Heartwarming / Starship Troopers

Films

• Ace comforting Rico after Carmen dumps him (through a glorified e-mail no less).
  Rico: I wouldn't even be here if it weren't for her.
  Ace: Hey, you got Squad Leader on your own.
  • It's even more heartwarming when Ace assures Rico that he still has him showing that he's a true friend.
• The Bait-and-Switch of Ace's Establishing Character Moment when he cuts in line at the meal hall and it looks like he's about to be set up as The Bully to Rico. Instead, Ace just smiles, piles food onto Rico's plate and decides then and there that the two of them are going to become best friends, which they do.
• Always though it was rather heartwarming to see Rico, Carmen, and Carl reunited at the end of the first film. The smiles on all their faces was very uplifting after seeing all the crap they'd all gone through.
• Carl takes time off from his duties in the middle of a very important operation to send Rico a psychic message that helps him rescue Carmen despite only having seen them once since they left for the military and it wasn't under great circumstances.
• The little speech Carl gives about how things are finally starting to look up in the war.
  Carl: We've got one of their Brains now. Pretty soon we'll know how they think, and then we'll know how to beat them. One day it will all be over, and everyone will forget that this was the moment. This is when it turned. And it wasn't the mighty fleet, it wasn't a fancy new weapon. It was a drill instructor named Zim, who captured a Brain.
• Zim bumped himself back down to Private to serve on the frontlines again. Rico, by contrast, has been promoted to Lieutenant. They salute each other with pride after capturing the Brain Bug.
  Lt. Rico: Carry on, Private!
  Pvt. Zim: Yessir!
• Zim asking Breckenridge if he is alright after breaking his arm in a sparring match. As well as later on demanding to the major that he goes to Big K with his men. Zim may be a Drill Sergeant Nasty, but deep down he cares about his soldiers. Zim ends up busting himself down to private so he can see combat, and captures the brain bug.
  • Another prominent example would be when Rico gets Ten Lashes, for having Breckenridge killed by accident in a live fire exercise. Zim's the only one that talks him through it, even giving him a piece of leather to bite down on in order to deal with the pain. It's implied that he went through the same punishment himself.
  Zim: Bite down on this son. It helps, I know.
• Rico drops out after a bad call on his part got another recruit killed, only to learn soon after that his entire family has been killed in a Bug attack on his hometown. When he goes back to change his mind, he's told he can't, because he already signed his discharge papers, and letting him go back on that wouldn't be legal. Sergeant Zim holds Rico's discharge papers in front of him and asks if that is his signature, and Rico, with no small hint of resignation, agrees that it is.
  Zim: Doesn't look like it to me. [tears discharge papers in half]
• During an offtime in a hostile world, Lieutenant Rasczak gives his soldiers games, music and booze. He even allows Rico and Dizzy a little "R&R". "I expect the best and I deliver the best... Have Fun! That's an order!"
• Zander ends up having several of these despite being Rico's love rival. When he becomes Carmen's instructor at the Fleet, they become a top-notch flight team. When they run into Rico, the rival for her affections, he's willing to go mano a mano with an MI soldier to prove his devotion. When a desperate plea comes up from planetside for a "crazy pilot" Carmen answers the call and Zander is right there with her, and bravely goes out shooting at the bugs to give Rico's group cover instead of sitting in the dropship. And when he and Carmen are facing certain death he passes her his only weapon, just so she might live a few moments longer.

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The Book

• After eight chapters of not even allowing his wife to talk about him, much less write to him since his enlistment in the military, Johnny's father reunites with his son as a soldier himself in the Mobile Infantry in a big, tearful embrace of pride and love.
• Just before Rico goes on his OCS practical assignment as a Third Lieutenant, the OCS Commandant informs him that Lt. Colonel DuBois, Rico's high school teacher, had written to him and asked that the pips he wore be given to Rico. Rico is touched, especially as DuBois had (seemingly) dismissed him as useless in school... until the Commandant regretfully informs him that the pips are unavailable due to a "real estate deal" (i.e. the last wearer wasn't in any position to return with them).
  • Rico's then offered a set of unlucky pips, where the last four of five cadets to wear those pips have flunked out. He swallows, accepts the offer to try and break the bad luck curse... and the Commandant thanks him, as he started those pips, the first to wear them as a Third Lieutenant.
    • Seeing as in the final chapter he is the officer in charge of "Rico's Roughnecks", Johnny broke the curse on those pips.
• When Rico is at his lowest point in boot camp, on the verge of resigning after watching Hendrick being flogged and dishonorably discharged (and fearing he'll be next), he receives a letter from none other than retired MI trooper and teacher Jean DuBois. They'd previously knocked heads in DuBois's History and Moral Philosophy class and Rico had the impression DuBois had dismissed him as a useless rich kid - but in his letter DuBois reveals that he'd been hoping Johnny would enlist, how proud he is that Johnny chose the MI, and encouraging him to finish his last leg of training. Heartened by this, Rico stays in and becomes one of the three percent in his class who graduates.
• Towards the end of the book, Rico is on his OCS practical assignment as a Third Lieutenant, leading an MI section into a Bug nest. His Platoon Sergeant is missing. Torn between leading his section to look for his man, and continuing on mission, Rico orders the Section Leader to continue the mission while he goes alone to make a one-man search. As he drops down into a hole and starts walking alone, he hears the Section Leader taking roll of the men on the radio. And then he hears the last order: "Section! By squads! Follow me!" And then the entire section jumps in after Rico.
  • Especially since Johnnie was a Temporary Third lieutenant risking his chance at a permanent commission by breaking off to look for his sergeant, paralleling a story the OCS commandant told of another junior officer from the age of Wooden Ships and Iron Men who was cashiered for making an unauthorized pickup. He ordered his men to go on so that only he was risking his career - but they followed him anyway out of loyalty.
  • And this wasn't even Johnnie's usual unit. He was only in temporary command for his officer's test, the men had never dropped with him before and likely never would again. Johnnie won them over because of No Man Left Behind.