The Hero class unit of the Zerg Hydralisk is called Hunter-Killer.
Similarly, the Hero class unit of the Defiler (not seen in-game, but available in the map editor) is the Unclean One, after a type of Nurgle-serving daemon.
The Hero class unit of the Zerg Ultralisk is called Torrasque, also the name of a dragon from an old French legend.
Protoss
Units
The Observer is a treasure trove of these in both games. Among it's greatest hits are a German Warcraft 2 advertisement, a Steve Irwin-like voice, a Diablo quote from Adria and...
Click on the Hero Samir Duran long enough, and he will start speaking the titles of Duran Duran songs.
To further the reference he speaks the first two lines in the chorus to Duran Duran's most well known song.
Duran: "My Name is Duran, DURAN!" Duran: "What's so funny?" Duran: "Please, please, tell me now!" Duran: "Is there something I should know?"
A Terran mining planet is named Moria. A mission takes place there in which you have to mine loads of minerals. Can't be any more obvious, can it?
The Terran victory cinematic from Brood War is a parody of newsreels from The Fifties, and probably also a shoutout to the first Starship Troopers movie.
The intro to Brood War is a near-direct copy of the Do Lung bridge scene from Apocalypse Now, complete with a detached soldier sporting a grenade launcher listening to a Hendrix-esque guitar track.
Lots of aspects of the Terrans, in particular the Used Future aesthetic and the awesome new music, give one the impression that someone at Blizzard got the Firefly DVD set for Christmas.
Also, a website error yields one of two messages: "Some terrible, terrible error has occured," or "I swallowed a bug - We seem to be having a little problem with our website, so we may experience some slight turbulence and then - explode." invoked
That and the general feel of the campaign in general. Compare the relationship between Jim and Tychus to the one between Mal and Jayne, for example.
The hologram of a dancing Night Elf female in the Hyperion's cantina appears to be the actual character model, imported directly from World of Warcraft.
The very first Tosh mission has you mining for boatloads of minerals on a planet called Redstone, while creepy crawly Zerg run a periodic interference on your otherwise peaceful operations.
The Hyperion's armory is Bay 12. Rory Swan, the manager, also looks pretty dwarvenly.
...mentions that he has a relative named Lester (a character in one of the first game's cinematics killed by a zerg)...
"Oh, my cousin Lester saw a zergling, once..."
...and suspect that a medic is following them around. (They automatically try to heal injured units within their sight range and will follow them around to do so)
One of his quotes is also "I'm waiting on you!" - which belongs to (human) Kerrigan in the first game.
Many of the Thor's lines are retoolings of various Arnold Schwarzenegger lines. With the same accent. The German version has even Schwarzenegger's dub voice for the Thor.
Via editors people have found out how the Raven operator's face looks like. He has a blank expression staring at a screen while holding a control stick. It's suspected to be a joke towards the clichè of hardcore gamers in front of their monitors.
The Ravens are aerial casters and detectors, and their abilities are best against groups of light enemy units (science vessel)
He also often follows attack orders by saying "burn and pillage!", guess what vikings were famous for?
One of his fun quotes directly references the early Blizzard game, "The Lost Vikings". He calls out the three characters names, and concludes that they probably got lost again.
Vikings are dual purpose walkers with anti-ground Gatling guns and anti-air missiles (Goliath, apart from changing modes... into an expy of the Valkyrie).
The spectre rattles off a whole bunch of titles of Steven Seagal movies when repeatedly clicked.
The ghost likewise spouts out more than a few Clint Eastwood quotes.
The Medivac dropship is just the original dropship with healing abilities, and during development it was just the normal dropship. When it became the medivac, they didn't even bother to change the model except to slap a few red crosses on the wings.
The Battlecruiser captain is also apparently a World of Warcraft player as he complains: "Let's hurry up and finish this attack. It's raid night."
The Hercules pilot not only speaks with scotish accent he also has a blue strip over his nose. It seems like a copy of Braveheart was also onboard the old starships. It even has a kilt pattern spraypainted on his armor suit.
The Spartan Mercenary Goliath pilot is modeled after Dustin Browder, head producer of the game. He gained internet fame by his enthusiastic reporting style, birthing the "terrible, terrible damage" meme that is also referenced ingame several times.
Heroes and story characters
Apparently a certain spy is an inspiration to ghosts, given the way Nova and Tosh play with their butterfly knives.
A group of marines in that mission also say that line when they are about to get killed by the Brutalisk.
And his name, "Egon Stetmann," is a combination of the three original Ghostbusters: Egon, Stantz, and Venkman.
And one of his greetings is "Back off man. I'm a scientist."
He also wears a shirt bearing the insignia of the Horde.
Tosh looks like a burlier version of Reggae legend Peter Tosh, (hence the surname) but he is most certainly not a laid-back Rastafarian.
In the Hyperion's Cantina there's also a poster about "Tosh and the Screamers", his band.
Valerian was derisively called "Arthas-in-Space". When the Starcraft II official site was first launched, the entire biography page on him was littered with comments about his likeness to Arthas.
Warfield spouts one to the famous "TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE DAMAGE!" meme in the mission "The Gates Of Hell":
A lot of new units exist to fulfill the same role as a cut unit from the original game, while some new units are just old units with new abilities. Most are an improvement over the original. A few examples:
The Brood Lords have the same role as the guardians, and even look like guardians, with the main difference being that brood lords spawn broodlings when they attack
Spore colonies and sunken colonies (creep-expanding structures that doubled as anti-air or anti-ground turrets) have been replaced with spore crawlers and spine crawlers, respectively, which function nearly the same except that they can be repositioned and don't produce more creep (the zerg now use a different mechanic for spreading creep).
Completely inverted by the queen, who despite sharing its name with a unit from the original game is completely different. The original queen was an aerial support caster, the Starcraft II queen is a ground unit designed to help base expansion by spawning extra larva and expanding the creep as well as providing some basic air defense.
Also inverted with the Infested Terran, who is now a temporarily summoned unit that shoots guns rather than a suicide bomber (a role now filled by the baneling).
A new heavy air unit prominent in the Char campaign, the Leviathan, combines features from the heavy air units of the other two races (Terran Battlecruiser, for its heavy damage attack, and Protoss Carrier, for its ability to spawn Mutalisks).
The Torrasque returns as a strain of the Ultralisk in Heart of the Swarm, like its namesake it regenerates when "killed". Also the mutation is acquired after some Ultralisks are exposed to radiation from an experimental nuke.
Also from Heart of the Swarm, the Swarm Host is a call back to the Lurker. It still burrows to attack, but instead of attacking with rows of spines, it spawns two free Locust units every 15 seconds.
Protoss
Units
The Colossi are a thematic shout-out to the Martian war machines from The War of the Worlds: giant stilt-legged striders with ray guns (heat-based, too, like in the original) that sweep across enemy crowds.
A lot of new units exist to fulfill the same role as a cut unit from the original game, while some new units are just old units with new abilities. Most are an improvement over the original. A few examples:
The Mothership is literally just a bigger, more expensive Arbiter from the first game. In early previews of the game it had different abilities, but Blizzard scaled them back.
The Colossi are huge robotic siege units ideal for attacking masses of small units (reavers)
The Stalkers are basically Dragoons with the added ability to Flash Step
In the mission Gates of Hell, the invasion to Char looks really, really familiar to Starship Troopers, the movie and the game. No that this similarity is something new to StarCraft, but still: spore cannons shooting down ships from the orbit, the whole ‘badly outnumbered bunch of troops surrounded by a Horder Of Alien Locusts’ situation, and to some extend Banshees wiping off some zerg in the Warfiled's rescue cinematic.
Do you think the inmates on the prison planet New Folsom have the blues? Tychus sure does.
The arcade game "Lost Viking" is (in name) a reference to a previous Blizzard title, The Lost Vikings. One of the achievements has the face of one of the protagonists of the game, Erik.
There's a Night Elf holograph doing her World of Warcraft dance in the cantina.
With some employees of Blizzard having formed a Heavy Mithrilband, it's unsurprising that there would be many references to Heavy Metal and rock music, as well:
One of the on-location news reports takes place aboard the evacuation ship Skynyrd II.
The songs listed in the commercial for the Level 800 Elite Tauren Marines albums: The song titles are all somewhat inspired by titles of 20th Century and 21st Century music.
I Kissed a Zerg! (Katy Perry - I Kissed A Girl)
Like a Firebat out of Hell (Meatloaf - Like A Bat Out Of Hell)
I Left My Heart on Mar Sara (Literally) (Frank Sinatra - I Left My Heart in San Fransisco)
New Folsom Prison Planet Blues (Johnny Cash - Folsom Prison Blues)
Don't Cry For Me Tarsonis (Madonna - Don't Cry For Me Argentina)
Another Hydralisk bites the dust (Queen - Another One Bites The Dust)
With or Without Nukes (U2 - With or Without You)
Saturday Night's Alright for Nuking (Elton John - Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting)
Lucy In The Sky With Mutas (The Beatles - Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds)
I Can't Drive Warp 5.5! (Sammy Hagar - I Can't Drive 55)
Every Rose Has It's Thor (Poison - Every Rose Has It's Thorn)
The song Terran Up The Night has two pretty obvious ones:
We have our own Transformer The rough and tough Viking He can fly and he doesn't cry Like the little wuss Starscream We never served a king, no We never served no lord But if we lived in Azeroth, honey You know we'd join the Horde!
The whole plot could be seen as an homage to the Firefly universe in general, and the Serenity movie in particular:
Both settings have a lot of parallels to the post-Civil War South.
The (anti)hero is a former soldier who has become cynical and disillusioned by his experiences in war, and now captains a ship with a Badass Crew that does not-strictly-legal work to pay the bills. He has retained his sense of honor, but has a deep grudge against the government.
The fight with the Ancient One is similar to Diablo 3's Belial, another Blizzard game, of all things.
Brood Mother Niadra's infiltration of the Protoss ship is very much like Alien.
One achievement for killing a certain amount of units with Locusts grants the achievement "Epic Meal Time".
Destroying some Protoss shuttle hangars in a particular mission gives you the achievement "My Cool Bay Explosions".
As per usual, the Stop Poking Me lines include these, such as: The Hyperion has "I'd estimate the odds of successfully navigating this asteroid field as 3750 to 1", quoting The Empire Strikes Back and Zapp Brannigan's mixed metaphor in Futurama, "Knock down the first domino and the rest will fall like a pack of cards - checkmate".
During the fight with Narud, Kerrigan pins them down and punches them in the face numerous times, with Narud shapeshifting into Pre-Infestation Kerrigan to mock her inbetween one of the punches, quite similar to Ed's beatdown of Envy near the end of the First Fullmetal Alchemist.
The final cutscene is rather blatantly modeled after the climax of Return of the Jedi, with Mengsk calmly informing Kerrigan everything is All According to Plan, then using electricity to disable and torture her while he gloats, followed by a surprise save (complete with chokehold-and-toss) by Raynor. Followed by The Emperor exploding.
