StarCraft II: Difference between revisions

* [[Zero-Percent Approval Rating]]: Mengsk in the border worlds. After {{spoiler|Raynor exposes his crimes}}, this spreads to the core worlds as well

* [[Acronym and Abbreviation Overload]]:

* [[Adam Smith Hates Your Guts]]: Justified since Raynor is smeared as a terrorist and mostly gets help, new blueprints and other stuff because he pays people for it or does them favors. Becomes a little less justified in the final missions where theoretically, you should have the entire technology of the {{spoiler|Dominion}} at your disposal--but then again, {{spoiler|you're in the middle of an inescapable warzone and it's pretty friendly of the game that you can call in mercenaries and arsenal upgrades at all. Plus, through the final missions, you can see wrecked battlecruisers and wraiths fall down around you constantly, It seems like things aren't going well for your allies.}}

* [[Advancing Boss of Doom]]: The secret mission in ''Wings of Liberty'' has {{spoiler|an invincible Hybrid}} chasing you as you escape the facility.

* [[Advancing Wall of Doom]]: One of the terran missions has a planet near a sun going supernova (which is, indeed, the name of the mission itself). You have to complete your objective before a wall of fire sweeps across the map, and in the meantime have to keep relocating your base to stay ahead of the flames.

* [[Alliterative Name]]:

** Raynor's Raiders.

* [[All There in the Manual]]: ''The Dark Templar Saga'' and the ''Frontline'' series are practically required reading for the sequel. ''Frontline'' gives the backstory and lore of several new units, while ''The Dark Templar Saga'' explains in detail what Preservers are and why they're significant. In addition the "Ghost Academy" series of books details the back-stories of Nova and Tosh; Though Starcraft 2 immediately spoils how well their friendship went after academy.

* [[And I Must Scream]]: {{spoiler|The Zerg Overmind}}, {{spoiler|Kerrigan}} and the Infested Terrans:

''"[[Night of the Living Mooks|Join ussss....]]"''<br />

''"[[Survivor Guilt|You were too late!]]"'' }}

* [[Artificial Brilliance]]: The computer has become [[Dangerously Genre Savvy]] due to a new hidden value assigned to units that determines their kill priority when attacked by AI opponents. Some caster support units take priority over standard attackers so the computer will target them first if they can. That's right, Blizzard has programmed the AI to [[Shoot the Medic First]]. However, it can also fall into [[Artificial Stupidity]] when you realize that you can position your units in such a way to either make them keep running around a unit or even move wildly trying to GET to the target.

* [[Ascended Meme]]: ''Terrible, Terrible Damage'', the reference to the project lead Dustin Browder, is now the God mode cheat, as well as {{spoiler|1=what General Horace Warfield near the end of the game [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8bieEfkoOs&fmt=22 says when his ship goes down]}}. It also appears when getting lots of simultaneous kills in challenge levels.

** In Battle.net, you can get an error message: "The page you were looking for either doesn't exist or some terrible, terrible error has occurred."

* [[Asskicking Equals Authority]]: In-game units advance in rank by racking up kills as recognition of their strength, though there's no actual RPG element that upgrades them because of it. The Galaxy Editor, however, supposedly has provisions for a level system. Of course, as with the original the heroes are higher-ranked by default and kick a lot more ass. Subverted by then main character units that retain their set rank no matter how many they kill. (Tosh will always be Rank: Spectre Leader, Tychus will always be Rank: Scoundrel, and so on)

* [[Cliff Hanger]]: ''Heart of the Swarm'' and ''Legacy Of The Void'' have a '''lot''' of things to explain.

* [[Combining Mecha]]: [http://www.gametrailers.com/player/47494.html Terratron], from the 2009 [[April Fools' Day]] gag. [[Ascended Meme|It makes an appearance in the]] [[Mini Game]].

* [[Cipher Scything]]: This happens to the player characters from the original and Brood War campaigns; the unnamed Commander/Executer/Cerebrate being retconned away.

* [[Computers Are Fast]]: In [[Starcraft II]], the computer can do an absurd amount of actions per minute. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=easv7l0NyJA And by absurd], [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAM41idmdIo&feature=channel it's 2000+ APM]. The best Korean players clock in at around 300, which (let us point out) is an already-absurd 5 actions ''per second''.

** Killing a Marine may result in hearing "Motherf-!"

** The normally proper and calm Matt Horner, when he sees {{spoiler|the Leviathan in the final mission}}, just catches himself in time.

** The Spectre's hilarious [[Stop Poking Me]] quote:

'''Spectre:''' "You just said that you stupid b-!" }}

* [[Damage Increasing Debuff]]: The Corruption ability, which makes their target receive 20% more damage for a few seconds.

** Three missions stand out for this trope. "In Utter Darkness," "Supernova," and "All In" are, by far, the most difficult missions of the game and stand above the others assuming equivalent difficulty levels. "All In" isn't too terrible if you know a few secret knocks, namely using a ridiculous number of siege tanks and making sure to intercept Kerrigan with a ball of stimmed Marines short of her hitting your tank line. "Supernova" doesn't give you enough time to build a proper force to face the Tal'darim and, to make it worse, they frequently attack you and cause attritional losses. Moving your base under pressure is very problematic. "In Utter Darkness" is probably the worst of the three (althought "Supernova" comes close), as success in this mission depends on being able to pick out hybrids for Lift with your Phoenixes. This gets very problematic once the number of units on the map gets so high they're all stacked on top of each other.

* [[Don't Explain the Joke]]: One of the terran banshee pilot's quotes:

** Doubly funny in that the lore explicitly states Banshees ''don't'' work in space--for cost reasons, it doesn't have engines that work outside an atmosphere. On the other hand, you do use Banshees on orbital platforms and even on a Xel'naga World Ship, because [[Hand Wave|space platforms have artificial atmospheres around them]]. That seemingly extend far beyond their surface.

* [[Double Entendre]]: From the Ghosts:

* [[Dramatic Pause]]: The protoss love that. One of the examples is Zeratul's dialogue with {{spoiler|Tassadar's spirit}}.

* [[Drop Pod]]: The Terrans use them on occasion, and one mission involves rescuing [[Drop Pod|Drop Pods]] stranded a bit too far behind enemy lines.

* [[Foreshadowing]]:

** When Raynor finds Zeratul's sneak in the Hyperion, {{spoiler|Zeratul alerts him that Kerrigan must be alive or something very bad will happen to [[The End of the World as We Know It|the universe as a whole]]}}.

** Tosh tells Raynor {{spoiler|he suspects someone on the ship is working for the Dominion}} and Horner constantly tells Raynor that {{spoiler|Tychus is up to something and that someone has 'a gun to his head.'}} Both foreshadow {{spoiler|Tychus's betrayal at the end of the campaign}}.

* [[Frickin' Laser Beams]]:

** In the [[Bar Brawl]] cutscene, Tychus tells the others that they can't trust "that drunk" (Raynor). While being drunk himself and the least trustworthy guy in the faction next to Tosh.

** Orlan, in the Cutthroat mission, says to Mira Han, after {{spoiler|he had been hired by Raynor to hack into an Adjutant, but decided instead to sell the information to the Dominion.}}:

* [["I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight]]: Throughout the game Raynor is shown to be losing faith in his own revolution, especially when Kerrigan is thrown back into the mix, and Matt calls him out on it at one point as his personal feelings for Kerrigan interfering with his ability to lead. {{spoiler|During the last mission as the artifact is about to activate, after you fend of Kerrigan for the last time, the human part of her mind calls out to Raynor and tells him not to give up. It works this time.}}

* [[Impossibly Cool Clothes]]: Arcturus and Valerian Mengsk combine this with the [[Bling of War]], but then Raynor's everyday clothes look very cool too, however prize number one goes to the protoss fleet commanders, with Artanis having what seems to be the coolest uniform in the universe, [[Bling of War|golden armour]] and psyonic neon lights included.

* [[Knight Templar|Knight]] [[Incredibly Lame Pun|Templar]]: The Tal'darim, a fanatical protoss faction that stayed behind in Aiur colonies has become quite xenophobic. In the mission "Maw of the Void", {{spoiler|they've captured some Dark Templar, which will join you after you free them}}.

* [[Large Ham]]: Units come in two flavors: hammy and [[Deadpan Snarker|snarky]]. Maar IS PRETTY bad about ''THISSSS'', as well as the heroes in the last Protoss mission (sans Mohandar, who isn't even that snarky to make up for it) There, in the face of total annihilation, [[Chewing the Scenery|they consume massive amounts of scenery]], [[Heroic Sacrifice|especially when they die]]:

* [[Last Stand]]: "In Utter Darkness", where {{spoiler|the Protoss--the last free race capable of standing up to the [[Big Bad|Fallen One]]--are wiped out in a single, glorious defensive action. May also count as a Crowning Moment Of Awesome for the protoss species as a whole}}.

* [[Late Arrival Spoiler]]: The official website's preview of ''Heart of the Swarm'' gives away the ending of ''Wings of Liberty'', {{spoiler|specifically, Kerrigan being de-infested}}.

* [[Mordor]]:

** Char, a mineral-rich volcanic planet, isn't the zerg ''homeworld'' but it is their main base of operations, and it's a nasty place indeed.

** Redstone too. In fact, the periodic lava flooding might make it more of a Mordor than Char. Raynor notices it too:

* [[Neck Lift]]: {{spoiler|Kerrigan is seen performing a telekinetic version of this on Valerian Mengsk in a trailer for ''Heart of the Swarm''}}.

* [[Never Trust a Trailer]]: A sizable chunk of the trailer/commercial footage for Starcraft II happens out of order in the campaign. For example, {{spoiler|one trailer has Matt handing Raynor his badge and this apparently motivating Raynor to take back up the fight: in the game Raynor ''has'' been keeping up the fight, just laying low for a bit, and the scene of Matt handing him his badge is much later in the game. In the trailer Matt's line "vengeance doesn't factor into this, our revolution is about freedom" is directed at Raynor. In the game he's actually talking to Tosh...although he could also be gently reminding his commander, given the context of the scene. A commercial trailer shows a hologram of Mengsk telling Raynor he's way in over his head. Mengsk is actually talking to his son, though Raynor is also present and when he announces his presence, Mengsk directs a similiar line to him.}}

* [[Nightmare Fuel]]: The normally stoic, deadpan and fearless Tosh is clearly wigged out from the Hybrid's psychic "scream" after the raid on the Dominion laboratory.

* [[Nobody Poops]]: Averted when Tychus is driving the [[Humongous Mecha|Odin]].

* [[No Ending]]: The game ends with {{spoiler|Jim carrying a now (mostly) cured Kerrigan off Char.}} Though this resolves that plot, there's still {{spoiler|Zeratul's vision and the Dark Voice, Valerian's dealings with Raynor, the Moebius Foundation and "Dr Narud"}}, and of course {{spoiler|Kerrigan's curing means the zerg are leaderless}}, although {{spoiler|a quick glance at her [[Fan Service|cured body]] reveals an odd skintone and the nastiest dreads in existence, so she isn't totally free.}} Besides the above point, the only real resolution to any of the overarching story is {{spoiler|Raynor exposing Mengsk's war crimes to the Dominion}}. Its obvious the game is more meant to set up the larger story coming in the second and third games rather than resolve everything. Oh, and rubbing salt in the wounds is the game itself, containing an advertisement for ''Heart of the Swarm'' on the main screen after finishing ''Wings of Liberty''.

* [[Nostalgia Level]]:

* [[Psycho Prototype]] / [[Flawed Prototype]]: Spectres--next-generation ghosts--depending on who you ask and who you believe. Their psychic powers are more destructive, they're harder to control, and they tend to be more eccentric in general, but they're also under fewer mind-control implants than ghosts and, unlike ghosts, are all volunteers (at least to become spectres; those who were previously ghosts, like Tosh himself, were not so lucky with the initial stage of training).

* [[Ragtag Bunch of Misfits]]: Ohhh, boy: a [[Nerd]], a [[Mr. Fixit]], a mercenary contractor, an idealist, renegades...we can continue all night long. [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] by both Raynor and Matt, after the mission "Media Blitz":

(Cue some laughs) }}

* [[Reinventing the Wheel]]: Averted and played straight in the campaign. Averted in that unit abilities (Marine shields and stimpacks, bunker capacity, etc., which need to be researched in multiplayer) are purchased and then stay with you for the rest of the campaign, while damage and armor upgrades are reset for every mission.

* [[Rise to the Challenge]]: Twice. The mission "The Devil's Playground" (your first Tosh mission) has the lower levels flooding every few minutes, forcing you to evacuate before your units die. Another mission ("Supernova") has you having to relocate your base due to a fire barrier consuming everything at it's way. And a later mission ("Belly of the Beast") has you outrunning a rising lava river as you try to escape a cave.

* [[Roaring Rampage of Revenge]]: From what we've seen so far of the upcoming Zerg expansion, Kerrigan is downright ''pissed'' at Arcturus ([[Up to Eleven]] compared to Raynor), after what Mengsk did to her in Starcraft 1.

* [[Robo Speak]]: The damaged Confederate adjutant, the raven, and (to a lesser extent) the science vessel (which is not actually a robot) and standard adjutants, as well.

* [[Rousing Speech]]: Raynor gives one to the surviving Terrans on {{spoiler|Char}} in a cutscene prior to the final mission (may have been unintentional, but the marines chose to listen to him anyway). Also, in the side-mission "In Utter Darkness", {{spoiler|Artanis}} gives an epic one when he arrives on the battlefield {{spoiler|prior to [[Kill'Em All|everyone getting killed]] by the zerg and the Hybrids in an apocalyptic [[Bad Future]]}}.

** Played straight with most other casters. Specially the infestor and the high templar.

* [[Stealth Pun]]:

* [[Stop Helping Me!]]: Invoked by Tychus when Stetmann lectures the group on [[Taking You with Me|Bane]][[Suicide Attack|lings]].

Tychus: "Thanks for the advice, son. Now shut up." }}

* [[Stop Poking Me]]: In Blizzard fashion, much of the dialogue is taken up by units who [[What the Hell, Player?|really don't like to be selected by the player repeatedly]]. [http://www.youtube.com/user/starcraft2units This YouTube user documents all of the sayings] of [[Loads and Loads of Characters|each character and unit]].

* [[Summon Bigger Fish]]: A few of the "commando" missions feature this. You have the option of, for example, unleashing a bunch of caged test subjects upon Dominion soldiers. If you do a little exploration, one such mission even lets you unleash an ''Ultralisk'' upon the enemy.

* [[Super Prototype]]: The Odin, a prototype Thor. It is implied the Dominion intended for the Odin to be replicated exactly, but for whatever reason they settled on the weaker Thor. According to Rory, the Odin is a piece-of-junk showpiece made to show off to the Dominion public during its demonstration. Rory goes on to tell us the Thor isn't as strong as the Odin but is less expensive to produce and maintain. {{spoiler|Which is probably why the Raiders only use it in two missions, given their limited resources. Well, that and it's so big even the ''Hyperion'' can't haul it around.}}

* [[Sweet Home Alabama]]: The Terrans. Also, the bar plays the [[Trope Namer]] song in the sequel.

* [[Take That]]: Fish. Barrel. [[Fox News Channel]].

* [[Take Your Time]]: Generally averted in the missions themselves, often brutally. However, in campaign mode, the player has a fair amount of control about which order they perform the missions in. Therefore, a mission can become available and the player can choose to do half a dozen other missions before tackling it. That's all well and good when your job is just to raid a location and recover an artifact, but a bit odd when the mission involves evacuating a planet under attack or recovering an artifact from a planet where the sun is going supernova. Needless to say, you'll always arrive before (and [[Always Close|just before]]) the sun goes supernova or the people you're trying to help are slaughtered by the zerg.

** Valerian actually encourages this at the start of the ''Maw of the Void'' mission.

* [[Taxonomic Term Confusion]]: In the [[Starcraft|original game]], its expansion, promotional materials, and the early [[Expanded Universe]], protoss and zerg were capitalized. However, as of the sequel, the species names are now officially uncapitalized, as is the scientific standard for species (although who knows how we'd deal with alien taxonomy).

* [[Technology Marches On]]:

** On the other hand, some old-school Terran units are still just as effective as ever. Goliaths remain well-balanced units with a nice antiair niche, and the classic Medic can now be upgraded to heal faster and use less energy, which in tandem with lower build time and costs can make it superior to the Medivac in some situations. Unedited medics inserted into a certain custom game that adds Brood War units to the standard cache of Starcraft II units result in completely overpowered Terran infantry for melee games.

* [[Tempting Fate]]: Before the third mission, Tychus sees a decorated trophy Hydralisk skull on the wall and wonders how good a deal they would get on hunting some zerg. Then the mission starts:

'''Tychus:''' I swear man, I didn't know nothing about no Zerg. }}

* [[This Is Reality]]: Tychus worries that the artifacts you've collected will put a hole in the space-time continuum. Raynor assures him that [[Leaning on the Fourth Wall|"This ain't science fiction!"]]

* [[We Can Rebuild Him]]: Immortals are refitted dragoons. The facilities required to create dragoons were all inconveniently located on Aiur, and were destroyed during the zerg invasion. They basically took every dragoon remaining and toughened them way the hell up, to preserve them a little longer since their supply of them is limited. So it's basically [[We Can Rebuild Him|We Can Rebuild Him Twice]]. There's also the "Immortality Protocol" upgrade for the Thor unit which lets you reactivate destroyed Thors at a fraction of the price of a new one.

* [[We Have Reserves]]: Kerrigan demonstrates that the species that is the [[Trope Namer]] for [[Zerg Rush]] still holds to that line of thinking after more than ten years. She practically lampshades it.

* [[Wham! Episode]]: The entirety of Zeratul's mini-campaign. {{spoiler|Starting on Zhakul, we have our first contact with an active hybrid. It's all but immortal and ''gets stronger every time you defeat it''. After that, there's the trip to Aiur in which we learn not only that Tassadar is still alive, for a given value of alive, but also what the Overmind's true motivation for creating Kerrigan was and realize it wasn't as evil as we'd thought. Lastly, and the most whammy of them all, the Overmind's vision of the future, in which we learn what happens if Kerrigan is killed. You control the last remnants of the protoss race against the immensely powerful Dark Voice and his army of hybrids and zerg. It ends with the Dark Voice extinguishing the star you're orbiting and presumably destroying all life in the universe.}}

* [[What a Piece of Junk!]]: Raynor and Swann have a tense discussion about [[Does This Remind You of Anything?|vulture]] [[Recycled in Space|hover-bikes]]. Swann thinks the model is a deathtrap. Raynor, having iconically [[Starcraft|owned one himself]], is not amused.

* [[What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?]]: If you take the time to read the terms and conditions the first time you run the game, you'll be doing so to the main theme mentioned above.

* [[Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?]]: Raynor laments about the wall of fire in the Supernova opening cinematic with this trope.

* [[Word Salad Lyrics]]: A Zerg, A Shotgun & You

* [[The World Must Know the Truth]]: What drives the Revolution/Matt Horner missions. {{spoiler|They manage to show to the Dominion civilians all the truth about its foundation, [[Moment of Awesome|thus unmasking Mengsk]] and starting a revolution}}.

* [[Yin-Yang Bomb]]: The twilight archon was designed to be a fusion of a dark templar and a high templar, and symbolically would have combined the power of the original archon with the spellcasting powers of the dark archon. They then scrapped it and brought back the original archon exactly as it was, the only difference is now any two templar fuse into an archon regardless of their alignment. Maybe it'll reappear in Legacy of the Void's single player.

* [[You Have No Idea Who You're Dealing With]]: Happens when Tychus Findlay asks Jim Raynor about what it was like fighting the Zerg.

'''Raynor:''' All the scrapes were in back in the day, all the narrow escapes...none of it compares to how terrible they are, Tychus. You don't know what real fear is until you've got a thousand of these sons of bitches bearing down on you. }}

* [[You Have Outlived Your Usefulness]]: Happens in {{spoiler|the Overmind's vision where the zerg, commanded by the hybrids, who are themselves puppets of a greater power, are used to destroy the last protoss army, and then the hybrids are used to kill them, themselves, and every other living thing in the universe.}} Most, uh...Triumphant, for lack of a better term, Example?