aside from weird mechanical sounds and you can never see through her visor. Maybe this is to hide the fact that it's really the SA-X taking her place so the real Samus can be Zero Suit Samus! So yeah that's why there can be two Samuses on the roster.

Metroid and the Kirby series take place in the same universe, at the same time

Well, Samus and a group of Metroids DO appear in Kirby's Dreamland 3...

And in Super Smash Bros. Melee's Adventure Mode, after Zebes blows up the camera pans over just a little ways to reveal Pop Star as the next area. Of course, it's Smash, so no assumptions, but still.

Going by the above theory and writing Popstar into Metroid canon, Metroids were inspired by the Kirby species

The Chozo did visit Pop Star once. They based the Metroids on the species' ability to suck in enemies, except it was more convenient to limit it to life energy and viscous organisms at most as Kirby's species can't transfer energy so easily. Fast forward, they returned and offered them some specimens, which were kept locked in some volcano and forgotten about, as they weren't able to cause much damage to the ecosystem. Too bad that prior to Metroid 2, Kirby wiped out the few remaining specimens.
Therefore, Kirby killed the Metroid franchise.
- Except that Samus rewards him for slaying the Metroids.
  - KD 3 could've taken place before fusion so she didn't know metroids were necessary for keeping the universe safe from the x parasites because she didn't even know they existed, she honestly thought Kirby was helping her.
  - Kirby's good-hearted but not the brightest, he may have believed that he was genuinly helping by killing off the Metroids.

Metroid and the F-Zero series take place in the same universe at the same time

Not trying to start a fad here. I mean this one. Couldn't Jody Summer and John Tanaka be employees of the same Galactic Federation that keeps contracting Samus?

Sadly, James McCloud's altered portrayal suggests that this series does not exist in the same universe as Star Fox.

This troper has always wondered why Nintendo has two flagship characters that are Bounty Hunters IN SPACE, but never crossed them over outside of Super Smash Bros....
- Well, one of them is a racing game and the other is action/adventure...ish. Not really compatible.
  - Put Samus in her modified ship. Easy. And James Mccloud could be a Legacy Character separate from Fox...
  - Putting Samus in her ship removes the adventure portion, and taking Captain Falcon out removes the racing. The two game types are not compatible. Samus should just make a cameo, if anything.
  - The game can be equal parts adventuring, railshooting and racing. Falcon would excel at racing and struggle at railshooting. Samus would excel at adventuring and struggle at racing. Fox would excel at railshooting and struggle at adventuring. And you can't say the three genres can't fit together in a single narrative. Remember The Adventures of Bayou Billy?
  - Fox struggle at adventuring... Oh right.
  - If your argument about game types not being compatible were valid, then the Super Smash Bros. series wouldn't even exist. Earthbound gameplay combined with Star Fox gameplay? Impossible! Also take a look at the kinds of games Mario and Sonic have appeared together in (as the only two franchises in the crossover, so not counting Smash).
Since Metroid and F-Zero take place in the same universe now, in the next game, the charge attack/super missile for Samus' plasma beam won't be a supercharged ray of plasma, but a Falcon Punch.

Ridley is a member of SCP-682's species.

Let's see... before the games began, the Space Pirate flagship fell on him, crushing him and searing the flesh from his bones. He survived that, by eating the corpses from the crash. Then, in the games themselves...

Samus shot Ridley to death in the first game. That only killed him for a little while. Then the Space Pirates revived him by making him a cyborg, and Samus and some Chozo ghosts shot him to (apparent) death and threw him in a bottomless gorge. It didn't kill him (at all, this time). Then he started healing from that, and was fully corrupted by Phazon to the point he became a Leviathan guardian (this may have sped up his Healing Factor). Then he had all the Phazon ripped out of his body, reducing him to dust. This didn't kill him.. And then he shows up on SR388, having actually healed to the point where most of his natural body has reformed. Samus shoots him to death again, while the baby Metroid is literally sucking the life force out of him... and he not only revives by himself, with no assistance whatsoever... he actually heals the rest of his natural body soon after that, discarding all of his (outwardly-visible) cybernetic enhancements.

After that, it takes Samus shooting him to death so hard he literally ''explodes'' this time, and then the planet she fought him on blowing up itself, to kill him for good.

And then some idiots in the Galactic Federation clone him, and it's heavily implied the clone has the original's memories and soul...

Ridley is a follower of Chaos Undivided.

Well, he is as brutal and sadistic as a servant of Khorne, he is described as being very intelligent, just like someone who worships Tzeentch, he is practically impossible to kill, an aspect of Nurgle...and about the Slaanesh part...well, let's just mention Rule 34.

Well, I guess that explains the hellish architecture he has in his lower Norfair lair in Super Metroid.

Samus is the next Hero Of Time

To back this claim up, Orange is the new Green, and the Screw attack is part of the Triforce.

This would suggest round eared humans eventually supplant the pointy eared Hylians, and that they no longer need to hear or wish to the gods.

The Power Suit is powered by Getter Rays

Hence why the Varia Suit looks like Shin Getter 1 and why Samus can change shape and use the Shine Spark. As an extension of this theory, Samus will eventually gain the ability to combine with a fast, blue-white Hunter and a heavily-armoured yellow one.

Could the first be Sylux?
And the second Kanden? Most likely though, this will happen via her just killing them and assimilating their armor. I don't know about Getter Rays, but evidence suggests the suit runs on life energy; the Chozo were adept at manipulating life, as evidenced by Metroids eating it.
It should also be noted that Samus's first Power Suit (whose Varia mode was a Palette Swap rather than having giant shoulders) bore a closer resemblance to the original Getter-1, and that according to Word of God the "Legendary" Power Suit which replaces it in Zero Mission can only be used by people with strong willpower.

The Arans are related to the Roivas family

Because Samus has far too an uncanny resemblance to Alex (they even share a voice actor).

Remember me, Alex?

Ridley is a sort of parallel to Discord.

Considering all the chaos Ridley makes and his ability to cheat death against all odds, including vapourization and getting his life energy sucked from his body, it makes sense that Ridley could be a creature of chaos; hence explaining the lack of others like him; like Discord, he's the only one of his kind. Samus always fights the original Ridley, even on times it's impossible for him to survive, due to Ridley having the ability to manipulate time and space to suit him as he desires (ie: Rebirthing himself after Zebes goes kaboom in Super Metroid).

He's obviously not quite the spell-user (considering the crazy stuff the universe already has, a sorcerer pirate space dragon isn't too unusual), but he likely knows at least some sort of magic, considering he's able to breathe fire (which if done by any normal biological being would rip their throat asunder quicker then a hedgehog would be at supersonic speed), as well as fly in space (which could just as easily be a levitation spell which he just flaps his wings with for effect).

Now obviously we need to know how Ridley could have been granted such abusable power, especially considering it'd bend all laws of nature, and why he just doesn't find Samus and use his innate chaos-creating powers to simply overwhelm her with Pirate mooks then strike while she's weak.

This, of course, leads into the idea of Ridley not being in it just for the violence of it, but more the sport (albeit a very violent, bloody sport). He never seems to kill Samus when given a perfect oppertunity to; he's always only brutally attacking her and not snapping her neck or crushing her skull like a grapefruit (which you expect in mortal foes with such vitrol), suggesting he knows they're in a game and that not only is he due to revive at some point anyways but his own powers prevent him from dying permanently. We know (from the manga at least) that Ridley also has a powerful healing factor and he seems to sport superhuman strength for a flying animal (as in able to carry a larger-then-average human, one weighing likely around 2-4 tonnes in all that armor, wiring and gadgetry, in one hand, which most flying animals, even larger ones, don't do nearly as much or as effortlessly as Ridley), also suggesting he might be able to shift an object's weight when he contacts it.

His power also probably allows him to shift his own weight at will, which explains how he's fluttering about weakly sometimes and soaring effortlessly others. He's already shown invisibility (so he can make his entire body reflect light in such ways that he becomes totally undetectable aside from his eyes) superhuman strength, the ability to fly in zero-gravity enviornments, the ability to breathe fire (which is generally associated with dragons, and therefore magic) and a hilariously long track record of not-deaths, so he may have got some sort of supernatural power going for him.

Ridley has yet to be voice-acted by John de Lancie. Your argument is invalid.

The Metroid universe is the future of the Beyond Good & Evil universe.

The DomZ (BGE) have demonstrated the ability not only to steal "Life Energy" and perpetuate themselves using it, but to use that ability to create reconstructions of those whom they deplete—up to and including armor. They also seem to store their energy in the Pearls. Perhaps the "Pearls" are, in actuality, shell-like casings they build up in order to protect their true soft, inner forms—this is not unlike what some real-world creatures do, in particular, a sea organism called Syringammina fragilissima, a giant protozoan. Now, after the defeat of their Priest and loss of their primary life force source (I.E., Shauni), they lost the ability to maintain these bodies—but they could hold forms long enough to return to their home planet, not yet discovered by humans. There, they reverted to their true bodies—gelatinous, levitating creatures—and their old way of feeding, directly consuming genetic material and life from their hosts as parasites.

Meanwhile, the threat of the Alpha Sections gone, the IRIS network turned to a new social conflict: Fantastic Racism in certain portions of the galaxy between Humans and Hybrids. Sadly, they could not stop it. But IRIS was able to help certain groups of Hybrids escape, and Jade loaned them a portion of her powers to help protect them until they could restablish new communities in secluded portions of the universe. The bird-based Hybrids went in one direction, the reptillian hybrids in another, the moth-based ones still another, etc. The different populations each used the gift in different ways. The bird-peoples used it to help them make their chosen world livable for them—but it was still too harsh for most unaltered humans. They began to call themselves the Chosen. In their spare time, they started tinkering with some leftover Alpha and Hillyan armor they had lying around, and built much improved, full-body Powered Armor they could use to defend themselves with.

The reptillian people did much the same, making a harsh planet safe for them alone, but unlike the Chosen, who were happy to live unnoticed, they vowed revenge on the humans and started building up vast stockpile of weapons. They couldn't figure out a use for their gift initially (which Jade was really starting to regret giving them), so they just sort of left it lying around. It wasn't until a group of scientists—geneticially tinkering with a relatively benign pterodactyl-like creature they found one a planet somewhere—took a look at said creature's potentially fierce physical body and realized that the only thing stopping it from becoming, well, unstoppable was a killer instict and a way to keep on going even if it got knocked down. So they invested the Shauni power into the creature and trained it, tweaking its brain to making it intelligent, and continuously growing (so long as its life energy was fed). The result: A nearly-unstoppable killing monstrosity with the ability to regenerate from almost anything, not to mention a vicious inner energy. However, like the original DomZ, he needed to feed on flesh in order to keep his inner power source running. They dubbed it Ridley.

Meanwhile, time had corrupted the name of the avian people into "Chozo," and they were out roaming the cosmos one day (as you do) when they stumbled upon the homeworld of the DomZ. Knowledge of their kind had long ago passed out of Chozo culture, and anyway, there was no one left alive who would have seen them in their original state. They called them the "X", because they had no idea what these strange parasites were—but when one of them suddenly attacked, the life-moving power was frightfully reminescent to them of the darker side of the Gift. They still knew the Gift existed, but they had not done anything with it in a long while. Now, their culture had a legend about how a creature with the power to consume life had been defeated by a warrior who was a limitless fountain of it. Their Gift was supposedly from that warrior, so they decided to use the last of it and incorporate it into a warrior to drive aside the X. Unfortunately, removed from the heart of that warrior, the creature, driven by that life power, was as thirsty and bottomless as the X itself—it destroyed them, but anything else it happened upon as well. Reluctant to have used up their culture's treasured Gift, they abandoned the Metroids and X to one another. Until, of course, the former reptillians—now the Space Pirates—happened upon them...

Luckily, there were those around who knew what the X truly were and what fueled the Metroids. The IRIS network still exists—in particular, because the original members are still alive, rendered immortal by the powers of Shauni. They've pushed and manipulated things behind the scenes for a while, such as helping build the DomZ Sarcophagus-inspired stasis pods for the former moth people (now the Luminoth), but they resisted temptation to directly meddle until it looked like the DomZ/X might break out into the universe again. (Well, OK, they tried to put a stop to Ridley too, but he seemed to be "another Shauni" in that not even Jade seemed able to stop him from regenerating eventually.) Then, they began to work together to create one more Gift—the power to create one more Shauni. One of them, posing as a scientists, posed the idea of the Metroid vaccine for the X—which they imbued with the last Gift. More than part-Metroid, Samus Aran became a new Shauni—ready to take up the mantle in the fight against the DomZ-X.

Oh, and we feel like we should mention—there was one more group of Hybrids that got a Gift. Not only were they eventually vengeful, but greedy too. They tried to use the powers of the Gift to farm Pearls. However, the Gift and the DomZ-traces mingled with the pearls, and created a horrible, spreading crystalline virus. Not only did it destroy them, but the stuff kept growing and spreading until it penetrated the very heart of their planet. Nobody heard from them for centuries, until the thing known as Phazon started cropping up all over the galaxy...

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow and Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow is to Castlevania as Metroid Fusion is to Metroid

There are an astonishing amount of similarities between the plots. A Metroidvania with a new style of play, wherein you can absorb your foes after defeating them. In both, you are what you used to fight, Soma as Dracula and Samus as a Metroid. In the end, Samus fights a copy of her suit, and in Dawn of Sorrow, Soma fights a person who copied his powers. Aria of Sorrow and Fusion were released on the GBA, roughly around the same time.

What does this mean? In the Sorrow games, Soma was attacked by a Belmont when it was revealed that Soma was Dracula. Perhaps in a sequel, (as suggested by someone above) she will be attacked by her former allies and bounty hunters for being a Metroid and for destroying BSL.

This time, maybe detonating a planet won't be the solution. Oh, who am I kidding?

Anthony Higgs is a Pikachu

So, the Pikachu from Brawl later underwent an extreme, experimental form of evolution (maybe it involved Higgs bosons), that he could be the same species as his savior? ...Makes about as much sense as anything else in OM's storyline, and is significantly more awesome.

Phantoon is Mantorok

And the Arans were related to the Roivas'. As the last surviving Roivas decendant, Mantorok needs Samus to free him so he can take over the universe (don't ask me how he got sealed away again). By attacking her in places where the veil of reality has been thinned by suffering and death a certain number of times, he's manipulating her into doing this. This also provides an explanation for Skeleton Crocomere, it's really a Mantorok Zombie. In V, he will attack her one last time and win. Forver.

Related to the above, Sylux is Pious Augustus

He is attacking Samus so she never beats Mantorok/ Phantoon enough to free him. The armor has been blessed by all three ancients, who managed to put aside their differences for once, hence the purple and green color scheme. He uses the Shock Coil to save on magick.

Eggplant Wizards will get Metroid game equivalents in the future?

Because they'd be even worse in an open ended game that is easy to get lost in.

Ridley is a Pokémon

Which is why he always comes back. Regardless of how much, or what kind of damage you do to him, he's just fainted. Blown to bits by missiles? Fainted. Stuck in a planetary cancer when it collapsed? Fainted. Infected and eaten by X Parasites? Fainted. It doesn't matter what happened, a quick trip to a Pokemon Center and he's right as rain.

Meta Ridley in Prime was the result of holding some Space Pirate weapons. Omega Ridley was a forced evolution that was reversed when all the Phazon was destroyed.
Something in Other M supports this idea.
- Do tell?
  - In Other M, the Federation accidentally clones Ridley, and it's revealed that he has several forms: the adorable fluffy white thing at the beginning when you meet him roaming around the Bottle Ship (known as 'Little Birdie'), which then evolves into a creepy huge lizard-thing after eating a human corpse, which then matures into fully-fledged Ridley. So, he 'evolves' into a more badass form over a long period of time and through 'experience'.
This is only really supported by bad translation, as in Japan, it's "near death" instead of "fainted". It was just typical NOA over-sensitive censorship of the time.
- And how do you know THAT's not a mistranslation?! Read the damn page quote!
- Still works, though. no matter how much damage you dish out, he will never actually die, only reduced to a weak and helpless state, but still able to be revived.
  - I refuse to believe Pokemon and Metroid existing in the same universe.

Metroid takes place in the Warhammer 40,000 Universe.

Given some minor clues, we can assume that the series would take place before the "mythification" of the Emperor.

First is the mention of the "Horus Rebellion" in Prime 3. The Horus Heresy, as it would later be called, was when one of "The Emperor's sons" rebelled and attempted a coup. It could be that a group led someone named Horus, or a group calling itself Horus, attempted a coup against the Galactic Federation government, leading to the President/Prime Minister/what have you being put in critical condition, requiring life support.

Next, and also revealed in Prime 3, is that the Leviathan Seeds and Phaaze are in essence very similar to Warp demons. The portal created by the Leviathan Seed also looks at least superficially similar to traveling through the Warp. Gorea in Hunters and Phantoon fits the bill quite well, too.

Additionally, Adam Malkovich and his team. Each of them stands as tall or taller than Samus, who is canonically 6 foot 3 without her armor. Given the timeline, it's possible that they have undergone the early prototypical process that would eventually become standard for Imperium Space Marines. At the very least for Higgs, given he stands head-and-shoulders taller than Samus.

Lastly is Hunters. The weapons used by the other Hunters are, quite frankly, ludicrous. The Magmaul uses hydrogen fusion, the Volt Driver could power a city for a year with one shot (or more likely, overload the grid and burn it down), the Judicator fires near Absolute Zero temperature plasma, the Battlehammer fires miniature nukes, the Shock Coil produces more neutrinos than a supernova, and the Imperialist makes its user invisible. All of these are run of the mill for the 40k canon.

Ridley is a fake dragon, like Charizard.

We know he's a pokémon (Metroid Other M) and he's vulnerable to electric attacks (Metroid Prime, Super Smash Bros. Brawl), so he must be a fire/flying type.

Related to the above, the Chozo are the evolution of the Rito(from Zelda)

It would mean that Zelda and Metroid are on the same verse...

Sylux is much fatter than its suit implies (as in just as fat as King K Rool).

Because no one would expect that.

Related to the above, Sylux is King K Rool.

Or rather the Metroid-verse equivalent.

Metroid takes place in the Cthulhu Mythos.

Which would make sense, except that it doesn't; a primary feature of almost all Mythos stories, especially those most faithful to Lovecraft's original conception, is an overpowering hopelessness and fatalism with regard to humanity's place in a vast, uncaring, and mind-smashingly incomprehensible universe. While Samus does seem to spend an inordinate amount of time fighting the same enemies over and over, never is it suggested that there's no point in her continuing to do so.

The Metroid universe is the future of the StarCraft universe.

The founders of the Galactic Federation are the Terrans and the Protoss: Following the defeat of the Zerg at the conclusion of the Koprulu Wars, the remaining Terrans and unified Protoss form a formal alliance known as the “Koprulu Accords”. Eventually their combined technological prowess and resourcefulness allows them to extend their influence to the rest of the Milky Way galaxy, encompassing the Sol System, the former Chozo worlds, and annexes many other advanced worlds in the galaxy. The final product of this union and subsequent expansion is the Galactic Federation: a civil union of space-faring civilizations to prevent the horrors of the Koprulu Wars from ever happening again. As the centuries go by, the Koprulu Wars and the Zerg are forgotten, and the Xel’Naga is eclipsed by the mysteries of the Chozo. Phazon was also an attempt at discovering an alternative to the rapidly depleting vespene gas, but was determined too volatile for profitable use. The Space Pirates disagree. Eventually, one of the more prominent Chozo worlds, “Zebes”, is colonized by a science/mining team to uncover more Chozo artifacts. The Space Pirates are just as interested in the artifacts, and less interested in sharing. As a side note: Federation Marine power-suits look like bulkier, advanced Ghost and Spectre suits (possibly modified with Protoss technology) and Armstrong Houston’s (Houston Barrimonde in some media) power suit is remarkably similar to a modified Terran Marine armor.
The Metroid are the last remnant of the Zerg: The Zerg was systematically destroyed following the death of their Queen and the irreversible destruction of their Cerebrates; they began to devour one another, until only one species strong enough to survive remained. In an act of self-preservation, they sought out a world to gestate and evolve without the threat of destruction. The last overlords and overseers carrying the DNA of this infant species found a distant planet with a rich eco-system and a small enclave of Chozo. The Chozo recognized this species as the creations of the Xel’Naga, and quickly abandoned the planet to the alien invaders. The species of Zerg found the planet to be a perfect breeding ground for their further development and used the ensuing centuries to grow and prosper. They developed a method of energy absorption that was at least ten times more efficient than standard metabolic processes and allowed them to become the dominant life form on the planet. The planet: SR-388. Their ability to alter their genetic code as they mature (alpha, gamma, omega, etc.) and their susceptibility to Phazon and other forms of radiation is a genetic artifact of the hyper-evolutionary virus that originally spawned their forerunners.
The Chozo and The Xel’Naga are philosophical off-shoots of the same civilization, if not the same species: The Chozo and the Xel’Naga are both highly advanced species, technologically and biologically speaking. It is not unfounded to speculate that they may have developed as civilizations simultaneously. Furthermore, they may have developed on the same home world, as two sapient races sharing the same planet. They may even be the same species, the Xel’Naga having become obsessed with a sort of “transchozoism”, seeking to modify their basic biological structure through technology, psionic manipulation, and genetic experimentation. The Chozo proper may have seen such technological modification to be reckless, and sought to develop them-selves naturally, combining their technology with the organic processes of their environments and developing their psionic abilities slowly and deliberately. Eventually, the Xel’Naga left their planet after some unforgivable schism rent their relations with their planetary cousins, forcing them to wander the universe in their world-ships, continuing their experiments they started on the Chozo home world (foreshadowing the conflict between the Dark Templar and Aiur Protoss). History would show that they would end up destroying themselves with their own creations, the Protoss and the Zerg, becoming a dark shadow of their former selves. The Chozo on the other hand, would continue to colonize world after world, careful to avoid contact with either the Protoss or the Zerg (possibly through the same ways they repelled any Xel’Naga influence), until they too disappeared under mysterious circumstances. (Possible Ing persecution, Metroid (read Zerg) taint, or Phazon corruption? Or a shadow war with some remnant of the Xel'Naga?) On a similar note, Samus' Morph Ball technique works by temporarily shifting her physical body into a psionic warp-space pocket, similar to what the Protoss use. It makes sense that an equally advanced species such as the Chozo would have similar technology. Her suit then compresses itself into a ball, which Samus controls psychically from the warp-pocket, and explains how she can see where she is going.
Ridley’s resurrections are similar in origin to the Cerebrates’ psionic resurrection: The Space Pirates are obsessed with Zerg bio-physiology (see below). They constantly strive to make themselves greater and greater, equally obsessed with the concept of “Purity of Essence and Form.” They continuously modify themselves with ancient technologies and strange xeno-biological processes. Ridley is the culmination of psycho-biological experimentation and meta-cybernetic development. He is essentially a being of pure psionic energy, able to restructure himself as he was from a kind of proto-genetic soup the Pirates manufacture just for him, or implant his psyche into cybernetic duplications of himself. He is essentially a Cerebrate without the need of an Overmind (But see below). (Kraid is a similar subject, but is more of a straight cloning procedure rather than the kind of psychically transcendent being that is Ridley.)
The X-Parasite is a semi-sentient, self-sufficient descendant of the original Zerg hyper-evolutionary virus: On SR-388, the last Zerg remnant, called “Metroid” by the Chozo enclave stationed there, continued to develop itself using an evolved form of energy absorption and the hyper-evolutionary virus that spawned them. With time, it became the dominant life-form on the planet and as a side-effect, spread its genetic influence throughout the planet’s eco-system. The Zerg hyper-evolutionary virus therefore integrated itself within the biospheres of the planet, eventually manifesting itself as an autonomous life form. The Metroid kept the life form, eventually referred to as the “X-Parasite” by Federation scientists, in check, but when Samus Aran destroyed the Metroids on the planet, the virus was able to further develop itself, becoming the lethal threat encountered in “Fusion”.
The Space Pirates are a group of descendant Protoss fanatics dedicated to combining Zerg biology and Protoss technology, hence their obsession with Metroids (all that’s left of the Zerg) and their predilection for Chozo (read Xel’Naga and therefore Protoss forerunner) technology; this cements their desire to become “perfect” and the most dominant species in the galaxy: “Purity of Essence and Form”. As such…
Mother Brain is an attempt at recreating the Overmind: As noted, the Space Pirates are a group of Protoss descendants shameful of their species' integration into the Galactic Federation. They have researched extensively the records of both ancient Xel’Naga and Chozo technology and development, and have come to the conclusion that the Xel’Naga were extremely close to achieving their goal of the “Perfect Life Form”. They then begun to aggressively acquire Xel’Naga and Chozo artifacts to solidify their research, and begin development where the Xel’Naga left off. Such developments are: The Metroids as a weapon; Ridley’s resurrection abilities; their marked differences in appearances amongst each-other and from the original Protoss; and finally, Mother Brain. In their attempt to emulate “Purity of Essence” they sought to unite themselves in the same glorious hive-mind the nearly unstoppable Zerg once had almost a millennia earlier. Through countless experiments and development, they created the first Overmind prototype: Codenamed – Mother Brain. Their experiments finally giving fruit at their research installation on Zebes, they initially used Mother Brain as a massive DNA computing processor to accelerate their research. Unfortunately for them, they did not count on the bounty hunter Samus Aran to destroy the Mother Brain and the Zebes installation. They would later re-inhabit the facility in an attempt at modifying the hyper-evolutionary virus found within the last-surviving Metroid to resurrect the Mother Brain, as well as give it a greater defensive capability. To no avail, however.
Raven Beak is a likely admirer of Amon, and probably subscribed to much of the Tal'darim philosophy as well, which would drive him to dislike peaceful coexistence. Raven Beak's red eyes may have had something to do with him using Terazine. Naturally, recovering the know-how of the Metroids would be a priority due to how highly Amon regarded the Zerg, and this would drive his goals of weaponizing them and perhaps recreating the Protoss-Zerg-Hybrid cloning program.

Samus is actually a Super Saiyan.

Think about it - She's blonde, has blue/green eyes, and moves with no trouble on Zebes, which has over 800 times the gravity of Earth. Even without her suit , she is incredibly agile in that environment. She lost the ability to use ki because of the Chozo DNA, but makes up for it with her suit. Either that, or she simply never learned to use her energy.

Dragon Ball Fighterz has a suppression device that send shockwave throughout the world disrupting all but the highest gods and angels' ability to use ki. "Fighterz" is implied to share continuity with Dragon Ball Xenoverse, where everything is much more powerful than it was in the Dragon Ball manga and animes it is based off of. Which is to say if even the amped up Dragon Ball Super Saiyains can be surpressed, there's little reason why similar devices can't be suppressing ki usage in the super cluster Metroid takes place in too. And we have a good candidate for the responsible party too. The kihunters! They're a multi galactic force, a small number of them just took interest in Zebes because a super saiyain appeared there and they wanted to make sure everything was in working order, knowing what sort of threat one of those with Chozo armor and an interstellar vehicle would be. But Samus lacks the naturally spiky hair and tail of a saiyan, the spiky hair in particular tends to come out even in hybrids when they go super. It's more likely she is a human who picked up some saiyan cells in the womb during a god ritual. Samus likely has a half sibling from one of her mother's previous relationships who is the "true" Super Saiyan, who inadverdently donated some cells, and is the kihunters' true target. Directly observing Samus likely disturbed them, as it suggests there may be as many as six extant super saiyans, one of whom may have access to god ki, but beyond that she's someone else's problem, explainng why they do not swarm into the galaxy in mass.

WMG / Metroid

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