Amazingly the biggest dumbass in Metroid isn't the Space Pirates, despite their mission statement reading "Breed lethally dangerous creatures and mix them with any dangerous chemicals we happen to find lying around". Most people abandon a hobby after their first world gets blown out from under them, but a hat-trick of planetary explosions later they're still going strong. This species make lemmings look like life insurance salesmen, and based on their safety record and "success/horrible disaster" ratio they're the descendants of the Umbrella corporation.

But they have been out-idiocied! For they are bad guys and therefore legally required to make mistakes which the average five year old would avoid. Otherwise games about lone heroes against an army would be extremely short. O-Lir (or R-Tard) of the Luminoth has no such excuse. As Guardian of the Sanctuary Fortress he fought the evil Ing, beings which possess others and make them fight their evil war. This fact is well known; it is, in fact, the Ing's entire deal. But R-Tard has a cunning plan! Does it work? Well, we scan the plan carved into the ruins of the Luminoths destroyed civilization, so not much.

So R-"McGenius"-Tard builds an army of robots to do battle. Robots! The ally which has a 50% chance of turning against you on a good day! Was this guy asleep during the Ing briefing, and every movie ever screened? Though there's a fair chance the Luminoth banned cinemas because their people kept flapping up around the projector.

Things that have been known to cause robots to try and kill their masters:

• learning (Terminator)
• lightning strikes (Stealth)
• confusion (2001)
• shortage of batteries (Matrix)
• just being an evil metal dick (Black Hole)

If Sesame Street or weather is enough to turn the armored killing machine against you, it shouldn't be your weapon of choice against an enemy whose power is "turning things against you".

A cluster of supercomputers has been assembled to calculate exactly how stupid this guy had to be - so far they've flooded the computer room with a deadly neurotoxin and launched a device capable of extinguishing the sun. Surviving human researchers theorise that as an advanced race, the Luminoth have more complex thought processes and are therefore capable of much greater relative stupidity than man. They also point out we should be grateful Aether wasn't attacked by fire creatures, lest O-Lir assemble an army of gasoline-soaked scarecrows to fight them.