Ridley's History
Next to nothing is known of Ridley's pre-military background (if in fact he even had any), but it's safe to say he made his way up the ranks until finally designated military leader of the Space Pirates (or took the role by force). He also appears to 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.
Meeting Samus Aran
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 named Samus Aran, holding her pet Rabbilis Pyonchi. 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 needed 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 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.
Reunion at Zebes
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 traumatized 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.
Zero Mission
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 the 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 enraged 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, Robot 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.
Cybernetic Enhancements and Revival
Though wounded beyond fighting capability, Ridley 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 track 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.
Phazon Crisis
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. Traveling 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.
Metroid Purge
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 afterward, 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 shape-shifting entity.
Final Battle and Death
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's unknown how or why Ridley went from his Omega form from Metroid Prime 3 to his purely organic body seen in Super Metroid. It's 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.
In the Super Metroid comic, Ridley stole the baby and programmed the Main Computer to self-destruct, as in the game. Later, when Mother Brain failed to convince the baby that she was its mother, Ridley captured Chief Hardy and Chairman Keaton, then planned to use them as bait on Samus so she could be destroyed in front of the baby. However, when Samus triumphed Tourian, Ridley decided to leave as "tactical retreat". Keaton then insulted him by calling him a coward for fleeing.
Rebirth
At the beginning of Metroid: Other M, Samus recounted the events of Super Metroid, stating that Zebes' destruction took Mother Brain, the Space Pirates, the baby, and Ridley. However, this is later proved to be only a half-truth.
Unbeknownst to Samus, she had come back with remnants of the Metroids and Ridley stuck to her Power Suit. These were extracted from her and brought to a supposedly derelict facility called the BOTTLE SHIP. Here, a group, dubbed "the ringleaders", used the particles to clone Metroids after abandoning a special-forces unit project using captured bioforms. Ridley was unintentionally cloned by the Lab Workers of the ship.
Initially, he appeared as a small creature the researchers did not recognize. Seeing no potential for use as a bioweapon, the creature was instead raised as a pet nicknamed "Little Birdie." They were oblivious to the fact that this small animal was actually Ridley's juvenile form. At some point, "little birdie" pretended to be dead to lure an unfortunate Lab Worker into its cage; when the worker opened the cage, the creature killed him and escaped.
Samus, after following a distress call to the BOTTLE SHIP, found the remains of the scientist in the Breeding Room. As she examined the scientist, she stated that she felt a chill in the air, the presence of a "dark intelligence", since the carcass was violently ripped apart.
Shortly after this, Samus meets "little birdie" as the creature tries and fails to climb atop a piece of fruit. Samus did not see the creature as a threat, so she left it alone and continued on into the Biosphere. However, little birdie stalked her to the Exam Center unseen and provoked much wildlife into battling her through its piercing screeches (sending nearby creatures in a panic), including Zeros. After destroying the King Kihunter and its hive, she saw little birdie eating the Kihunter colony's honey, and it roared at her. Samus found the creature to be a "disgusting beast" because it used her to destroy the Kihunter nest so it could feed on its nectar, and by how greedily it ate the nectar.
At the Exam Center, Samus saw the 07th Platoon being confronted by a Mystery Creature. The creature also noticed Samus and roared at her. Rushing to their aid, she saw the troops firing above the door she came from and turned around just in time to see the lizard jump from the wall above and pin her down. The creature, at this point, seemed uninterested in the troopers and focused its attack efforts on Samus. While holding her down, the lizard called forth various bioforms to attack the troops. Samus fended off the creature's attacks, and before it was able to kill her, Anthony Higgs managed to fend off the beast with his Plasma Gun. The creature convulsed after being shot and fled, barely escaping another shot and crashing into a wall hidden by holographic scenery.
After investigating the scene and discovering the mutilated body of Lyle Smithsonian, Samus followed a trail of green blood to find the empty shell of "little birdie" with its back ripped open, implying the small creature was a juvenile form of the lizard. Adam ordered her to follow the creature to the Pyrosphere, but shortly afterward, told Samus to head to the Cryosphere instead to search for survivors. After finding one and losing her, Adam noticed that the wavelength frequencies of the lizard were growing more aggressive, and told Samus to go back to the Pyrosphere yet again, with the order to activate her Plasma Beam if she encountered it. Samus eventually found the lizard creature's husk bound to a wall, again with its back torn open from within.
Samus carried on until she reached the Geothermal Power Plant, after hearing from Adam that the creature appeared to be moving towards there. She was suddenly targeted by a red-laser sight, and believing it to be an attacker, pointed her Arm Cannon at the person. It turned out to be Anthony, who was already in the room to restore power while targeting an unseen monster in the room when Samus got in the way.
Rushing behind the wall with Anthony, both tried to hide from the creature, who was taking cover in the shadows and launching fire attacks at them. The creature destroyed the bridge to the exit, preventing Samus and Anthony from leaving. Samus told Anthony she would deal with the monster and used a Super Missile to complete his mission and destroy the magma-eruption port, raising the lava level and flooding the chamber with light. Samus then turned to see a dark, winged figure rising over the platform. Samus was incredibly shocked to find that the monster she had been tracking was her nemesis, somehow reborn even after his death on Zebes: Ridley.
Samus reacted to Ridley's appearance with a mental lapse for the first time since before becoming a bounty hunter. She was too overcome with shock and horror to concentrate properly, allowing Ridley to grab her, her Power Suit deteriorating from lack of concentration. This forced Anthony to use his Plasma Gun to save her again. He then goaded the beast into attacking him in hopes of giving Samus time to recover, though Ridley knocked him off the platform, apparently into the lava, and then prevented Samus from rescuing him. Seeing what appeared to be the death of her close friend, Samus was able to compose herself, equip the Plasma Beam, and do battle with Ridley once again.
After Ridley's body was sufficiently ravaged by Samus in her rage, he fell to the platform, seemingly dead yet again. Samus, after looking over the edge to see if Anthony indeed survived, was suddenly attacked again by a revived Ridley. The two fought again until Ridley escaped by breathing fire to create a hole in the wall and rammed through it.
Later on, immediately before Adam detaches Sector Zero, he gives Samus several final orders, one of which is for her to destroy Ridley because he is as "much of a threat as the Metroids".
A weakened heavily wounded Ridley was later seen at the mercy of a large creature (which turned out to be a Queen Metroid). Though Ridley made a vain attempt to escape, he is quickly killed. Samus arrived shortly to find his body as a gray and lifeless husk, making her wonder what could have happened. After the post-credits, Ridley's corpse is no longer there. It is assumed that the Galactic Federation took the body of Ridley's clone and transferred it to the Biologic Space Laboratories research station, where it was frozen to be preserved and seen in Metroid Fusion.
It is currently impossible to determine whether or not Ridley's clone retained the memories of his original form's past life. It is interesting to note that the clone's adolescent form-focused its attacks on Samus; this suggests that either he remembered his past encounters with her, or this was a result based on instinct in which he simply perceived her as the greater threat. However, the second theory would not explain why the clone's adult form toyed solely with Samus in a sadistic manner during their reunion in the Pyrosphere and not with his other victim (Anthony).
X infection
The Ridley clone's corpse was collected from the BOTTLE SHIP and stored at the Biologic Space Laboratories research station, in a Sub-Zero Containment. Samus eventually stumbled inside the containment chamber during her mission on the BSL. She approached the frozen corpse and witnessed not only its eyes glow but also an X Parasite leaving the body, resulting in its collapse. This X Parasite traveled to another location and, using the DNA it took from the clone, perfectly imitated the immobile, dried husk seen near the end of Other M. When Samus encounters the imitation, the parasite proceeded to heavily mutate it, resulting in a far more menacing creature called Neo Ridley. This duplicate had a much smaller wingspan and a more green tint to its skin, and it even possessed the frozen pose of the clone's corpse. Like always, Samus was able to best this Ridley, his body fading away completely into the X Parasite. Samus absorbs this parasite, obtaining the Screw Attack ability, Ridley presumed to have died for the final time.
