Next to nothing is known of Ridley's pre-military background (if in fact he even had any), but it is safe to say that he made his way up the ranks until finally he was designated military leader of the Space Pirates (or took the role by force). He also appears to have been held in considerable favor among members of High Command.
Gray Voice said that he corrected Ridley's "genetic flaws" with Chozo technology, though the extent of this modification is unknown. Ridley is also outfitted with at least one cybernetic implant prior to becoming Meta Ridley, as he has a transmitter located at the base of his skull that allows his minions to communicate with him.
Ridley's introduction took place on the Star Colony K-2L, on which he conducted a massive raid with the main goal being to steal the planet's Afloraltite, but he also allowed his soldiers to destroy whatever they wanted.
During the raid, he met a three-year old girl holding her pet Rabbilis Pyonchi. This little girl was named Samus Aran, and she and Ridley would have a long history together. Amid all the destruction, little naive Samus went up to and asked to befriend Ridley.
Initially feeling pity towards her, Ridley promptly decided to kill her, despite thinking that she was "so cute". Before he could strike, however, Samus' mother pushed her out of the way at the cost of her own life. Ridley was largely unphased by this action, however, as he simply intended to torch everything due to no longer needing to hold back upon gaining access to the Afloraltite. Meanwhile, Samus's father destroyed the supplies the pirates were after, but was himself killed in the blast. Ridley noticed the ship bursting into flame and pondered why it was on fire before the wreckage started heading towards him, to his disbelief.
Ridley also appeared to be injured by the wreckage, but he survived, later claiming to have survived by consuming the flesh of the deceased humans and regrowing his own cells. Little did Ridley know that by orphaning the young Samus, he unknowingly created his own worst enemy (and the enemy of all the Space Pirates) - a mistake that would eventually cost him his life.
Years later, Ridley arrived at Zebes to establish a Central Command Center beneath the planet's surface. The Pirates would designate Mother Brain as the supreme leader after Ridley's forces annihilated most of the native Chozo civilization established on its surface. Ridley once again met Samus, who suffered from posttraumatic stress disorder upon the sight of him. Ridley pains her even further by making sadistic remarks about how he survived the destruction of K-2L by devouring the corpses of dead humans and implying that he may have eaten her mother, stating "At least pay your respects!" However, she escaped and recuperated with the help of her comrades and foiled the Pirates, who were creating genetically engineered troops. Ridley killed Gray Voice when the latter tried to shut down Mother Brain, the rogue Chozo computer (he pretended to join the Space Pirates until he could get close enough to Mother Brain to bring her down, having realized her treachery), first by mortally wounding Gray Voice via impaling him with his tail, then by using his plasma breath on him after the latter interfered with the Space Pirates' attempts to prevent Samus and the others from leaving Zebes.
Later in the manga, Ridley confronted Samus during her Zero Mission, although she was able to triumph over her PTSD and defeat Ridley, even growing bold enough to mock him.
Up until this time, the Galactic Federation had disregarded Zebes as a low priority, class XIII Wanderer Planet. The Space Research Vessel Marina had begun returning from SR388 to Galactic Federation Headquarters with a newly discovered specimen, dubbed the Metroid. The Pirates swiftly attacked the vessel, destroying it and seizing the specimen, bringing it to Zebes. The Pirates discovered the Metroid's dangerous ability to drain life energy from organisms, its invulnerability to conventional weapons as well as being able to multiply within 24 hours by exposure to beta rays.
Ridley's personal flagship, the Space Pirate Mother Ship fought the fleet under the command of Adam Malkovich, but he later returned to Zebes after receiving a distress signal following the defeat of his comrade Kraid. He reached his lair just in time to come face to face with the brave challenger who would dare invade Zebes, and was surprised to find the challenger was Samus Aran, now a young woman, a Bounty Hunter employed by the Federation to destroy the Metroids and Mother Brain.
Samus was also surprised and disturbed to find Ridley, but was able to fight and defeat her nemesis, allowing her to leave with the Unknown Item she had just obtained.
At the end of Samus' Zero Mission, after crash-landing near the Mother Ship, she encountered an incomplete cybernetic construct built by Ridley himself, Mecha Ridley. Built in his image, it was designed to be used as a powerful weapon. She managed to destroy it, but in doing so she triggered a self-destruct sequence that was set to obliterate the ship in five minutes. Samus escaped via a hijacked Escape Ship.
Ridley, though wounded beyond fighting capability, was still alive, even after Samus had supposedly killed him. After the destruction of Tourian, several Pirate ships that were in Zebes' orbit had managed to escape to regroup their strength elsewhere; the crippled Ridley was brought onto one of them, the Frigate Orpheon.
The Space Pirates, by order of High Command, reconstructed his body and infused it with machinery, turning him into "Meta Ridley". His transformation would reach its final stages when the Orpheon arrived on planet Tallon IV's orbit. The crew intended for him to become a mainstay of the Tallon IV group's security force, with their guessing that it would be a job the draconian leader would "certainly relish." When the Parasite Queens broke out on the Frigate Orpheon, Ridley's mechanization wasn't quite fully complete. He re-encountered Samus while she was escaping the exploding frigate, then decided to escape himself. While she stood in shock witnessing her reborn nemesis, Meta Ridley broke free of his restraints and escaped the frigate, flying down to Tallon IV. Samus raced back to the Exterior Docking Hangar and tracked him to the planet below.
As she pursued Ridley, she lost tracking of him, and was required to search for him via ground-based recon. She saw him flying over the Phendrana Shorelines when she arrived at the Phendrana Drifts, and watched him fly away, presumably to the Glacier One facility or even the Phazon Mines to alert the Pirates occupying these bases that the Hunter was here. After Samus destroyed both laboratory operations, she had collected the twelve Chozo Artifacts needed to access the Impact Crater. While preparing to open the Artifact Temple, Meta Ridley flew in and destroyed the Chozo Totems, preventing Samus from accessing the crater. In retaliation, she battled him once again, ultimately doing enough damage to him that the Space Pirate enforcer's plasma wings shorted out and forced him to continue the battle on the ground. At the battle's conclusion, the temple's Chozo Statues, implied to be out of retribution to Meta Ridley destroying the Chozo Totems, blasted Meta Ridley and sent him hurtling into the Impact Crater, where an explosion was seen.
Despite his fall, Meta Ridley somehow survived and returned to the Space Pirates yet again. Sometime before the events of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, Dark Samus used the power of Phazon to make not only the Pirate ship Colossus's crew, but also all the inhabitants of Urtraghus (a Pirate homeworld) bow to her will, with Meta Ridley included. Now loyal to her, he played a role in the Norion invasion, where Samus fought him once again.
He was first seen by Samus from afar when he easily decimated a squad of Federation Marines. He later tried to attack Samus while she was crossing through a Morph Ball tunnel (where she was quite vulnerable), but she managed to use her Bombs to escape his grip. He then ambushed her in Generator C after she had begun activating it, with the intention of crushing Samus, but instead broke through the glass floor, sending both of them hurtling down the Generator Shaft. Samus had no time to react to his sudden appearance and was forced to battle him again. Ridley was not fully healed from his fight on Tallon IV and still quite weak, allowing Samus to easily defeat him. At the battle's conclusion, she delivered several shots directly into his throat, leaving him to fall the rest of the way down the Generator Shaft as she was rescued by Rundas.
Despite this long fall, Ridley still managed to survive the duel: however, he was so badly wounded this time that he needed pure Phazon to recover. Travelling to the Pirate Homeworld, he eventually became the Pirate Seed's guardian; the massive quantities of raw Phazon given to him directly by the Phazon Core healed his injuries and turned him into "Omega Ridley". Whether or not he willingly approached the Leviathan for healing or was forced (by Dark Samus, his fellow Space Pirates, or even the Leviathan itself) is unknown. Nevertheless, Samus encountered him in the Leviathan and defeated him. However, Ridley's disintegration (unlike other Leviathan guardians) was never actually seen. He may have potentially fled the seed before Samus could notice, due to the massive corruption she herself was receiving.
As suspected, Ridley had indeed fled the Leviathan, having survived his crushing defeat as Omega Ridley. He had presumably also managed to regenerate to the extent of shedding roughly half of his cybernetic implants, now taking the name of "Proteus Ridley". With Phazon now lost to them, the Space Pirates turned their attention to the Metroid species once again.
Ridley himself traveled to SR388, presumably to retrieve any Metroids, but by the time he arrived, Samus had already killed all but one of the Metroids on the planet. As Samus was attempting to leave the planet with the infant Metroid in tow, Ridley revealed himself and attempted to abduct the specimen. Although Samus immediately noticed him and attempted to intercept the hatchling, Ridley managed to grab the Metroid and proceeded to do battle with his hated nemesis. After taking some damage, he attempted to escape with his prize, but Samus gave chase, managing after a brief scuffle to grab onto his chest and fire repeatedly at point-blank range until Ridley was forced to let go of the Metroid. Samus promptly grabbed the hatchling, broke away from Ridley, and spun mid-air to fire a blast at his wing before he could close the distance, causing him to slam into the nearby cliffside and pinning him beneath the resulting rubble.
Just when the battle seemed won, however, Ridley broke free of the rocks and immediately redoubled his offensive. Samus held him off, but using his mechanical arm to block her blasts, he managed to buy himself enough of an opening that he was able to fling her against the wall and pin her down before she could recover. As Ridley prepared a direct blast to finish off Samus once and for all, he failed to take notice of the Baby, who latched onto his head and began draining him of energy. Ridley was able to break free of the creature, but at the cost of releasing his grip on Samus and giving the Baby the opportunity it needed to rejuvenate Samus with his energy. In this fashion, Samus and the last surviving Metroid proceeded to fight off Ridley together until he could finally take no more, and he collapsed.
However, shortly after Samus and the Baby's departure, a post-credits scene reveals that Ridley discarded some or all of his mechanical parts afterwards, implying that he had at last fully regenerated the organic components of his body. His discarded robotic claw was nearly eaten by a Hornoad before it was suddenly consumed by a mysterious shapeshifting entity.
After escaping SR388 completely unnoticed and shedding all of his remaining cybernetics, the now fully organic Ridley presumably followed Samus to the Ceres Space Colony, where she had delivered the Baby to the station's scientific staff. Samus had already departed the station when Ridley arrived there, and mercilessly killed the scientists.
Fortunately, a distress call sent out by the scientists was intercepted by Samus, who quickly returned to the station. Ridley remained hidden in the shadows until Samus came upon the baby's containment capsule, ambushing her just before she was able to take the capsule. Samus returned fire, eventually forcing Ridley to activate Ceres' self-destruction sequence and flee with the Metroid hatchling. Samus escaped and pursued Ridley.
He led her back to Zebes, where, as she discovered, some Pirates had stayed behind to rebuild the fortress and return to their old method of raising Metroids. Samus began a rampage through Zebes, killing the reborn Kraid and the newly recruited Phantoon and Draygon before she descended for Ridley's Lair. She dropped down into a chamber and Ridley appeared, preparing to fight her. With the loss of the armor plating from his previous form, he was now much more vulnerable to attack, and Samus was able to defeat him once more. Unfortunately, she found in the connecting chamber the baby's broken capsule, with the baby itself nowhere to be found.
Samus then figured that the Metroid must be in Tourian, and because she defeated all four Pirate leaders, she now had access to the rebuilt Tourian. She proved correct, encountering the baby, now a Big Metroid, and killed Mother Brain for the final time, but not before she witnessed the baby's brutal murder. Samus escaped the self-destruction protocol, destined to obliterate all of Zebes, and it exploded, eradicating from the galaxy Mother Brain, the Space Pirates, the Metroids, and Ridley. This event marks the first true death of Samus' nemesis; currently, all of his future chronological appearances are either clones or imitations of the original individual.
It is unknown how or why Ridley went from his Omega form from Metroid Prime 3 to his purely organic body seen in Super Metroid. It is known, however, that Phazon contains healing properties and also worth noting is that Samus was fully cleansed of all traces of Phazon in her body following the destruction of both Dark Samus and Phaaze; these two factors may have significance on Ridley's curious return. However as shown in Samus Returns, Ridley had apparently slowly begun regenerating his organic body discarding some of his the mechanical parts of his Meta and Omega Ridley forms. By the time he faced Samus on SR388, Proteus Ridley retained only some of his cybernetics. Following his battle with Samus and the Baby, Ridley managed to completely restore his organic body, completely discarding his cybernetic components. This explains why he appears completely organic by the time he confronts Samus on the Ceres Space Colony which occurs shortly after their fight on SR388.
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