Editing Samus (section)

===Enemies===
'''Ridley''': Sometimes heralded as the leader of the Space Pirates, other times just a high-ranking warlord or an enforcer, Ridley is one of the most evil fucks in the galaxy/universe. Despite being a fully sentient and highly intelligent being, he takes extreme pleasure in the bestial brutality of indiscriminate slaughter of anyone or anything unfortunate enough to be on the same planet as him. [[Grimdark | His sadism even goes so far as to gloat to Samus who was at the time, only a teenager and was caught in her first ever PTSD episode about eating her freshly murdered parents (while mimicking their voices) before promptly killing her adopted chozo-dad]]. What's worse, is that in most cases he kills people just for the shits and giggles (which, by Nintendo's standards, is pretty damn dark) rather than to fulfill some ulterior motive or power play. He joined the space pirates as an enforcer of its mysterious High Command not for any higher goal or even for his own gain, he's only in it because he likes to hurt and kill people and the space pirates were the army that would let him do that the most. As mentioned above, he currently holds the Nintendo record of fastest respawn times (Even Ganon from LoZ usually takes at least a lifetime or longer to reincarnate, Ridley just pops back a week later like it's just another damn day at the office). While most Nintendo villains are evil in a grand, cosmic way; Ridley is mean and cruel in a very personal and ugly way and his opposition to Samus is born entirely out of personal rather than destiny related reasons and ideology is only in play to the extent that "I deserve to have fun by killing and torturing people" versus "That's really fucked up" is an ideological conflict. As of Metroid Dread, he has yet to reemerge in some shape or form, so for now it is modestly safe to assume he has perished permanently. Until some Space Pirates eventually pull back the curtain on a secret clone army of the dragon, at least.
*The only major Metroid games Ridley is absent for are Metroid Prime 2, Metroid Prime Hunters and Metroid Dread. He was formerly absent from Metroid II: Samus Returns, but a cybernetic iteration of him randomly popped in to fill the role of final boss in the remake of it.
*While the Metroid Prime, Mother Brain, and High Command are all more influential or powerful than he is and he's always operating as someone else's soldier, he's Samus' arch-enemy, not them. As mentioned before, Samus' conflict with him is almost entirely driven by personal reasons and at the same token, he's the only reoccurring villain who definitely opposes her for reasons beyond being an obstacle in his plans. The others are her enemies or villains; only he can genuinely claim to be her nemesis.

'''Kraid''': A massive, morbidly obese Godzilla that serves as another high-ranking Space Pirate commander. Despite having a position similar to Ridley's, he's not remotely as revered or competent as his draconic counterpart; a detail likely noticed by most of the Space Pirates in charge of rebuilding Ridley every time Samus kicks his ass. To that extent, Kraid has only ever stood in Samus' way twice, both times on the planet Zebes (it's entirely probable that his size prevents most conventional ships from moving him anywhere else anyways). Even though he was planned to show up in Metroid Prime in a deeper section of the Phazon Mines, it wasn't until Metroid Dread where he makes a re-appearance chained up in a facility with no explanation or fan-fare as a boss fight. Samus was resolutely unimpressed with his reappearance and dispatched him rather effortlessly.

'''Mother Brain''': A giant, literal brain that functioned as something of an overseer for the Chozo society. Over time, she grew rather sick of cleaning up after Space Pirate raids and the Chozo's new pacifistic outlook on life and began wishing to instill her concept of "order" unto the galaxy/universe. To this end, she conscripted Ridley and the Space Pirates to act as her personal army in a bid to take control of the Galactic Federation to achieve this goal. She also seemed to think that the Metroids are the perfect life form, and sought to evolve them into a fully intelligent race. Suffice to say, between her second death and the extinction of Metroids, the odds of her goal being realized are real fucking slim.

'''Space Pirates''': These awesome fuckers have been the biggest thorn in the Federation's side since god knows when. The exact nuances of their government and society at large aren't really clear (different games show them as Arthropods or Reptoids, not helped by the official stance they are an amalgam of many species) but they are an extremely militaristic race that tends to have a [[ork | "might is right"]] mentality. Despite this, they are still a fairly advanced race in their own right and are capable of creating (crude) technology that allows them to rival the Galactic Federation. Unlike the Federation, the Pirates are much less concerned with the safe applications of said technology, so much of their newer or experimental technology tends to be considerably less refined than their GF counterparts. Their tech also tends to suffer from particularly fatal flaws (such as notable vulnerabilities to specific beam weapons, or high equipment temperatures making them liable to explode). The R&D aspect of their technology also tends to have a staggering mortality rate on the personnel testing it, a hilarious example being when they tried (and failed) to copy Samus' Morph Ball. After ''Prime 3'' and ''Super Metroid'' they have been almost completely defeated, having lost both their homeworld and their backup bases on Talon IV and Zebes, though as with any video game antagonist it wouldn't be hard to bring them back if Nintendo really wanted.
*'''Disciples''': A sect of Space Pirates who worship Phazon as a holy substance, and Dark Samus as their new goddess. During ''Prime 3'' they held most of the political power in the Space Pirate hierarchy, though the destruction of Phaaze means any survivors probably aren't high on the totem pole any longer.

'''Ing''': When Aether was hit by a Phazon-infused meteor, the impact in tandem with the Phazon reacting with the natural energies of the planet split Aeither between two dimensions of reality. Most of the Phazon and half of this planetary energy shifted over to the half that became known as 'Dark Aether'. This realm became populated by the Ing, literal daemons of darkness who possessed and killed things in the original Aether (not necessarily in that order either, their possession abilities aren't even limited to organics which the Luminoth found when the Ing turned their war machines against them) in order to slaughter the Luminoth and steal the remaining energy to stabilize their dimension and erase the original planet. Once Samus drained every bit of planetary energy and murdered their Emperor, the entirety of Dark Aether imploded upon itself, taking the rest of the Ing with it ([[Grimdark|many of whom were so desperate to escape their apocalypse they tried to force themselves through an unstable portal to a realm that's atmosphere would've very likely killed them anyways]]). This is kind of noteworthy, as this is the first instance of complete and utter genocide Samus has committed against a fully sentient (if strictly hierarchical and extremely hostile) race to the point of extinction.
*Metroid Prime 3 gives a hint to their origins with a minor enemy known as the Phaaz-Ing which looks and acts an awful lot like a recoloured version of an Inglet. It's likely that the Ing Horde was birthed from a collection of Phaaz-Ing that hitched a ride on the leviathan heading towards aether and were mutated by the dark dimension when Aether's bizarre energies sent the meteor into another dimension.

'''Dark Samus''': The first of Samus' doppelgangers, Dark Samus is an ''extremely'' mutated Metroid first appeared as titular final boss in Metroid Prime. After it was defeated by Samus it survived by stealing the Phazon Suit to effectively turn into a deranged murder-clone of her. While she was relatively directionless on Aether, she eventually became obsessed with spreading Phazon corruption to every known planet of importance. Due to being almost pure Phazon, Dark Samus' personality is twisted and manic. The Space Pirates corrupted by her came to see her as something of a prophet or harbinger, with many all but worshiping her. Her final death came with the destruction of the planet Phaaze, which effectively cause all Phazon to become inert and fade away.

'''SA-X''': The Samus Aran X-Parasite was created shortly after a Federation sponsored visit to the recently de-Metroided SR-388 when one of the little STD blobs crawled into Samus' suit. After promptly infecting and copying her at the height of her power, it began wreaking havoc on the Space Station it was contained in. By the time Samus was strong enough to face off against it, it had asexually reproduced into no less than 10 copies of a fully powered Samus. All these copies are presumed to be destroyed along with the entirety of SR-388 and the Space Station they were held on. Unlike Dark Samus, this thing might have copied some of the original's personality, though mostly it seemed to imitate just the part that was obsessed with murdering metroids. Given that the X-Parasite mimicking Quiet Robe willfully sacrificed itself to bring Samus' metroid form under her control so that she could escape the about-to-explode planet ZDR, it may be more towards the former.

'''E.M.M.I.''': Extraplanetary Multiform Mobile Identifier, E.M.M.I.s are cybernetic probes created by the Galactic Federation for the express purpose of tracking down and identifying potential X-Parasites on a recently identified planet known as ZDR. To do this, they made these things out of "the toughest stuff" in the galaxy, to wit, none of Samus' conventional weaponry can damage an E.M.M.I. under any circumstances. Of course, all the E.M.M.I. sent to ZDR went rogue and now want to take a sample from Samus... by impaling her with a massive proboscis-like needle. Upon encountering Quiet Robe, he reveals that Raven Beak has re-appropriated the E.M.M.I., equipped them with some of Samus' stolen gear and has tasked them with extracting the Metroid DNA from within her so that he can create an army for galactic conquest. As their acronym suggests, E.M.M.I. adapt their forms to better track their prey. As far as Samus is concerned, she has to spend a majority of her time fleeing from these robots, as the most she can do is ''potentially'' escape their grasp if they manage to pin her. Why the Federation thought designing a droid this difficult for their top bounty hunter to deal with when she's still working for them is an enigma at best. Fortunately, by the time Samus encounters the last E.M.M.I, she's able to dispatch of them by using her Metroid abilities to simply drain them of their energy.

'''Raven Beak''': An evil Chozo who leads the warlike Mawkin Tribe. The Thoha Tribe contracted him to stop the Metroids after they ran out of control on SR388. He obliged in their request, but upon the the Thoha requesting that they destroy SR388 to ensure the Metroids and X-Parasites couldn't pose a threat, Raven Beak betrayed and slaughtered them. Raven Beak instead decided to hop on the bio-weapon bandwagon and use the Metroids as weapons for galactic conquest, only sparing Quiet Robe from the Thoha genocide as a means to control them. However, his plans were delayed slightly after it was revealed that an X-Parasite managed to infect one of his soldiers and was wreaking havoc upon ZDR, the Mawkin base of operations. By the time Raven Beak managed to contain the X-Parasites, all of his soldiers had succumb to the parasite, leaving him as the sole survivor. Undeterred, Raven Beak set out to resume his plans for the Metroids, only to discover that while he was preoccupied with the X, Samus had wiped out all the Metroids on SR388. Again undeterred, once he discovered that Samus had been inoculated with Metroid DNA, he shifted his plans to capturing Samus to harvest her DNA. To this end, he leaked footage of an X-Parasite to the federation and captured all the E.M.M.I. units dispatched to investigate by the time Samus got to the planet. Though he was originally planning on simply killing Samus during their initial encounter, his plans shifted once he noticed Samus' latent Metroid DNA was beginning to awaken. Thus, he knocked her out, stole most of her powersuit's equipment and disseminated them to the E.M.M.I under his control and engineered a majority of the trials Samus had to endure with the intention of fully awakening her powers for his personal use.
*Raven Beak thus far is the most powerful opponent Samus has ever faced (you don't survive an outbreak of X-Parasites by being easy to kill); even at full power, he is able to best Samus in combat in both of their encounters, Raven Beak emerged victorious. Only upon Samus' metroid powers fully awakening did he lose against her.
**Raven Beak is the source for the other half of Samus' Chozo DNA infusion, providing the martial prowess the Mawkin (and by extension, the former Chozo people) were known for. In a sense, this effectively turns him into Samus' bird Darth Vader-dad. This relation does little to prevent Metroid-Samus from going full [[Doom|Doomslayer]] on him.