How many of them did you notice?

Except such obvious things that:
- Starcraft races are Blizzard interpretation of Games Workshop's Space Marines, Eldars and Tyranids.
- A lot of "Alien" franchise vibe.
- Units' responses quoting lines from various movies/sketches/advertisements.
- The sarlacc.

I have some observations, a lot of which have been surely noticed by people:
- Cliff doodad in jungle/badlands tilesets looking like vault gates from "Fallout". There's even "13" print on it (Vault 13 is the main vault in Fallout 1 plot).
- Desert doodad crude structures looking very "Mad Max-ish" post-apo camp.
- In Starcraft Episode V: First Strike mission, the action takes place in a snowy world. You're having found forsaken camp of Confederates with Samir Duran at the forefront, who's later coming out to be infested by Zerg. It may be reference to "The Thing" movie.


I will write some more points when I recall myself.
Write about your observations.

The inspiration goes back even earlier to Starship Troopers, the novel.

This isn't entirely accurate.

The terrans draw mostly from Starship Troopers, space westerns, and other non-40k scifi. Also the American Civil War, prior to Metzen deciding to kill off the Confederacy in episode 1. Talk about a complete waste of world building.

The protoss actually seem to draw inspiration from both the Eldar and the Imperium (e.g. religious, super soldiers, dragoons=dreadnoughts, etc), as well as the titular predator from Predator. Plus all the other religious and warrior races in scifi.

The zerg aren't just clones of tyranids. They have brain bugs taken wholesale from Starship Troopers. They had personalities, which have no analogue elsewhere in scifi. (Don't get me started about how stupid Kerry ruined their characterization forever. I hate that stupid harlot with the burning intensity of a trillion suns.)

They're pretty much assembled entirely from existing scifi tropes, not 40k specifically.

Yes I agree with you in 100%.

And the Space Marines/Terran Marines reference about which I meant was rather visual aspect of bulky power armors, crude tanks, walkers and hover vehicles.
The lore and characters of those two faction do not have a single similarity.