Does the Army Have Better Gear Than the Marines? UPDATED

In space, no-one can hear you ooh-rah.

"They shall be my finest warriors, these men who requite of themselves to me. Like dirt I shall mould them, and in the furnace of war forge them. They will be of iron will and steely muscle. In great armour shall I clad them and with the mightiest guns will they be armed. They will be untouched by plague or disease, no sickness will blight them. They volition have tactics, strategies and machines and so that no foe tin can all-time them in battle. They are my bulwark against the Terror. They are the Defenders of Humanity. They are my Space Marines and they shall know no fear."

Since Space Is an Ocean, Infinite Marines are the troops carried by spaceships, their roles paralleling those of conventional marines: mobile deployment, boarding hostile ships, securing ports — including Space Stations — from Infinite Pirates.

These guys are the number one troops of choice for the humans in the Standard Sci Fi Setting.

Infinite Marines beginning plow up in the short story "Captain Brink of the Space Marines" past Bob Olsen in Amazing Stories Book 7, Number viii, of November 1932, and a later on followup, 1936'due south "The Space Marines and the Slavers." The trope, however, fully rose to prominence with the use of the term in the wildly popular Lensman Series beginning in 1934. In 1959, Starship Troopers codified the trope, popularizing the emblematic Power Armor, The Spartan Way of training, and the array of exotic weaponry they wield. Warhammer 40,000 from Games Workshop is notable for taking these aspects to a peak, achieving the ideal "SPACE MARINE" Super Soldier, augmented with Genetic Engineering or cybernetics (or both!).

In many settings they fight as a squad, sometimes with Crawly Personnel Carrier support, swooping downwardly in a Drib Ship, or launched right into the thick of it via Drib Pod. A notable exception to this are the many Beginning Person Shooters that use the Infinite Marine groundwork every bit a useful alibi to get a highly trained soldier alone on a hostile planet. This tradition starts with the much-imitated Doom series — see A Space Marine Is You and 1-Man Army.

This folio shouldn't be confused with the video game Warhammer twoscore,000: Space Marine, though that game pretty much is about them.

It should be noted that the proper name "infinite marine" is actually a misnomer — there'due south no water in deep infinite. Works aiming for more realism or a more Ray Gun Gothic feel may adopt to call them "espatiers", and the virtually direct Latin equivalent for the surroundings parses as "astroram". Merely for those wanting more to invoke the Romantic Infinite Is an Ocean trope the name space marine works simply fine. Sometimes, "space marine" is culturally translated into "space [insert badass military unit of measurement here]" - for instance in Russia infinite marines are often called "space landing forces" (kosmodesantniki) after the VDV ^annotation Vozdushno-desantnye voyska, "air-landing forces", ofttimes chosen just "desantniki" (rougly "landers") an airborne unit of the Russian military that has roughly the same reputation every bit the USMC and Majestic Marines in American and British cultures.

Annotation: This trope is almost the elite spaceborne soldiers themselves. Overly-generic Science Fiction military protagonists belong elsewhere, such every bit A Space Marine Is You for video games.

Examples

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Anime and Manga

In Legend of Galactic Heroes, the Rosen Ritter from the Costless Planets Brotherhood is a notable example. Its members have been consistently regarded as elite soldiers; their standard equipment includes incredibly tough armor and they are practically the only group in the series to appoint in boarding tactics against enemy ships.
Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn introduces ECOAS (acronym for "Earth Colony Asteroid", an idea similar to the existent-life SEALs), a special operations unit of the EFSF. Tasked to hunt downwards Neo Zeon remnants, their speciality is covert infiltration with their tank/mecha/APC hybrids.

Comic Books

Judge Dredd: Mega City-One is one of several Mega Cities that has a Space Corps. Many trainees that don't meet the harsh requirements for the Judge force or who show overly loftier combat simulation scores at the expense of discretion volunteer to become space marines instead.
Wonder Adult female (2006): The Denizens were a spacefaring culture with a marine equivalent and odd obsession with memory alteration before the genocidal Astarte took over and turned the whole civilisation into her soldiers for destroying the life on entire planets.

Fan Works

A Crown of Stars: Avalon's Empire Army has a Space Marines partition, dedicated to perform the usual tasks of a Marine division. It is pointed out in that location is friendly rivalry betwixt them and the other regular army corps. In the second half of the history one of them -Corporal Vasraith- has a prominent role.
Grand Shinji: Being a Warhammer 40,000 crossover it was a safe bet that they would figure in this story. The premise of the story is Shinji was institute and trained by a Chaos-worshipper Infinite Marine when he was a kid. X years later Shinji inherits several jars containing the souls of four fully-armed Rubric Marines and he uses them every so oft. Finally later Third Impact legions of Space Marines are trained in mass to spearhead an interstellar state of war.
Bait and Switch (STO), a Shared Universe of Star Trek Online, has a couple different varieties.
- The Space Commando role is filled past Starfleet MACOs, who are established in exposition in The Wrong Reflection to exist Starfleet special operations troops (i.e. Space Navy SEALs). They're equipped with Powered Armor and ameliorate gear than ordinary Starfleet Security personnel. Captain Kanril Eleya has secondary certification every bit a MACO, though she's primarily a space warfare (i.e. starship combat) officer.
- Starfleet Security acts as rank-and-file infinite marines deployed aboard transport. In addition, "Tinker Golfer Doc Trill" makes mention of the USS Bajor stopping by Andoria to pick up the 103rd Expeditionary Force, which Reshek Gaarra rather snidely refers to every bit "ten thousand jarheads". In "Last Rights" they operate tanks.
Homaged in Rocketship Voyager, where the eponymous rocketship has infinite marines in place of Red Shirts. The two mentioned by proper noun are Sergeant VanBuskirk and Corporal Juan Rico, and they're equipped with dirigible infinite armor and weapons like recoilless machine guns, bazookas firing A-rockets, micratomic grenades, and nuclear-powered flamethrowers.

Films — Animated

In Titan A.East. Korso is a former Earth Infinite Marine.
In Wreck-Information technology Ralph, the game within a movie Hero's Duty features a squad of space marines fighting a Bug War.

Films — Live-Action

The Colonial Marines of Aliens greatly helped popularise the trope. This classic version of the Space Marine is quite conservative — for instance, no Power Armour and generally conventional weapons. Interestingly, the cast was required to read Starship Troopers before filming, a volume which is also recommended reading for the Real Life USMC. In improver, figures from Aliens have to admit Games Workshop's registered trademark of the proper name Space Marine, despite that Rogue Trader came out the year after Aliens.
- Alien: Resurrection, set centuries later on the other movies, replaces them with the United Systems Military.
Some of the marines in Avatar were actual marines, admitting now they're Private Armed services Contractors rather than military. James Cameron said he essentially invented the modern 'space marine' so if anyone should be allowed to use it information technology should be him.
- Even though he admits that he got the idea from Robert A. Heinlein.
Kainan, the protagonist of Outlander, was a space marine in the Back Story. In the movie itself, he rapidly loses his space-armor and gun, and substantially gets adopted as a Viking.
A platoon of Marines equipped with laser weapons are dispatched into space to destroy Drax's satellite base at the climax of Moonraker. Apparently, NASA keeps a shuttle load of U.Due south. Marines on standby merely in case.
One group of specialist Clonetroopers who appear briefly in Star Wars Episode Three: Revenge of the Sith take been identified in Expanded Universe material every bit "Galactic Marines."
- This is likewise a main function of Imperial stormtroopers. The very first time we see them is in the ISD Devastator's boarding activity against the Tantive Four in A New Hope.
- The Rebel soldiers dropping into the battle during the climax of Rogue One are called "Rebel Marines" in the supplemental fabric and resemble the Rebellion'due south Endor troops combined with Vietnam War era U.s. Marines.
In Doom, a platoon of marines called the Rapid Response Tactical Squad is dispatched to bargain with the events on Mars.
Again, Starship Troopers has the Mobile Infantry, who are this in all simply name. Taking an entirely different tone from the book, the Mobile Infantry are gung-ho space soldiers who, for all their tough bug-stomping talk, are repeatedly shown to be arrogant and foolish Military Mavericks. In one of the get-go battles of the war, the Mobile Infantry deploy in a chaotic Zerg Rush and and then rout in panic after merely very lite casualties. At i signal the protagonist'southward unit throws a frat party in the middle of enemy territory. The motion-picture show was meant to be a satire on the book's jingoism.

Literature

A primary inspiration for this trope is Robert A. Heinlein'due south Starship Troopers, though his Mobile Infantry are never once described as marines, and could just as well be based on army paratroopers except that Space Is an Ocean. His clarification of their beefy power armour and exotic weaponry is a classic which influenced many later designs. The spirit of the Mobile Infantry shows the feel Heinlein had of Existent Life Marine drill instructors at the U.S. Naval Academy. It is oddly circular that Starship Troopers is now recommended reading for the Real Life USMC.
Heinlein's earlier Space Buck actually features Infinite Marines under that name. The protagonist, a member of the Infinite Patrol, considers transferring but is convinced to practise otherwise past his mentor. As he explains, the branches of the Space Patrol tend to attract different men: the Marines concenter those who seek glory and excitement, the Patrol attracting men of intellectualism and idealism, reflected in the Patrol's motto — Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? ^note Who will guard the guardians? The protagonist elects to remain in the Patrol.
Every bit mentioned by the introduction, the Lensman serial probably ranks among the earliest examples. Galactic Patrol of 1937 featured the first appearance of the Space Marines [sic], whose powered armor might well have inspired Heinlein's later, more than iconic version.
The warrior class in John Steakley'due south Armor, including the protagonist, obviously heavily inspired by Heinlein.
The CoDominium series feature the CD Space Navy and Marines and later, the Imperial Marines. The CD Line Marines are formed from the The French Strange Legion, and thus keep a lot of their traditions alive. The CD Marines armament includes semi-automatic rifles, big-diameter weapons loaded with armor-piercing and (sometimes) heavy tanks, with the CD providing orbital burn back up upward to and including nuclear weapons. The particular Line Marine unit most ofttimes featured in the novels is commanded past an officeholder politically on the outs with the almost powerful man in the Thousand Senate, and every bit such they repeatedly get denied proper resource. This can requite a misleading impression of the CD Marines in general.
In C. J. Cherryh's Brotherhood/Union novels, Armada warships have a complement of marines. As relatively hard sci-fi their armour is minutely described and plausible as applied science. The marines are central to securing assets: getting into space is exorbitantly expensive enough, so an armed starship entering a arrangement tin own it past closing with other ships and stations to secure them with the marines. The marines are able and willing to smash and cutting their way to control centers, even if it ways exposing parts of the station to vacuum. Life for a marine is very boring 99% of the time, being excluded belowdecks from the send'south crew. When deployed, in that location is the terrifying prospect their ship might all of a sudden need to motion, with no friendly ship in-arrangement in a decade.
Though they aren't actual 'space' marines, the Seanchan Fists of Heaven in The Bike of Time do fly around on what basically corporeality to living planes in a late medieval setting and execute hit and run raids from the air. Though the Bloodknives introduced in Gathering Tempest probably fit this improve; they are elite Fists equipped with items that repel magic and eliminate fear in the wearer who stay behind instead of being evacuated with the residuum of the Fists to kill as many enemy wizards as they possibly tin earlier going downwardly.
The UNEF Infantry in Joe Haldeman's The Forever War. Their ability armor comes with born light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation cannons and medical systems that can automatically amputate severely damaged limbs and cauterize the wound. Their power armor makes them unstoppable killing machines, but inside the armour the marines are simply frightened conscripts who really don't want to be there.
The Royal Manticoran Marine Corps, the People'south Marine Corps and their counterparts in diverse other star nations also the Star Kingdom of Manticore and People'due south Democracy of Oasis in the Accolade Harrington serial. Grayson is an exception here: they lack a dedicated branch for Marines and use troops borrowed from the Army for the tasks (boarding deportment confronting pirates and planetary assaults) other nations use Marines for. The Manticoran Space Marines use a mix of regular infantry and powered armor with customizable loadouts (for example, high speed long lasting scout configuration or bulkier, slower assault configuration). Troops in powered armor are considered the 'modern' equivalent of tanks.
- The Manticoran Marines are peculiarly notable since they are trained to serve both every bit infantry and to help run the send they are stationed (by and large as weapon crews). This allows Manticoran ships to carry larger marine detachments than other nations since having extra marines on lath doesn't subtract the number of people on board who are trained to run the ship.
Nosotros never actually see the Space Marines in Robert Zubrin'southward The Holy Land, but they must kick a lot of butt. A detachment was sent to Earth to rescue one conflicting adult female from ane group of theology students holed upwards in the basement of a cathedral, "turning much of northern Manhattan into a calorie-free-textured finely ground dust in the process."
Richard M. Morgan'south Takeshi Kovacs books feature the Vacuum Commandoes. Amidst other things, they engage in boarding actions on spacegoing craft. They are therefore literal Infinite Marines.
The Hyperion Cantos features Forcefulness Marines. Complete with Powered Armor and Swiss Army Guns. Colonel Fedmahn Kassad is i; don't mess with him.
Every bit Sergey Lukyanenko's books Line of Delirium and Emperors of Illusions are set in the starting time Principal of Orion universe, there naturally are Space Marines.
The entire Space Opera Genre, being essentially War and Peace in Sci-Fi settings, features space-related tropes and space marines where the average history novel featured sailors and the original navy.
They get relatively cursory mention in the games, simply in the Wing Commander novels, the Terran Confederation Marine Corps serves this role. In the novel Fleet Activity, they lath a armada of super-powerful carriers against which the normal weapons (torpedoes delivered by fighters) were useless due to their extreme armor and shielding, for the purpose of detonating antimatter mines inside the carriers. Naturally, this is not survivable for the Space Marines in question, just when the culling is The Cease of the World every bit We Know Information technology...
The MacGuffin in Reed de Buch'south Skymarine Jones, mainly a spoof on the whole genre of Space Marines and Ringworlds, complete with Voodoo possessed unstoppable sentient weapons - Marx Brothers meets Halo. Skymarines
The Allied Infinite Marines in John Ringo and Travis Taylor's "Vorpal Bract" Series. Their modular Wyvern armor doubles as space suits. It also incorporates a chameleon coating, and a full sensor suite, including particle sensors, which they are required to be able to empathize.
The Confederation of Valor series follows Staff Sergeant (later Gunnery Sergeant) Torin Kerr, a senior NCO in the Amalgamated Marine Corps. These marines' primary role is ground combat, not boarding deportment. Also the series puts an interesting twist on it: Confederate Marine armor, while powered, is not very bulky at all since it needs to still be usable in case the Others hitting them with EMP. Nigh of their tech is similarly intended to piece of work but too in its master function with or without electricity.
Marines are nowadays in the Star Risk, Ltd. series (two of the protagonists, Thou'chel Riss and Chas Goodnight, are a former and ex-Marine respectively), simply usually ignored since the series focuses on a group of mercenaries unaffiliated with The Brotherhood.
Spots the Space Marine achieved a bit of internet fame in February 2013 after it was pulled from Amazon when Games Workshop claimed Trademark violation. The space marines in question are near-time to come marines equipped with Powered Armor provided past alien allies that has built-in Deflector Shields, and deployed on a distant planet to fight in a Problems War.
In the Hostile Takeover (Swann) series, all of the arms of the Confederacy seem to maintain these. We generally see the Occisis Marines, who are devotedly Cosmic and ethnically homogenous, like the planet of Occisis. A large division of the Marines are seconded to Klaus Dacham. Their commander, Captain Shane, plays a major role.
The Theirs Not to Reason Why series has the The Terran United Planets Space Strength Marines, complete with ability armor support. It'southward implied that the other spacegoing polities take their own Space Marines besides, with the Five'Dan Marines specifically mentioned.
The Terran Expeditionary Force, as depicted in "The Hero", ane of George R. R. Martin's "Thousand Worlds" scientific discipline fiction stories. They are Heavyworlders outfitted in Ability Armor with rocket belts and sonic weaponry, and they have force and speed far beyond normal humans and the aliens the protagonist encounters in the story.
The UF marines in Invasion of Kzarch, who fight in space, air, land... anywhere they can find an enemy.
The United states of america Marine Corps becomes this in Ian Douglas'due south Galactic Marines series. In fact, the very get-go novel Semper Mars starts off with the corps almost to exist disbanded, as the higher-ups claim it'southward no longer relevant. As a last-ditch effort to rebrand the marines, a disengagement is sent to the Martian earthworks site in Cydonia. This proves to exist the exact identify where they volition be needed when the UN starts a war with the US. Several issues are mentioned, such every bit the fact that their gear isn't up to specs considering someone back on Earth assumed they were going to an World-side desert environment (e.g. their guns' electronic sights are calibrated for World gravity and atmosphere, and they take 40 pairs of desert boots which they can't habiliment with their sealed suits). The same book also features the showtime always combat in microgravity with a different team of The states Marines fighting a forcefulness of UN troops. The differences are showcased, such as the lack of comprehend in space, the need to burn down your weapon at your center mass in guild to avoid to spin wildly out of control, and the fact that even a tiny hitting tin can exist fatal due to the vacuum outside the adjust.
The infinite marines the Nameless War are there to provide Boxing Fleet with an organic infantry force for rapid deployment, the expectation beingness that in the result of larger operations, elements of the national militaries will exist deployed. While not equipped with a fully enclosed power armour, the marines do wear a supporting exoskeleton that allows them to acquit armour far heavier and more than protective than could otherwise exist carried. The marines are primarily intended for operations on planets but practice storm an enemy space station.
Stark'due south War has the titular Stark and company (Who are technically Army - the USMC having been reduced to a ceremonial formation that never operates in space), although the "infinite" function isn't actually their specific vocation — considering soldiers all wear environmentally-contained Powered Armor, military command doesn't make distinction betwixt "space marines" and normal ones except for their current posting. (Fighting on the moon does require different competencies than fighting on Globe, naturally, but good luck disarming the incompetent officeholder corps of that.)
Marcus Winchester from Mike Kupari's Her Brothers Keeper is a former Spec Ops espatier.
In the Frontlines series past Marko Kloos, the two master earth factions have space marines for send security on their naval ships, garrisoning their colonies, and taking colonies away from the other faction. The United Due north American Republic marines trace their lineage back to the United States Marines of the modernistic mean solar day. The Sino-Russian Alliance marines appear to be descendants of current Russian Airborne Troops and Russian Marines equally they are mentioned as wearing blue striped telnyashkas.
In the Illuminae series, Infinite Marines are the bulk of the forces seen inside the United Terran Dominance. Though in that location might exist an regular army we don't see, as the merely soldiers we meet directly are part of a ship's crew, beingness much closer to classical marines.
The books of the Aeon 14 shared universe abound with Space Marine esprit de corps. The principle protagonist, Tanis Richards, though originally a Space Navy pilot and captain and and then a military intelligence counter-insurgency officer, served with and was honey past the Marines in both 5th millennium Sol and ninth millennium New Canaan. Exemplified by the oral communication Marine Sgt. Hector gives when Tanis is captured in Race Beyond Spacetime:
Sgt. Hector: "I grew up on stories of Tanis Richards... She'south our family, she'south our mother, she's the onetime lady, she's a Marine. And what do nosotros do when a Marine gets left behind?"
Marines: "No Marine is left behind!"
The squad bellowed the ancient mantra, and the words warmed his heart.
Sgt. Hector: "Fuckin' right they don't. And who's the nigh badass Marine of all time?"
Marines: "Admiral Tanis Richards!"

Live Activity Telly

The Expanse: Both the Earth-based UNMC and the Mars-based MMC are direct-up examples, complete with power armor that turns a single recon Marine into a formidably lethal walking tank. While there's no love lost between the 2 factions, the MMC reminds their troops that "the second most dangerous affair in the solar arrangement next to a Martian Marine, is a United nations Marine".
Andromeda had the "Lancers," which appear to serve the aforementioned functions as Marines traditionally practise.
Babylon 5:
- The episode "Gropos" featured the Globe Force Marine Corps, dirtside troops of the Earth Alliance (the episode title is brusque for "ground pounders"). Just well-nigh every stereotype of Infinite Marine beliefs fabricated it into this episode, including the obligatory bar fight. Towards the end of the episode, they depart for a battle that nosotros briefly go to run into, and the very end of the episode reveals every single named Gropo grapheme, except for Full general Franklin and his senior NCO, had been killed off-screen in the battle, within anxiety of each other.
- The Gropos brand another appearance in the third flavour, when they come to the station to forcefully attempt to take it back from Captain Sheridan.
Battlestar Galactica has marines (Colonial Marine Corps) who are dressed and equipped like to a Existent Life Hostage Rescue Squad. Originally created as throwaway Redshirts for action scenes, they terminate up playing an important function in events (e.g. ability struggles) in the Rag Tag Fleet.
Flavour ii of For All Mankind features US Marines on the Moon, sent to secure mining claims disputed past the Soviet Marriage.
Sgt. Riley in Pixelface is a space marine from a video game called Sentient Strength.
Cerise Dwarf makes a brief mention to their existence in the extended cut of Back In The Ruby. As well, in one of the books Rimmer's son was a space marine.
Power Rangers:
- Power Rangers in Infinite: This is the first season where the Rangers could be said to count as this. The season is Darker and Edgier and depicts the clash between good and evil as an all-out intergalactic war. The Red and Silver Rangers are members of the military machine of their homeworld KO-35 and the Rangers often use boxing tactics more than in line with that of soldiers.
- Power Rangers Lost Galaxy: The travelling human colony of Terra Venture has its own armed forces forcefulness which four of the Rangers are a part of.
- Power Rangers S.P.D.: The A-Squad'south armor suits and their reputation equally being the ace heroes of SPD give off this vibe. Notwithstanding, they plow out to be villains.
Space: To a higher place and Beyond is a Television receiver serial about The Team of literal USMC Space Marines. Unusually, the master characters are Space Fighter pilots rather than infantry.
Star Trek: Enterprise had a team of MACOs (for Military Assault Command Operations) fastened to the crew in the third season. Despite some initial tension with Enterprise's security team they proved to be quite useful (certainly more and so than Voyager's security personnel) though their employ of Special Weapons and Tactics acquired some Continuity gripes from fans. The trope likewise gets a reference in the commencement Star Trek: Elite Force game (see below,) with the EMH stating "I'm a doc, non a space marine!"

Music

Talvikuningas, a concept album by the Finnish ring CMX, gives united states the Praetorian cyborgs. They're exactly what you'd remember they would be. Beefy armor, heavy weapons, modified genes and, oh yes, they're cyborgs. (But don't but take our discussion for it, watch the music video)

Tabletop Games

The setting of the Warhammer 40,000 tabletop game and assorted derived media, which include estimator games, comic books and bestselling novels, prominently features an army of warriors known more properly as the Adeptus Astartes, only most often referred to every bit simply the Space Marines. Not only is he a holistic Warrior Monk in beefy Powered Armour, who wields a lot of big guns, kills aliens, heretics, and mutants with ease, and knows no fear, he's also a genetically engineered Super Soldier with a fanatical devotion to the Emperor. In summary, the trope Turned Up to Eleven. They're generally considered the Spotlight-Stealing Squad of the setting, and have a number of sourcebooks dedicated to them. These guys can endure from "Seinfeld" Is Unfunny, being such a long-running franchise.
- And if these guys aren't scary enough, yous also take the Chaos Space Marines, the belligerent mutated brethren of the Space Marines, who come in all different flavors (from Ax-Crazy to plague-zombies to metalhead drug-addicts to the spirits of deceased Marines bound to their armor long after their bodies had crumbled to dust). Add this to the fact that they serve a host of Eldritch Abominations and even the other Marines are afraid of them.
- Let's get into what exactly goes into making a 'Space Marine' by 40k standards. Your aspirants are usually natives of a Death World and/or a Proud Warrior Race Guy culture ages x to xiv, and go through extensive trials to whittle information technology downwardly to the very best of those. Then comes the Super Serum- the gene-seed derived from the children of a Concrete God, which alters your very appearance to be more like your Primarch. Then you lot take many boosted organs and bionics gradually implanted, a 2d heart, a third lung, acrid spit glands, and so you begin your gainsay engagements equally a Spotter at age xv the youngest. If you survive those, you then get the Black Carapace, a big pare implant that interfaces with the Powered Armor you just earned the right to wear. All this time you'll receive training in every aspect of military life and action, and indoctrinated into a fanatical faith in the Emperor, and undergo difficult and mortiferous initiation rituals, and constantly monitored for any sign of corruption, weakness or disloyalty. If you lot survive all that? Congratulations, you're now (at to the lowest degree as far as your role on the tabletop) a disposable shield for a heavy weapons team. And if you survive that and take centuries of battle under your belt, you are given the honor of being part of the 1st Company Terminator squads. And y'all y'all manage to survive that you are probable to exist a Dreadnought, immune to slumber in a life-sustaining sarcophagus until you are needed to fight in a xx pes tall walking machine.
- The actual Imperial Navy tends to use poorly-trained conscripts for both its boarding actions and its defense confronting the same. They are basically a vast mass of cannon fodder with shotguns designed to shred soldiers while leaving corridors relatively undamaged to fit with the rules most Majestic Navy commanders not being allowed to have anyone useful in ground actions under their straight control. The Space Marines themselves take part in boarding actions more often than not but when their own ships are involved (the Space Marines are a split organisation altogether, information technology's complicated but there is a reason) and as befitting such elite troops, this generally consists of small squads penetrating to the enemy ship'southward span or engines.
- Battlefleet Gothic gives the Eldar the pick to have Aspect Warrior boarding parties. Depending on which Attribute you consider as making up these parties, the options can turn downright scary.
- The Tau eschew close gainsay in normal 40k as well as Battlefleet Gothic; whoever they use equally marines are pretty bad at it. Except when his proper name is Shas'la Kais, in which case he's a Walking Death.
  - That being said, the closest they have to a usable boarding party without resorting to Kroot Mercenaries would be the Breacher Teams; they're all intended for the close confines of urban combat, but they are equipped with Pulse Blasters and Pulse Pistols, which would not exist out-of-identify in a boarding action.
Aristocracy Clan infantry in the BattleTech universe are, indeed, located somewhere inside armor the size of iv brick shithouses. The subversion is that these Space Marine stand-ins are chosen to be infantry in a galaxy where Humongous Mecha are kings of the battlefield, so they're already seven feet tall plus and ripped to shit, and then they're put within armor that allows them to survive in extreme heat, common cold, the vacuum of infinite, underwater, and fly through the air... hence their name: Elementals.
- Then in that location's their reputation of being able to rip open Battlemechs similar tin cans, given a sufficient numerical advantage.
- With emphasis on Elite. Elementals are BattleTech universe's equivalent of Astartes: Genetically engineered giants equipped with powerful boxing armor designed to tear the shreds out of all opposition, particularly much larger Battlemechs. The Clans also accept regular infantry merely they're treated equally little more than Cannon Fodder.
- This is about the point where we should mention that the Inner Sphere on the other hand also has huge suits of powered armor in a wide multifariousness of shapes and sizes (which the Clans are catching upward to), but have to brand due to regular men and women inside of them. They also brand use of regular infantry, which can be on pes, riding in/on vehicles, or using jet packs.
- A particular Inner Sphere instance belongs to the mercenary outfit known as the Grey Death Legion. The Legion was the starting time to use power armor extensively, not merely for infantry gainsay, only for getting close and bravado the legs off battlemechs. The GDL's anti-mech units are every bit close to Badass Normal as the BattleTech Universe will allow.
Race for the Galaxy, a menu based game designed by Thomas Lehmann, has a card entitled Infinite Marines which displays the about generic view of this trope. The carte du jour gives an obvious military bonus.
The Prime Directive/Starfleet Universe Strategy game and RPG actually give all the major space empires, like the Federation and the Klingons, Platoons of Space Marines for boarding actions or planetary drops.
In Traveller the 3rd Imperium is famous for the prowess of its marines. They usually wear battlesuits and are trained to "parachute" out of space. They also have esoteric customs like their cutlasses and bagpipes.
Starfleet Battles has (almost all) ships equipped with Boarding Parties, which can exist used to board other ships or repel boarders, and the Marines optional module adds detailed ground combat (with tanks, heavy weapons squads and even air support and artillery too) and highly detailed subdivisioning of (most) ships for more than 'realistic' boarding actions. It also added many more 'commando' ships, which be primarily to deliver marines to combat.
The cunningly titled Space Marines, published by Fan Tac in 1977.
In Tomorrow's War the USMC themselves have jurisdiction over all of the USA's extraterrestrial ground deportment. By agreement with the Army who get Globe.

Video Games

Video Games based on the Conflicting series will, inevitably, have the players assume the role of the iconic Colonial Marines from the second motion picture. Notably in their Track Shooter trilogy, Conflicting 3: The Gun, Aliens Extermination and Aliens Armageddon.
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine: Exactly What It Says on the Can.
"The Space Marine" is the only name given the hero of the Doom series. Amidst fans, he'south acquired the appreciating nickname of "Doomguy". On his guest appearance in Quake Iii: Arena, he'due south known simply every bit "Doom". In the books, his name is Flynn Taggart. In the movie, he was named John Grimm; apparently id Software's sole insistence for the picture show was that his kickoff name exist "John". In the Doom³ novels by Matthew Costello, he was named John Kane (curiously, this is the aforementioned surname as the protagonist of Convulse IV). In the Doom RPG mobile games he's given the name BJ/Stan Blazkowicz. DOOM (2016) follows the fan tradition for the classic games and nicknames him "The Doom Slayer", which is what Quake Champions calls that version of the graphic symbol. He doesn't have much characterisation equally an actual space marine, but the phrase has gone on to get a shorthand for a certain type of FPS grapheme — see A Space Marine Is You.
Cortex Command plays with this a lot. While virtually of the types of troops in-game are delivered by dropship or rocket pod, and are heavily armed and armored, they're actually extremely heavily engineered to exist quite literally brainless. Justified in that the player themselves are brains in bunkers, and control their troops past either direct possessing bodies or giving very elementary commands.
Halo:
- John-117, better known past his rank "Master Main", whose design been quite influential on post-2001 video games. He is 1 of the very few survivors of the heavily armored and augmented Spartan-Ii super-soldiers, who are by far humanity'south greatest soldiers.
- There are also the Spartan-IIIs, who are basically low-budget, expendable Spartans. They're nonetheless more than badass than nearly everything else in the galaxy. In Halo: Reach, centered on a team of Spartan-IIIs, Noble Six alongside Spartan-II Jorge-052 really put the "Space" in Space Marine, every bit they commandeer Sabre Infinite Fighters engage in space dogfights, and board a Covenant cruiser.
- It is technically inaccurate to label the Master Chief or any Spartan as a Space Marine; while they have powered armor and advanced grooming (plus loads of augmentations), they're all actually UNSC naval personnel, making them closer to Navy SEALs. John-117's actual title and military machine designation is "Main Chief Petty Officer John-117", which makes him an non-commissioned Naval officer. The Orbital Drop Shock Troopers (ODSTs) better fit this trope, being actual elites within the UNSC Marine Corps; they consider themselves the main rivals to the Spartans, despite being normal humans with unpowered armor. The UNSC's regular Marines themselves sort of count, being the UNSC'south primary rapid-deployment and expeditionary force.
- Halo 4 introduced the Spartan-IVs, which, different their trained-from-childhood predecessors, are fabricated from adult volunteers, with many of them existence, ironically, former ODSTs. They're fifty-fifty more than numerous than the IIIs were, with much better equipment to boot (though they're in general less skilled than their predecessors due to a more relaxed selection criteria). Also, the Spartans now have their own separate UNSC co-operative, meaning they're technically still non Marines.
The basic man unit in StarCraft, by far the virtually-played Real-Fourth dimension Strategy game ever, is the Marine. The "lots of big guns" aspect sets it apart from the basic units of the other races, giving it range. Despite all the beefy armour and preparation and the fact that most of them are Badass convicts that take been brainwashed to gamble the life for the force they serve, they happen to be one of the weakest units in the game individually. Goes to show how powerful everything else in the game is. Badass inflation strikes once more.
- It is, however, a testimony to the versatility of the Terran Marines that '1000&M' (Marine and Medic in SC1, Marine and Medivac in SC2) is considered a solid build for most situations and has consistently been a headache to balance against. They're the only cannon fodder in both games with anti-air capability (the Zerg Queen and Protoss Sentry being closer to vehicles and much less expendable).
The Red Faction serial has armour-suited EDF Drones deployed from Earth to Mars, first landing to provide emergency aid the rebels, later as a tyrannical occupation strength. Their pattern in Red Faction: Guerrilla bears similarities to Halo. They are unusual in being bad-guy Space Marines in a video game.
Dead Space: Subversion: The principal character, Isaac Clarke, has the armor, weapons, and coolness of a Space Marine... And he's a repairman: his "weapons" are tools for mining and repairs.
- Although played straight at times in the sequel; Isaac can acquire quite a few suits of armor which qualify (although you can still equip the original i whenever you want). He tin also acquire new weapons which can only be military grade.
Beyond Good & Evil's hamtacular Double H is something of an Affectionate Parody of the Infinite Marine (and possibly the Action Hero in full general). For one matter, he's the dutiful Sidekick instead of the main character, who is introduced to play James Bondage before anything else. Most of his military-inspired one-liners and battle cries are intentionally So Bad They're Good. He's rather squishy and awkward beneath his grizzled badass facade and Perma-Stubble.
Space Trooper is one of the ten original ring sets available in "zOMG!". Its primary focus is on ranged attacks, and its skills include firing Cool Guns, altering its density, and summoning a Beehive Barrier.
Disgaea: Hr of Darkness has them. They are the be-all-cease-all masters of guns, with the highest Hitting affinity in the game (tying with the Game-Breaker Majin classes).
One of the major complaints against the 2008 Continuity Reboot Turok game is the conversion of the chief grapheme from a colorful Native American Warrior to a generic Space Marine directly outta Aliens.
In Gears of War and Gears of War 2 you are veteran marine Marcus Fenix. He wears the trademark bulky armor.
FreeSpace had them as well, but since information technology was a infinite sim, they were relegated to cutscenes and briefing reports on the overall war. The GTA ones appeared to be the just competent ones though, since the versions for any other grouping seemed to be butchered in any encounter.
Commander Shepard, Gunnery Primary Ashley Williams, and Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko in Mass Consequence are all Space Marines - although Kaidan, as a combination biotic/tech guy/medic, notably doesn't fit the trope in most respects, and Shepard becomes more than like a Space Secret Agent at the outset of the game. Applies when y'all play as a Soldier, Vanguard, or Infiltrator.
- Though your squad in the 2d game is an even bigger Ragtag Agglomeration of Misfits than the starting time, you lot actually end up boarding more than starships, making more rapid insertion operations, and mostly behaving more than like Infinite Marines than you lot exercise in the offset game. Squadmates Zaeed Massani and Jacob Taylor were both ex-Alliance marines earlier 1 went mercenary and the other joined Cerberus. You lot even meet a few Quarian Migrant Armada Marines including Kal'Reegar. The third game adds Lieutenant James Vega.
- All human soldiers seen in the game are Space Marines; the codex notes that the ground forces doesn't exist anymore as a split branch and the Marines are simply a sub-branch of the navy. Appropriately, Powered Armor, Deflector Shields, coilguns several times more powerful than equivalent modern firearms, genetic/cybernetic enhancements, and omni-tools are standard consequence among the grunts. And then again, they're standard for everyone else'southward grunts as well.
- In Mass Outcome: Andromeda, Alec Ryder and his twin son and daughter are all old Alliance marines. Alec was a legendary N7 Special Forces operative only like Shepard in the first three games, while his son and daughter briefly followed his footsteps every bit marines before all three of them got kicked out. Squadmate Cora Harper was also briefly an Alliance marine biotic stupor trooper earlier being sent on an exchange program to an asari commando squad. She considers herself an asari commando now.
Star Trek: Elite Forcefulness practically lampshades the aforementioned ineffectiveness of Voyager's security, as its premise is that a group of the best combatants aboard form a special "hazard squad" of infinite marines.
In the Star Trek vein, Star Trek Online has several Space Marine organizations.
- Star Trek: Enterprise's One thousand.A.C.O.s return as one of the anti-Borg organizations alongside the Klingon Accolade Baby-sit and despite the ongoing war betwixt both sides, they've teamed up to create an Anti-Borg Task Force called the Omega Force. There's also the Nukara Strikeforce who are another multi-faction task force who deal with Tholian threats and the new Dyson Joint Command, a joint task force led by the Romulan Republic to button back the Voth from the Solaneon Dyson Sphere. Joining these organizations are the majority of End-Game reputation systems (though the M.A.C.O./Honor Guard/Omega Force existed earlier the reputation mechanic was put in).
- Commander K'Tek of the Klingon flagship IKS Bortasqu' is basically one of these. His job championship is QaS DevwI', or "troop leader", and it entails leading the ship'south embarked troops during boarding actions.
Star Command ii features the Orz, whose ships can deploy combat-exosuit-wearing infinite marines who will board enemy ships to kill their crews.
The One-half-Life mod Natural Pick features aliens vs. Infinite Marines, in a cross between get-go person shooter and real fourth dimension strategy.
- Vanilla Half-Life i was a touted disfavor, starring an Action Survivor Badass Bookworm instead of even so another Space Marine. But on reaching the end levels, the weapons, playstyle and situations were substantially the same — Quake Two with the serial numbers filed off.
In the Wing Commander games some secondary characters are Space Marines.
- In the improver "Operation Thor's Hammer", for the original Wing Commander, they provide the force that assassinates the Kilrathi priestess conducting the Sivar Eshrad ceremony on Firekka.
- In Fly Commander Four, Space Marines of both the Terran Confederation and the Union of Border Worlds play a part in the plot, mostly in regards to boarding ships and stations to (re)capture them for their respective governments.
- Fly Commander Prophecy: Terran Confederation marines recapture several stations taken over by the Nephilim, and shut down most of the wormhole gate in the final mission, leaving the player to cease the job due to potent resistance from the bugs preventing farther marine penetration of the facility.
The Federation Troopers of the Metroid Prime Trilogy. Unfortunately, they most frequently serve as the franchise's requisite Redshirt Regular army. This is more a matter of the Worf Event than any inherent weakness. In Metroid Prime three: Corruption, yet, they have shown proficiency across this role.
Ships in Master of Orion ii got marines on board as a Boarding Party or defenders from the aforementioned. Planets can be invaded past troops via Transports and build Billet for defenders.
In Star Wars: Battlefront Two, not just exercise you get country battles, but you get space battles. Space battles take two classes: pilots who have little in the fashion of personal defence and marines who accept better weapons than their land analogues. On the other paw, a pilot's starship auto-repairs.
Many ships ^notation mainly capitals, only also corvettes and three of 4 freighter classes in the X-Universe series can carry around EVA-capable marines. Player-controlled personnel transports, corvettes, and missile frigates tin utilise them to try and capture other ships - via spacewalking the marines to the other ship or firing them in a boarding pod - The target ship volition sometimes be defended by their own marines, or internal turrets
Betty: A Marine is a simple animate being. Feed information technology and tell it what to exercise, whatever many things go possible.
Of note are the Commonwealth Commandos featured in Star Wars: Republic Commando. While the standard white armored troopers act like standard infantry, Republic Commandos are equipped with improve weapons, custom painted and detailed armor and recieve superior training, as well as distinct personalities, which was considered odd, as they're clones and should exist carbon copies of each other. Fighting as a squad with mission support, they more than closely fit the trope of archetype space marines than the other generic clone troopers. Merely looking dorsum, this became standard amidst clones in The Clone Wars television series, which (specially after the kickoff flavor) has a lot of focus on the clones being this trope, and had The Cameo for Delta Squad.
The Delta Squad'southward lasting influence is felt in the Star Wars: The Old Democracy, likewise, despite that game existence set 4 thousand years further upwardly the timeline. The Republic Trooper class is essentially a infinite marine, whose storyline is ripe with boarding action, basis action, space action, and lots and lots of Stuff Blowing Up (courtesy of the dedicated demolitions practiced companion).
Every race in Sword of the Stars has some form of power armored marines for boarding actions. Background fabric for SolForce states that the marines and the ground forces are essentially the aforementioned thing, seeing as the game doesn't bother with ground gainsay.
The Karavan of Ryzom, even if they aren't these, still give off this sort of vibe with their avant-garde applied science and godlike weapons.
The special ability of the Hoplite Carrier in Infinite Tyrant is to deploy a squad of these as a Boarding Party, messing with one of the enemy's ships.
Every Borderlands game has at least one of the playable characters as basically a former infinite marine from one of the setting'south corporate militaries.
- The offset and second game feature Roland and Axton, respectively, who both come up equipped with deployable auto turrets every bit their action skill. Roland was a member of the Atlas Corporation's Cherry Lance, while Axton was a soldier for Dahl.
- The Pre-Sequel has Athena, who was a former Reddish Lance assassin. She comes with a ballistic shield called Aspis that she can throw similar Helm America. The Pre-Sequel takes this trope another step, being attack Pandora's moon, with the opening cinematic existence the Vault Hunters as a Boarding Party coming to the rescue of the Hyperion Helios Station against Dahl's Lost Legion Marines.
- Borderlands 3 has Moze, who was a member of the Vladof corporation'southward Ursa Corps, which operates the Fe Bear Mini-Mecha. 3 too has the Vault Hunters land on each planet for the first time via Drib Pod.

Web Comics

Commander Badass in Manly Guys Doing Manly Things is a Navy TiALS (Fourth dimension, Air, Land, Bounding main) from a "generic infinite time to come" who was genetically engineered to be a tough-as-nails vitrify soldier type, in lodge to sell activity figures considering that'southward apparently how wars are fought in the future.
In S.S.D.D many of the characters of the time to come arcs are marines in the Core army augmented with cybernetics or Nano Machines and equipped with experimental Powered Armor. When Tessa and Julien discover out that their squad is actually going into space for their first time he references a certain legal action.

Spider web Original

In all of his forms, Iron Manatee is ane. A veteran of the Anglo-Chinese Opium Moon Wars, he fights in an armored space-suit, later upgraded to a full adapt of Powered Armor with a primitive railgun and diamantine bladed chainsaw.
The KSS Marines in Nexus Gate serve equally the game's space marines. They guard the Kovolis held infinite from space pirates and other criminals.
In Then That Worlds May Align , the war machine of the Solar Union has the Interstellar Advanced Trooper Corps (the author has said that he specifically wanted to avert the term "Infinite Marines") who are stated to be well-trained enough that whatsoever one of them is equal to ten standard soldiers.

Western Animation

In Titan Maximum, Titan Force Five and the armed services they work for is never openly stated they are in the marines, merely they are all given Navel Ranks. Billy's rank is even titled Infinite Seaman.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars: The clone troopers got treated equally this more and more the further into the series you go; in much of the first season, especially before "Rookies", the clones were generally grunts who didn't even use cover much like the Mecha-Mooks they fought. Many episodes revolve around this trope also as The Squad, and they even fight out on the hulls of ships on at least one occasion. A lot of them proceed commando style missions, and they hold up well compared to the Jedi, due to teamwork, especially the "ARC troopers" (who are more than independent minded clones). Delta Squad, who are this trope starting time, and clones 2nd, make a cameo, likewise every bit another Republic Commando (who true to the game, is a One-Man Army) in the fifth flavour. Fifty-fifty more outstanding, is the fact that the lowliest grunt clones can and do get promoted to serve alongside superior types of clones, as happens with Domino Squad condign ARC troopers. Season 7 introduces the Bad Batch, an experimental group of clone commandos with genetic mutations that set them autonomously from the residual of the Grand Army. They're basically Delta Squad expies with Bio-Augmentation, and they're fix to get their own spinoff, Star Wars: The Bad Batch in 2021.

Real Life

23 U.s. Marines have been astronauts, including Colonel John Glenn, the first American to brand an orbital flight; every bit a result, Infinite Marines take been around, in a very literal sense, most since the first of human spaceflight.
- Of form, unlike the fictional version, these Marines aren't out to fight anyone (notwithstanding), but are used considering a Marine is highly probable to be in prime number physical condition, which is very necessary for working in space. In comparison, there have been over 80 astronauts from the Air Force (Air Force pilots being similarly held to high standards of fitness), simply only 15 from the Army (with the Air Strength having taken virtually of the pilot jobs when it carve up off back in 1947).
- Thus far none of them flew aboard the Russin Soyuz though. Because a Soyuz descent capsule is kitted with a survival gun, equally well as landing retrorockets.
- This besides makes a lot more sense when you realize that performing the equivalent of EVA work is literally the task that makes marines "marines" instead of sailors or infantry. Fifty-fifty the original marines in the Phoenician fleets were the soldiers trained to jump out of the boat and exercise irregular things similar climb onto other boats to engage enemy forces or beach the craft manually in a normally bad landing spot, rather than being trained to operate the ships.
SUSTAIN was a project beingness undertaken by the United States armed forces during the 2000s for the purpose of orbital Marine deployment. Then the financial crash happened in 2008, the Great Recession striking, and military budgets got slashed across the board, leading the Pentagon to abandon the project. The closest analog to fiction is Halo'due south Helljumpers, but the idea was damn close to having Marines driblet in from infinite. Early in his presidency, Donald Trump stated that he wanted to revive the project under the moniker "Infinite Forcefulness."
- While the Infinite Force has been fully created, it doesn't have plans for actual Space Infantry yet. For at present they are only ground personnel operating the US' armed services unmanned space assets, like satellites.
NASA has a special forces team, although they are technically police enforcement SWAT personnel dedicated to protecting NASA's ground facilities, and non military machine in infinite operations.