Starship Troopers

Factual error: Rico lives in Buenos Aires, which has no hills within a couple of hundred miles. The city shown in the film has hills.

Factual error: The meteor that hits Buenos Aires was fired from Klendathu, a planet that, per the galactic chart shown after the hit, to be a third of the way around the galaxy. That the crew of the Roger Young had time to detect it and avoid it means it was not traveling at any kind of hyper velocity. It means it would have had to have been fired from Klendathu millions of years previously. That is some long range planning.

Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.

Suggested correction: Not an error, although it's never explained how it's possible to have a near real time war over relativistic distances. We definitely see that the Earth forces can respond to events in 'bug-space' by communicating and sending ships. That the bugs are also doing this is logical.

Factual error: In the English DVD subtitles, during the first commercial at the beginning of the movie, the announcer has a line that reads in the subtitles, "They're doing they're part." The second "they're" should be a possessive "their", not a contraction. (00:00:45)

Phoenix

Factual error: The last thing Rico's parents say before the meteor strikes is, "Looks like rain," as the sky outside gets darker. As a large meteor (large enough to destroy a major city) makes it's appearance in the atmosphere, there would be a flash of light brighter than the sun. Several minutes later a dark dust cloud would rise, but by then everyone in the vicinity would be killed.

Continuity mistake: Toward the end, Carmen Ibanez gets stabbed through the shoulder when she is brought before the big master alien thing. If you were to sustain such an injury, there would be so much swelling, not to mention just destroyed tissue, that you wouldn't be able to move that arm for weeks. Yet a few minutes later, she is seen hefting around a very large assault rifle, and seems to have no difficulty. I guess it's a pretty standard action movie "heroes can temporarily ignore injury in order to save the day" kind of oversight, but it just seems exaggerated in this case, considering how severe the shoulder trauma looked. (01:48:15 - 01:53:40)

More mistakes in Starship Troopers

Ace Levy: Don't worry, you still got me to kick around.

More quotes from Starship Troopers

Trivia: In Heinlein's novel, the Mobile Infantry - true to its designation - used suits of powered armor, which have no appearance in the movie. However, this idea inspired the concept of personal high-tech armor in SF, such as Marvel Comics' Iron Man.

More trivia for Starship Troopers

Question: In the scene where the infantry is retreating from the first attack on the arachnid planet (the night attack) we see that Rico has been seriously wounded to his leg and cannot even stand up. He was all alone and then we see him kill the first attacking bug with a shotgun mode of the rifle, but when the second bug attacks it seems that he didn't kill the bug and it killed Rico (he screams a lot). Later on, he is in a liquid tank, and his leg is being healed. My questions are these: Who saved him ? How did someone saved him when he died, or even if he didn't die who bothered returning for him when no one was sure if he's dead or just missing in the squad being somewhere else? How come he was in a healing tank while the military filed him as "DEAD" ?

Answer: When Rico, Diz and Ace report to the Roughnecks, they find out that Lt. Rasczak saved him. He was listed as dead, because Carmen checked just hours after the battle. With the MI's huge personnel losses, all the dead and wounded hadn't been confirmed yet. He was listed as dead because he didn't return with his unit.

Grumpy Scot

More questions & answers from Starship Troopers

Join the mailing list

Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.