Main page - StarCraft/Brood War - StarCraft II (Wings of Liberty - Heart of the Swarm - Legacy of the Void - Co-Op Missions)
Fridge pages are Spoilers Off by default, so all spoilers are removed and all examples folderized, so proceed with caution. You Have Been Warned.
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Fridge Brilliance
- Kerrigan's deinfestation:
- Jim Raynor makes a vow to be the one to kill the Queen of Blades during the Brood War and at first glance, Jim deeply missing Sarah seems to contradict this. However, it's likely that Jim doesn't consider the Queen of Blades the same person as Sarah Kerrigan, and when given the golden opportunity, he wants to remove Sarah's infestation. In a sense, Jim kept his promise and killed the Queen of Blades using the Xel'Naga Artifact.
- First, Kerrigan had a really crappy past, to the point where she would be considered a Woobie if she hadn't become the Big Bad of Brood War.
- Secondly, the infestation process is explicitly stated to remove one's humanity and morals, among other things. Basically, it knocks Kerrigan's ethical principles back to that of a child. What would happen if you gave an abused child an insane amount of power? They might use that power to lash out at the people who hurt them. In this case, the universe. Adding to that, her lack of morals would have made Evil Feels Good.
- Kerrigan is also not completely under control of the Dark Voice's programming as shown in the dialogue during the final mission "All In". The invasion of Char was hardly easy to perform by Raynor's Raiders and Valerian's Dominion expedition, but at the same time Kerrigan, is probably trying their hardest to allow it to happen so that she can be "cured" by the Xel'naga Artifact and free from the Voice's control.
- Kerrigan likely thought that Jim had abandoned her on Tarsonis, just like Arcturus. She didn't know that Jim did try to save her (and failed), nor that he left the Sons of Korhal shortly after because of her betrayal by Arcturus. So, at the end of Wings, after she gets zapped by the Xel'Naga artifact, she seems to regain some sense of humanity, and is rescued by Jim, she realizes that in reality, he did care about her (hence her confusion when she becomes slightly lucid), adding to the Heartwarming Moments of it all.
- At first, Hanson's side missions might seem pointless, but in reality, they aren't. When Raynor got the call for help, they were in exactly the same position that Kerrigan was in during the Fall of Tarsonis (thrown under a bus for expediency and in danger). Raynor already knew what it was like to fail to save one person from that fate, so he could not simply leave these people to the same fate. It's also why he sided against Selendis; the last time he gave up when there was still a chance, Kerrigan became the Queen of Blades and the results were completely tragic. Raynor probably believes that if he made the choices he failed to make at Tarsonis, then he can gain solace for failing to save Kerrigan. Alternately, the colony of Agria is in essentially the same situation Mar Sara was at the start of (vanilla) StarCraft. Abandoned by their government with just a rebel force to help them out of their plight.
- Likewise, the "Zerg were corrupted" plot twist seems random, but considering that Duran was manipulating them back in Brood War and already served an ancient being with goals involving the Xel'Naga, it actually makes perfect sense.
- Most people dismissed the fact that the news was all live as Rule of Funny. But there's something from the novels that needs to be kept in mind: The Confederacy ran very heavily edited news posts as fact for a long, long time. Merely passing a law that all news broadcasts must be live would make Mengsk look pretty good. To take this even further, Kate's occasion pro-Raynor or Anti-Mengsk comments actually make Mengsk look good for allowing them. Donnie's clumsy attempts to cut her off even seems like playful banter the audience may enjoy as much as we do.
- It also helps as well that, though the Dominion under Mengsk can have such jarring tendencies as shown above, they do have real life precedents. Indeed, some of his propaganda wouldn't be too out of place in Singapore's public service announcements, albeit exaggerated.
- Kate still reveals too much with her live feeds, and her actions when she's taunting Mengsk with that evidence is crimen laesae majestatis
; why does she live, and continue to work in UNN? Well, Valerian gave a hint in his interview. - The ending cinematic:
- At the ending cinematic it's revealed that Tychus was working with Mengsk in exchange for his freedom, and to earn it, he needed to kill Kerrigan. However, before doing so, he lets the laser of his rifle be seen by Raynor, which seems like a rookie mistake. But if you pay attention to some of the cutscenes between missions, you can tell that he tried to internally justify his actions as being a favor for his friend. It's only when he sees Jim interacting with Kerrigan that he's convinced that he truly loves her, which is why he gives him the chance to save her. This also explains why in Heart of the Swarm, Raynor doesn't seem to hold a grudge against him.
- Another bit: When Tychus initially accepted the deal from Mengsk—heavily implied to be "kill the Queen of Blades to secure your freedom", he didn't knew any of the backstory regarding Kerrigan and Raynor. He just thought he was going to be risking his own life to kill a threat (in exchange for his freedom if he succeeded), which, despite what he saw as a low chance of success, certainly beat rotting in prison for the rest of his life, especially if he could spend that time with his old friend. It wasn't until he learned that backstory, and realized that Raynor still cared about Sarah, that he started having his misgivings. Indeed, he tried his best to avoid the position he was in at the end of the game, including trying to convince Raynor to cut and run at one point.
- Anyone playing the game a second time around and watches all of Tychus's interactions with Raynor takes on a whole new meaning. He was only OK with the idea of shooting Kerrigan when he thought she was just the "queen bitch of the universe". When he found out that her death would not only mean breaking the heart of his best friend, but also end the known universe, he does everything he can to stay the hell away from Char until the last possible moment. He even screams at Raynor that he threw several years of his life away for him, and now Raynor is literally asking him to throw the rest of it away too. In the end though, when Raynor asked him to stand by his side one last time, Tychus still complies, with a grim look of resignation on his face because Raynor didn't take the hint (He obviously couldn't tell Raynor the reason out loud).
- You'll also notice that Tychus talks about killing Kerrigan a lot. It could be he's trying to convince Jim that it's the right thing to do, or he's trying to get across what he's expected to do.
- Heck, Tychus' rampage in the Odin takes on new meaning too, since he's so happy and enthusiastic about it compared to his normal serious and dour mood. Maybe he's enjoying it because he gets to take some revenge on Mengsk for forcing him into this situation, going on a big rampage on Korhal while knowing that Mengsk needed to keep him alive to kill Kerrigan.
- After the Odin stealing mission, Matt Horner mentions that Tychus' suit is a death trap which will shut down all his major organs if the correct transponder code is received. Tychus knew that he would be dead anyway, and decided that it's better to die by Raynor's hand than to be killed by Mengsk in a potentially more painful way.
- The reveal explains why he phrased his explanation the way he did; he made a "Deal with the Devil". The Devil is known to make deals that sounds good on the surface, but come at a great personal loss due to the exact wording. Tychus accepted the deal thinking he was going to kill a monster; he didn't realize he was chosen specifically because of the friendship between him and Raynor. He realized at that moment that Mengsk used him; either he kills the one person Raynor loved, or Raynor is forced to kill him. Either way, Mengsk got the last laugh.
- Breaking into New Folsom might seem like a risky idea, in that you would be freeing dozens, hundreds or even thousands of prisoners who would be violent or dangerous to everyone, not just Mengsk, until you remember that all the violent criminals are Boxed Crooks in the Dominion's Marine and Reaper cores so the people locked in New Folsom are most likely political prisoners without the physical ability to be soldiers.
- This was confirmed after you completed the mission. Prisoners at New Folsom were mostly intellectuals.
- Why does Tassadar have a different voice actor? Because it's not really him, but an illusion.
- Raynor has a starship in orbit for every mission.note The Raiders are running on volunteers with one massive, yet still very cramped battlecruiser. Dropping things from orbit is, in-universe, a serious undertaking; Hyperion takes thirty minutes to get low enough for a full evacuation. Not to mention how valuable the flagship is: it would be extremely stupid to put her at direct risk when a cargo ship can do the same work. The bases you build are a staging area and campsite, and likely a recruitment center whenever you operate on a world with sympathetic Terrans. When you're done, the command center and barracks take off and dock with Hyperion along with whatever new recruits decided to sign on. As for the Zerg, they're technically a few minds with ten bajillion feral animals to drive around; all they want to do is spread, so of course they build hive clusters. The Protoss build semi-permanent colonies and teleport everything in, pre-fabricated. Potential Gameplay and Story Integration, right there.
- It's shown in several cutscenes, such as the one after New Folsom, that the Raiders actually have several capital ships. Of course, it's very likely that the enemy isn't in the habit of leaving things undefended and those ships are engaging Dominion patrol ships, Protoss skirmishers, or the Zerg while the battle happens on the ground. It's also possible that they could be somewhere else coordinating other operations just like the Hyperion, only assembling for large-scale operations.
- After Deadman's Port, Tychus sarcastically comments that Raynor really knows how to pick his friends. He's not wrong to be sarcastic - Nearly every one of Raynor's Terran friends betrayed him, including Arcturus Mengsk, Kerrigan (albeit not willingly), and later on Tychus himself. The only ones he considers friends who don't stab him in the back are Matt Horner, Rory Swann and Egon Stetmann. Fittingly, those he doesn't consider friends - Mira Han, Gabriel Tosh, Nova, and Valerian - don't turn on him at all and will even go out of their way to help him. He seems to catch onto this after Wings of Liberty, making much more reliable friends among his own kind.
Fridge Horror
- It was mentioned that Kerrigan was infested to give independence to the Zerg swarm. But, throughout the campaign, Kerrigan was basically falling in with the Voice's bidding. This means that the Overmind's plan failed, and the Zerg swarm is still as trapped in its programming as ever by the Voice.
- While the UNN are played for laughs, it's the propaganda machine for the evil dictator Mengsk who will likely not tolerate dissenting views. One have to wonder how many times Donnie have saved Kate's skin by cutting her off before she can reveal too much.
- A couple things about the missions you do for Dr. Hanson:
- The entire mission branch is Kerrigan messing with Jim. Terrans are of no interest to the Swarm except as cannon fodder for important missions (with the exceptions for powerful psychics of course) so there's absolutely no reason at all for the colonists to be attacked and have such a persistent infestation unleashed on them as anything other than a distraction for Jim. Kerrigan is using them as a distraction to keep Jim busy while she searches for the artifacts as well as to demoralize him. This makes sense with a few other things in mind: while the order you do things in can greatly vary Kerrigan gets really annoyed at Jim after the first few artifact missions, noting how he keeps interfering and doesn't know when to quit so it makes sense she'd whip up something to distract him, and second there's Haven's Fall, Ariel's infestation suggests a sadistic higher mind at work. She's been left self-aware and her mutations are too clean, not something that Terran infestations generally have since it's considered an inefficient use of the Swarms resources to compensate for Terran's many genetic draw backs. Infested Ariel is a personal message from Kerrigan to Jim.
- Kerrigan was aware of everything the Raiders were up to via the Zerg specimen sample in the lab. It's growing rapidly and is in a position to oversee the collection of the artifacts and overhear everything Jim learns from Zeratul's memory crystal. This would explain how they've managed to keep it contained for so long (Heart of the Swarm demonstrates repeatedly that all Kerrigan needs to do to free Zerg from containment is to simply will it hard enough) with only half-hearted attempts to escape confinement via releasing acid into its containment jar when it could simply use its tentacles to smash the jar. One wonders if maybe Kerrigan was deliberately allowing Stettman to study the specimen in the hopes he'd mess up, or discover something she could use.
- One of the mercenary companies that you can hire in Wings of Liberty, the Spartan Company, are remnants of the UED expeditionary force. They're not the only ex-military mercenary company, but they're the only (known) UED one. Imagine what they have been through. Not only did they fight throught the Brood War, but they've now been stranded in the Koprulu Sector, with no chance of ever going back to Earth or seeing their families again.
