Starship Troopers Trivia
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50 free Starship Troopers trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Would you like to know more? This Starship Troopers trivia quiz covers Paul Verhoeven's 1997 film from Buenos Aires to Planet P: Johnny Rico, Carmen Ibanez, Dizzy Flores and Carl Jenkins, Sergeant Zim, Lieutenant Rasczak and the Roughnecks, the disaster on Klendathu, the Tanker Bug, the Brain Bug and the FedNet propaganda that told everyone to do their part. There are questions on how it was made: the Bug Hunt at Outpost 7 script that turned into a Heinlein adaptation, the Wyoming badlands that played alien planets, the Riefenstahl-inspired casting, Phil Tippett's Oscar-nominated bugs, the $100 million budget and the reviews that called it fascist before the film was reclaimed as satire. A final section covers Robert Heinlein's 1959 novel, its Hugo Award, its powered armour and Filipino Rico, plus the sequels and the 1999 animated series. Easy questions first, then ones for citizens who have done their part. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on the film, the novel, the sequels and the people involved, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which notorious 1995 flop did Paul Verhoeven direct just before Starship Troopers?
Showgirls
Showgirls: Verhoeven turned up in person to collect his Worst Director Razzie for it.
Q 02Which major science-fiction award did the novel Starship Troopers win in 1960?
Hugo Award
Hugo Award: it took Best Novel in 1960, to its author's surprise, and marked the end of his long run of novels for young readers.
Q 03In Starship Troopers, how is Rico punished after a recruit dies in a live-fire exercise he was leading?
A public flogging
A public flogging: Rico takes ten lashes in front of the camp, and Sergeant Zim hands him a mouthpiece to bite on, saying that it helps.
Q 04In Starship Troopers, what must a person complete to earn the right to vote?
Federal service
Federal service: only those who serve get the vote, yet Rico's wealthy father sneers that it is 'menial training for inferior people'.
Q 05In Starship Troopers, which city does an Arachnid asteroid destroy, prompting Rico to re-enlist?
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is Rico's home, so the strike kills his parents just after he has quit boot camp, and he asks to be taken back.
Q 06In Starship Troopers, what is the Arachnids' home planet called?
Klendathu
Klendathu: the first invasion of it ends in a rout, because military intelligence had underestimated how well the bugs could defend themselves.
Q 07What is Earth's government called in the film Starship Troopers?
The United Citizen Federation
The United Citizen Federation was founded by military veterans who took power after democracy collapsed, as a classroom lecture explains in the opening scenes.
Q 08In Starship Troopers, which branch does Rico join to stay close to his girlfriend?
The Mobile Infantry
The Mobile Infantry 'made me the man I am today', Rico is told by a recruiting sergeant, a badly maimed veteran who is hardly an advertisement for it.
Q 09Who plays the pilot Carmen Ibanez in Starship Troopers?
Denise Richards
Denise Richards did not have to join the boot camp held for the actors playing troopers, but asked to go anyway and spent a blizzard huddled in a tent.
Q 10Who plays the psychic Carl Jenkins in Starship Troopers?
Neil Patrick Harris
Neil Patrick Harris, until then television's child doctor Doogie Howser, ends the film as a grim colonel in a grey-and-black officer's uniform and jackboots.
Q 11Who plays Dizzy Flores, the trooper in love with Rico, in Starship Troopers?
Dina Meyer
Dina Meyer was steered by her agent towards the part of Carmen but asked to play Dizzy, a character who is a man in the novel.
Q 12Who plays Sergeant Zim, the drill instructor, in Starship Troopers?
Clancy Brown
Clancy Brown's Zim is told that the only way to a combat posting is to bust himself down to private, so he does, and ends the film as Private Zim.
Q 13In Starship Troopers, what was Lieutenant Rasczak's job before he led his elite unit?
Rico's high school teacher
Q 21Whose propaganda films did Verhoeven cite as the look he wanted for his blond, blue-eyed cast?
Leni Riefenstahl
Leni Riefenstahl: Verhoeven also copied her Triumph of the Will for the recruiting reel that opens the film, and said that at the time nobody noticed.
Q 22Which Wyoming landmark stood in for the bug planets in Starship Troopers?
Hell's Half Acre
Hell's Half Acre: the crew had to build roads into its remote ravines, which were rife with rattlesnakes, and lower some of the gear in by helicopter.
Q 23Which 2024 video game's satirical bug war sparked a revival of interest in Starship Troopers?
Helldivers 2
Rico's high school teacher: the film created its Rasczak by merging two characters from the novel, a classroom lecturer and a heroic lieutenant.
Q 14In Starship Troopers, what is Lieutenant Rasczak's elite unit called?
The Roughnecks
The Roughnecks follow Rasczak until he is killed; Carl then hands command of the unit to Rico, promoting him to lieutenant on the spot.
Q 15In Starship Troopers, what kind of giant bug does Rico kill on Tango Urilla to earn promotion to corporal?
A Tanker Bug
A Tanker Bug: Rico kills it from on top of its shell, and Rasczak tells him he is corporal until he is dead or someone better turns up.
Q 16In Starship Troopers, what is the intelligent Arachnid that directs the others called?
The Brain Bug
The Brain Bug is taken alive at the end, after it has sucked out the brain of Carmen's co-pilot Zander to absorb what he knows.
Q 17In Starship Troopers, how does the wounded Sugar Watkins buy time for his squadmates to escape?
He sets off a nuke
He sets off a nuke: the rescuers had held the bugs at bay by threatening to detonate it, and the dying Watkins finally does so as the others get out.
Q 18Which animated series spoofed Starship Troopers in its 2000 episode "War Is the H-Word"?
Futurama
Futurama: Fry and Bender join Earth's army only for the soldiers' discount on chewing gum, and are shipped off to war within seconds.
Q 19Starship Troopers reunited the producer, writer and effects artist of which earlier Verhoeven film?
RoboCop
RoboCop: its producer had spent years looking for a way to reunite the team, and found it in its writer's idea for a war film about giant insects.
Q 20What did Paul Verhoeven make of the novel Starship Troopers when he tried to read it?
Dull and too right-wing
Dull and too right-wing: he gave up after a few chapters, had his screenwriter summarise the rest, and then set out to satirise the book.
Helldivers 2: its troopers spread 'managed democracy' against giant insects, and its director called the renewed interest in the 1997 film 'incredible'.
Q 24Starship Troopers was half-funded by Touchstone Pictures, a label owned by which studio?
Disney
Disney: TriStar would not carry the $90 million budget alone after Waterworld's losses, so Disney's label paid half in return for the release outside North America.
Q 25Basil Poledouris, composer of the Starship Troopers score, also scored which sword-and-sorcery epic?
Conan the Barbarian
Conan the Barbarian: for Starship Troopers he spent six months on the music, and Verhoeven had him build the whole score on his theme for a troop ship.
Q 26For which Academy Award was Starship Troopers nominated?
Best Visual Effects
Best Visual Effects was its only Oscar nomination, and on the night the bugs lost to the sinking ship of Titanic.
Q 27On the Starship Troopers set, what did Paul Verhoeven sometimes wave to show actors where the computer-generated bugs would be?
A broom
A broom: Verhoeven also played the bug himself, and one actor recalled him jumping up and down with a bullhorn, shouting that he was a big bug who would kill them.
Q 28What did an editorial in The Washington Post accuse Starship Troopers of being?
Pro-fascist, made by Nazis
Pro-fascist, made by Nazis: Verhoeven, who says he meant the film as a satire of fascism, blamed the attack for helping to sink it with American audiences.
Q 29The FedNet propaganda clips in Starship Troopers end by asking viewers which question?
"Would you like to know more?"
"Would you like to know more?": the clips were invented for the film, as its writer's guess at how television and computers would one day merge.
Q 30The Starship Troopers cast agreed to film a co-ed shower scene only after Verhoeven and his cinematographer did what?
Undressed as well
Undressed as well: about fifteen actors then shot the scene on a set cleared of everyone but the two naked film-makers.