Metroid: Other M/WMG

Samus is a Fantastic Racist
She states that naturally the space pirates are just a bunch of dumb feral creatures without something smarter than them leading them.
 * Of course, the fact that they destroyed everything she knows and loves when she was a little girl probably colored this perception.
 * If this game is any indication, she's probably right.

MB is actually GLaDOS.
Because I don't see why the hell not.
 * She never offers you cake.

Concentration works on the same principle as Spiral Energy.
It's so obvious! Why would she have multiple ships if they didn't combine? (HYPER... WAVE... BUSTERRRRRRR!)

Ridley has been secretly putting his own DNA into the other creatures at the BOTTLE SHIP.
This is evidenced by the shapes of a number of the enemies' heads. He planned on using the army to dominate the universe.

By the next game this characterization will all go out the window.
They change everything else each game, so why not that?
 * Considering the massive backlash from the characterization, this is quite possible.
 * The only "massive backlash" I've seen was in that X-Play review, and that was just because they hate anything written like a JRPG.
 * Look around the Internet. You'll see things.
 * Heck, just scroll up and click on the JBM link.
 * Even That Other Wiki with all its restrictions is able to state that Samus's new characterisation is near-universally disliked.

Samus is genuinely terrified of Ridley.
She saw him kill both her parents when she was a child. He continues to come back over and over again. Samus is terrified that she will be forced to fight him for the rest of her life. This makes every battle with Ridley a Crowning Moment of Awesome as she is able to overcome her fears to kick the shit out of him (which is the real definition of courage).
 * Its like spiders. No matter how many times you squish one, they still freak you out.
 * This isn't a guess so much as "really freaking obvious"...for this game anyway. Considering how controversial that particular scene is, whether it will carry over to future installments is anyone's guess.
 * I meant through out the entire series
 * It's possible she was always afraid, but this time was worse because he appeared with no warning and started bearing down on her while on other occasions she figured out he was about and was able to mentally prepare. Zero Mission she knew he was alive, Prime 1 she followed him to Tallon, Corruption she saw him trashing Norion and Super, well the link between them wasn't even written in yet so of course no fear could be displayed. This time was the first he apparently survived the detonation of a planet, so Samus was certain he was gone.
 * Hey, we never hear her talk. During all the cutscenes of all the games with Ridley, Samus could be freaking out, we just can't hear her.
 * This troper believes that it wasn't necessarily just Ridley being... Ridley... that terrified her. I think Samus's issue was that, after so long, she was used to fighting the big guy when he had cybernetics. The knowledge that she weakened him to such a point of forcing the Pirates to remake him as a cyborg likely gave her a confidence boost. Seeing the murderer of her parents being 'whole' again after so long, with those glowing blue-green eyes glaring at her... well, we saw the result of that.
 * Holy shit I had the same theory!
 * The only problem with this is the fact that he was back in his original body in Super.
 * Not quite, his original body was green with red eyes (Zero Mission artwork), in Super, he's purple with yellow eyes. Seems the Pirates made some genetic modifications that the GF scientists furthered.

Anthony was the Deleter
Notice how he's the only member of the squad to come out alive? And his first action upon revealing himself is insisting he 'escort' the only two living witnesses. he also displays better combat prowess than any other member of the squad, and has the training and clearance to use the very dangerous plasma cannon. Most likely he used Samus' trust in him to convince her that revealing what the Federation did would only make her some very powerful enemies and solve nothing. As for a certain distraught scientist...it would be all too easy to fake a suicide.

Adam was the Deleter
Slight Fan Wank here, but it would explain a lot without having to change too much. Adam was in the command center (or whatever they called the place with all the cameras) during the game... supposedly. While there he would know where everyone would be, and how to ambush them, and it wouldn't be much of a stretch to assume he was outfitted with some cool equipment to help him get around faster since he was The Mole. This also makes a lot of sense in regards to how he interacts with Samus; she's an outside element that could potentially mess up the plan to wipe out the traces of what happened on the ship, and yet he still has paternal feelings towards her. So during the game his duty to kill her and the rest of the squad is clashing with his feelings towards Samus! (explains why he waited so long to let her turn on the Varia suit, and why he shot her) If this had been intentionally stated in game by the end, it would have done wonders to screw with the player as well, since most of us got annoyed at the guy for the whole "authorization system" thing, it would have made sense to set him up as the Corrupt Military antagonist. Of course, his feelings for Samus ultimately win out, and he sacrifices himself to save her.... Except in Metroid Fusion the AI was a flash clone of Adam, and the Federation still has Metroids. Could Adam have faked the destruction of Section Zero and ended up assuming Samus and everyone else that needed to be "taken care of" was dealt with when the Bottle Ship blew up? In fact, HE might have detonated it once he was some distance away! And since Samus ended up surviving the events, they then had to figure out how to indirectly kill her to completely cover up what happened, which lead to her getting infected by the X parasite in Metroid Fusion, only they backed out of letting her die at the last minuet so they could test the new vaccine on her. That way, if she lived they could keep using her, and if she didn't then she was out of their hair. Like I said, lot of Fan Wank in this theory, but it does fix a lot of issues some players had about this games plot...
 * Actually, this makes perfect sense. The part with the Metroid report being written by him was brushed off far too quickly, really. It should be noted that the demolition of the Bottle Ship was scheduled; Samus just had really bad timing at the end. I haven't checked the timeline of the radio silences, but I recall they were common and often very long; odds are they fit in well with the murders of the team. Even then, he might have carried a radio around with him. The only question is why he would kill the team. I forget what the original motivation was assumed to be, but I'm guessing that either he was acting alone, the team was considered expendable and was used as a cover story, he didn't have enough people he could trust to bring along or Samus showing up meant he had to improvise a cover.

James was the Deleter
Notice how, when they get to the tower in sector 1, James is the first one there and is doing something under the desk (and that the tower later explodes), or that when a body is dumped in sector 3's magma Misawa is nowhere to be seen afterwards AND, when the Deleter confronts MB it's in the same room James' freshly Metroided corpse is found, with his freeze gun missing. (MB got a Freeze Gun didn't she?...)
 * He HAS to be, him and KG are the only ones Samus hasn't seen dead at this point and having seen James' body that means KG cannot be the deleter as he has to have been the one thrown into the lava. Major evidence is that the Deleter has the lower half of his helmet's 07 logo faded away and James is the only one with said faded numbers.
 * Don't forget he's a CIA agent. No, really. His service record during the briefing cutscene near the beginning of the game flat-out states his training was under the Federation Central Information Agency. It would certainly explain how a guy whose specialty is "Communications" is also a computer hacker and demolitions expert, considering what happened at the Sector 1 building.
 * A bit of minor evidence, but in the body dumping scene the deleter never had a massive gun on his back so it points away from Anthony.

There was NO Deleter
was lying. She made up the story about the Deleter so Samus would become more suspicious of the squad. The scenes of Maurice and KG getting killed were just Samus's imagination based off of the lie. The Power Suit that was piloting the loader machine was. Maurice died because his suit probably sustained damage during the fight in the field, and he ended up freezing to death in the Cryosphere. KG is simply missing in action as stated: who knows what happened to him. As for James? He was running from Samus because he probably couldn't see it was her, and thought he was being pursued by some monster, which explains why he shot out the bridge. When Samus met up with  again, James was listening to all the lies that were being told. After Samus left the room, he intended to interrogate  himself but had no idea what he was really up against...

The BSL Lab is a continuation of the Bottle Ship's experiments, with plausible deniability
The rogue faction in the Federation subcontracted their experiments out to the BSL corporation to avoid the kind of political fallout that the Bottle Ship incident caused with HQ, so if anything went wrong, the BSL corp. would be the fall guy. Alternatively, BSL is just a dummy company for the rogue faction and doesn't really exist as a private corporation.

Ridley loathes being in his larval form
Seriously. He's a badass uber-space dragon, and then whenever he gets fragged by Samus, he has to spend who knows how long as a Ridiculously Cute Critter that is even less threatening then the "monsters" from Night of the Lepus. No wonder he hates her.
 * Assuming that this is the exact same Ridley, that is.

The game actually incorporates all the mechanics of Prime
The auto-target is Samus' lock-on system from Prime, those horrible pixel hunt sections are the scan visor. Why her scan visor doesn't automatically highlight things of interest anymore is because... Adam didn't authorize it?
 * There's a perfectly reasonable explanation of this that has nothing to do with the storyline. Remember what this game comes right after, and what system it's on. See, Nintendo has this condition where if they make a game for the Wii, they are required to incorporate all of the features of it. Therefore, the similarities have nothing to do with the storyline and more to do with how it was chronologically released. Sorry for shooting this WMG down.

Samus BSOD'd against Ridley, because she killed him in Super Metroid
Now tell me, why would we fight a  of Ridley rather than the real deal? Because, canonically, Samus actually KILLED him in Super Metroid! Other M takes place between super Metroid and Fusion, and we see Ridley-X in Fusion, we hear nothing about the REAL Ridley. Since Samus killed him in Super, she thought she had finally killed the beast that she'd been hunting all her life. Then comes the boss fight in Other M, and she sees him again, it's no wonder she BSOD's!

Samus is writing a tell-all book about her exploits...
The cheesy, narmy narration is due to the fact that she isn't a very good writer.
 * According to an interview with Samus' English voice actress for Other M, you're on the right track. (Long story short: Samus is a badass but she sucks at analyzing other peoples' feelings, which in Inner Monologue terms translated to a monotonous delivery, while her actual voice in action cutscenes is very emotional and engaging)
 * Considering her childhood was spent mostly in training to become a Chozo Warrior (at least, what was seen of it in the canon mangas) with few actual friends a normal kid would have, she might indeed have some trouble relating to other people. Or writing books.

Samus is an Unreliable Narrator.
Related to above. Could be she's trying to make Adam sound better than he actually was, amongst other inconsistencies with the plot.
 * For both this and the above, it seems more like her narration is so awful in most of the game because she's suppressing the pain of the Bottle Ship incident while revisiting it "for the record." Notice how she's much more lifelike and emotional when she's speaking in real time (call is suit recordings) and much more robotic while doing after-action narration. Given what she's remembering and what she lost there, is it any wonder she can't even try to act?

Anthony was originally going to die, like all the other soldiers.
However, due his unexpected popularity (Mysterious Black Dude meme), they decided to keep him alive.

The Galactic Federation is a bloated and slowly collapsing bureaucracy.
Why else would so much weight be put on proper authorization of life-saving equipment in dangerous situations? It also explains why Samus, as a bounty hunter, does jobs more suited for a soldier or spec-ops team: using an independant contractor really cuts through the paperwork back at the office.
 * Corruption and too much paperwork for good to be accomplished would also go a very, very long way towards explaining the BSL debacle.
 * Not only that, but given the Bottle Ship's similarities to the BSL station in Fusion (similar layout, existance of ), it could be presumed that BSL is in control of a good chunk of the Federation government, because they managed to violate numerous sentient rights laws and superweapon non-proliferation treaties twice, and get away with it, as far as the audience knows.

Samus x Ian
That explains the picture where the two of them seem a little close.
 * I too was under that impression. She went as far as leaving the Federation and her supposed father figure after that incident, must've been a pretty hard hit.
 * Wouldn't it be interesting if you were right, but also Adam was jealous of their relationship? He let Ian die by forbidding Samus to rescue him, which she probably could have done, since she outruns self-destruct sequences all the time; with Ian out of the way, Adam's plan was to take Samus for himself. Adam knew that she saw him as a father figure, but he didn't care; he may even have seen her as a sort of daughter-figure for him, but decided to go after her anyway. That's just one reason why Adam was not and probably never will be ready for parenthood.

Samus x Higgs
When hes talking about subtly and "how to treat a lady" he's talking about himself.

The Reason for the
Okay, so you manage to defeat the, then return to collect more items, kill some weird monsters, fight   and retrieve Samus' precious thing:   But at that moment the ship finally does what it's supposed to do and   The question is why now? Why after having done so much and right when things quiet down does this happen?? Because the BOTTLE SHIP Apparently all that time  spent in the control room made the ship infatuated but when a   hussie walks in to take away   it gives in to jealousy and   What better explanation for the suddenness of that moment then due to freaky jealous ship rage?
 * ROFL. For a more serious explanation, it was probably the Federation  transmitting a self-destruct signal, which is a lot easier than mobilizing a fleet and/or firing off some nukes. The story had already explained that it was going to happen in a day or two; apparently the timetable was moved up a bit. They probably didn't even know Samus was there, since she went back in secret.
 * Or they did know, and the signal was sent by the same rogue faction that had begun the Metroid program in the first place.
 * I assumed that it was because absolutely wrecked the ship during your battle with him. Notice how they prevent you from exploring the rest of the ship after that battle (and, also, prevent you from getting to the control room before that point). The delay is just the computer needing to take some time to figure out how extensive the damages are. Or something.
 * Quick question: If the federation was able to blow the whole ship with a self-destruct signal, why couldn't they have done the same to sector zero? I'll be the first to admit that I never got accepted into Spaceship Design School, but it seems like a good idea to make something containing what could be the end of the galaxy able to self-destruct from somewhere other than inside it. You know, standing around with all the end of the galaxy bringers.
 * Or given what Phantoon is suggested to be in Super Metroid, the one we fight in Other M is the Bottle Ship created by Melissa Bergman.

Samus was trying to commit Suicide by Ridley
Samus watched Ridley kill her parents, and a common psychological symptom in such orphanings is a great degree of guilt and self-blaming in the psyche of the victim. After years of trauma, being raised by neglectful caretakers (The manga shows that while the Chozo are nice, they were also very busy, and usually left Samus with their homicidal computer nanny.) who trained her to kill, joining the military as a teenager, forming a bond with a Father figure only to leave him behind, (and if the above WMG regarding Ian is correct, losing a boyfriend,) and spending years alternatively killing or being mutated only to culminate in the WORST WEEK EVER as she hunted down all but one of the energy monsters the Chozo created (when they should have been raising her,) having dozens of innocent people killed when her Arch-Nemisis attacked Ceres, and it was HER FAULT for not killing that baby Metroid when she had the chance, finally killing her long-time enemies, only to watch as the infant she'd saved against orders, transported illegally and left behind dieing to save her, that when seeing Ridley, alive and well, and knowing that her fight to avenge her parents, and all the people that had died for her had all been for nothing, she decided to just end it all and let him get it over with.And then he hurt Anthony.
 * In addition, in the manga, when Samus has another encounter with Ridley, she freezes up, then starts screaming for someone to kill her. This breakdown is less drastic by comparison.
 * This just completely redeemed that scene for me. Hopefully it won't get Jossed now.

Phantoon appeared because Samus succeeded.
The first (and last) time we ever met Phantoon was on the Wrecked Ship in Super Metroid. The next time we meet it is on the Bottle Ship, after MB and Ridley have been killed and everything's been shut down. The ship is essentially adrift in space, with no major guiding intelligence or purpose, and is slated for destruction soon... but hasn't yet been destroyed. At that point, it's effectively a ghost ship.

Ridley doesn't have Genetic Memory.
Much as it's hard to accept, the real Ridley most likely is Deader Than Dead after Zebes blew up. All the behavior of the Little Birdie doesn't point to Genetic Memory at all. In fact, it seems like typical animal behavior. Why was it glaring at Samus like that? Well, how would you react if someone wearing a bright orange and red armorsuit walked by? Not to mention that bright colors are a sign of "don't mess with me" in the animal kingdom. El Pollo Loco Ridley probably went after Samus because she stood out so much, not because he has a personal grudge against her.

The lava creature that Anthony froze was K.G.
After being kicked into the lava by the Deleter, instead of dying, K.G. became a lava creature. When Anthony is knocked into the lava by Ridley, K.G. pops up under him, and he freezes K.G., allowing him to survive. Anthony will never know that it was K.G. that saved his life.

A possible explanation for the "Authorization" system of upgrading
Okay, so we all know how Samus gets her major upgrades...she already has all of them, but doesn't use them until Adam authorizes it. Many see this as strange, but most of it makes sense, depending on how you look at it. First of all, the system itself. It's Galactic Federation SOP. This is evidenced by the scene during the Brug Mass fight, in which Adam authorizes his team to use their ice guns in the same way that he authorizes all of Samus' equipment. Also, since Adam beat Samus to the Bottle Ship, she pretty much had no right to be there. However, he allowed her to stick around and help out, so long as she played by his rules...in other words, adhering to GF protocol. Samus probably saw this coming, which was why she deactivated her Bombs and Missiles even before she was officially allowed to help out. Then there's her equipment. For all her weapons, as well as the Speed Boost, Adam pretty much stated that he didn't want her blazing through the ship at full power, in case there are any survivors hiding out. Thus, he only authorizes their use when it becomes absolutely necessary. As for the things like her Varia Suit, Space Jump and Grapple Beam, it's possible that Samus didn't activate them in the beginning because she didn't think she'd need to. By the time she discovered otherwise, she was already following orders from Adam, so she probably didn't want to risk disrupting the mission by activating them without his say. And, as for the whole Varia Suit thing, one thing that people tend to overlook is that there are only a few areas of the Pyrosphere where the intense heat would become an issue. Granted, one room is extremely large, but different parts of it are visited in different sections which are more than possible to get through without the suit. As such, it's possible that neither Adam nor Samus herself expected that she would have to be in these areas for an overly long period of time, and thus saw no reason to activate the suit. But, it became clear that this wasn't the case when Goyagma attacked Samus, so he went ahead and okayed it. The same could be said about the Gravity Feature, the only difference being that Samus activated it on her own. Either way, it might not be the best explanation, but it least it makes a little sense.
 * This makes perfect sense, except for the Varia Suit. Unlike the rest of her ridiculously destructive equipment, the Varia Suit is purely defensive and poses absolutely no threat of accidental friendly fire to her squadmates or any innocents she might come across. It shouldn't have needed to be authorized because there was no reason to ever turn it off in the first place. And Samus would have to be pretty stupid to turn it off just because "she didn't think she'd need it." Most every planet and space station she's ever visited up to that point contained superheated areas where she needed the Varia suit, why would she think this one would be any different?
 * It's true that most of the planets she'd been on had super-heated areas, but, chronologically, this is the first time in-game she's spent more than a few minutes on a space station. It's not unreasonable to believe she didn't know that there was an active volcano on the Bottle Ship, thus she saw no reason to activate it. Again, not the best explanation, but it's the best I can come up with.
 * The only problem is that in roughly five minutes it should be pretty damn obvious that nobody is still alive on this ship. If there are any survivors, they're probably in on it. Also, its not like your weapons can ever do any damage to the ship, so who cares?
 * Considering how massively huge the Bottle Ship is and that their main priority was to locate and secure the safety of survivors, Adam's squad would have pretty much sucked at their job if they decided that, since nobody was in the first few rooms, everyone must be dead. They probably came to the conclusion that everyone had locked themselves up and were hiding somewhere. As it turned out, Madeline was the only one who was smart enough and/or able to do so, but they had no way of knowing that at the time. And, as far as the whole "not like your weapons can damage the ship" argument, I'm fairly certain that's a case of Gameplay Story Segregation.
 * Has anyone thought about Samus being a bounty hunter and the Federation is requiring her services that she could be billing them for the stuff she has to use?
 * If that were the case, then he wouldn't have needed to authorize his own team to use their ice guns

The Varia and Gravity Suits were somehow altered in/after Super Metroid and now give off low-level radiation.
Adam didn't authorize them until "absolutely necessary" because he knew the radiation might have ill effects on his squad. This also could explain why the Gravity Suit is now a purple energy aura.

Adam's weapon isn't as powerful as previously thought
We all know that Adam is weilding a weapon seemingly capable of oneshotting Samus, but does not seem otherwise very powerful. We also know that the Power Suit is primarily held together by concentration, and, as demonstrated by Ridley, can be partially to fully deactivated if that concentration is lost. Now, in the scene in question, Samus has just stumbled upon a baby Metroid out of nowhere, and one that is acting quite similarly to The Baby, at that, giving no indication that it was hostile. And then, just as Samus prepares to kill the infant, Adan shoots her in the back, which disables Samus' suit. The most likely explanation is that Samus' concentration wavered when she was confronted with another chance to kill an infant Metroid, which were thought to be extinct, and Adam's sneak attack came while Samus was still in flashback mode.

Ridley has a wall fetish
In his second form, Ridley ambushes Samus by sticking himself to a wall. After he gets blasted by Anthony, Ridley retreats by ramming himself through a wall. The next time we see his is second form is when it's stuck to a wall. He constantly rams Samus into a wall (and drags her along a wall in The Subspace Emissary), and when he's finally defeated by Samus, he escapes by fire-breathing on a wall and crashing into it.
 * So... he's a Wall Banger?

Adam sucks as a commander
Notice that his entire team gets wiped out in a matter of ten minutes and he does fuck-all to warn them or Samus? Notice that he doesn't tell Samus to use her weapons until roughly two minutes after she needs them? What is this guy doing, fapping on his control panel? Its a wonder any of his troops have survived this long.
 * Except for the fact that communication with his squad is down and the only way he can talk to them is via Navigation Booths. Not to mention the fact that one of his men was a traitor who was going around killing everyone else, and he had no way of knowing about it until Samus discovered this. Even then, this didn't become apparent until after the second death, as the first one was caught off-guard by Ridley. As for the occasions where he gave her authority to activate her Ice and Wave Beams mid-battle, one thing we have to remember is that he can only see what Samus sees. During those battles, she's doing a lot of jumping and flipping around to avoid getting shot in the face, so it most likely took him a moment to figure out what was going on and what needed to be done.

Adam is an Author Avatar
This is a relatively new fan theory, but think about it. In Real Life, co-creator Yoshio Sakamoto thinks of himself as Samus's father. In game, Samus considers Adam her father figure. Samus also practically worships the ground he walks on, even going as far a risking her life to get his helmet. Notice the blatant Marty Stu traits, like being the only one besides possibly Ridley to nearly kill Samus, and Samus thinks he's always right. Let that sink in for a awhile.

Adam's armor is the means of his Brain Uploading
Let's assume that GF suits are linked up into the nervous systems of soldiers, much like Samus' own Power Suit is. That would mean that, whenever a soldier dies, his mind can be uploaded into the suit. When Adam dies in Sector Zero, his mind is therefore uploaded into his armor. The uploaded mind can be accessed through any part of the armor whether it is attached or not. Thus, his mind was specifically accessible from his helmet as well. Him leaving behind his helmet was a major stroke of fortune for his continued existence; since his body and main armor were destroyed along with Sector Zero, Samus' retrieval of the helmet in the epilogue just barely saved Adam's mind from oblivion. So, little did she know, but Samus' quest to save Adam's helmet was not merely a sentimental escapade, but also an action that would ultimately save her life come Fusion.

Sector Zero never got destroyed
Adam was killed by the Metroids before he got the chance. Instead, Sector Zero drifted off into space until the Galactic Federation retrieved it. With the Metroids inside still alive, they "renovated" the complex so that it could secretly fit into the BSL Station as the Restricted Lab. Thus, Sector Zero never really got destroyed until Metroid Fusion. Indeed, the reason the last area of Sector 1 in Fusion bears a striking resemblance to Tourian is because, being Sector Zero, it is a replica of Mother Brain's old hideout.

Sector Zero never got destroyed, and Adam is a Manipulative Bastard
Adam, who wants Metroids to take over the Galaxy, lied to Samus, and upon entering Sector Zero, he simply detached it and flew it off into space, Metroids in tow. The explosion heard could have just been fake (perhaps he set off a bomb), and he probably lied to Samus about everything.

Space Pirates have infiltrated the Federation
The Bottle Ship was really just one of there many reseach ships, it was all just testing out there newest stuff without Samus blowing up there base.

Melissa Bergman is a liar.
Exposition that originates with Melissa is not to be trusted.
 * that would be impossible for a multitude of reasons. Far more likely, it was done intentionally by MB. This would explain how without the scientists being aware of what it was; they aren't the ones who did it. The one thing that they were afraid of was that the  and  presence seems too much of a coincidence, especially with the mystery surrounding him.
 * Why was the vulnerable to ? There were never any . The epilogue shows that Adam learning that  were invulnerable to  from Melissa and the reason she told Adam but not Samus was very specifically to get Adam to sacrifice himself. They were supposedly foreshadowed by a monster's drained husk in the arctic sector but, as you enter it for the first time, the automated announcements refer to a recent climate-control malfunction; the indoor areas were not frozen until very recently.

Adam didn't need to sacrifice himself.
After shooting Samus in the back without even being 100% certain that he'd be able to kill the Metroid that was about to feed on her, Adam offers a great deal of conjecture about Sector Zero and his plan to destroy it. Unfortunately, his plan shows just as poor judgement as when he gambled on that Metroid not eating Samus and then him. To destroy Sector Zero, all you need to do is cause enough superficial damage to the structure to force an auto-eject sequence. Now if only there was someone with super-intense explosives and super-enhanced running speed. Oh wait, the girl he just shot in the back! Samus could've entered Sector Zero (she wouldn't even have needed to go far judging by how little time it took Adam to start the destruct sequence), dropped a Power Bomb, Speedboosted and Shinesparked back to the exit, and escaped through the door by either not sealing it on the way in or letting Adam keep the locks open at the entrance. Furthermore, with Power Bombs in effect and sense move to stay alive while it recharges, there's no gameplay reason why Samus couldn't have defeated all the unfreezable Metroids all by herself with little risk of failure. But with so much Cutscene Incompetence in effect in Other M, the first plan would probably be safest. Either way, Adam's sacrifice was entirely pointless.
 * Power bombs do hurt SR 388 strain metroids, BUT it takes 3 power bombs to kill even 1. Combining that with the way Other M does power bombs, what with a slow charge up to use, and a very slow cool down afterward, she would have been trying (and failing) to destroy metroids LONG after all hope for her survival is lost. Besides, once Adam went in, Samus still had to escape the corridor leading to Sector Zero before it fell off, trying her damnedest not to get sucked into the vacuum of space, before reaching blast doors which were already about to close. Granted, Samus still could have died while Sector Zero was detaching, which would have made Adam's sacrifice pointless, but she would've had been doomed if she actually went in.

Adam is a Dark Knight
He is the hero that Metroid deserves, but not the one it needs right now. And so we'll hate him, because he can take it, because he's not a hero. He's a silent guardian, a watchful protector. A Dark Knight.

The reason Ridley's larval form is so radically different from his final form is because the clone is genetically impure.
Like the Metroids and many of the other organisms on the Bottle Ship, their DNA was taken from Samus' suit. Also, as noted elsewhere, a couple of the regular Mook creatures likely have some of Ridley's genetic code in their own. So who's to say that the reverse didn't happen to Ridley? In fact, the sequences showing Ridley's metamorphosis seem to indicate that his own DNA was gradually reasserting itself amid the other genomes in his body. That would explain why his larval rabbit form has the chicken legs, as if the clone started off as a plain rabbit-like creature but was having the rabbity DNA shoved out in favor of the dragony DNA. It also explains why Ridley's metamorphosis cycle as depicted in the game involves the cocoon-like molting process; while the normal Ridley is a reptile, this process, normally only seen with insect(oid)s, was implemented into his genome when it got mixed in there accidentally by the scientists.

The next game will review what went right and what went wrong in Other M and makes changes accordingly.
Such a strategy is certainly not foreign to the Metroid series. Recall back to the time of Echoes and Hunters. Like Other M, neither of these games broke the million units sold barrier thanks to certain aspects that alienated customers. So when Corruption came around, Retro Studios took out or de-emphasized the parts that critics didn't like (limited ammo for all non-Power Beam weapons, excessive linearity, multiplayer, unbalanced difficulty, etc.) while retaining and expanding on the bits that critics did like (emphasis on other hunters besides Samus, flying around in the gunship, free aiming, etc.). The same is bound to happen with the next game; the disliked bits (Samus' characterization and narration, the linearity, the length of cutscenes, the "authorization" mechanic, etc.) will be expunged or altered, while the well-liked bits (the smooth controls, the refocusing on advanced platforming, the faster pace, the concept of a more complex plot, etc.) will be improved upon.
 * Small corrections. Echoes did break 1 million in sales, though not by much. Also, Retro didn't have anything to do with Hunters, so they mostly just ignored it (well, except for the 100% cameo at the end). It should also be noted that Fusion was the most linear Metroid game of its day, and following it came Zero Mission, the only Metroid game so non-linear that it actively encourages sequence breaking. So we'll see.

Other M was All Just a Dream.
Specifically, it was a dream Samus had while she was in a coma during the Fusion introduction. It's an amalgam of her final mission with Adam's squad, paranoia about the Federation's dirty laundry, her childhood encounter with Ridley, angst over the baby Metroid, and so on. This explains the disjointed nature of the narrative and the peculiarities of everyone's personalities. None of it ever happened exactly as presented - we're getting maybe a smidge of actual history filtered through a brain delirious from X Parasite infection.