Here then, a non-exhaustive, non-comprehensive list of all the plausible cultural references, easter eggs, nods, allusions and connections in the scenes and cameos of The Asylum's Sharknado 2: The Second One.
We begin.
The flight attendant is Kelly Osbourne. Her father, Ozzy, has bitten off the head of both a dove and a bat. The sharks that hit the plane end up biting off mostly passenger heads.
Fin Shepard (Ian Ziering) spots “something on the wing” of the plane, much like that episode of The Twilight Zone, “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”, where William Shatner’s character, Bob Wilson, witnesses a gremlin tearing apart one of the plane’s wings.
Santa Mira flight 209 is piloted by Captain Bob Wilson, played by Robert Hays. Hays is also known as Ted Striker from Airplane! (or Flying High!) and flew on the same flight number. The captain and first officer, Jonni Valentine (Rachel True), discuss the menu choices being between fish and chicken. Wilson was considering the fish but that chicken looked good. Then Valentine says, “Always chicken on the plane.” The crew and passengers from Airplane! that chose fish got food poisoning.
Wrestler Johnny Valentine was on board a Cessna 310 in 1975 with three other wrestlers and a promoter when it crashed.
Wil and Anne Wheaton feature as passengers on the other side of the plane. Wil happens to host a YouTube series called Tabletop. In episode 3 of the first season, Get Bit! is one of the games. An elimination game where you’re a robot trying to outswim other robots and a shark is out to bite you into pieces.
Austin Priester is the air marshal and appeared in The West Wing as a secret service agent. If you take north as being the nose of the plane, the west wing will be on the left, where Fin and April (Tara Reid) are sitting.
And that’s only the first six minutes.
Captain Wilson reports that they need emergency clearance into JFK airport and they’re descending rapidly through 20,000 feet.
April is still holding the gun when it's bitten off by the shark as they're up in the clouds. Luke Skywalker loses his hand in a duel against Darth Vader on Cloud City while still holding onto his lightsaber in Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, sequel to A New Hope.
The police officer’s (Andy Dick) badge is 7455, same as the air marshal’s.
Doctor Quint is Billy Ray Cyrus, who broke big with “Achy Breaky Heart”. Fin and April are also dealing with a broken marriage and divorce. In Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, Robert Shaw plays a character named Quint.
Doctor Hartman is being paged. There’s a South African diving guide by the name of Andre Hartman, possibly known as the “Shark Whisperer” to some people. In a documentary, Hartman shows Jean-Michel Cousteau how to catch a ride on a shark’s dorsal fin.
April is convinced the shark knew who she was and is out to get her. Much like the plot of Jaws 4: The Revenge, whose lead is named after Lorraine Gary’s Ellen Brody. Ellen from Sharknado 2 is played by Kari Wuhrer whose character is married to Mark McGrath’s Martin Brody. Martin being Roy Scheider’s character from the first Jaws film. The son, Vaughn (Dante Palminteri), sharing the name of Murray Hamilton’s character, Mayor Larry Vaughn, from the Jaws series.
Sandra Denton is Polly, one of Ellen’s friends. Denton is part of Salt-n-Pepa. One of their hits being “Push It”. Later on, Ellen, her daughter Mora (Courtney Baxter) and Polly will try escaping on bicycles. Or, push bikes.
Ellen’s other friend is Chrissie, played by scream queen Tiffany Shepis, who is credited as being in some film called Some Fish Can Fly. But that’s about an Irishwoman and a New Yorker falling in love.
Judd Hirsch as the taxi driver. Obviously still pulling fares from when he was on Taxi with Danny Devito and Marilu Henner.
Vivica A. Fox is Skye, Fin’s ex-girlfriend from high school. Fox starred in Shark City, a comedy more about poker and gambling than any marine setting.
In the sewers, one of the workers tries to outrun an alligator before a flood surge also brings with it a huge shark. The Asylum also made a film in 2010 called Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus.
Jared Fogle from Subway eating a subway in the subway in front of a Subway sign. Subway being one of the sponsors of the film.
Bloke strumming his guitar on the train is the director of both Sharknado and Sharknado 2: The Second One, Anthony C. Ferrante.
The man holding a “The End is Near” sign about the impending sharkpocalypse is knocked over by Daymond John from Shark Tank, a show about investors looking to fund the next big hit.
The taxi group (Fin, Martin, Vaughn and Skye) seem to be looting various places for weapons and charges, but the team from Liberty Island (Ellen, Mora and Polly) take the time to whip out a credit card to pay for their Citibike rentals.
Fin uses an unanchored magic rope (which was on the taxi’s driver side floorboard all this time) over a street light to get the passengers to swing to safety as their yellow taxi is surrounded by sharks. Another yellow vehicle was the school bus from the first Sharknado where it too was surrounded by sharks and used a rope to haul the kids to safety.
And then Fin literally jumps the shark a few times in a Frogger inspired escape.
Al Roker warns viewers that when the two sharknados combine, New York City is headed for a storm of biblical proportions. Kind of like Dr Peter Venkman’s warning in Ghostbusters.
The fire chief is wrestler Kurt Angle. Wrestling is a big block of content for Syfy and at one point being 80% of the programmed shows. Another 18% being of people talking to themselves and throwing pebbles behind each other while filming their reactions with infrared cameras. The last 2% being science-fiction shows.
April turns up with a circular saw where her left hand was. Ash from Army of Darkness also replaced his hand with a chainsaw. Earlier, Fin was on top of a fire truck rallying passersby as he chainsaw-gutted a shark in half. Toward the end of Sharknado, Fin ran around carrying both a shotgun and a chainsaw.
With flooding from below and flaming sharks from above, both groups end up on the fourth floor. It’s written conspicuously as “4th Floor” as the others are simply “3” or “6”. This could be about tetraphobia, or like many things in life, that 1999 William Hurt and Juliette Lewis horror/thriller.
The cable used to conduct electricity from the lightning is just too short, and disconnects. Skye comes back doing a Doc Emmett Brown to hold the two cables together as Hill Valley’s clock tower juices up from Back To The Future.
After the exploding Freon cools down the sharknados, the citizens then run rampant down the streets with shovels, pitchforks and machetes. A reference to the fact that everybody in New York has gardening tools and a boot filled with weapons.
It all ends when Fin reaches into a shark and pulls out a gun-wielding arm. Luckily, it also has a ring that he can use to propose to April with. It’s not her arm though, since hers was bitten off at the wrist compared to the elbow meat found in the shark.
Accuracy not guaranteed
Published on Sunday, 3 August 2014
By Ethan Switch 
Well doesn't that just look tasty.