Archived Discussion WMG / Metroid

This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.

Pulled this, regarding Ridley:

• Um...yes, cloning can explain why you can kill the same thing six times. Why wouldn't it? He dies, then he's cloned. Simple. Saying it has to be a healing factor, when it's already a given they have cloning technology, is kinda stupid.

I reiterate: it doesn't explain why you don't fight Kraid and Mother Brain six times. Or why they cloned him in under a month specifically for Phazon-related purposes. Or how they cloned him after they lost their base. But more importantly, this is Wild Mass Guessing. This is no place for Occam's Razor. If there isn't a contradiction, it's fair game.

Mr Death: I made that post, and yes, there is an explanation for why you don't fight Kraid or Mother Brain six times. Kraid is (as Retconned in Zero Mission) bloody -huge-. He has absolutely no mobility, making his usefulness pretty low. Ridley, on the other hand, is a flying, comparatively small space dragon, who has a number of other possible applications besides Kraid's "Sit around and wait for Samus" job. As for Mother Brain, while Ridley's strictly biological, MB is biological and technological. It's likely the bits that the mechanical bits that Samus broke the first time 'round were harder to replicate than the biological mass was. By comparison, they probably have Ridley's template saved already, and he's not the leader of the pirates: He's a blunt instrument they throw out to destroy and intimidate things. I'm not saying he can't have a healing factor, just that it's far from the "only answer".

As a side note, every other WMG entry has some sort of discussion in its pages, why was this cut?

Falcon Pain: Largely because I interpreted your comments as claiming that my theory was stupid and shouldn't have been posted. Which I took as an insult, considering the large number of far less believable theories on WMG that haven't been counterargued.

Go ahead and put it back if you like.

Mr Death: I suppose I was a little harsh in how I put it. I suppose what I was really objecting to was the rejection of cloning as a possibility to explain how someone keeps coming back from the dead (When, well, that's why the idea of cloning exists), not the possibility that it was a healing factor. He could have a healing factor, and it could contribute to his resilience, but saying it's the only possibility sounded wrong to me.

Next posted response:

• That doesn't make any sense. What does cloning do, in your usual sci fi setting? Recreate the organism exactly as it was. Doesn't him using technology the Pirates are known to have sound just a bit simpler than him having a special healing ability that doesn't show up in the games at all? So yes, cloning can account for why Ridley shows up after being killed. That's pretty much why the idea of cloning exists in the first place.
  • But does cloning retain the original's intelligence to a sufficient degree that he can continue to serve as the leader of the Space Pirates, a concern that doesn't apply to file-copyable computers such as Mother Brain or supporting positions like that held by Kraid? And if cloning is so simple, why aren't there multiple Ridleys around in the universe? (Ooh, there's a WMG down there with another idea!) And why does Ridley come back four times in the time it takes Mother Brain to be recreated once, especially considering that the Metroid Prime logs stated that they started work on MB soon after Zebes fell? And exactly how could the pirates go about cloning Ridley after their freaking base of operations was completely destroyed, down to the planet itself? And why am I being called out for proposing this theory, which has yet to be proven impossible or implausible, while completely ridiculous theories about characters secretly being British time-traveling aliens or unwitting Japanese schoolgirl deities go completely unquestioned?
    • Intelligence: Actually it is as simple as a file-copyable computer. Behold: Adam Malkovich. The Pirates probably don't have any qualms about overriding a "newborn" clone's brain to get Ridley back. Also, at least once he hasn't been killed outright, just badly injured; Ridley —> Meta Ridley is explicitly this, no healing factor needed... the Pirates pieced him back together.
    • Good point. I will concede the memory thing. Other cases look less like mere injuries; I recall him falling apart in Super Metroid, for instance.
    • He explodes in Zero Mission (and original Metroid) too, but Prime mentions the pirates recovering his body, so we can chalk the explosion upon death as game mechanics.
    • Also, in the end of Zero Mission, you face a robotic Ridley. It seems reasonable that the pirates, not having enough time to recover ridley's remains, just loaded his memory into a robotic backup. This troper can figure out no other reason for the existance of the said robo-Ridley.
    • Also Zebes probably isn't their only base considering their shenanigans in the Prime subseries? Hell, they have connections places we've heard about exactly once in throwaway logs that don't even get downloaded, like mention of trade with the monks of lalawherever in Prime 1. They're Just Hiding after Zebes blows up. Honest.
    • That is possible. However, aside from the whole "planet going boom" thing, there's another significant difference. The Space Pirates still had a flourishing homeworld after the original Metroid. After Metroid Prime 3, that was no longer true. This leads to another potential WMG: the loss of their homeworld was responsible for their adopting the term "Zebesians" for themselves, as used in Super Metroid and Metroid Fusion. As if Zebes was their home. (That or they wanted to distinguish themselves from the Kihunters, who also happened to be space pirates.)
    • Pirates have always been desribed as nomadic, so they probably have several bases scattered around the place, aswell as various space-based fleets. The whole reason why Federation hasn't been able to wipe them out is because thye can't catch them all.
    • Finally, I assume completely off-the-wall ideas don't get called on because, well... they're off-the-wall and everyone knows they're made in jest. This is more debatable, so here we are like good little nerds because this is Serious Business. :)
    • I think I overreacted. Mostly, I guess I was annoyed by the idea that this, of all the WMG entries on this site, needed to be singled out as wrong. I happen to like this theory, after all. (It was far more useful to me before Zero Mission retconned original Kraid's height. I had a plot bunny about the fate of various Super Metroid characters before Fusion.)
• In the supplemental manga, which has only been released in Japan so far but Nintendo has treated as canon (working some of the details from it into later games, especially Fusion), it's stated that Ridley survives because he feeds off nearby biologic materials. He's shown surviving a huge explosion, only to repair himself by eating the bodies of nearby victims. In the case of, say, Zebes blowing up with him on it, if the Space Pirates retrieved him, they could have fed him until he was reasonably healed and used machinery to repair what that couldn't. Either way, he's survived very big booms before, and he's just really, really damn hard to kill. It's not the easiest explanation to swallow, admittedly (and I feel a little silly putting it out here, honestly, but trust me, it makes...some sort of twisted sense in context), but considering the "mocktroids" in Super Metroid, it's just a tiny bit more plausible than "the Pirates have advanced cloning technology". Besides, my guess is Space Pirates in general are hard to kill: Weavel from Hunters survived when he only had a 'brain and spinal cord' left when Samus was finished with him, and that was enough to make a cyborg from. Although a point for the cloning theory: if General Adam Malkovich's mind could be copied into a machine, I suppose something similar could be done from one organic creature to another.
  • How recent is this manga? I can't help but wonder if Metroid: Third Derivative introduced that plot point before Metroid did. It was really good at guessing the rest of the Prime series...
    • The tradeback scans on One Manga give a copyright from 1986-2002. The thing is, though, that the art seems fairly consistent throughout the whole thing, so it's unlikely to have actually lasted over a decade.
    • 1986 corresponds to Metroid's initial release, and 2002 for Metroid Prime. That may be the franchise's copyright.