ccovell wrote:
No it's not awesome: the theory's garbage, the article is fanwank garbage, and I certainly hope Tepples had set up a grand joke (way back in July.)
Metroid was released in 1986. Krang made his first appearance in TMNT (TV & Comics) in 1987 and 1988 respectively. No way TMNT inspired the creation of Mother Brain from at least a year earlier.
The theory is garbage by the historical development timeline of the two series, but it is clearly not meant to be taken seriously. This is being published in Cracked, after all.
However, it is theoretically possible that TMNT may have had an influence on the main villain in Metroid. Krang's inspiration, the Utroms, were featured in the TMNT comic book as early as issue #3 in March, 1985. It is conceivable that one of the Japanese developers who worked on Metroid could have read an early TMNT comic book and used it as an influence. But it is really an extremely remote possibility given that TMNT was just becoming a successful book in the US.
More likely, if there was an influence to be had, it probably would have been from more established science fiction like Star Trek and Doctor Who. The TOS series episode "The Gamesters of Triskelion" from 1968 had the Enterprise crew captured by omniscient beings known as The Providers to fight in gladiatorial games. The Providers turn out to be disembodied brains sustained by machinery. Doctor Who had also done something similar in "The Brain of Morbius" from 1976, where the renegade Time Lord Morbius' brain is enclosed in a jar and sustained by machinery. A doctor plans to transplant Morbius' brain into the Doctor or, when that fails, a repulsive Frankenstein-monster like creature built from many species.
These are but two examples which come to mind, but the disembodied brain trope had been long established by the time Nintendo produced Metroid.