Welcome to Part Three of the ongoing skins guide for Heroes of the Storm! For those unaware, Blizzard is notorious for all of the references to various things that have influenced them and making inside jokes with the numerous characters that are in the game. Through things like character poke quotes, and /dance animations there is a long history of Easter eggs being inserted into their games.

Heroes of the Storm is no exception when it comes to Blizzard’s long established tradition of Easter egg references. Described as a “love letter to the fans”, the game is a great mash-up of other Blizzard titles, references to a multitude of other sources such as other video games, movies, TV shows and comic books. This article series is going to document as many references found within the skins as possible!

If you haven't had the chance yet, you can check out Part Two or start at the very beginning withPart One to see all of the skin references covered so far.

Falstad

So Falstad is one of the characters in the game who hasn't gotten a lot of love in the way of skins – there are only four skins total in the game for him and there isn’t a lot in the way of diversity with them. His base, Gryphon Master and Storm Lord skins all have tints that feature dwarven subraces found in the Warcraft universe: the Ironborn dwarves, which have recently become playable characters in World of Warcraft, and the Frostborn dwarves, who first appeared in Wrath of the Lich King.

The Ironforge tint for Falstad’s base skin might be referencing his appearance on the Warcraft novel Day of the Dragon as this is the only appearance I’ve seen of him that features him with black hair and blue tattoos. Wrapping things up for these skins, the Storm Lord skin is most likely referencing the Warcraft 3 gryphon rider unit as the addition of a shield and helmet makes him resemble one of those units.

Falstad’s last skin, the Buccaneer skin, looks to be drawing inspiration from two Hearthstone cards: Sky Cap’n Kragg, who first appeared in the Argent Tourney expansion (before becoming a dungeon boss in Battle for Azeroth in World of Warcraft), is pretty apparent as they both have red parrot mounts. Second is Wickerflame Burnbristle from the Mean Streets of Gadgetzan Hearthstone expansion. You can see that both Wickerflame and Falstad have parts of their beard on fire, which might be referencing the real-life pirate William Teach, aka the infamous pirate Blackbeard, who stuck pieces of lit fuse in his beard to make himself look more intimidating. Other than that reference, the Seafoam tint might be a reference to cereal mascot Captain Crunch, but I’ll leave this one up to you folks to decide!

Garrosh

Garrosh’s tints follow a similar pattern to Falstad’s (as well as most of the other orc characters in the game) as they reference different orc subspecies in the Warcraft universe. His Blackrock and Shattered Hand tints reference the orcs of the same name from the Warlords of Draenor expansion, with the sigil of the Shattered Hand on Garrosh’s chest.

The Deadly tint might be referencing the Siege of Orgrimmar fight from Mists of Pandaria as Garrosh is influenced by Sha and has blue eyes in this fight. For those unaware, Sha were sort of the big baddies for Mists of Pandaria, and Garrosh ends up doing some horrible things while under their influence.

The Mad Axe skin contains several references here: the basic appearance is influenced by the character Krieg from the Borderlands series, as can be seen with the axe and the mask he wears. From there, we can see that this skin (as well as the Borderlands series) owe a lot to the Mad Max films, a reference which should be pretty apparent thanks to the name of the skin as well as the license plate that’s on Garrosh’s backside, which features “4-79” in the top right corner. For those unaware, April 1979 was the initial release date of the first Mad Max film, and April is the fourth month of the year. Continuing with the Mad Max references, the Frozen tint for this skin might be a nod to Scabrous Scrotus, a villain from the Mad Max video game that came out a few years ago, as both are blue hued and feature skull tattoos.

The El Hefe skin, aside from being one of the coolest skins in the game, may be a neat nod to old school Mexican wrestling. One of the original “Big Three” luchadores who helped popularize the sport was a gentleman who went by the name of the Blue Demon. The Blue Demon, who worked as a rudo (aka a bad guy), may have been the inspiration for the El Fuego tint. I say this because there’s a connection between this skin and Diablo’s luchador skin, which I’ll be getting to in a future article!

And finally for Garrosh, the High Warlord skin is clearly inspired by the High Warlord’s gear which was part of the old PVP ranking system in vanilla World of Warcraft. This gear was originally very hard to obtain and is a great callback to an older part of World of Warcraft’s history.

The Frostwolf tint for this skin has two references contained within. The first is that it clearly references the Frostwolf Clan from Warcraft, as their traditional color is blue and are one of the two factions found in the Alterac Valley battleground in World of Warcraft. Secondly, it ties in nicely with the Echoes of Alterac event that was going on when these skins were released. The default team colors in Heroes of the Storm are red and blue and all of the skins that came out for this event featured red and blue hues. Red and blue are also the colors of the Horde and the Alliance, with red being the color used for the Stormpike Dwarves, the other faction featured in the Alterac Valley battleground.

To close things out for Garrosh, the Chaos tint for the High Warlord skin references the chaos orcs from the Warcraft universe; of which Garrosh’s father, Grom Hellscream, was a rather notorious one. Additionally, the armor and general appearance is pretty close to a scrapped hero unit from Warcraft 3, the Orc Warlord. This unit does make an appearance in the Human campaign in Warcraft 3 as the Slave Master and the armor coloration is pretty close to Garrosh’s appearance on this skin.

Gazlowe

Gazlowe’s default appearance does match up pretty closely to how he was depicted all the way back in the scrapped Warcraft Adventures game, where he sports both goggles and a vest. Also, one thing that a lot of people forget about is that Gazlowe used to have a cigar in his mouth, similar to Tychus, but it was scrapped for presumably the same reasons. These weren’t the only changes made to Gazlowe and his model, as originally he had a different model when he used Robo-Goblin, which made him resemble a Goblin Shredder moreso than the goblin tinker model we’re all accustomed to. This model was also slightly fancier back in the Alpha days, featuring a more blinged out version of Gazlowe than what we have today.

The name of Gazlowe’s Chief Engineer skin is most likely a nod to Gazlowe’s contribution in helping build Orgrimmar in addition to being a reference to the goblin tinker model as the wrench, helmet and armor all correspond well with the tinker’s model. Moreover, there’s also a reference to some old concept art of Trade Prince Gallywix back in Cataclysm as the blinged out grill Gazlowe has on this skin is very similar here. Finally for this skin, the Fel Iron tint is pretty clearly a nod to the Fel Reavers from Burning Crusade-era World of Warcraft.

Big Top Gazlowe features a reference to the Joker with the Clown tint, while the Tangerine tint on the Mad Martian skin might be referencing the Looney Tunes character Marvin the Martian. The Silver tint (as well as the basic appearance for the Mad Martian skin in general) might be specifically referencing the classic film The Day The Earth Stood Still, as the silver coloration matches up pretty well here. Also, the floating brain that’s in Gazlowe’s mech is possibly referencing the 90s Tim Burton film Mars Attacks!

Greymane

I talked about how some skin tints may serve as hidden previews for upcoming changes in other Blizzard games, and Greymane’s Dignified tint would be another example of this, as the coloration is very close to an updated model he received in the Legion expansion. Greymane and this tint were released in January 2016, while the Legion model wasn’t unveiled until May 2016. The Feral tint seems to be patterned after the character Lycan from Dota 2, as the striped pants and black hair are a bit of a giveaway.

The Blackwald tint for Greymane's master skin references a subzone in the Worgen starting area in World of Warcraft and features a similar color scheme. More broadly, Greymane’s master skin looks to be drawing inspiration from the witch hunters from the Warhammer Fantasy setting, although I would argue that this reference might be going back a step further as the Warhammer witch hunters seem to be inspired by Solomon Kane, a character from the mind of Robert E. Howard, the creator of Conan the Barbarian. Howard did describe Kane as being like a wolf several times in his stories about him and even featured a scene where Kane bit out a man’s throat. Now, who does that remind you of?

Finally, there are two references with the Ringmaster skin. The Uncle tint is pretty clearly patterned after Uncle Sam, while the Darkmoon tint is a reference to the Darkmoon Faire, which is once a month event that takes place in World of Warcraft.

Gul’dan

Starting off, Gul’dan’s codpiece features the sigil of the Stormreavers, the clan that he headed back in the Warcraft 2 days. The First War tint looks to be a reference to the movie version of Gul’dan, who featured similar robes, while the Legion tint looks to be referencing Gul’dan as he appeared in Warlords of Draenor and Legion expansions in World of Warcraft.

The Brooding and Shadowmoon tints both reference different subspecies of orcs, referencing the Shadowmoon orcs from Warlords of Draenor. Additionally, the Brooding tint and the Chaos tint for his Shadow Council skin is a chaos orc reference, similar to Garrosh’s Chaos tint. The Shadow Council skin seems to be based off of some old concept art that Samwise Didier drew of Gul’dan back in 2004.

The Shadow Council skin also features several orc subspecies: the Mag’har tint is a nod to the Mag’har orcs, who are the ones that never drank demonic blood; and the Wretched tint which references Pale Orcs, who are sort of the World of Warcraft equivalent of Gollum from Lord of the Rings.

The Balespider skins draw from the Tier 12 Warlock set from World of Warcraft, the Balespider Burning Vestments, which was obtainable in Cataclysm, while the Heroic version is a recolor of a similar set that players could obtain in Heroic mode.

Illidan

The Void tint for Illidan is incredibly similar to his appearance in Warcraft 3 and is likely a reference to his first canonical appearance, as his tattoos weren’t green back then and were a darker color. The Crimson tint might be a nod to vanilla World of Warcraft Demon Hunter Loramus Thalipedes, who was the only demon hunter and sported a red ensemble. The Felblood tint is most likely referencing the Felblood elves from Burning Crusade World of Warcraft.

When talking about Chen in my last article, I made mention of Samwise’s signature panda mark that he puts onto a lot of stuff that he works on, which in Heroes of the Storm can be seen on Chen’s keg. Well, the Betrayer skin has this panda logo popping up again on Illidan’s glaives, which mirrors what the demon hunters had on their glaives back in Warcraft 3.

The Shan’do skin features the Satyr tint, which references the creatures of the same name that are found in the Warcraft universe and are a part of the corruption that exists in the Emerald Dream in World of Warcraft. The Vordrassil tint has a cute pun going on here, for those who are huge lore nerds like yours truly. Vordrassil is a fallen World Tree that can be found in Northrend. Fallen tree… fall-themed tint? Get it?

The Spectre skin is clearly based off of the units of the same name from Starcraft II, but more specifically they seem to reference concept art from the scrapped Starcraft: Ghost game, as the way Illidan’s hair is patterned and the arm-hose rig both match up with how the skin appears in-game.

The Neon tint for this skin is one of many Neon Genesis Evangelion references we’ll be getting to in this series, as the coloration is similar to Eva Unit-01, while the Ghost tint for this skin is clearly a nod to Nova.

And that concludes Part 3 of our series! We hope you enjoyed it!

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