Web Animation / StarCrafts

If only the actual Zerglings from StarCraft were this cuddly.

(Honk-Honk!)

You know that Real-Time Strategy game, StarCraft II? The one where the Terrans, Zerg, and Protoss duke it out on a regular basis? The one with the insanely popular multiplayer?

Take that game, chibi-fy it a bunch, tweak the personalities of various units, imagine those same units having their own simple little lives, then throw in a healthy serving of Hilarity Ensues, and you'll get an idea as to what this series is all about.

Produced by Carbot Animations, Star Crafts (two words) is a animated web series available on Youtube. In each short little episode (they generally run only a minute or two on average), the three armies wage the war you'd expect, but not quite in the way you might expect them to wage it, with hilarious results. Other works Parodying other blizzard games have followed, see the creator page for details.

A total graphical overhaul of Starcraft 2 into the art style of Star Crafts is now available on the Starcraft 2 Arcade. Blizzard has also released StarCraft: Cartooned, a Game Mod for StarCraft Remastered that renders the entire game in Carbot style.

After 7 years and 7 seasons, the series finally ended with the release of the grand finale on 21st December 2019.

A brand-new episode 102, "How to Zerg", was released in May 2021.

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Star Crafts includes examples of the following tropes:

• Affectionate Parody: Take StarCraft II and cartoonify it.
• All Animals Are Dogs: It doesn't cover all of them, but Zergling, Ultralisks and Abathur's Ravagers in Co-op behave in ways quite similar to them.
  • In Season 2: Episode 22: "Crude Brood", one of the Brood Lord's Broodlings barks like a small, angry dog as it tries to jump up and reach a Colossus cowering on top of a Robotics Facility.
• Arc Villain: The rogue Adjutant is the Big Bad of Seasons 6, leading a purple army of Terrans. It is defeated by the end of the season, being replaced by the returning series Big Bad, Derpfestor.
• Art Evolution:
  • The quality of the designs, as well as the scale of the episodes, has improved drastically over the duration of the series.
  • A notable inversion would be a few characters who started out resembling the ingame units but were later much simplified, such as the zerg drones, which lost the little "wings" of the actual drones from Starcraft.
• Ass Shove: A raven in "Spineless Coward" launches a missile at a queen straight at her behind where she poops out creep for the fleeing spine crawler.
  Raven: Systems primed. (Naughtily squints its "eyes")
• Autobots, Rock Out!:
  • In Season 2 Episode 22 "Crude Brood", a Brood Lord (flying siege unit) starts rocking out to the music after attacking.
  • Season 3 Episode 7 shows that everything done in a Terran tech lab is essentially one massive latin dance party.
• Back-to-Back Badasses: In Season 5 Ep 27 The Fall (part 3), Patches and Medic Girl do this on a platform; the former firing, the latter shielding.
• Badass Adorable: Patchling, the main Zergling, who in the grand finale goes toe-to-toe with Derpfestor's forces aboard the Protoss ship, and ultimately defeats the Derpfestor himself by having him and his newly-hatched clone mind-control each other.
• Badass Fingersnap: A High Templar does this while casting Feedback on an Overseer, saving a fellow Dark Templar from certain death.
• The Berserker: Bob the Zealot's only recourse to enemies is to charge at them screaming madly. Taken to a head when most of his Protoss deathball is wiped out and he just charges the entire Zerg horde by himself, the one that's being lead by an Ultralisk.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: The series has two main villains, Derpfestor and Obnoxious Executor. Initially, Derpfestor is the Big Bad of Season 3, leading the Red Army against all three factions until he's defeated in the finale. Derpfestor returns, seemingly back on the Zerg's side in Season 5 but Obnoxious Executor underwent a Face–Heel Turn and began hoarding all the minerals for himself, with implications that he and Derpfestor are secretly working together. Season 6 has the Executor working with a Rogue Adjutant, which is heavily implied to be controlled by Derpfestor. Derpfestor and the Executor finally take center stage as the main villains in the final season.
• Big Damn Heroes: Happens several times: the biggest example is season 7. The huge derpfestor army is bearing down on the small remaining forces of the three races and their 6 remaining buildings. Than a bunch of dark templar are warped in using minerals stolen back from the executor, than medic girl returns with forces from Brood War, making a much more even fight.
• Big Friendly Dog: The Ultralisks. Due to how huge Ultras are, also counts as Canis Major.
• Big "NO!": Patches gives one upon seeing Crackhead's Heroic Sacrifice.
• Bittersweet Ending: The series finale. Derpfestor and the Executor are stopped, but Crackhead sacrificed himself to ensure the Red Army's defeat. However, the Zerg have reunited with Kerrigan, Bob is welcomed as family by the Probes, and Patches and Medic Girl are finally together with a child.
• Black Bead Eyes: Almost all of the Zerg units. The only exceptions this far are the Roach (Glowing Eyes of Doom), Viper, Mutalisk (both seem to have Cartoony Eyes), Corruptor (has no visible eyes at all), and Overseer (has eyes resembling a cat or snake). In addition, the Terran Marauder also sports these.
• Black Comedy: Make no mistake, the series runs on this with a helping of Comedic Sociopathy. It's just not quite noticeable due to the Bloodless Carnage and overall art style.
• Book Ends: At the end of "GG No Re", Bob returns to the trashed Terran base from Season 1 and looks down at the one intact building: the Supply Depot that blocked him in his very first appearance.
• Brick Joke: Several visual gags persist throughout the series. In the first season, a zergling bit off the back of a marine's pants, and from that point on, that marine would make cameos in several other episodes. Same thing in Season 2, with the overlord holding the mineral given to it by a drone early on in the season.
• Bring My Brown Pants: In Season 1 Episode 22, an overlord sees some approaching Phoenixes and uses its Generate Creep ability. Consider the fact that most players and casters refer to this ability as "pooping creep".
• Bring It: The Zealot's standard reaction to impending doom is to lift his psi blades into the air and scream before charging into battle.
• The Bus Came Back: "GG No Re" features the Ghost and the Dark Templar from "The Duel", apparently having been fighting for the past few seasons amidst the wreckage of the space platform. Said ghost proves instrumental in defeating Red Team.
• Call-Back:
  • Episodes frequently reference things that happened in previous ones, such as an SCV trying to get revenge on a probe and the Halloween episode was chock full of ones to the original Brood War.
  • Season 5, episode 11 is a Whole-Plot Reference to episode 5 of the original series, only with a Cyclone instead of Banelings, complete with the two Stalkers' reaction at the end. To reinforce the callback, Bob the Zealot gets a flashback to the episode, and a group of Banelings roll in at the end to add insult to injury.
• Cartoon Creature: The Zerg are stylized to a very simplified art style, with the Zerglings looking like small, earless dogs with wings and the drones being egg-shaped things with two little hands. Surprisingly, they manage to still be easily recognizable.
• Cerebus Syndrome: As the series went on, longer term plotlines and characters became more and more common, though still mixed in with the usual parodies. Season 3 introduced somewhat of a plot involving the Derpfestor's armies, and some character interactions between Patches, Crackhead, and Medic Girl, Season 6 added a lot more such interactions and some hints of weirdness, and Season 7was heavily dominated by the fight with the Derpfeator, with the final episode especially very drama filled.
• Chekhov's Gun: A Spine Crawler was knocked off a cliff quite a few times over the course of the series. At the Darkest Hour of "GG No Re" when all of the heroes' structures are supposedly destroyed, they are still shocked that they are still alive. Why? Because that Spine Crawler finally climbed back up the cliff again, giving them a structure.
• Civil Warcraft: Generally averted, with the Protoss, Terran and Zerg sides mostly fighting each other, but played straight once the Derpfestor creates a three-race army, with episodes featuring Zerg vs Zerg, Terran vs Terran and Protoss vs Protoss in season 3.
• Conjoined Eyes: How the Protoss units' eyes are currently drawn.
• Construct Additional Pylons/You Require More Vespene Gas: Season 3's premiere episode runs through the whole gamut of the Protoss advisor's quotes, including these two.
• Crapsaccharine World: As cute as the animation is, it's still a war game, so many units (including the cute Zerg and the human Terrans) are killed in each episode. Some deaths, such as dissolving in Baneling acid or being impaled through the head by the spike on a Nexus, are especially gruesome.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Played for laughs with the Zerg of Season 6 who adapted to live underwater left helplessly flopping and gasping like fish when the water all drains away.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: The Derpfestor. Its first introduction was to put on a display not unlike a small child ignorant of the battle going on, but since then has single-handedly destroyed a nexus, fungaled an entire protoss deathball, and used a neural-parasited battlecruiser to physically crush a stalker. And in the preview for season 3, it had decided to stake out on its own by using the bases of all 3 races.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: There are regularly episodes where an army from one side (or even just a handful of units) will show up and proceed to completely wreck (or be wrecked by) the entirety of another sides army. In "Win of the Century", a Ultralisk literally does this to a Protoss deathball as it breaks it up by charging it then happily jumps up and down like an excited dog, stamping everyone beneath it into the dirt.
  • Curb Stomp Cushion: Oftentimes the receiving side of a devastating attack will manage to drive the invaders back somehow, often by a single unit like a lone Viking stopping a Colossus rampage or a Viper pulling a Thor into the Zerg's clutches after it tries to evac from its destruction spree.
• Deadly Dodging: This is how the brave little Zergling does most of its fighting in "GG No Re", baiting enemies into attacking each other while trying to hit it as it bounds around. It eventually defeats the twin Derpfestors by getting their tentacles to strike each other, locking them in simultaneous Neural Parasites forever.
• Disney Villain Death: Derpfestor is sent tumbling to his demise at the end of Season 3 but he returns in Season 5 alive and well. In the series finale, the Obnoxious Executor is tossed down a reactor shaft and unlike Derpfestor, this one sticks.
• Dissonant Serenity. The Reaver is the only Protoss unit that smiles, even if he's blowing up a whole base.
• The Dreaded: The Reaver in Season 4, and with right reason.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: The beginning of Carrier Career, which has a Carrier warping out of a Stargate with difficulty. Same goes for the Battlecruiser at the beginning of Burning Tide pt. 2.
• The Dog Bites Back: At the end of season 3, the original Terran SCV the Derpfestor captured and forced at gunpoint to build his Terran infrastructure breaks free of his bindings, severs the Derpfestor's neural parasite tentacle which was controlling Patches and drives it out of the flying barracks to fall its death.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The first few episodes are vignettes that end with a visual gag, and are about equivalent to a comic strip in depth. Episode 6, however, features a fairly lengthy segment where an Infestor mind controls a Hellion (a buggy with a flamethrower) and plays with it while make car noises, setting the tone for the rest of the series.
• Edible Ammunition: "Got 99 Probelems" shows a Probe assaulting a floating barracks by throwing cheese at it. A few episodes later, "Core Values" takes a more brutal approach by depicting an SCV shoving a piece of cheese on an enemy Probe's "eye" and squeezes it. Note that "cheesing" is a fanspeak term in StarCraft describing the techniques featured in said episodes.
• Eldritch Abomination: The Zerg Overmind and then Season 3's Zerg Hatchery.
• Emergency Transformation:
  • True to the game, a Dark Templar and a High Templar combine into a fearsome Archon during an intense battle with the Terrans. Unfortunately, this proves to be a near-lethal mistake, as a single Ghost EMP takes out all of its shields at once.
  • During the series finale, Rambo-verlord morphs into an Overseer to survive a direct hit from a missile.
• The End... Or Is It?: At the end of season 4 Patches and company have escaped back to Starcraft II again... but a Lurker is shown clinging to the underside of their Medivac in the spirit of this trope (lampshading the reintroduction of the Lurker to the Zerg lineup in 'Legacy of the Void').
• Enemy Mine: Repeatedly defied by Bob the Angry Zealot, who refuses to ally with the Terrans and Zerg even in the face of total annihilation at the hands of the Derpfestor's Red Army. Even in the grand finale he still slaps away the hand Patches offers him and beats him up, until Patches intervenes to save him from the traitorous Administrator, leading Bob to finally ally with Patches.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: If there happen to be the four terran infantry units together in one scene: Marine(sanguine), Reaper(choleric), Marauder(phlegmatic), and Ghost(melancholic)
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: At least Once an Episode, there will be a hard-to-spot cameo or momentarily shown text (to humorous effect). One example is the Marine visor reading "9000+" as the Archon's power level.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Derpfestor started life as a nameless infestor, but from Season 3 onward is now the recurring Big Bad.
• Frontline General: The Derpfestor has shades of this during Season 3, despite having his own personal army by that point. While he still spends a lot of time in control rooms issuing orders, he has no problem fighting alongside his troops in intense battles, and in episode 10 takes down a group of Mutalisks basically by himself.
• Foreshadowing:
  • During Season 2, Derpfestor makes off with multiple worker units (Eating Larva in Episode 10, and capturing an SCV and a Probe in The Stinger of episodes 13 and 18 respectively). This all leads into Season 3, where he uses said Larva (One of which spawned into a Drone), Probe, and SCV, to build himself an army of all 3 races.
  • The ending of Season 3's finale shows a chase scene involving Bob the Ragelot, Sgt. Patches, Crackhead and an SCV where the Terran theme for StarCraft is played in the background. Guess in what game would season 4 take place?
• Funny Background Event: Loads of them, if you're paying attention, often as Call Backs to previous episodes. For instance, in season 3, the Zergling rush in episode 2 is visible in the background of episode 3, and the Swarm Host battle from episode 10 reappears in the backgrounds of several later episodes.
  • The Hi-dralisk appears quite frequently in zerg crowd shots, waving at the camera.
• Go-Karting with Bowser: "Spawning Pool Party" has the Terrans and Zerg having, um, a pool party in a Spawning Pool, which actually goes pretty well until the Ultralisk decides to jump in. And then the Protoss show up.
• Gory Discretion Shot: Not universal, but often appears at the end of an episode (especially during Season 1), whereupon the title card displays while you hear the audio of the carnage taking place.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: Derpfestor occasionally uses his Neural Parasite to beat enemies over the head with other enemies. Taken to absurd degrees in the Season 2 finale, where he smashes a Stalker into the ground using a Battlecruiser.
• Hammerspace: The marines can summon an infinite number of rifles whenever they lose one.
• Heroic Sacrifice: In the grand finale, Crackhead lures the entire enemy army away from the Zerg Hive where Patches, Medic and the brave little Zergling are battling the Derpfestors and gets them to chase him back into their own base, burning Stims (which hurt him) to stay ahead of them. As he collapses and the army gathers around him to finish him, he covers the red dot of the Ghost's nuke, which annihilates the entire army along with Crackhead.
• Hilarity Ensues: The premise of the show is a ground-level look at a game of StarCraft II being played, with all the murder and horror that that entails — except the units have personalities of their own, and are usually quite inept at what they do.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • The red Viper unit makes heavy use of its Consume^note converts 200hp from a friendly building to restore 50 energy ability to continue its one-bug campaign of trolling the enemy teams. This backfires horribly at the end of Season 3 when it drains the last standing structure on the combined army, resulting in an instant loss condition.
  • Again in "GG No Re" when the brave little Zergling gets the Derpfestor and its newly-born twin to hit each other with their Neural Parasite tentacles at the same time, permanently brain-locking them both as they try to control each other.
• Honor Before Reason: When the alliance of the Blue Terrans and the Purple Zerg approach the Teal Protoss with an offer for them to join them against the overwhelming power of the Red team, Bob furiously tears up their offer and drives Crackhead away before giving the remaining Protoss forces a Rousing Speech and leading them in a rage-fueled suicidal attack. This time it actually gets him killed.
• Idiot Hero: In reference of him being the 'tutorial hero' in Heroes of the Storm, Raynor is portrayed as a lovable moron.
• Innocuously Important Episode: Season 5 Episode 21 "Executive Decisions" at first just seemed like an episode-long gag poking fun at bad players who allow their economy to float by expanding their mining and neglecting their army development, leading to them getting overrun by the armies of smarter opponents. In fact, the Executor ordering the Probes to do nothing but harvest ridiculous amounts of minerals was the first step in his plan to betray the Protoss and ally with the Derpfestor, who would use the minerals the Executor stole to fund the production of his massive combined army, kicking off the series' final all-encompassing story arc.
• Irony: At the end of Season 4, a Dark Archon tries to do what Derpfestor did in Season 3 by Mind Controlling an army made of all three races. But it doesn't get anywhere quick between only being able to give orders to twelve units at a time, giving a Defiler -the spiritual predecessor to the Infestor- time to effortlessly cripple said army using its Plague ability.
• Killed Off for Real: Subverted when Bob was apparently annihilated in "My Life For Aiur" as his body was recovered, rebuilt into an Immortal and, after the Immortal was disabled, healed back to full health as a Zealot again by the Medic. Played straight with several other characters, however: Obnoxious Executor, Gun Overlord, Cackles, Donut Marine, and Crackhead all meet their end in the finale. Crackhead gets to go out in a Heroic Sacrifice by baiting the Red Army into a nuke.
• Killer Rabbit: Yes, most of the Zerg units look cute and act adorable. They will still tear you to pieces if they get the chance.
  • Reavers in Brood War. One cheerfully demolishes an entire terran base and nearly all its occupants, with a lovely grin on its face all the while.
• "King Kong" Climb: In the "Dehaka & Swann Co-op Mission" episode, the gigantic Dehaka snatches up a hapless Terran medic and climbs up the side of a large structure while swiping at circling Banshees.
• Large Ham: Bob the Angry Zealot. His entrance alone is when he interrupts a pair of Marines talking to each other with shouting "Arun nal'adan!" when he charges to their base is an indication.
• Leeroy Jenkins: The Zealot's preferred strategy.
• Lightmare Fuel: The Cyclone is essentially a demented Thomas the Tank Engine that shoots missiles, played both for absurdity and freakiness. Especially with the Thomas theme playing in the background as it gleefully demolishes a Nexus.
• Logic Bomb: What ultimately undoes the Derpfestor and its newly-hatched twin in "GG No Re" when they get baited into using Neural Parasite on each other at the same time, paralyzing them both forever as they each simultaneously control the other. They're last seen together in straightjackets in an asylum in the ending.
• Made of Iron: Shield Batteries are shown to make protoss units effectively invincible, as demonstrated when an adept survives constant shelling from seven Siege Tanks.
• Mama Bear: The Zerg Queens. Heaven help you if you decide to mess with their drone "children".
• Mass "Oh, Crap!": The Red Army's reaction to realising that they had been lured into all crowding around the target for a gigantic nuke.
• Mauve Shirt: Certain units have managed to be more competent at their jobs, or at least surviving. These include a Marine from the first season, a Zealot in the second, the Derpfestor, and a Ghost.
• Meaningful Background Event:
  • The Season 2 finale has the Zealot single-handedly taking down a Battlecruiser and going down with it into the lava. In the background, a Mothership Core can be seen using Mass Recall, hinting at his survival.
  • In "Pest Control", when the Roaches are burrowing behind Protoss lines, the Infestor can also be seen burrowing past in the background. Needless to say, the Protoss army later finds their base destroyed by Infested Terrans.
• Mirror Match: The whole reason for the Derpfestor going rogue, from a development standpoint anyway.
• Musical Episode:
  • Season 3, Episode 7 comes about as close to it as possible for a series with 2-minute long episodes and hardly any genuine dialogue.
  • Season 3, Episode 20 follows roughly the same formula as the above.
• Mythology Gag: Season 4, being set in the BW timeline, has many towards the gameplay of the first game such as the Goliath and Dragoon pathfinding problems.
• Never Found the Body: Derpfestor, after having been "Killed" at the end of Season 3, sends out a message consisting of "Red is not Dead", followed by an image of himself.
• No OSHA Compliance: The Tech lab in season 3, episode 7 follows some...questionable safety techniques.
• No Mouth: Inverted: while Protoss canonically lack mouths and speak telepathically, some Protoss are occasionally shown with mouths for comedic purposes, such as in Mineral Line Up where a roided-out Bob the Zealot takes a bite out of a steak.
• Not the Fall That Kills You…: Units fall off or get knocked off ledges to their doom so often, fans joke that "the cliff has the highest kill tally in the series" or "cliffs OP". In the second season, falling off a ledge is more likely to result in falling in magma.
• Nuke 'em: How the red army is finally defeated in the grand finale.
• Obviously Evil: Arcturus Mengsk in SC + Brood War in a Nutshell and WoTL and HoTS in a Nutshell. For the moments he did something bad like tossing Kerrigan to the Zerg or having Raynor captured, he's always pulling an ominous Evil Laugh.
• Oh, Crap!: Considering all the things that can go horribly wrong for a unit in Starcraft multiplayer, you're likely to see at least one of these in any given episode.
• Overly Long Gag:
  • The Swarm Host battle at the end of Season 3, Episode 10. To wit: the battle goes on for half a minute and continues as the ending screen comes up... and is still going as the ending screen disappears after about a minute. Then it goes on for five more minutes after that. (For reference, episodes usually only last a minute and a half to two minutes.) And it's still going several episodes later.
  • The zoom-in on Derpfestor at the end of part 1 for the season 3 finale. It ends up going into his eye until the screen is completely black.
• Patriotic Fervor: The Liberator's is taken up to eleven - their Defender Mode is represented by the ship raising a Statue of Liberty that shoots laser beams out of the torch. While "The Star-Spangled Banner" plays in the background.
• Pistol-Whipping: It's not uncommon for Marines to use their Gauss rifles as bludgeoning tools.
• Plot Armor:
  • The Mauve Shirt characters get to survive things that would kill regular units several times over. A particularly blatant example occurs in "Colossal Mistake", where Patches and Crackhead (the two recurring Marines) are the only survivors of a Disruptor bomb that blows up an entire clump of Marines.
  • Bob finally pushes his too far in "My Life For Aiur". Subverted, however, as he comes back in "GG No Re", first as an Immortal, then as himself again.
  • Crackhead is killed in a Heroic Sacrifice at the end of "GG No Re".
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: The SCV initially captured by Derpfestor gives a "Job's finished!" as he drops Derpfestor to his death.
• Ramming Always Works:
  • A couple of times in the season 2 finale. Patches the marine's diving into a tempest shot, the Derpfestor using a Neural Parasited battlecruiser to crush a stalker, and the Corruptor one-shotting a carrier.
  • How two Protoss deathballs (literally, see Visual Pun) do battle.
• Recap Episode: "Brood War in a Nutshell" and "Wings of Liberty/Heart of the Swarm in a Nutshell." Obviously parodied in that they're heavily abridged (Heart of the Swarm takes 15 seconds to recap).
• Red Shirt Army: Well, it is based on StarCraft Multiplayer.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: Zerglings, bar none. There are also other qualifiers, mostly among the Zerg.
  • The Zerglings even qualify in-universe: as shown in Season 2, Episode 4, a Command Center can't land on top of a Zergling because the pilot is too busy gushing over the Zergling. Marines are fair game, though.
• Rousing Speech: Parodied in "My Life For Aiur", where Bob gives one of these to the surviving Protoss forces which just consists of him screaming incoherently at the top of his lungs with blood in his eyes. Double Subverted when it moves the Protoss so much it brings them to tears and they all follow him into the jaws of death itself.
• Running Gag: Countless, most notably the number of cliff-related deaths.
  • Grenades being thrown badly and bouncing back, then turning out to be a dud.
  • Whenever there's a group of idle Hydralisks, one of them is waving at the camera. Exaggerated in the "Legacy of the Void" intro, where one is waving as he bursts out of the ground in an ambush.
  • A Spine Crawler being knocked off the cliff whenever it reaches the top. It winds up being the reason why the heroes win in the Grand Finale.
• Scissors Cuts Rock: In Colossal Mistake, a Colossus (commonly used against large amounts of light units such as Marines) is swarmed and disintegrated by a large horde of Marines.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: At the end of the Brood War season, Patches and his friends repair their crashed Medivac and flee back to Starcraft II when the Zerg force crashes into the lines of the orange Terrans they'd joined.
• Shout-Out: Quite a few.
  • Perhaps most notably, before a Templar and a Dark Templar combine into an Archon, they perform the last few steps of the original Fusion Dance.
  • The Cyclone is depicted as a twisted and psychotic version of Thomas the Tank Engine. Some of Derpfestor's Cyclones in the Season 7 finale also make Rage Faces.
  • One episode has a Zerg hive being raided by Hellions... riding on other Hellions. Every time one of them got shot off their mount, They would both transform and switch places. The third time it happened, they straight up played the Transforming sound effect.
  • The rogue Terran Adjutant, upon being destroyed in the season 5 finale, quotes Transmutate from Beast Wars.
  • Dehaka's coop episode has him parodying Godzilla, King Kong, the T. Rex from Jurassic Park and even Yoshi from Super Mario World of all things.
  • The climax of Bob and Patches' battle against the traitorous lightning-shooting Administrator in "GG No Re" is taken straight from Return of the Jedi, complete with a sudden shaft for Bob to hurl the Administrator down (although the Big "NO!" the Administrator shouts is actually Vader's memetic one from Revenge of the Sith).
• Simple, yet Awesome: Many times extravagant tactics or maneuvers fail to the most minor of things, like a rampaging Colossus driven off by a single Viking or a Carrier being smashed apart in one hit by a Corruptor.
• Stepping Stones in the Sky: During the series finale: A Brood Lord only seals its fate by fighting against a recently-resurrected Bob, as he just uses the launched broodlings to climb up to the Brood Lord and take it down.
• Strong Flesh, Weak Steel: A common joke that's reflected in the gameplay mechanics, and most notable when Patches survives a Battlecruiser-destroying shot from a Tempest and sustained fire by a Void Ray (which had been in the process of destroying pretty much EVERYTHING up until that point in one hit).
  • Given that the series is based on the multiplayer aspects of Starcraft II, it's actually showing the logical conclusion of Gameplay and Story Integration. Marines can survive tempest and Void Ray shots because the Void Ray's damage bonus is vs. armored units, while the Tempest gains its attack bonus vs. Massive air units (which restrict it to the Colossus, Battlecruiser, and Brood Lord). It's also why the Immortal will basically kick anyone's ass... until a pack of Zerglings show up.
• Strong as They Need to Be: It's very common for events in the series to not perfectly reflect the game, such as the Ghost's Snipe ability one-shotting everything it hits, or an Ultralisk enduring far more punishment than should be possible for it.
  • The marine's gauss rifles generally automatic fire that doesn't do much more than smart, but have been seen at times to fire a single shot capable of going right through a man.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: In contrast to the usually exaggerated antics of lesser units, Battlecruiser vs Carrier fights are depicted unflatteringly straight as they would in-game.
  • In Starcraft 2, this translates to the Carrier's interceptors haplessly swarming around the Battlecruiser like a swarm of angry bees while the Battlecruiser simply shoots lasers at the Carrier in retaliation, before using its Yamato cannon.
  • In Starcraft 1, the Battlecruiser rotates erratically while it attempts to shoot down each individual interceptor. The interceptors still swarm it like angry bees though.
• Surrounded by Idiots: Stalkers are probably the most level-headed Protoss units and seem to be exasperated by all the others.
• Taking the Bullet: Defied in "CyclOwned", where Bob the Zealot tries to block the cyclone's rockets from assailing his team's Nexus, but the game's mechanics causes them to miss him.
  • There is probably Plot Armor.
• Time Travel: The premise of season 4 is that the four StarCraft II Terran units from season three's finale have somehow ended up in the Brood War era StarCraft.
• Too Dumb to Live: Mainly the Zerg units. Zerglings in particular have been seen playing with Banelings and the red dot that designates a nuclear strike, and the red Viper drains his side's last remaining building, causing the entire army - including himself - to keel over.
• Toon Physics: Happens once, at the end of Season 1.
• Torches and Pitchforks: Most of the time, a group of Worker Units trying to run an enemy out of their base will be carrying standard angry mob gear. The Stetmann and Mengsk Co-op Mission even has Mengsk's Laborers/Troopers picking up the torches and pitchforks after the previous wave dies and drops them.
• Throw-Away Guns: Marines. See Hammerspace above.
• Under the Sea: Season 6 takes place in an underwater stage, to which they fall to from the end of Season 5.
• Very Loosely Based on a True Story:
  • Season 3, Episode 6 is based on an actual game of Starcraft played by Carbot where he cheesed a Protoss player into submission with Widow Mines.
  • "Win of the Century" has a seemingly unstoppable Zerg force declaring GG and running off a cliff at the sight of an even stronger Protoss force including Carriers, Colossi and Void Rays, only for the Protoss army to be revealed as Hallucinations soon after. This was likely inspired by an infamous pro game where Zerg player Idra Rage Quit a game he would have won against the Protoss Huk after Huk engaged with an army bolstered by Hallucinated Void Rays.
• Visual Pun: Physical manifestations of Starcraft player vernacular regularly appear, such as a literal giant Katamari of Protoss rolling around ("deathball") or Probes throwing pieces of cheese at the Terrans as they Photon Cannon rush ("cheesing"). One Brood Lord "throws out the GG" by literally throwing some copies of the letter G along with the rest of its broodlings. The Overlord from Bring My Brown Pants applies as well.
• Water Is Air: Season 6. Although some terran characters have some sort of mechanism in their suits that allow them to breathe and the protoss don't breathe air through mouths, it still can't be explained why the zerg can still survive underwater (although that can be handwaved by them evolving gills or something, because the Zerg probably could do that if they tried) and how some machinery can still work.
  • Subverted in "Hellfired", where a group of hellions tries to assault a pack of zerg, only for their flamethrowers to not work. Double Subverted later on where a stalker attacks a barracks until it emits fire due to damage.
  • Even further subverted for the Zerg in the season finale, as demonstrated in Crippling Overspecialization above.
• What Measure Is a Non-Unique?: Units with some sort of distinguishing trait or end up becoming Mauve Shirts (such as Patches, Crackhead, and Derpfestor) get Plot Armor. Anyone else can and probably will die.
• William Telling: "Splash" has a Terran army trying to get rid of a burrowed Zergling by doing this with a Marine, an apple, and a Siege Tank. Both the apple and the Zergling survive.
• You Require More Vespene Gas: See Construct Additional Pylons above.
• Zerg Rush: Of course. Parodied in "ZvsZ" where the Swarm Hosts just unleash an endless wave of Locusts that lasts several episodes.

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