The makers said that the Metroid series is supposed to be like the 1979 film, "Alien", and Samus was like one of the film's characters, Ellen Ripley. Players thought Samus was a boy until the end of the original "Metroid" game. One of the makers said that it would be "kind of cool if it turned out that this person inside the suit was a woman". The rest of the makers liked it so it happened