Ridley (Metroid)
Ridley returns in his Meta form once again in "", where he, along with the Space Pirate legion under his command, are corrupted by Dark Samus. He encounters and battles Samus on Norion, a Galactic Federation-occupied world, and the two fight while free-falling down an air shaft. Ridley is later supercharged with Phazon, becoming "Omega Ridley", and is charged with guarding the Leviathan Seed on the Space Pirate homeworld. He is confronted once again by Samus, and despite being defeated, he survives the fight and is later cured of his corruption after Dark Samus' defeat later on. Between the "Prime" trilogy and "", the Space Pirates reorganize on Zebes and hatch another plan to clone and weaponize the Metroids, while Ridley gradually begins to regenerate from his past injuries, gradually shedding his cybernetics. In the remake of the second game, "", Ridley, in his semi-regenerated form of "Proteus Ridley", attacks Samus on SR388 to steal the last remaining Metroid. Samus and the baby Metroid work together to defeat Ridley.
Characters in the Metroid series
However, this project was foiled by the accidental cloning of Ridley and the rebellion of MB, the Mother Brain-like android created to control the Metroids. This leads to the interference of Adam Malkovich's team of soldiers and Samus. However, one of their operatives called ""The Deleter"" by Samus, infiltrates Adam's squad to remove any evidence of the project. While it is not explicitly stated, the Deleter was in fact James Pierce, the squad's communications expert. The presence of Samus derails James' mission, though he does manage to kill several members of Adam's squad before he himself was found dead in the Bioweapons Research Center: it can be surmised that he tried to eliminate MB, but failed. An unnamed scientist who cleans the Metroid and Ridley's DNA off Samus is implied to be a member or operative for the group. Additionally an unnamed GF colonel who orders MB's destruction and attempts to force Samus to handover Madeline Bergman using the fact she is an outsider to force her to comply is implied to either work for or a top ranking member of the group and may have been the one responsible for sending the Deleter to eliminate Adam and his team before they could uncover and expose their bio-weapons research as he is a member of the Galactic Federation military. The actions of Samus and Adam's heroic sacrifice put an end to their bio-weapons research on the Bottle Ship, but their secret bio-weapons research and Metroid breeding program continues on the B.S.L. research station until it is overrun by the X parasites. In "Fusion", Samus discovers the continued bio-weapons research and learns that they foolishly plan to capture the X parasites and the SA-X for the bio-weapons research, and crashes the station into the planet SR388 with the help of her ship's AI, which was based on Adam Malkovich.