This is somewhat off topic, but there was I believe a subversive reason for Robert Heinlein to make his narrator in Starship Troopers a Filipino. He was subtle at first, putting in small clues early in the novel pointing to Johnnie Rico’s ethnicity, and the most overt he comes is later in the book when Johnnie mentions Ramon Magsaysay and makes a statement in Tagalog.

Heinlein was a 1929 graduate of the Naval Academy, and served when Filipinos were restricted to the steward rating, i.e., officers’ servants. It could not have been mere happenstance that his central character, who goes from recruit to NCO to a commission, was a Filipino.

Among the many crimes of Verhoeven’s comic book “adaptation” was the transforming of Juan Rico and Carmen Ibanez to middle class white bread Americans.