Löjtnant Rasczak räddade honom, enligt andra Roughnecks.
Från filmens skript, strax efter Johnny Rico släpps från läkningskammaren och han och Ace and Dizzy går med i Roughnecks. Här är skriptets scen:
Ace: So, I hear your lieutenant is a real nut-buster
Birdie belts him, and Ace goes down.
Birdie: No one talks about the Lieutenant that way. He saved my life!
Sugar: Mine, too.
Other Roughnecks: Same for me. Me, too.
Ace: Well, sounds like he is quite a guy.
Birdie (to Johnny): Who do you think saved your ass?
("Starship Troopers" screenplay by Edward Neumeier, Production Draft 4/17/1996)
Den komiska anpassningen var inte så specifik, det sade helt enkelt "någon hittade honom och sys upp honom" och utelämnade den "räddade din röv" -scenen.
Det här är helt ironiskt nog en av de små, obetydliga detaljerna som filmskriptet faktiskt blir något korrekt från Heinleins bok (samtidigt som allt blir meningsfullt fel) - RAH betyder betydligt att Saved sannolikt Rico liv i boken, om inte fysiskt då metaforiskt:
I'm glad I did it that way, because if I hadn't, I wouldn't have been along when the Lieutenant bought it . . . and that would have been just too much to be borne. It happened very fast and just before retrieval. A man in the third squad was wounded, not badly but he was down; the assistant section leader moved in to pick up — and bought a small piece of it himself. The Lieutenant, as usual, was watching everything at once — no doubt he had checked physicals on each of them by remote, but we'll never know. What he did was to make sure that the assistant section leader was still alive; then made pickup on both of them himself, one in each arm of his suit.
He threw them the last twenty feet and they were passed into the retrieval boat — and with everybody else in, the shield gone and no interdiction, was hit and died instantly.
I haven't mentioned the names of the private and of the assistant section leader on purpose. The Lieutenant was making pickup on all of us, with his last breath. Maybe I was the private. It doesn't matter who he was. What did matter was that our family had had its head chopped off. The head of the family from which we took our name, the father who made us what we were.
("Starship Troopers" by Robert Heinlein, Chapter 10)