Morgan is named after Morgan Freeman, but there is a bit more story to it... When we brought him home as an itty-bitty 10-week old puppy back in February, there was still snow on the ground. We would take him outside for his potty training, and after he was done he would come sit on our feet like a baby penguin does. So we wanted to give him a penguin name. The only penguin movies we could think of was "March of the Penguins" and "Happy Feet"... we didn't like any of the "Happy Feet" names, and so he was named after the narrator of "March of the Penguins".
My husband and I picked out the kitties names, Whitacre and Ticheli, LOOOONG before we ever even met them. They are the last names of our favorite two concert band composers, Frank Ticheli and Eric Whitacre. I think were were trying to name a pair of girl rats at the time, and decided that those would be AWESOME names for a pair of boy cats... and so they are.
Novinha (rat) is named after a character in the Ender's Game series... She's in the last three books. She doesn't really match the character's attitude at all (hence why we usually just shorten it to "Novi"), but it goes along with a theme that I've had with my girl-rats for years now. RIP Poke, Petra, Valentine, Virlomi ('Lomi), Ela, and Quara.
Teller (and his brother Penn, RIP) was named after, um, well, Penn and Teller. We had just been watching their TV show a lot at the time that we got them, and we figured that naming sugar gliders after illusionist comedians seemed appropriate.
Elphaba and Fiyero are named after characters in Wicked. Again, we had just seen the show when we got them, and well, they can Defy Gravity!
Oh, and we also have a middle name convention for all the pets, too. Basically, whatever their previous name was (like at the shelter, or in Novi's case, from Craigslist) becomes their middle name.
So from the shelter, we have:
Morgan Rocky
Ticheli Smokey
Whitacre Crumpet
From CL, we have:
Novinha Jingles
And the sugar gliders don't have middle names because we got them directly from a breeder when they were joeys.