Headscratchers / Metroid Fusion

• How did Adam get uploaded to the computer after he sacrificed himself in Sector 0?
  • The way it was phrased, it sounds like important personnel in the GF have their minds uploaded on a regular basis (like backing up your hard drive every week). The AI 'did' ask how Adam died.
• Why on earth (wakka wakka) does a space station need a boiler room? The problem should be getting rid of excess heat, not making more of it.
  • Justified by Sector PYR as a whole, especially because there are creatures that requires excessive heat (Norfair-tier) to live!
• How is Samus able to swing from monkey bars when one of her hands is covered by the arm cannon?
  • Either a magnetic grip or the arm cannon morphs into a hand and back instantaneously. Or some clever use of the flaps from the missile launcher.
  • Chozo tech is amazing, but it's not that good where it can switch from arm cannon to hand instantaneously. Otherwise, she'd use it for functions like piloting her ship (and anyway, her left hand suffices for that by itself). Also, see the similar line of questioning below.
• Okay, so the X realise Samus is a major threat to them because she has Metroid DNA now, allowing her to absorb them like a Metroid would. In order to combat this, they develop the ability to lower their 'bodies' to extremely low temperatures which seriously harms Samus should she try to absorb them. An interesting way to show the X aren't just mindless killing machines but it begs the question of why they didn't do this with the Metroids way back when the Chozo designed them to be their natural predators.
  • Aside from needing extremely cold environments in order to change them, what makes you think that they didn't? The later stages of the Metroid lifecycle aren't particularly vulnerable to being frozen.
  • The X didn't just arbitrarily lower their temperature, they used Sector 5 to do so. SR388 has never been stated to have regions with low temperatures, and even if it did it would only significantly affect larval Metroids.
    • Both the ending battle with the Omega Metroid and the remake of the second game show that the Metroids later forms retain their weakness to cold, so it would've been very useful.
• Why is the Omega Metroid actively trying to kill you in the finale? With Metroid DNA, it should view you as a curious sibling, if nothing else.
  • Larval Metroids might not have the intelligence or sensory organs to tell that Samus isn't a real Metroid, but Omegas are fully grown.
  • It's also possible that the Omega Metroid had killed a few of the SA-X copies previously and saw Samus as just another one of them.
  • Another possibility is that it was a fight for dominance. The Metroid DNA they used to start the breeding program and to create the Metroid Vaccine were taken from the Baby Metroid, and Other M confirms that the Baby Metroid had the genetics necessary to become a Queen Metroid.
• Why is the Arm Cannon on the Fusion Suit rifled (check some of the promotional art)? It's primarily a directed energy weapon and its missiles are fin-stablised. The former is unlikely to gain a spin, much less benefit from it, and the latter would if anything be better off without a spin.
• Why doesn't Samus mutate? The environment of SR-388 is what causes the Metroids to mutate and transform into Alpha, Gamma, Zeta, and Omega forms, so why didn't the now part-Metroid Samus undergo any sort of similar mutation?
  • Likely due to the amount of time spent there being fairly minimal, the remnants of her suit separating her body from the external environment, or just that she is not Metroid enough to metamorphose.
  • Metroid Dread answers that question: Samus would have metamorphosed into a humanoid Metroid right after her transfusion, were in not for her Chozo DNA transfusion suppressing the transformation.
• At the end, when Samus absorbs the SA-X, does that mean that going forward she can no longer absorb X-Parasites or worse, can be infected by them again?
  • That's unlikely, considering that none of the other X Parasites that Samus absorbs up to that point have any effect on her ability to absorb X.
    • Possibly a thing, considering Sakamoto has said that Samus regained her original DNA structure when she absorbed the SA-X. Supposedly, this is how she can use her equally-recovered Ice Beam without her body rejecting it, as Adam postulated when discussing tactics for battling the SA-X.
  • Metroid Dread shows that Samus can still absorb X parasites in exactly the same way.
• I don't really understand the physics here. But how does crashing a space station into a planet, destroy the planet itself in its entirety?
  • The space station's self destruct sequence was activated before it crashed into the planet. A space station that big, colliding against a planet the size of Earth would cause some damage. Its self destruct sequence would probably annihilate it completely.
    • No, no it wouldn't. It would certainly cause damage and kill almost all life on the planet, but destroy the planet itself? The space station is only about size of a Disney theme park, and most of that is likely gonna burn up upon entering the planet's atmosphere.
    • Most likely it wouldn't outright destroy the planet, but would completely wipe out the ecosystem, leaving the entire planet uninhabitable to anything. It would be much like what the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs did, only worse. The lab hitting the ground would be an extinction level event, but then the lab blowing up with enough force to destroy the city sized structure? The odds of anything on the planet surviving the fallout is so small that the planet may as well be destroyed.
    • As mentioned below, it could have an antimatter, hypermatter or some-other-exotic-matter drive/powerplant, which would be expected to have orders of magnitude more destructive potential than a nuclear reactor.
    • This is a case of Lost in Translation. In the original Japanese version, Adam explicitly says that BSL's self-destruct device is powerful enough to destroy an entire planet during the emergency in PYR. Still doesn't explain why such a powerful device is needed to destroy a relatively small station, but there you go.
• Multiple questions, but all of them related: how and why is Samus's suit Organic Technology? How was the Federation unable to remove the suit while she's unconscious? If pieces of her regular armour were removed, then why does it look like her Zero Suit is stretched over her armour as the Fusion Suit? Why does B.O.X. have an organic brain? I know that the Federation is portrayed as stupid and/or evil, but I don't see how pulling a RoboCop 2 would benefit them.
  • Samus is a Cyborg. Presumably, Chozo warriors are augmented in a number of ways, including genetic enhancements and cybernetics. Each warrior's Power Suit is a part of the wearer's body, evidenced by the fact that it cannot be removed without doing so surgically, slowly regenerates like damaged flesh or skin, and shares any enhancements that the wearer gains (such as Samus's Metroid abilities). The Fusion Suit is merely Samus's Power Suit slowly regenerating itself after being damaged and removed (evidenced by 'Metroid Dread'', where it's still in the process of regenerating but looks much closer to its default state). As for B.O.X., well considering how advanced Chozo tech was, it makes sense that the Federation, the Pirates, and others would try to replicate the way their tech intertwines with organics.
  • The power suit being organic tech was foreshadowed previously. In Metroid Prime, for example, it becomes the Phazon Suit after being "corrupted by viral exposure". More subtly, the original Metroid instruction manual stated that the suit absorbs the power of Samus' enemies, presumably in the form of life energy and ammo you pick up from fallen enemies. Also, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption implied that organic compmuters similar to the Mother Brain were common within the Federation.
• How is Samus clambering across the ceiling rungs? The arm cannon doesn't open at the arm (and you would see a hand coming out anyway if it did) and the free hand comes off for a bit. It could be magnetic, but it would have to be a very strong magnetic field to support her weight long enough to get the other arm over to the next rung. I guess the arm cannon could have biological components, and it could be the remains of the grapple beam, but that doesn't explain how it could be half-working if it's not there, otherwise it wouldn't work at all, so probably not related to the grapple beam. I have been wondering this for years and no one else seems to notice this in Fusion.
  • Maybe there is a tiny claw inside the arm cannon?
  • Prime 3 shows that the arm cannon can open up like a claw to "grab" things, making clever use of the kibble from how it opens up to shoot missiles. Retroactive explanation?
  • Although it doesn't open up when she grabs the ladders. Maybe it contains an electromagnet strong enough to hold Samus's weight.
  • In SSBM, Samus uses the Grapple Beam from the arm cannon, so that could be an explanation. Alternately, the game designers didn't think that one through.
  • In some pictures (e.g. the iconic one on the cover of Metroid Prime, and indeed one with Samus holding both arms at her side in the Fusion suit) the arm cannon seems to be at least a few inches longer than her left, unadorned arm. So, unless there’s a claw on the top side of it, it would be awkward to swing from anywhere else on the cannon (that is between it, over to the left hand, and back). So, the most likely thing is that it has a strong magnet (Samus’s suit is capable of any manner of incredible things with it’s high technology) where she can attach it at any suitable point to the rungs to produce a comfortable cadence of clambering, much like you would have normally with simply two unadorned arms.
• Who packed BSL with enough explosive charges to take a planet with it when the self-destruct goes off? Whoever they are, they have vapour for brains.
  • BSL is full of biological weapons. The explosives are either there for sterilisation purposes (in case something escapes; which is exactly what happened) or the BSL itself is a weapon.
  • I've always assumed the planet-destroying explosion (technically it doesn't destroy the planet as you can still see it on the radar, just blow most of the surface into orbit) was not caused by the explosive self-destruct mechanism itself, but by the explosion causing the station's reactor to go critical. Assuming the station was powered by antimatter or something a breach in the reactor could cause an enormous explosion.
    • Actually, the self-destruct explosives seem to be much more powerful than the reactor overloading- that's exactly the reasoning ADAM gives to why you have to stop the reactor overload earlier on. But as said above, BSL is packed with all kinds of top secret bio-weapons, special projects of dubious legality and some of the most dangerous creatures in the galaxy, a thorough self-destruct has several purposes: a containment failsafe, a reason for invaders to be hesitant to use heavy weapons, and plausible deniability.
    • Thoroughly destroying a space station is one thing. Taking an entire planet with it is another. That transcends plausible deniability and goes straight on into "making it worse". With a thorough enough self-destruct, you can at least claim the station never existed, but when a PLANET suddenly disappears because of your secret illegal experiment lab, that's harder to explain away. There just isn't a good Watsonian reason for why the station could destroy SR388. Of course, a probable Doylian answer is that someone on the development team went, "Super Metroid was awesome, and it ended with a planet exploding. We should blow up a planet again. That'll make Fusion awesome."
    • The self-destruct sequence is a given, but its size would be a case of Reality Is Unrealistic. The station is actually SR388's asteroid moon. An impact event in real life is always devastating, even if the impactor is smaller and of lesser mass, mainly due to the sheer velocity of said object. Orbit rapidly degrading, Samus and Adam rammed it straight into SR388, and detonating the core would have finished the job.
    • In a Watsonian sense, it may have been a combination of the explosion and the impact. There's a decent chance that the station is both large enough to be analogous to an extinction-level meteor, and have shielding to keep it from burning up in atmosphere, and if things were timed right- which they probably were- and the self destruct went off the moment it hit the planet, it would increase the force with which it hit the planet. Like a bullet hitting an egg.
  • The planet wasn't completely destroyed. The station became a meteor like the one that took out the dinosaurs, causing SR388 to fall into a nuclear winter as the reactors' fallout and impact debris overcasts the atmosphere and rains down. The surface of SR388, and all X on the planet, are now radioactive glass. It's as good as destroyed as the radiation precludes all attempts to go back on the planet for at least the next thousand years.
• The X infect Samus's suit and create the SA-X. Fine. Then they start dividing and create more SA-X. Um... How? How did some virus/bacteria/amoeba looking thing recreate lost Chozo technology? Can they now cannibalise metals and recombine them to create any alloy they want? I think that would make them at least as valuable as 'infinite energy' Metroids.
  • They are that useful, if they could be used. But they can't. The fact that they're impossible to control is kinda a plot point. Plus the Power Suit isn't exactly technology as we know it, its solid energy and whatnot and may have enough organic composition to replicate with a little metal ingestion.
  • It's likely part of the X ability to process data and make things out of it. They've shown the ability to turn data (which is just information) into a functional Varia shielding effect, as well as all of Samus' beam weapons. They can apparently use any type of information to accomplish this, such as the information stored in DNA as well as the other upgrades. It's entirely possible they can also do this with nonorganic material if they have a molecular composition to work with (like the Nightmare and B.O.X's armour as well as their organic parts.) As long as they have the power suit's specifications and data, they can make more copies.
  • Indeed. By all accounts, they can reproduce matter at its most basic level, copying the very atomic structures themselves.
  • I've always figured that the X synthesise an organic substitute for inorganic materials.
  • The Chozo could be using organic material, after all, plastic is organic and apparently limestone has the right make up of carbon too and can be produced by living things. Maybe Chozo managed to synthesise the organic substitutes. It would explain why the X were so hard for them to deal with that they made the life-sucking abominations called Metroids.
• At the beginning of the game, the X infect the Power Suit and steal/copy its abilities. When Samus absorbs one of the Core X into herself, she gets those abilities back. Does that mean that Samus no longer needs her suit to use those abilities? Like can she Speed Boost or Space Jump anytime she wants?
  • Samus is "eating" the X the same way a Metroid does, turning it's mass into energy for herself, and thus for her suit (the two are linked, as shown in Fusion's opening stating parts of her old suit had to be surgically removed). The abilities, on the other hand, are not being absorbed directly into her, but rather into the suit (the X has to pass through the suit before Samus can "eat" it). The core of the Fusion suit is still the adaptable, modular Chozo tech, so it somehow analyses and incorporates that data into a power-up for the suit itself.
  • The suit is damaged, Samus 'eating' the X also repairs the suit. Usually that's just restoring shielding and ammunition but Core X also restores suit functions.
  • Metroid Dread may go into more detail about this question.
• How did the Galactic Federation know what the X were prior to Samus encountering them in the game, since the Chozo are absent? Did Samus know about them from her childhood?
  • Samus explicitly never encountered the X until the game's intro. Hence why she thought nothing of one infecting her at first. It's likely the Feds only realized the X's true nature after they started the surgery on Samus.
  • Okay but that still doesn’t answer another part of the question. “X” is a term penned by the Chozo. And yet, the Federation seems to know that they are called X somehow despite having not encountered them until this game.

• How does Samus traverse those handholds on the ceiling when one of her "hands" is her arm cannon?
  • Samus' cannon arm could have a magnet. Or maybe it's a left over of the grapple beam.
• What were the Space Pirates doing in BSL? Clearly they were up to something... at least before the X took them over.
  • Knowing the space pirates, chances are good they got bit in the butt with karmic retribution. They discovered through some means about either the X parasite (something they could have encountered before on SR388), or about that small lab module stuck off all on it's lonesome on the station, with its supply of goodies, and decided to raid pillage and plunder it. Plus, it's a Federation Science Lab, out in the open without escort. Easy pickings, it would seem to the casual pirate: Lot's of salvageable tech and information for Science Team, and a space station to create a Space Pirate base of operations that could sail through Federation Space without getting shot out of the sky. This idea held true and was panning out, right up until they got eaten by the X. See also: Metroid Prime (Parasite Queens), Echoes (the Ing), and whatever shot them in the face in Corruption.
    • What shot them in the face in Corruption was them returning to Aether after the Federation had been there to collect Phazon samples. According to a Pirate data log, they quickly went in with a small team to scoop up as much Phazon as possible before the Federation came back. This went surprisingly well. But not long after takeoff, Dark Samus reformed from stray Phazon particles in their cargo bay (see Corruption's intro scene) and wreaked havoc upon the ship. After restoring its body with the Phazon and brainwashing the crew, Prime/Dark Samus went to the Pirate Homeworld to take it over. Later she went to Phaaze and kicked Corruption's plot into high gear.
  • Alternate theory: The BSL researchers devoted Sector 1 to reproducing the atmosphere, flora and fauna of Zebes as closely as possible. Then someone said "Hey, didn't Zebes also have Space Pirates?" That guy didn't last long once everyone else found out.
    • Nope. Sector 1 was a replica of SR388, not Zebes (hence the map code SRX). However, there is a way Pirates could have wound up in SR388's ecosystem - see below.
    • This is true, but what about the fact that every other sector on the space station is carrying organisms from Zebes? Isn't that extremely suspicious? When did BSL get all of these samples? When the planet was a Space Pirate hive? Or when it went from being a Space Pirate hive to a slightly charred asteroid field?
    • I kinda like this theory. Besides, somewhere out there there is a scientist who would go that far for accurate reproductions.
  • Less stupid theory: Ridley was held captive there. Can't the Space Pirates go on their own rescue mission every once in a while? Especially after losing their bases and possibly access to their cloning methods?
    • Nope, still a stupid theory; Ridley was not held captive there; their leader(?) Ridley was dead. The Federation cloned him. That's not their leader, unless his genetic memory ever becomes canon.
    • That wasn't established until Other M, which was released after this headscratcher was written. Even with that game in mind, considering how many problems stemmed from Ridley accidentally being cloned, would they really want to do it deliberately? Despite this group's Zebesian work, their goal wasn't to recreate the Space Pirate organisation as a whole (At least, it shouldn't have been. The plot is sounding more and more like a Hand Wave to recreate all of Samus's classic threats in an effort to prolong the series, isn't it?).
  • Alternate, less stupid theory: The Pirates knew that Metroids originated on SR388 from the first Federation survey ship way-back-when. (That was the catalyst event for the original Metroid, as quoted in the manual. The Feds had just discovered SR388 and sent a survey expedition, which got hijacked en route back to Earth along with their research specimens - including a handful of Metroids in stasis). Samus exterminated the Pirates' original Metroid stash on Zebes, but the High Command wasn't about to let Metroids go so easily and mounted their own expedition to SR388 to capture more. This was the origin of the Tallon Metroid line, and may explain why the Tallon Metroids (as seen on Tallon IV and Aether) look strikingly different from the Zebes version (smaller, more colour variance, get killed by lots of weapons instead of ice+ missile only, etc). During that mission, some hapless Pirate trooper got attacked by X; Pirate command never noticed because they were losing troops left and right to the local wildlife. Since X reproduce asexually and retain the genomes of all their past victims, it's plausible that at least one clonal line retaining the Pirate genome made it to BSL. When Samus started kicking all their lower-order forms around, the X switched to forms with better combat capability, including that of the Space Pirate. Voila.
    • That could work, but shouldn't all the little scrubs in the entry hall change to ferocious combat forms as well? It looks like they can only mimic one creature at a time. With the Big Bad of the games final transformation being the exception, probably due to how many signatures were present in the original host.
    • The Ridley-X battle begins with the corpse◊ becoming the one you fight◊. Also, the Fish and Pirate X combining in a Merman Pirate. The X can change the shape of their "hosts".
  • I thought it was established that the Federation was secretly working with them.
  • Working with mixing the events in the game with manga here, but the Metroid were developed to destroy the X parasite by the Chozo, under Mother Brain's surveillance. Since Mother Brain was siding with the Space Pirates in the end, they might have heard something about X from her along with the Metroid. Since one of the reasons for destroying BSL and SR388 against Federation orders was to keep the Federation, or anyone else, from using X as a biological weapon, it's possible that the Pirates got intel that X could be useful to them, and the station was a more controlled environment than trying something so dangerous as to track it down something that no longer has a natural enemy in its own environment.
  • A lot of the Pirates you meet are in the station's reactor area. Perhaps their true intention was to sabotage the station, causing it to crash into the planet below, destroying all life! Because seriously, even Space Pirates should be able to tell that the place is a shithouse.
    • Aren't these the same Space Pirates that designed their own ships and bases with doors that they themselves cannot open quickly in an emergency? Space Pirates are generally portrayed as dumber than a space sack of space bricks, especially the command wing (Ridley excluded). Someone high-up could've given the order to sack BSL, the Red Shirts grumbled and complained and saw just how risky attempting to loot an obviously compromised research station would be, but still went through with their orders as an alternative to being launched into the nearest sun. Common sense isn't the SP's stock and trade.
  • Theory from a fanfiction I once read (which can be found in the fanfic rec's): BSL was built as a training ground for what would essentially be more Samuses. It would have everything Samus had faced so far, so the trainees would end up as strong as Samus. Then the X invaded, and they decided that using the X as an unstoppable bioweapon worked just as well.
  • Alternate Alternate Theory: The researchers had some intact Space Pirates in storage to eventually study. BSL had retrieved Ridley's corpse, so grabbing some Pirates while they were at it isn't out of the question.
  • My best guess is that the X on SR388 somehow got ahold of Pirate DNA, or possibly the Feds had samples on the BSL. As for Ridley... we know that the one you fight is just a copy, but I've always believed that the frozen one wasn't the real one either. Maybe the Feds were studying a clone they had made? Then again, we know he's in Other M, which is between Super and Fusion, so we may get to see how they got Ridley into the BSL.
  • Other M might have explained this one. It's revealed that the Galactic Federation had been experimenting on Zebesians, cybernetically enhancing them to be used as bioweapons. As one would expect, this went horribly wrong, mostly due to Ridley's unexpected appearance. So it might be that they were continuing said experiments on BSL... since Ridley wasn't going to be an issue, seeing as how he was dead and (just in case) frozen solid, they probably thought they would succeed this time around. Then the X Parasites came.
    • The Federation isn't exactly a shining pillar of ethics. They probably captured some more Space Pirates after the bottle ship went under and started experimenting on them and Ridley's corpse at BSL.
• What happened to the remaining eight SA-X that were onboard the station? They couldn't have all been on the super happy fun compartment, we only saw the one. Then there was the one that got blown up in the control room... So we're missing like, eight of the buggers, according to ADAM.
  • Unless one of them smuggled inside Samus' ship(which didn't happen due to the ship being able to detect them), they were blown to smithereens. It's hard to survive a space station crash. Followed by it self-destructing. And taking the planet it crashed into with it.
    • Simple. They weren't there. Adam was lying about how many there were in order to scare you and get you off the station (after hearing this, you pretty much have free reign to explore the rest of the station, but you'll never see any more SA-X until the endgame. If there were really so many of them, it would be possible to run into them).
    • How long have you been on this website?
    • Sequel Hook?
    • No, they're definitely gone. One got nom'd by Metroids. One of them was absorbed by Samus, and the other eight were blown up with BSL, SR388, and the rest of the X.
    • Or, they could just be stranded in space. The only way to destroy X that has been shown is absorbing it's energy. The Chozo created the Metroids specifically for that purpose. Samus having Metroid DNA is able to do it too. Why would an explosion kill all of the X at the end of the game, when they are not shown to be affected by explosions anywhere else?
    • Because Adam says an explosion the size of the BSL will kill X parasites caught in it and one big enough to take a planet will kill all of them in the area. Individual X are shown to be slightly affected by the power bomb. Not damaged but they are still moved about by the blast, maybe once the bangs get too big their defences just can't take it? Draining their energy just seems like a much preferred and safer method than planet sized explosions.
    • Maybe the X are vulnerable to radiation. A station that size probably ran on one or more nuclear reactors of some description. The Colony Drop turned those reactors into makeshift nuclear weapons, potentially irradiating the entire surface of the planet and roasting the X (and everything else on SR-388) into radioactive glass (could that be what they meant by "destroyed" when talking about SR-388? Ecologically ruined as opposed to physically destroyed?).
• How exactly did the X infect Samus? The suit is airtight and protected by an energy shield. So far, Samus's suit seems to have a crippling weakness to plot.
  • Where does that fit in Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors?
    • Assume it beats Plot Armor and is weak to Plot Holes.
  • I don't think the suit is entirely airtight. It likely has some sort of pressure system, where it seals up automatically in the increased pressure of being underwater or the decreased pressure of vacuum, but if you'll recall, poison gas hurts Samus in the Prime series, so in regular environments with breathable atmosphere, there are apparently some openings, probably filtered, for breathing air. The X probably got in through there.
  • It's said above that the suit is partly organic, the X might not have even needed to penetrate it. Alternately, they assumed microbial form and snuck in through the smallest cracks.
    • Except that it was acidic gas, and the suit has an energy field around it. So it somehow got past the shields, through the armour, into the organic parts, and then got to Samus herself?
    • The X are shown to go intangible, to the point where Samus can't absorb them if they're phased out. They probably phased past the shield when they attacked Samus.
    • Also, the energy shielding may only protect against energy weapons, while the armour is designed to handle everything else that gets thrown at her. Note that all of the Prime games feature all kinds of materials getting on Samus' armour, notably her helmet's faceplate (water, bug guts, trash-disposal... um, liquids), which indicates that the shielding isn't deflecting those materials away. Thus the X, being organic and not affected by the shielding, would only have had to get through the armour at some previously mentioned weak point.
    • This then raises the question of why physical attacks still drain energy from the shield. Samus takes nearly the same amount of damage from a high-powered beam as a punch from the Omega Pirate. The only way this is possible is if the shield blocks them, too. In addition, the shield has blocked such things as ghostly attacks and demonic possession, and that Omega punch should have tossed Samus across the room, but didn't. The materials themselves don't damage Samus, but merely obscure the visor and seem to cover the entire suit. Perhaps the shield essentially "hardens" when hit by a physical attack, and those substances can stick to it when this happens. Maybe the X simply wasn't registered as a threat, and the shield didn't react. They are microscopic, after all.
    • About that demonic possession: Samus's armour wasn't initially able to resist Ing possession on its own. Samus needed to acquire the Luminoth's Energy Transfer Module from the possessed creature sent to steal the last of Aether's energy to be able to resist. Strangely, I don't think it was ever explained just what in the module itself would prevent possession. During the short time before she gets it, I don't think the Ing had even bothered attempting to add her to their forces.
    • The Ing never bothered to possess her because the Ing couldn't take a physical form in Aether, and just attempted to possess what they knew. When that didn't work, and she made her way into their home, they tried to possess her, which didn't work either. Also, I always assumed that because, as far as the inventory descriptions say, it's essentially a giant ball of light, and the Ing hate the light...
    • If that were true, and I don't think the module protecting Samus was ever said to do that, the Ing would not have been able to steal it or possess the Alpha Splinter, since his Dark form had it. The more likely explanation is that either Samus or the suit is simply unable to be possessed due to Chozo foresight/wizarding or sheer willpower.
    • It was specifically stated in the log book entry for the transfer module that its core contains the Light of Aether which prevents Samus from being possessed.
    • I think the transfer module doesn't do anything to the Ing. If it did, they wouldn't be able to use it to steal Aether's energy. Since it's made of light, though, when Samus added it to her suit, it basically made it impossible for Ing to possess her. I imagine the light has a burning effect...
    • It is stated in-game that holding the transfer module immunises you to possession. The Ing can take it and use it just fine, such as the one leading the final attack on U-Mos that possessed an Alpha Splinter, they just can't possess whatever being is holding it. Which means that particular Ing couldn't be possessed by its fellow Ing, because I heard you like Ings but we can't put an Ing in your Ing.
    • So, no Ingception?