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Fridge / Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles

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Fridge Brilliance:

  • In the episode featuring it, the Cybernetic Humanoid Assault System is a One-Man Army, massacring bugs by the score until its Heroic Sacrifice. In later episodes, C.H.A.S units are effortlessly taken down by a handful of regular bug troopers. This seems ridiculous, until you remember something: at the end of the episode C.H.A.S, Higgins explains via voice-over that the C.H.A.S project was scrapped; apparently, it's cheaper to train, feed, maintain and equip a human soldier than it is to build and program a single C.H.A.S. This means that the subsequent appearances of C.H.A.S units are actually cheaper knock-offs, built with less expensive parts and inferior tech — naturally they're less powerful than the first one; they're using substandard versions, making the original practically a Super Prototype.
  • On Pluto, the Hoppers could shrug off normal pulse rifle rounds but by the Tesca campaign they were easily killed by it. The pulse rifle is a projectile-based weapon: by the Tesca campaign, SICON had all the time to develop, test, mass produce and distribute new rounds that could kill them with ease.
  • A flashback shows that at enrollment Dizzy had to fill a survey that included questions about her suffering from claustrophobia (that she lied about answering she didn't have it) and acarophobia-that is, irrational fear of dark and closed spaces and of bugs respectively. As episode 1 establishes this as the second time they're cleaning Pluto of the Arachnids, SICON wanted to know which recruits could actually engage them if they returned, and, not knowing that the Arachnids weren't from Pluto yet, anticipated that if they did return they would have to engage them in the tunnels they expected them to have hidden into to escape the original massacre.
  • On Skinny MI equipment:
    • Their power suits are of a different design than the standard ones, and appear of Skinny making. Skinnies are much taller than humans, breath methane, and need sunlight and far higher environment temperature than humans (T'phai suffered of potentially lethal hypothermia in a 40° Celsius environment)-it was easier to teach the Skinnies how to design and produce their own power suits than adapt human designs, and it would weigh less on Terran industrial production.
    • Early in the Tesca campaign, T'phai's power suit got the environment control unit damaged when Dizzy tackled him down, while human suits works perfectly even after being hit much harder. As the Skinnies never left their homeworld before they never needed to build power suits before and are still making relatively fragile ones, but the Terrans have more experience in making them and have more rugged designs.
    • Once enrolled in the MI, the Skinnies don't use their constrictor foam guns but human standard Moritas. The constrictor foam can damage vehicles but take time to act and can be countered with the right chemical (as the MI started doing during the Tophet Campaign, spraying it on anyone hit by the foam), while bullets do less damage but do it immediately, and the underslung grenade launcher hits as hard as a constrictor foam gun.
  • In Real Life, combat medics and embedded reporters don't fight (though recently combat medics have been armed to defend themselves and their patients), yet "Doc" Lacroix and Higgins are armed and fight, with Doc even being the usual pilot of the Duck. There's two reasons for this:
    • In-Universe, it's because the Bugs don't respect the concept of non-combatants, so it only makes sense that the medic and the embedded reporter fight too.
    • Out-of-Universe, it's a Continuity Nod: in the original novel everyone fights, with specific examples cited being the Roughnecks' having their cook and chaplain as section leaders (and Rico even expressing puzzlement at the idea of a chaplain blessing something he wasn't willing to do himself)-thus the squad's medic is a veteran soldier, and the embedded reporter is a newbie but still a trained soldier.
  • After Brutto is reassigned away following a combat injury Rico is promoted directly from private to sergeant to replace him in spite of both Gossard and Doc outranking him as corporals-for a number of unstated but quite good reasons:
    • Gossard and Doc are already the team's combat engineer and doctor in addition to piloting the team's Marauders, and while any of the other troopers could be reassigned to pilot the Marauders (as had happened in the brief period Gossard couldn't) engineers and doctors don't come easily, and adding a sergeant hat to that would have compromised their main job.
    • Rico is The Heart (as pointed out by T'phai during the period he was absent on Tesca), whose mere presence keeps the team together. In a way he was already doing part of the job.
    • Rico was being groomed as a future officer ever since training (with Zim helping him pass the final obstacle course rather than letting him wash out)-but as in the Mobile Infantry everyone starts from the bottom he started out as a private, and by the time Brutto was injured Rico was considered experienced enough to take on command responsibilities and advance toward his eventual officership.


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