[[quoteright:313:http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/suffer_not_the_unclean_to_live.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:313:I'll be up in a minute Mom, I just have to purge these heretics.]]

->''Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.''

''Warhammer 40,000'', [[FanNickname known informally]] as "Warhammer 40k" or just plain "40k", is a miniatures-based [[TabletopGames tabletop]] [[TurnBasedStrategy strategy game]] by Games Workshop. Drawing heavily on their previous ''{{Warhammer}} Fantasy'' game, it began as "Warhammer [[RecycledInSpace In Space]]", but has over time grown distinct from (and far more popular than) its fantasy counterpart.

Thirty-eight thousand years in the future, the mighty [[TheEmpire Imperium of Man]] has expanded across the galaxy... to discover that the galaxy is [[WorldHalfEmpty a hell that would make Hieronymous Bosch shit himself in terror]], and that ''[[BeyondTheImpossible it]]'' [[CosmicHorror has a hell]]. From without, the Imperium is assailed by [[AliensAndMonsters alien monsters]] from the depths of space, [[OmnicidalManiac nightmare death-machines]] and [[TheHeartless soulless daemons]] (as well as soulless death-machines and nightmare daemons); from within, treachery, heresy, [[ObstructiveBureaucrat mindless incompetence]] and the [[TheCorruption festering taint of Chaos]] threaten to tear it apart.

''Warhammer 40,000'' is [[{{Understatement}} not a happy place]]. Rather than just being DarkerAndEdgier, it [[RefugeInAudacity paints itself non-reflective matte black]], takes a running jump and [[BeyondTheImpossible hurls itself head first over the edge, bellowing "WAAAGH"]]. The Imperium of Man is an oppressive, stark, and downright miserable place to live in where, for far too many people, living isn't something to do till you die, but something to do till something comes around and kills you in an unbelievably horrible way - quite probably something on your own side. The [[MessianicArchetype Messiah]] has been locked up on life support for the past ten millennia, [[HorusHeresy laid low by his most beloved son]], and an incomprehensibly vast {{Church Militant}} commits hourly atrocities in his name.

The problem is, as bad as the Imperium is, they're not quite as bad as many of the other factions. Death is about the best you can hope for against the vast majority of the other major players in the battlefields of the 41st Millennium. The basic premise of 40k, insofar as it ''can'' be summed up, is that of an eternal, impossibly vast conflict between a number of absurdly powerful genocidal, xenocidal and in one case omnicidal factions, with [[TropeOverdosed every single weapon, ideology and creative piece of nastiness imaginable]] [[{{Troperiffic}} turned up]] [[UpToEleven to eleven]]. The ''basic sidearm'' of a Space Marine is a [[{{BFG}} fully automatic armour-piercing rocket-propelled grenade launcher]]. The Astronomican, a ''navigation aid'', [[PoweredByAForsakenChild has the souls of thousands of]] [[HumanResources psychic humans sacrificed to it every day]], dying by inches to feed the machine. The faster-than-light travel used by most factions carries with it a good chance of being ''[[HyperspaceIsAScaryPlace eaten by daemons]]''. There are also [[ChainsawGood chainsaw swords]], [[PowerFist armored gloves that crush tanks]], [[HumongousMecha mountain-sized daemonic walking battle cathedrals]], [[TankGoodness tanks the size of small cities]] and warships that level continents, if not simply [[ApocalypseHow obliterating all life on an entire planet just to be sure.]] [[BeyondTheImpossible And sometimes even that doesn't work.]] There is no time for peace, no respite, no forgiveness; there is only war.

The 40k universe is a spectacularly brutal playground of tropes and horrible things taken to their absolute extreme. Entire planets with populations of billions are lost due to ''rounding errors'' in tax returns. Orders of capricious, fanatical, [[BioAugmentation genetically engineered]] SuperSoldier [[KnightTemplar Knights Templar]] serve as the Imperium's special forces, while the ''trillions'' of soldiers in its regular armies take [[WeHaveReserves disregard for human life]] further than most people could believe possible. A futuristic [[RecycledInSpace space]] [[StateSec Inquisition]] ruthlessly hunts down anyone with even a hint of the taint of the heretic, the mutant, or the alien, and is backed up by legions of supercharged daemonhunting super soldiers and fanatical power-armoured [[AmazonBrigade battle nuns.]] The ancient and debased manipulator-race contrive wars that see billions dead so that ''they'' can survive; their depraved cousins cannot ''live'' without torturing numberless innocents to death in unimaginably horrible ways. There's a [[BeePeople Bug Swarm]] trying to eat [[HordeOfAlienLocusts everything in the galaxy]], a light-years wide [[NegativeSpaceWedgie hole in reality]] through which countless daemons and corrupted daemon-powered super-soldiers periodically attempt to destroy the universe, and an entire civilisation of [[ImmortalityImmorality undying]] [[OmnicidalManiac Omnicidal Maniacs]] serving their [[EnergyBeing star]]-[[PhysicalGod god]] [[EldritchAbomination masters]]' desire to exterminate all living creatures, down to the last bacterium. There's a [[OurOrcsAreDifferent genetically-engineered survivor warrior species]] infesting every corner of the galaxy and cheerfully trying to kill everything ''else'' in the galaxy because it's literally hard-wired into their genetic code. The closest thing to the ''good guys'' you can find in this setting is a tiny alien empire sandwiched between all the other factions, and they [[UnreliableNarrator may or may not]] have a thing for forcing new subjects into their empire through orbital bombardment, sterilization, and concentration camps, but they will at least offer you admittance to their club.

As well as the game itself and its rulebooks, faction-specific, setting-specific and campaign sourcebooks, 40k has spawned a range of [[ExpandedUniverse spinoff games and publications]]. Over sixty 40k novels and short story anthologies, including the successful ''[[GauntsGhosts Gaunt's Ghosts]]'', ''{{Eisenhorn}}'', and ''CiaphasCain'' novels, are published by the Black Library, a subsidiary of Games Workshop, who also published the now out-of-print comic book ''Warhammer Monthly'' and short story magazine ''Inferno''. Boom! Studios now publish comics set in the Warhammer 40K universe, in the form of various mini-series, rather than an ongoing title. There is even a full-length fan film, {{Damnatus}}, which was approved, made, banned over conflicts between British and German IP laws, then leaked online. Spinoff tabletop games include the space combat game ''BattlefleetGothic'', large-scale strategy ''Epic 40,000'', gang-based ''Necromunda'', all-Ork ''Gorkamorka'', small scale ''Film/{{Alien}}''-influenced ''Space Hulk'', RPG-influenced "narrative wargame" ''Inquisitor'', and the more traditional [=RPGs=] ''DarkHeresy'' and ''RogueTrader''. A small but growing number of 40k videogames have also been made, of which the most recent are ''Warhammer 40,000: DawnOfWar'' and its sequel ''DawnOfWar II'', a pair of RealTimeStrategy games for the PC, ''Warhammer 40,000: Fire Warrior'', a First Person Shooter, and ''Warhammer 40,000: Squad Command'', a turn-based tactical game. Currently in development are a third-person shooter, ''Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine'', and a MMORPG under the imaginative working title of ''Warhammer 40,000 Online''. An official CGI movie, ''Ultramarines'', was recently announced. Before you start screaming, consider that the script is written by DanAbnett, which may be something a of a CueCullen.
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A more in-depth look at the tropes specifically embodied by the various major factions can be found [[{{Characters/Warhammer40000}} here.]]

Spin-offs and games of ''{{Warhammer 40000}}'' that have received indexes of their own:

*BattlefleetGothic (Spin-off game.)
*BloodRavens (Book series and protagonists of ''DawnOfWar''.)
*BloodAngels (Book series.)
*CiaphasCain ('''[[strike:HERO OF THE IMPERIUM]]''' Book series.)
*{{Damnatus}} (Fan film.)
*DarkHeresy (Spin-off game.)
*DawnOfWar (Computer game series.)
*{{Eisenhorn}} (Book series.)
*GauntsGhosts (Book series.)
*GreyKnights (Book series.)
*HorusHeresy (Book series.)
*{{Inquisitor}} (Spin-off game.)
*{{Ravenor}} (Book series.)
*RogueTrader (Spin-off game.)
*SoulDrinkers (Book series.)
*SpaceWolf (Book series.)
*{{Ultramarines}} (Book series.)

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!Tropes for the [[Pantheon/TropePantheons Trope God]], Examples for the Example Throne!

* AbsurdlySharpBlade (Nearly every faction has an example; many races' ''basic close combat weapons'' have monomolecular edges, and it only gets sharper from there.)
* AbnormalAmmo (Guns which fire razor-edged molecule-thick ninja stars, guns which fire nets of RazorFloss, guns which fire wooden stakes, flamethrowers which squirt ''holy'' napalm, biological guns which use, um, [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything muscle spasms]] to fire flesh-eating beetles/maggots or ''exploding tumours'', guns which open holes into hell, guns which fire tiny goblins ''through'' hell, grenades filled with tears collected from a thousand crying statues of the Emperor.)
** Space Marine Sternguard Veterans ONLY carry abnormal ammo: rocket-propelled anti-armor rounds, rocket-propelled flaming airburst rounds, rocket-propelled ''vials of flesh-eating acid'', and rocket-propelled ''miniaturized fusion bombs''.
** Aside from a very few conventional laser weapons, Eldar ranged weapons use abnormal ammo -- if they use ammo at all -- more or less exclusively: the ninja star guns, RazorFloss guns, and guns that open holes into hell listed above are all theirs. The Dark Eldar top this with guns that shoot poisoned slivers of glass, pure distilled ''pain'', and the tortured souls of enemy psykers as ammunition.
** Don't forget the Necrons have guns which literally flay your skin, flesh, organs, then BONES into their molecular components with [[ShockAndAwe bolts of green lightning]].
***You know, by they time it got down to your bones I doubt you'd really care all that much.
* AbusivePrecursors (C'tan definitely qualify.)
** The Dark and Craftworld Eldar to a lesser but still notable extent.
* AchievementsInIgnorance (Ork technology as a whole, via ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve.)
* TheAestheticsOfTechnology (Brutally averted for the Imperium. That huge, boxy, primitive-looking Leman Russ? That tank is so damn maneuverable it can practically ''tap dance''. Also played straight for Eldar, whose tech is every bit as advanced as the inhuman sleekness suggests.)
* AFatherToHisMen (Literal in the case of the Emperor to the Primarchs and the Primarchs to their respective legions during the Great Crusade. Also see the image on that page for much lulz.)
* AffablyEvil (Nurgle ''loves'' his little children, and shows it by giving them gifts (of horrible, flesh-eating diseases). His followers even refer to him as "Father Nurgle". He's like a festering, disgusting Santa Claus.)
** One of the three remaining Eldar Gods, Isha, the goddess of healing, is his prisoner, and he uses her as a test subject for his plagues. Since she's the goddess of healing, they are instantly cured. Her fate would be much worse if she had fallen into the hands of the other Chaos God who sought to claim her. Being taken alive by Slaanesh him(her? it?)self is, even in the 40k universe, perhaps the single worst fate imaginable. At least Nurgle does love her, though being a Chaos God with atrocious codependency issues makes him express it in twisted ways. It is unknown if the feeling is mutual, as Isha secretly sends out the cures to as many of Nurgle's plagues as she can to try and help the enemies of Chaos but Stockholm Syndrome would have undoubtedly taken some effect in the millenia since Nurgle rescued her from Slaanesh.
* AfterActionReport (Battle reports, a long-standing feature in White Dwarf magazine.)
* AfterTheEnd (Though there have been about five "ends" for humanity alone, each more awful than the last.)
* AIIsACrapshoot (The first true human-created artificial intelligences, the Iron Men, wiped out humanity's first great interstellar civilization and plunged the human race into a galaxy-wide dark age. The Adeptus Mechanicus outlawed sentient [=AIs=] as a result, and for the most part the Imperium's modern-day "machine spirits" are pretty well-behaved.)
** Tau drones are also entirely well-behaved. Mind you, their AI is approximately the same as a squirrel (OK, [[CallARabbitASmeerp pterasquirrel]]).
*** Individually, they're not quite intelligent. However, these things can link up and create more intelligent systems by combining their processing power. Potentially, a large enough Gun Drone squad could become sentient. (say, +50?)
* AirJousting (Eldar Shining Spears: space elf knights on flying bikes with laser lances.)
* {{AKA 47}} (Some vehicles were quite clearly based on certain real-life vehicles:)
** The Imperial Guard's Bombard siege mortars were based on Nazi Germany's Karl-Gerat super heavy mortars. Their Chimera was based on the old [pre-Desert Storm] Bradley, including having Lasguns as firing port weapons.
** The Space Marine Rhino is a clone of the M113 APC; the original all-plastic Predator has a T-55 turret stuck on top. The Land Raider is apparently a copy of some kind of snowmobile.
* AlienBlood (Tau have blue blood and Tyranid fluids are generally described as "ichor". Eldar and Orks have red blood, although Eldar blood crystallizes instead of scabbing, and Ork blood used to be as green as their skin before Games Workshop [[RetCon retconned]] that. The Orks are now considered green due to thick amounts of algae that grow beneath their skin.)
* AlienGeometries (Try not to look too hard at Chaos buildings, or anything else Chaos makes, for that matter. [[BrownNote Bad idea.]])
* AliensAndMonsters
* TheAlliance (The Tau Empire, who are the only faction with significant allies outside their own species. This being 40K, they don't always get along. And then there's the people who suspect brainwashing, and the evidence of forced sterilization and concentration camps....)
* AllThereInTheManual (Numerous rulebooks, novels, magazines, supplemental sourcebooks and spinoff games with their own sets.)
* AlternateCharacterInterpretation (Pretty much every organisation's actions and motivations can be "read" in several different ways.)
* AlwaysChaoticEvil ([[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Chaos]] and the Dark Eldar. Conversely the Imperium is Always Lawful [[strike:Evil]] [[WellIntentionedExtremist Extremist]], Craftworld Eldar are Always Lawful [[strike:Neutral]] [[ManipulativeBastard Manipulative]], the Orks are Always Chaotic [[strike:Evil]] [[PsychopathicManchild Rambunctious]], the Necrons are Always Lawful [[strike:Evil]] [[OmnicidalManiac Omnicidal]], the Tyranids are Always Neutral [[strike:Evil]] [[HordeOfAlienLocusts Hungry]], and the Tau are Always Lawful [[strike:Good]] [[strike:Neutral]] [[strike:Evil]] [[UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans Utopian]]. All [[AlternateCharacterInterpretation subject to interpretation]], of course.)
** And get this: in spite of all the atrocities they commit, the Imperials still consider ''[[KnightTemplar themselves]]'' to be LawfulGood. Or at least LawfulNeutral, for those who aren't Space Marines or Grey Knights.
* AmazonBrigade (The Sisters of Battle and Eldar Howling Banshees. ''Not'' the Dark Eldar Wyches, oddly enough, unlike their {{Warhammer}} counterparts.)
** Howling Banshees ''do'' have male members according to the lore, though they are rare. This is not, however, represented in any of the models.
***It's stated in some sources that males walking the path of the Howling Banshee shed their gender identity and consider themselves female, so it's more like Amazon-Transsexual Brigade.
* AMechByAnyOtherName (Dreadnoughts, Wraithlords, Gargants, Titans, etc.)
* [[strike:[[AMillionIsAStatistic A Million]]]] [[AMillionIsAStatistic Ten Billion Is A Statistic]]
* AncientConspiracy (All over the place. [[DeathNote Just as planned...]])
** A key example of this is a multi-race super secret Illuminati like group, whose entire goal is to rid the universe of Chaos. And what, do you ask, is their genius way of doing this? Aid Horus in every single way so he kills the Emperor, hopefully relying on the fact this will trigger the last ounce of guilt in Horus, effectively driving him into emo mood, which will cause only more civil war, eventually ridding the universe of humanity and leaving Chaos' best plaything destroyed. Evidently their plans weren't that smart. Horus got [[MindRape a nasty headache]].
**There's also the Cabal from the ''HorusHeresy'' novel, ''Legion'' - an organisation of various elder (and Eldar) aliens which aimed to prevent Chaos from killing the universe. They [[spoiler: recruited the Alpha Legion to this end]] but their success is...unclear, to say the least...
* AncestralWeapon (Almost everyone's equipment seems to be ancient to some degree, most notably Eldar and Marine wargear and Necron ''everything''. Somewhat [[JustifiedTrope justified]] by the fact that a lot of the more advanced wargear has to consist of ancient hand-me-downs, because humanity has largely ''forgotten how the technology works and considers it magical''. More progress would be made in regaining that lost knowledge, but the Adeptus Mechanicus, the priesthood of technology, guards all their secrets jealously and takes a dim view of innovations that aren't based on pre-existing technologies.)
* AndIMustScream (The Outsider, victims of daemonic possession, possibly Necrons.)
* AndManGrewProud (Human history up until and through the war with the Iron Men that destroyed the first great era of human civilization lingers as myth and cultural superstitions.)
* {{Animesque}} (The Tau and the Eldar, albeit in two diametrically-opposed fashions.)
* AnnoyingArrows (Half averted, half played weirdly straight - there's at least one instance of alien bows and arrows going straight through Space Marines, but failing to harm them because of their superhuman toughness.)
* AnotherDimension (The Warp.)
* AntiMagic (Pariahs, Blanks and Untouchables [[PowerNullifier nullifying]] psyker abilities. Which means [[SuperpowerLottery you're immune to all the psychic and sorcerous nastiness out there]], but [[BlessedWithSuck everyone hates you because you have no soul and the Necrons will do unpleasant things to you if they find you]]. Oh, and some Pariahs will actually harm psykers just by standing close by.)
* ApathyKilledTheCat (Imperial domestic policy. "Only the awkward question; only the foolish ask twice.")
* ApeShallNeverKillApe (Played straight by the Craftworld Eldar and the Tau. ''Thoroughly'' averted by everyone else, who gladly maim, torture, kill, and even ''eat'' members of their own race, and claim no moral superiority from avoiding such acts.)
* ApocalypseHow (Has an example on every level of the scale.)
* ApocalypticLog (A few have cropped up from doomed Imperial research expeditions.)
* ApologeticAttacker (The Tau claim to always be this, at any rate.)
* AristocratsAreEvil (Or just corrupt and ''really'' stupid; various background pieces have members of the Imperial upper classes joining Chaos cults out of boredom, smuggling xeno artifacts, ''[[TooDumbToLive using Dark Eldar as mercenaries]]'' to sort out their rivals, trying to [[DealWithTheDevil cut a deal]] with ''the PhysicalGod of death''...)
* ArmyOfTheDead (The Legion of the Damned, a Space Marines chapter that got lost in the Warp and became spectral beings. They occasionally emerge from the warp to turn the tide of a battle in favor of the Imperium before disappearing again.)
** To lesser extent, the soul-powered Wraithlords and Wraithguard of the Eldar.
* ArtifactOfDeath (Most Daemon weapons lead to their owner's doom eventually.)
* ArtifactOfDoom (By the truckload in every size and shape imaginable, from simple daemon weapons to entire planets serving as the titular cans in SealedEvilInACan.)
* ArmCannon (Chaos Obliterators are this ''all over'': their bodies are partly made out of weapons.)
** The Grey Knights strap rocket-propelled grenade launchers to their wrists as ''standard'' armaments.
* ArmourIsUseless (Generally averted - armour and [[DeflectorShields force fields]] can and do make a difference most of the time. However, there's no shortage of weapons that make a mockery of even the toughest physical armour: [=AP2=] and [=AP1=] ranged weapons, rending weapons of all sorts (on a good roll), power weapons and their variants, and literally anything used by a Monstrous Creature in melee. And then there are weapons so powerful they could not care less about ''any'' conventional protection, including vortex weapons, C'tan phase weapons, and certain daemon weapons.)
** Within the background, the standard flak armour is considered to be almost useless against the weapons of pretty much every other race in the universe.
* ArtificialLimbs (May be the above ArmCannon. Even in the higher echelons of pretty much every Imperial organisation, there is some discrepancy over just what it is possible to replace damaged parts with. Sometimes actual flesh and blood vat grown limbs are referred to, but most of the time it's large, mechanical, piston-driven coolness.)
* ArtMajorBiology (First the genetically-engineered supermen are designed to look cool, then they later explain how it (doesn't) work.)
* AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence (The Emperor already has.)
* AsLongAsThereIsEvil (Chaos, but the Necrons seem to have an... unorthodox solution to the problem in mind: permanently sealing the Materium from the Immaterium by ''killing everything, everywhere'', down to the last bacterium.)
* AsskickingEqualsAuthority (Ork 'society'. It is said that a powerful enough Ork warlord uniting all of the galaxy's Orks could [[CurbstompBattle curbstomp]] every other faction. This is also how Space Marines get promoted, and how champions of Chaos gain renown.)
* ATeamFiring (All Orks ever, who consider MoreDakka far more important than such nonsense as "aiming". The one exception would be Warboss Nazdreg, who has learned that dakka + aimin' = bigga 'splosions.)
* TheAtoner (Cypher and the Fallen Angels, also the Lamenters chapter and (most of) the Craftworld Eldar.)
* AtopAMountainOfCorpses
* AttackAttackAttack (Orks)
* AttackDrone (Widely used by the Tau. Imperial servo-skulls are also somewhat like this.)
* AttackPatternAlpha (Tau and Imperial militaries follow this.)
* AuthorityEqualsAsskicking (Many Chaos leaders are warp-enhanced, the original Primarchs literally were demi-gods, and Ork and Tyranid leaders are LargeAndInCharge. Prevalent for all races in the tabletop game, though in later editions, either justified or rectified - taking away things like the unrealistically high Toughness of human characters, justifying the amazing weapon skills of certain heroes because they've literally been doing this sort of thing for ''centuries''.)
** Also, this trope is arguably justified in that surviving to be promoted so high in ''{{Warhammer 40000}}'' is ''really'' unlikely to be based off your luck. And if it is, you just won't survive in that position for very long.
** Marneus Calgar, chapter master of the Ultramarines, has a special rule titled "God of War". 'nuff said.
* AutomaticallyViolent (Generally the case with Chaos-inspired madness, though in most cases those afflicted were already violent.)
* AveMachina (The Adeptus Mechanicus first and foremost, but also the Iron Hands chapter of Space Marines.)
* AxeCrazy (Two words: Khorne Berserkers. The worst of the bunch is Kharn the Betrayer, who's so blood thirsty that any missed attacks in close combat hit anyone in the same squad as him. Known to randomly kill anyone in his way, even other Khorne Berserkers.)
** Lesser Axe Crazies include Imperial Penal Legion troopers, [[BloodAngels Blood Angel]] Space Marines in the throes of [[UnstoppableRage the Black Rage]], and the entire Ork race.
** It should be noted that while ''every single Ork'' is an Omnicidal AxeCrazy CompleteMonster by human standards, members of the Goff klan are considered AxeCrazy '''by other Orks'''.
* {{Badass}} (Pretty much every character. Hell, pretty much every ''foot soldier''. Characters get a whole new level of badass.)
** BadassAbnormal (The Sisters of Battle used to be nothing more than power armored [[ChurchMilitant nuns with guns]]; better equipment and training aside, they were just ordinary humans like the [[BadassNormal Imperial Guard]]. Recent Sisters lists have weaponized the Sisters' faith, allowing them to manifest battlefield miracles that protect them from enemy fire and further increase their combat prowess.)
** BadassArmy (EVERY PLAYABLE ARMY.)
** BadassBiker (How much more badass do you get than screaming green maniacs on ramshackle scrap-metal motorbikes laden with giant machine guns? Oh yeah, that would be the {{Super Soldier}}s on giant armoured bikes the size of cars. Or the ''evil'' Super Soldiers on ''hell motorbikes'' covered in blades and skulls... or maybe the space-elf knights on flying bikes with laser lances... or the evil space elves that can fly their bladed flying death bikes with enough skill to ''cut specific arteries''.)
*** Let's not forget about DOOM RIDER, who's basically the Chaos equivalent of Ghost Rider (and who may or may not do cocaine... oh, who are we kidding. He's a daemon prince of Slaanesh, of ''course'' he does cocaine. And a bunch of other horrifying substances that make cocaine seem like powdered milk by comparison).
*** Don't forget to mention the White Scars, which is basically an entire Space Marine chapter of Badass Bikers.
***Or Wazzdakka Gutsmek, who is this Trope personified. This Ork does things like ramping his monstrous bike off a cliff to ram it into the cockpit of a [[HumongousMecha Titan]] just so he can personally punch out the pilots. His bike has fully-automatic ''tank cannons'' mounted on it.
** BadassBoast (Too many to count.)
** BadassCreed (Just about everyone barring Tyranids and Necrons. Generally shouted as a battle cry.)
*** The Imperials also have a literal one in the form of Ursarker E Creed: Lord Castellan of Cadia, badass WinstonChurchill expy, and possessor of Tactical Genius ([[TheKhan "CREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED!"]]).
** BadassDecay (The Necrons in general and the Void Dragon in particular have been steadily losing their mystery and power since being introduced.)
***[[VillainSue There's probably a]] [[GodModeSue reason for this,]] given the first portrayals of Necron technology and the fact they've got so many other horrible things to compete with.
** BadassGrandpa (Lots. Pretty much every Space Marine will see their first century, the Craftworld and Dark Eldar can live for millennia, the original Traitor Legions are going ten thousand years and still counting, while the Necrons, being older than most other things in the universe and with regenerating metal bodies, outlive most of the opposition.)
*** Commander Dante, the current Chapter Master of the Blood Angels, is ''1,100'' years old, the oldest Space Marine in the Imperium, Dreadnoughts excepted. He is so experienced, fearless, and powerful that when the Chapter Masters of the Salamanders and Ultramarines (Tu'Shan and Marneus Calgar) were asked who should head the Armageddon intervention, they ''picked him unanimously''.
** BadassLongcoat (Fear the Commissar more than you fear the enemy!)
** BadassNormal (The Imperial Guard: ordinary human soldiers, taking on enemies that can kill ordinary human soldiers by looking at them funny, and winning. Admittedly more visible in the fiction than on the tabletop....until the latest Codex.)
** RetiredBadass (more than can be counted. Commissar Sebastian Yarrick, any Space Marine Dreadnought, and '''[[CiaphasCain Ciaphas Cain, HERO OF THE IMPERIUM!]]''' among them.)
*** Aun'shi of the Tau got pretty close to retiring, before he was put back on duty by his bosses.
* BadBoss (Ok, maybe many Comissars have the justification of shooting fleeing men because there are a lot that can follow suit, and their infantry depend on MoreDakka via their numbers to kill stuff, but...)
** Commander Chenkov of Valhalla routinely abuses the Imperial Guard's [[WeHaveReserves reserves]] to overwhelm the enemy with endless waves of poorly-trained, disposable conscripts. He's also been known to use his troops to clear minefields for tanks and bog enemy units down so that the artillery can shell them, and once executed a million of his own men to build a dam from their bodies. His regiment, the Tundra Wolves, has been refounded more than a dozen times in recent decades due to casualties, and it's rumored that he's killed more of his own men than he has of the enemy. And of course, since this is the Imperium, he's routinely awarded medals and commendations for quickly defeating the enemy with these brutal tactics.
** Ork Nobz also aren't above "krakkin' a few uv da ladz' 'eadz" (often fatally) in order to restore order, and Runtherdz maintain the "morale" of their Gretchin charges by having their squighounds ''devour'' a couple of them whenever they try to flee.
** The grand master of this trope (insofar as the 40k universe has a grand master of horribleness) is Abaddon the Despoiler, Warmaster of Chaos. A fairly unpleasant person BEFORE he turned to Chaos, Abbadon is very much a believer in the Darth Vader approach of anger control, namely immediately killing those who displease him. However, this being the GRIMDARK setting it is, Abaddon takes it just one step further and will happily destroy ships of his own fleet if the captain of said vessel displeases him. And keep in mind his flagship was at one time the aptly titled ''[[EarthShatteringKaboom Planet]] [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill Killer]]''.
* BadPowersBadPeople (Chaos.)
* BadVibrations (Justified - if you don't feel the tremors of an approaching Titan, you deserve what you get.)
* BarbarianHorde (The Space Wolves and White Scars recruit solely from the Barbarians of their homeworld.)
** The entire Ork race is viewed as a BarbarianHorde by the galaxy's other races, given their penchant for fielding large numbers of screaming infantry armed with overlarge weapons. The Snakebite Clan in particular is considered a BarbarianHorde ''by other Orks'', forsaking what few niceties Ork civilization has for the joy of riding enormous snorting warboars and squiggoths into battle.
* BaseOnWheels (The Leviathan, a mobile command centre on treads the size of ''a small city''... which acts as an [=APC=] ''for tanks''.)
** Orks have their own version - A ''krawla'' will vary in size from a tank APC to a city on wheels which may in turn contain smaller krawlaz.
** Before the setting [[DroppedABridgeOnHim got rid of them]], the Squats specialised in these, and it was said they built the Leviathans. Back in the days when Epic was still called ''Space Marine'', there was also the Cyclops [a colossal anti-Titan assault gun], Land Train, Colossus [a Leviathan variant], Hellbore [a ridiculously huge drilling machine], the Ordinatus machines, and the Capitol Imperialis [the modern Leviathan is a ret-combination of this tank-carrying monstrosity and the old Leviathan which was just a mobile command post].
** The Imperator Titan is also essentially a base on ''legs'' which carries an entire ''castle'' around on its back, particularly when the ridiculously complex ''Titan Legions'' rules are used; the same applies to the Mega-Gargant. This Troper also recalls the canned variant Imperators that were supposed to follow the release of the ''Titan Legions'' but never did, one of which would have had an entire aircraft carrier deck on its back.
* BeamSpam (Imperial Guard infantrymen almost-universally tote rapid-firing laser weapons, and they field a ''lot'' of men.)
* BeautyIsNeverTarnished (Often played straight by the Eldar, and justified by the Callidus Assassins (who are all shapeshifters). Generally avoided by the Sisters of Battle, who are about as ugly, scarred and broken as you might expect "realistic" battle-nuns to be, and get older, more grizzled, and meaner as you move up the chain of command.)
* BeautyEqualsGoodness (Subverted to [[IncrediblyLamePun hell]] by followers of Slaanesh.)
* BecauseISaidSo (Frequently the only justification you'll ever get from the Inquisition.)
** Questioning an Inquisitor for a justification will get you executed for Heresy. If you're lucky that is.
** Repeat after me: ''The Commissar is always right.''
** Notice how the quote for ApathyKilledTheCat only goes as far as two...
* BeeBeeGun (The Tyranid fleshborer is a Beetle Beetle Gun, firing ravenous insects that chew their way into a target's insides. The Devourer does much the same thing with a horde of flesh-eating worms.)
* BeePeople (Tyranids. Also the Tau's Vespid Auxilaries, though they're more like Wasp People.)
* BellisariosMaxim (This setting ''runs'' on RuleOfCool.)
* BeliefMakesYouStupid (And keeps you alive.)
* BenevolentAlienInvasion (The Tau. At least compared to any of the alternatives.)
* BerserkButton (In-game with Arco-Flagellants, and also in real life. Try bringing up the [[OldShame Squats]] at any GW press event. ''See what happens...'')
** There was a secret rule on the official GW forums before they were closed. If you ever mentioned the Squats, for any reason whatsoever, the moderators would permanently ban you and delete the thread.
** A similar thing happens if you bring up the idea of female Space Marines.
** Mentioning Squad Broken in a 40k forum.
** Suggesting harming civilians in front of the Salamanders.
** Suggesting haircuts, shaving, and restraint in battle and partying and, especially, uttering the words [=Codex Chapter=]/[=Codex Astartes=] in front of Space Wolves.
* BetterToDieThanBeKilled (Considered an honourable end for disgraced Imperial Guard officers and those touched by the Warp, and much preferable to being taken alive by the Ecclesiarchy or Dark Eldar.)
** Or Chaos. Or the Inquisition. Or the Necrons. Or the Tyranids. Or....
* BeyondTheImpossible (How much [[MoreDakka Dakka]] can the Ork Mekboys put together [Answer: never enuff]? How much [[MoralEventHorizon more evil]] can we make the [[AbusivePrecursors Dark Eldar]]? How loud can Kharn scream "'''BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!'''"? How big of a BigBad can CiaphasCain, '''[[FakeUltimateHero HERO OF THE IMPERIUM!]]''', defeat through a combination of dumb luck, skill and [[IndyPloy fast thinking]]? Just how much [[ItGotWorse worse can things get]]? It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that the setting pretty much runs on BeyondTheImpossible.)
* BigBad (Abaddon the Despoiler is the closest to the traditional concept - the other contenders for number one evil in 40k are better described as forces and gods than true villains. Ghazghkull Thraka is another strong contender, though, and most other factions have their own Big Evil Overlords as well.)
* BigBadassWolf (Fenrisian Wolves, chaos hounds.)
** [[http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m500485a_99110101430_SpaceWolvesCanisMain_873x627.jpg Canis Wolfborn rides a wolf so big it has its own zipcode.]]
* BigBookOfWar (The ''Tactica Imperium'' and the ''Codex Astartes''. ''The Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer'' would be this, were it not full of [[strike:outright lies]] uplifting Imperial propaganda.)
** The ''Primer'' is actually pretty useful in some places, containing useful and informative tips such as how to make a frag grenade into a booby trap, how to field-strip and clean a Lasgun, and how when you are on guard duty you should '''NEVER LEAVE YOUR POST. EVER.'''
* BigBrotherIsWatching (And ready to burn you at the stake.)
* {{BFG}} (Way, way too many to list here. Let's just say that the bolter, the ''standard issue'' Space Marine gun, rapid-fires .75 caliber armour piercing rocket propelled grenades. [[{{Memes/Comics}} It fires 19mm caliber grenades. That's as large as a 10-gauge shell. And]] [[strike:[[AndThatsTerrible that's terrible]]]] it goes upwards from there.)
* {{BFS}} (Eight-foot-long chainsaw sword with bolt-on flamethrower, anyone?)
** Eviscerator, Uge choppa. Dreadnaught close combat weapon. Titan close combat weapon.
** Special mention must go to the Dawn Blade wielded by Commander Farsight, which not only has to be mounted on a battlesuit, but can hack through tank armour. And it's got crackling energies all over it. About the only thing it lacks is a [[ChainsawGood chainsaw edge]].
* BiggerIsBetter (The basis [[{{BFG}} for]] [[{{BFS}} many]] [[HumongousMecha things]] in this setting.)
* BiggerStick (Leman Russ not enough? Baneblade. Then Leviathan. Then a Titan. Then a bigger Titan. Then [[EarthShatteringKaboom Exterminatus]].)
* {{Bizarrchitecture}} (Common on [[EldritchLocation daemon worlds]], where the laws of physics are literally just another building material.)
* BlackAndGreyMorality (Opinions vary between whether 40k is black and grey, black and ''black'', or black and '''''[[DarkerAndEdgier ALL-CONSUMING LIGHT DEVOURING VOID]]'''''.)
** [[http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/3/5/ Obligatory Penny Arcade link]].
* BlackMagic (Everything connected to Chaos.)
* TheBlacksmith (Vulkan, who passed the trait on to the Salamander Astartes Chapter. To a lesser and weirder extent, Ferrus Manus and the Iron Hands.)
* BladeOnAStick (A number of Grey Knights' Nemesis Force Weapons come in the form of glaives; it's the default form for them in ''DawnOfWar''. Eldar Singing Spears are also an example.)
** The Necron warscythe is one of the most feared close-combat weapons in existance- a glaive that can cut through ''energy fields'' without slowing down.
* BlessedWithSuck (Psykers; these are also a debatable case of CursedWithAwesome, at least until a daemon eats their soul.)
* BlindSeer (The soul-binding process required to turn psykers into Astropaths - interstellar telepaths used for all long-distance communication - completely burns out their eyes, though their psychic abilities generally compensate for it. Many non-Astropath psykers are also depicted as physically blind.)
* BlingOfWar (Imperial armour tends to turn into this if the wearer lives long enough and achieves high enough rank. Orks, particularly of the Bad Moon and Deathskull clans, also tend to acquire some pretty tricked-out combat gear.)
** Chaos, too...only the bling generally consists of either SpikesOfDoom or NothingButSkulls.
* BloodKnight (Orks and followers of Khorne, without exception. You also get a fair number of Imperial, Eldar, and Dark Eldar in this category.)
* BloodyHilarious (Orks wouldn't be nearly as popular if they weren't so ''funny'')
* BodyHorror
* BondCreatures (Both natural, in the somewhat obscure Grynx, and the various creations serving psykers as Familiars.)
* BookOfShadows (Various tomes kept by the Inquisition.)
* BrainBleach (What you'll need after reading ''[[OldShame Space Marine]]'' (the tabletop game, not the new video game). Or some of the stuff on [[ImageBoards /tg/]].)
* BrainFood (Space Marines and Tyranid Lictors can gain some of a creature's knowledge by eating its brain.)
* {{Brainwashed}} (Liberally used by Chaos, the Imperium, and... well, pretty much everyone else, really.)
** BrainwashedAndCrazy (Again much loved by Chaos. The Imperial Ecclesiarchy also likes to combine heretics with a partial lobotomy, advanced hypnosis, generic brainwashing, combat drugs and cybernetic implants to create Arcoflagellants, AxCrazy combat monsters which are often set against their former allies)
* BreathWeapon (Tyranid bio-plasma, certain daemons and daemonhosts.)
* [[BribingYourWayToVictory Bribing Your Way]] [[strike:[[BribingYourWayToVictory To Victory]]]] ''[[CrackIsCheaper To Being Able To Play]]'' (A starter army, with the rule book, matching codex, bitz for customization, paints and glues, and a case to put it all in? Expect to put down ''half a grand''. At least.)
** Unless you get your pieces off E-Bay. The market's saturated.
** Depend on what army you play. If you play World Eaters, you can get two squads of Khorne Berserkers and Kharn the Betrayer for about 50 bucks and have a pretty decent 500 point army.
* BrokenMasquerade (The secular Imperium of the Great Crusade was founded on the idea that there were no gods, no daemons, nothing that could not be explained by science. That got disproved pretty comprehensively, and [[ItGotWorse things got worse]] as a result -- thus demonstrating why the Emperor established the {{Masquerade}} in the first place.)
* BrownNote (Chaos iconography can drive men insane. Chaos ''daemons'' are a whole world of horror beyond that.)
** Ollanius Pius, a guardsman during the Horus Heresy, came upon the duel between Horus and the Emperor and [[YouShallNotPass stood in front of Horus in an attempt to save the Emperor]]. When Horus looked at him, he was turned ''inside out''.
* BugWar (Whenever the Tyranids show up.)
* BulletProofVest (The standard Imperial Guardsman is equipped with [[strike:a flashlight and T-shirt]] a lasgun and flak vest. Guess how much good it does in this universe.)
* BurnTheWitch (Standard government policy.)
* ButtMonkey (Played for laughs with grots. Played straight with Imperial Guard as they were Games Workshop's favorite punching bag. Even extended to the players as they got two consequtive under powered codexes with at least half the units being useless and had to (and still do) deal with [[ScrappyMechanic kill points]] making the Annihilate mission UnWinnable. GW eventually decided to [[ThrowTheDogABone give IG players a break]] by releasing a codex that was actually good and giving them the lion's share of stuff in Apocalypse.)
* CallARabbitASmeerp (And occasionally CallASmeerpARabbit.)
* CanisLatinicus (Conventional rendering of High Gothic; e.g., Adeptus Astartes, Adeptus Mechanicus.)
* CantArgueWithElves (...but you can shoot them in the face. Foul Xenos.)
* CarFu (Tank Shock.)
* CardCarryingVillain (Followers of Chaos.)
* CargoCult (The Imperium of Man combines this with AncientAstronauts in an interesting fashion, as the overwhelming majority of the technology they use predates the incident that put [[MessianicArchetype the Emperor]] on life-support, and maintenance has become more of a religious ceremony than anything else.)
** A little more complicated, DependingOnTheWriter. The Mechanicus are often depicted as competent engineers despite/[[OrIsIt because of]] their mystical approach, who understand the workings of many things and for whom reverse-engineering the [[BlackBox rest]] and discovering the physics responsible is a holy quest for enlightenment.
* CasualInterstellarTravel (Played straight by the Eldar with their Webway and the Necrons with their Inertialess Drive, [[HyperspaceIsAScaryPlace brutally]], [[CosmicHorror horribly]] averted by everyone else.)
** Tau don't use the warp, but due to the short range of their technology they can't be considered ''as'' casual as everyone else.
* CatchPhrase (The Emperor protects!/Death to the False Emperor!/For the Greater Good!/WAAAAGH!)
** It's worth noting that ''all'' the catchphrases are battlecries.
*** And all battlecries are catchphrases (Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the Skull Throne!/For the Emperor!/Harriers for the cup!)
* CerebusSyndrome (People often forget that the first edition was a parody)
* [[strike: ChainsawGood]] [[ChainsawGood Chainsaw Is God]] (The Space Marines, Eldar, Orks and Chaos regularly equip their close combat specialists with chainsaw ''swords''. Though the standard chainsword/chainaxe is, in games terms, just another close combat weapon, no more effective than a knife. Not to mention the ChurchMilitant handing out [[{{BFS}} chainswords with blades eight feet long]] capable of cutting the armour of a ''tank'' to its most fanatical squads of religious psychopaths. And let's not even get started on the daemonically possessed mecha armed with a chainsaw the size of a skyscraper...)
** As well as the ubiquitous (!) chainsword, the universe features chainsaw axes, chainsaw glaives, chainsaw claws, chainsaw ''scalpels'' and chainsaw ''fists''.
* ChandlersLaw (When in doubt, have another Tyranid/Ork/Chaos/Necron invasion.)
* ChaoticGood (Somewhat surprising to see in such a grimdark franchise, but Logan Grimnar, and indeed the whole Space Wolves chapter seems to be of this alignment: fiercely anti-authoritarian berserkers with a grudge against the Inquisition for killing off all the people they worked so hard to save during the First War for Armageddon. A prime example of DarkIsNotEvil as well as GoodIsNotNice.)
* CharacterDerailment (Over the universe's many years at the hands of dozens of writers and developers, and in the minds of its huge fandom, a great deal of change, {{Flanderisation}} and decay has gone on.)
** Wraithbone was, in the past, an exotic material even to the Eldar, reserved principally for Seers' rune armour and the construction of Wraithguard and Wraithlords. Now, it seems, ''everything'' the Eldar have is made of it.
** Some things (such as Imperial jetbikes and Mk VI power armour) were shown as relatively common items in the first edition of the game, but were phased out in the second edition. Later editions of the game re-introduced them as being (in-game) extremely rare relics that have not been in common use for almost 10,000 years. This would make it seem that the first edition of the game was set 10,000 years prior to the current edition when in fact they represent the same time period (which of course is the 41st millennium - the game has always been called Warhammer 40,000).
** Games Workshop have treated the Salamanders space marine chapter as the 'token black guy' army, showing a greater proportion of dark skinned marines than any other offical chapter (the other chapters having a combined total of zero). According to 5th edition, not only does every Salamander marine have dark skin (jet black to be specific) but red eyes too!
** Somewhere along the line the Necrons' aims in unlife changed from mysterious "harvests" and enigmatic plans to "kill everything, everywhere", though this is more a belief among fans than actual canon.
** Khorne was once a god of martial prowess and honour, whose followers would not slaughter the defenceless. Now, all that matters is blood is shed and skulls are taken, caring not from ''where'' the blood flows.
* TheChessmaster (Ongoing manipulation contest between the Chaos god Tzeentch, the C'tan Deceiver, and the Eldar Seers. Chances are, ''any'' major galactic happening is going to have at least one of them cackling "just as planned".)
** The Emperor is also a likely candidate for this trope, as it is hinted at in several texts that he knew the Horus Heresy would happen, and planned for it and all future events leading up to the present and probably beyond so as to (presumably) prepare the galaxy for an ultimately happy fate.
* ChunkySalsaRule (Game mechanic: Instant Death.)
** Quote from the 5e Codex: "It can be imagined that the creature is vaporized, burned to a pile of ash, blasted limb from limb, or otherwise mortally slain in a suitably graphic fashion."
* CharacterExaggeration (The Imperial Guard's leaders are generally considered {{General Ripper}}s who care very little about their troops because WeHaveReserves by fans, as well as Commissars being complete sadists who will kill Guardsmen at the drop of a hat. Naturally, the Imperium doesn't encourage death - the 3rd edition 2nd Imperial Guard Codex says itself "A good general does not lead an army to destruction just because he knows it will follow." The Imperium just has lower standards of 'pointless' compared to us. However, that is usually done for GallowsHumor, and helps them say {{Warhammer 40000}} is a WorldHalfEmpty very well. Which is still is.)
* ChildSoldiers (Space Marines are inducted at 10-14 and become Scouts by 15 at the latest. Cadian education and military training are the same thing, and they're typically full soldiers (which requires earning a medal) by some time in their teens -- assuming they live that long. Orks incubate in their underground wombs until adolescence, and are ready to fight and kill the moment they break the soil.)
* ChurchMilitant (KILL THE MUTANT! BURN THE HERETIC! PURGE THE UNCLEAN!)
**... [[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Quotes/ChurchMilitant there's more.]]
* CityInABottle (Some hive cities get like this.)
* ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve (Ork technology. If you hand an Ork a stick, and successfully convince him it is a gun, it ''will'' fire bullets (although it would take quite a lot to actually convince an Ork this is the case). Paint things red and they ''will'' go faster. It's important to note that not ALL ork technology works this way, and they are capable of building mechanically functioning equipment. They just don't often do so.)
** It's not ''quite'' as simple as that - the item in question has to reasonably approximate whatever it is that the Ork believes it is. A stick won't fire bullets, but a slapped-together slugga ''will'', provided there are actually bullets to be fired.
***This troper had it explained to him thusly: As long as an Ork is not convinced that something CAN'T happen, it will work. Of course, Orks know that that Battlewagons need fuel to go, and Sluggas need bullets to go DAKKA, but as long as something conforms to Orky logic, they will have no problems with it. A good example of this is a comic (not certain of the title) where a squadron of Ork bombers were busy making a general mess of anything below them, when their fuel ran out. Of course, the bombers continued to function until the Ork pilots were informed that they were out of fuel, at which point the bombers dropped out of the sky like rocks.
** It's been hinted at that humans are, to an extent, capable of this too- their Tech Priests try to fix machines by praying to them, and while it usually fails like the CargoCult it is, it works just slightly too often to be coincidence. Pretty much confirmed, if you take the abilities of the Tech Priest from the DarkHeresy tabletop game as canon.
* ClingyCostume (Chaos Obliterators. Also Eldar Exarchs once they've bonded enough with the spirits of their armour's previous wearers.)
* ClothesMakeTheManiac (Chaos-corrupted suits of armour. Granted, in most cases this is more a case of Clothes Make The Maniac ''Worse''.)
** Eldar Phoenix Lords as well, for certain definitions of "maniac."
* CoatHatMask (Commissars, although most don't wear masks. Gas masks on the other hand...)
* ColdBloodedTorture (Most typical of the Inquisition - the torturers of other races usually have far too much fun to be called cold-blooded.)
* ColdSniper (Vindicare Temple Assassins.)
* TheCollectorOfTheStrange (Chaos, the Orks, and the Dark Eldar collect the skulls (and occasionally other body parts) of their enemies as trophies. The Imperium collects the skulls of particularly pious servants for use as relics and {{Attack Drone}}s.)
* ColonyDrop (''[[http://warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?t=33310 Deconstructed]]'', if you can believe it, but also used straight on occasion. "In close consultation with his advisors, Orkimedes determined that the best solution to the tactical flexibility of Imperial forces was to drop big rocks on them." A surprisingly common Ork technique to both deploy close to the enemy [in fact on top of a portion of them] and weaken aforementioned enemy.)
* ColourCodedForYourConvenience (Space Marine chapters, Chaos Space Marine legions, Eldar craftworlds, Ork klanz, Tyranid hive fleets, Necron tomb worlds, Tau septs -- practically every major army has a set of color-coded subdivisions, and many of these have associated composition themes and stereotypes. Only the Imperial Guard defy color-based pigeonholing, and even they have certain color schemes they tend to favor.)
* CombatMedic (Space Marine Apothecaries, Ork Painboyz, and pretty much anyone else with a medkit or the equivalent.)
* CombatTentacles (Tyranids mount these on everything from {{mook}}s to ''[[AwesomeButImpractical spaceships]]''.)
* CommissarCap (TropeNamer, and not entirely restricted to Commissars-a few regular regular officers and the odd Inquisitor wear similar hats, and some Orks love looting them.)
* CompanionCube (The Adeptus Mechanicus and their treatment of ''any'' machine.)
* CompensatingForSomething (Imperial architecture in general. Mile-high Gothic cathedrals as far as the eye can see.)
** Super heavy vehicles. [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything Watch as my long, powerful volcano cannon releases its blistering payload into your vulnerable rear armour!]]
* CompleteMonster (Chaos and Dark Eldar, full force.)
** You could argue that ''every'' one of the settings factions are Complete Monsters. And that they only escape being called Complete Monsters because Chaos and Dark Eldar are infinately worse. In most other settings, a faction like to one of the good guys would not only be called Complete Monsters, but ''absurdly excessive'' Complete Monsters.
* ConservationOfNinjutsu (Operates in full force.)
* CoolStarship (Millennia-old kilometres-long ''battle cathedrals'' in space.)
* CoolButInefficient (Imperial Navy spaceships are hypertech vessels decorated with gargoyles and other morbid sculptures on the outside, and crewed mostly by throngs of press-ganged deck-hands that must do most everything by muscle power.)
* TheCorpsIsMother (The Adeptus Astra Telepathica, responsible for human psykers.)
* CorruptChurch (The Ecclesiarchy. Chaos cults go [[ReligionOfEvil rather beyond "corrupt"]].)
* TheCorruption (Chaos, if not the ur-example, is one of the most developed in any setting.)
* CosmicHorrorStory (It's a universe where even death won't save you from an eternity of torture.)
* CrackIsCheaper (And doesn't require painting.)
* CrapsackWorld
* CrazyAwesome (Orks are {{Complete Monster}}s and AxCrazy by human standards, and even have BiggerStick as as cultural mark - but, being [[WorldHalfEmpty Warhammer 40000]], they are used for GallowsHumor, [[CrossesTheLineTwice which works]] very well. Sadly, the setting of {{Warhammer40000}} is not a character, as the name for this trope describes half of it perfectly. [[DarkerAndEdgier The other half?...]])
* CrazyEnoughToWork (Everything the Orks do, ever.)
* CreepyChild (The Apex Twins, a minor but memorable background note. Think the girls from ''TheShining'', except ''[[PersonOfMassDestruction omnipotent and deadly]]''.)
* CreepyMonotone (Necron Lords, on the few occasions they do speak, and techpriests of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Servitors are independently creepy and monotonous.)
* CripplingOverspecialisation (The Eldar's [[PlanetOfHats Hat]].)
** Averted with the Space Marine Sternguard and the Deathwatch, who carry different types of ammunition for all different threats, and modifications for their standard issue boltgun to make it a powerful, long range sniper rifle.
* CriticalFailure (Hope you don't roll a 1 while carting that plasma gun around.)
* CrossesTheLineTwice (The entire core of Da Orks' humour is their ridiculously, overwhelmingly violent nature.)
** Some may find the setting in general does this, due the over-the-top GrimDark, {{Impossibly Cool Weapon}}s and [[TheForeverWar war.]]
* CrowningMomentOfAwesome (Gets an [[CrowningMoment/{{Warhammer40000}} entire page to itself]].)
* CrystalDragonJesus (Of course, there's a chance that the Emperor ''was'' Jesus...)
* CrystalSpiresAndTogas (Eldar and Tau only.)
* {{Cult}} (Plenty serving Chaos, and plenty of others devoted to the Emperor. At least one devoted to CiaphasCain, '''HERO OF THE IMPERIUM!!''')
* CulturePolice (The Inquisition and Adeptus Arbites are pretty laid-back about culture, so long as planets revere the Emperor and pay tribute to the Imperium. However, if they see anything that could possibly be interpreted as a sign of Chaos, the purge will be swift and without mercy -- and not all Inquisitors agree on what constitutes a sign of Chaos.)
* CustomUniform (Many examples for minor characters and squad leaders, such as Imperial Guard commissars and techpriests, and Eldar warlocks.)
* CutscenePowerToTheMax (The differences in power between beings are drastically diminished in the actual tabletop game compared to the fluff - don't expect those greater daemons to kill whole worlds or the space marines to be a OneManArmy... or those lasguns to punch through concrete.)
** Lampshaded by a White Dwarf article that supplied rules for "Movie Marines", depictions of Space Marines based on the how they might appear in an in-universe war film. Basically turns every Marine into a Hive Tyrant and every Bolter into an Assault Cannon, and they're about 100 points each.
** In the ''SpaceWolf'' novels Ragnar and co. fight off what we can estimate to be 40 odd genestealers [[TooDumbToLive in close combat]]. In game, that many Genestealers spell a one way ticket to rending claw ''buttrape'' for anything short of a super heavy tank.
* CyberneticsEatYourSoul (Servitors, and most Adeptus Mechanicus magos. Possibly literal in the case of certain Necrons.)
** Also chaos marines interred inside dreadnaughts tend to go... a little mad.
* DanceBattler (Eldar Harlequins.)
* DarkIsNotEvil (Averted and played semi-straight. The Dark Eldar are a whole world nastier than their Craftworld cousins, but the Dark Angels, Black Templars et al are no ''[[CrapsackWorld more]]'' [[CrapsackWorld evil]] than other Space Marine Chapters.)
**Actually, the Dark Angels really are. All that ignoring or outright killing other Imperial forces just to cover up their dirty little secrets.
* DarkerAndEdgier (Taken ''almost'' to the point of parody. What positive attributes exist for the other factions are regularly pruned; particularly noticeable with the Eldar, who were getting almost sympathetic. Apparently, [[WriterRevolt the Devs didn't like that]].)
** In the transition from 2nd to 3rd Edition, orks went from dark comedic relief to [[DarkerAndEdgier darker]] and more brutal comedic relief.
** And then the Tau went from "we'll negotiate for weeks if that's what it takes" to "join us or die." Of course, ''offering'' the "join us" option is still far, far nicer than everyone else.
*** This is partially explained, however, in that the current stage of Tau expansion is the Third, which came as a response to the Damocles crusade, a period of extreme and brutal fighting after which the Tau might have noticed that the Imperium see negotiation in pretty much the same light as bloody holocaust when it comes to Xenos. They simply found out that it won't work as well as they thought, and adapted their strategy.
* DarkMessiah (Horus. A lot of Word Bearers seem to have delusions of this, too. The Emperor of Mankind was [[AlternateCharacterInterpretation either]] this or a straight MessianicArchetype whose plans were brutally subverted by the power-seekers and paranoids who took them up after he was forced to become one with the furniture.)
* TheDarkSide (Somewhat predictably, the setting takes this trope and hurls it off the deep end in the form of Chaos. The result? There's no Light Side-only a sort of Gray Side, and the actual Dark Side is sentient, extremely intelligent, masterfully manipulative, very powerful, and occasionally takes matters into its own hands when mortal pawns aren't getting the job done.)
* DaysOfFuturePast (Feudal or Oligarchal planetary government is the order of the day in most of the Imperium.)
* DeadlyDoctor (Mad Doks and Apothecaries are fully qualified and lethal combatants with their medical equipment.)
* DeadManSwitch (The facilities imprisoning a planet's psykers before they can be carted off to Terra usually have one. In case of any trouble, all held psykers are instantly gassed. Considering how much trouble "any trouble" can evolve to when you deal with several hundreds of untrained and unsanctioned psykers, this can be considered a wise precaution...)
* DealWithTheDevil (Having anything to do with Chaos.)
* DeathBySex (Slaanesh is ''very'' tempting...)
* DeathFromAbove (Jump infantry of every shape and size, Space Marine drop pods, Tyranid mycetic spores, and Ork roks.)
* DeathOfAThousandCuts (General Imperial Guard tactics - point enough "flashlights" at something and it should go down. Eldar shuriken and splinter weapons are a more literal example.)
* DeathOrGloryAttack (The TropeNamer.)
* DeathRay (Rays which ''cause'' death, rays which ''fire'' death, rays which ''eat'' death, and rays which are fired ''[[GrimReaper by Death]]''.)
* DeathWorld (One of the more common {{Single Biome Planet}}s.)
* DefeatMeansFriendship (The Emperor and some of his Primarchs)
* DefectorFromDecadence (The Craftworld Eldar and Exodites, before the Fall of the Eldar. Turned out they were right...)
** Also, in their novels, the SoulDrinkers Space Marine chapter. Except the Decadence is the [[DesignatedHero Imperium]]. After a ThirtyXanatosPileup gone badly wrong, they decided that the {{Obstructive Bureaucrat}}s, CorruptChurch, and ignorant, terrified populace couldn't possibly be what the Emperor wanted.
* {{Defictionalization}} ([[http://www.thq-games.com/uk/features/show/6258 Look! A Rhino. A RHINO. Our game developers are building METAL BOXES, the cowards. The FOOLS!]])
* DeflectorShields (Starting with personal infantry shields or shield drones and reaching up to Void Shields that defend Titans and starships.)
* DemBones (Servo-skulls and Necrons.)
* DemonicInvaders (Chaos being the prime offender, of course.)
* DemonicPossession (Even the ''tanks'' can get possessed.)
* DepletedPhlebotinumShells (Holy hammers, holy bullets, holy stakes, holy artillery rounds, holy flamethrowers.)
**Holy handgrenades?
* DerelictGraveyard (Space Hulks.)
* {{Determinator}} (The Necrons and Tyranids are entire races of [[ImplacableMan Implacable]] Determinators, but insanely determined people crop up everywhere in this universe.)
** Non-race-specific example is any unit that has the "Rage" special rule, which force them to go after the closest visible enemy when they move, run, or charge, or the "Feel No Pain" special rule, which lets them keep going despite horrific injury.
** One of the more extreme examples is Black Templars, who are the only army that [[AttackAttackAttack move]] ''[[AttackAttackAttack towards]]'' [[AttackAttackAttack the enemy when their men die]]. On top of this, they are literally fearless in close combat - a lone Neophyte (a warrior ''novice'') who has just seen the rest of his squad die will stay in the fight against a monster three times his size, which just happens to have huge claws, acidic blood, head-bursting psychic powers and Emperor knows what else.
** This is also true of Sisters Repentia in a Sisters of Battle army. Their zeal and will to repent is represented in their special rules, which attempt to ensure that they will always rush towards the enemy during their movement phase, and will always charge the enemy ''if they ever fail a Morale check in combat''. Adding in a Priest only [[strike:exacerbates the situation]] improves their chances of doing so.
** On the Chaos side, the Khorne berserkers voluntarily undergo a partial lobotomisation that make them singlemindedly bloodthirsty and removes their inclination towards self-preservation. This means that they rush into melee brandishing chainsaw axes and are completely immune to morale effects.
** Another notable example would be Commissar Sebastian Yarrick. Despite losing his left eye and his right arm, as well as being an old, old man by the time of his main exploits, Yarrick managed to inspire terror and respect in the Orks by his uncanny ability to fight in the thick of it no matter the odds (and the pain). When his right arm got chopped off he simply beheaded the offending Ork Warboss and kept on fighting, only "allowing himself the luxury of passing out" after the long battle was won. This has granted him the dubious honour of being [=WH40K=] fandom's answer to Chuck Norris, [[TwentyFour Jack Bauer]] and meme-makers know who else.
** Played with by the Tau, who are physically unable to disobey their Ethereal caste leaders. If an Ethereal tells another Tau to do something, they automatically become the Determinator. If all nearby Ethereals are killed in battle, they tend to react... [[HeroicBSOD poorly]].
** Not only are the Orks determinators individually, they're determinators as a race. They reproduce by giving off spores that grow into orkoids (orks, gretchin, snotlings or squigs) in the ground. Orks come out of their pods fully formed and ready to [[AxCrazy fight anything they can find]]; since the more an Ork fights, the more spores he gives off, once you have Orks on a planet you will '''always''' have Orks on that planet.
* DesignatedHero (The Imperial Guard and the Space Marines. Witch Hunters aren't even ''trying''.)
* DetectEvil (Psykers can sense the presence of Chaos.)
* DeusEstMachina (Taken literally by the Omnissiah, and almost literally by the Void Dragon. Then there's the part where they might be the same being...)
* DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu (Daemons, C'tan, and other {{Eldritch Abomination}}s ''can'' be defeated, if only by [[DeathInAllDirections throwing absolutely everything at them]] - but destroying the physical form of a daemon only banishes it back to the warp for a while, and the C'tan merely need to fashion new necrodermis bodies.)
* DissonantSerenity (Eldar, mostly, though some of the more beatific Living Saints of the Imperium can manage to pull this off.)
* TheDitz (Ogryn. Nork Deddog is considered to be a genius by Ogryn standards, in that he can sign his own name and count to four; even after receiving neural enhancement surgery, the very brightest of Ogryn only have the mental capacity of an eight year-old. Even the Orks look clever by comparison.)
* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything (Tyranid wargear. Do ''not'' examine [[{{Squick}} the biology behind it]] too closely.)
* DoNotGoGentleIntoThatGoodNight (The Eldar and Imperium are entire ''races'' in the middle of this.)
* DoomsdayDevice (Lots, in every form imaginable, from sucking planets into hell to simply breaking them apart from the inside out.)
* DreamLand (The Warp.)
* DressedToKill (Some Commissars, priests of the Ecclesiarchy, and Inquisitors make a point of dressing conservatively or humbly. The rest gleefully embrace the same BlingOfWar worn by everyone else.)
* DropTheHammer (Partly ''named'' after this trope. Thunder hammers, a gigantic hammer with a tank-splitting energy release, are a favourite of Space Marine Terminators and the Ordo Malleus... which translates to "Order of the Hammer.")
* DropShip (Tonnes, the best known being Space Marine Thunderhawk Gunships.)
* DrunkOnTheDarkSide (Don't stand too close to anyone powered by Chaos.)
* DualWielding (Done with swords, axes, chainsaw swords, chainsaw axes, giant hammers and enormous bladed claws that shoot lightning; a combination of this and GunsAkimbo, [[SwordAndGun with a pistol in one hand and a blade in the other]], is used by virtually all close combat troops in the setting.)
** Taken to the next step by Eldar Striking Scorpions, who have a [[{{ChainsawGood}} chainsword]] in one hand, pistol in the other, and mind-activated gun mounted on their helmet. Half a step to the left are Dark Eldar Incubi, who trade the chainsword and pistol for a double-handed glaive but keep the head-gun.
* DuelToTheDeath (Common in the Imperium and Dark Eldar; ''extremely'' common, if informal, among the Orks.)
* DueToTheDead (Orks and Chaos forces regularly mutilate the bodies of dead foes, possibly to stick some heads on something pointy. Not that respect for the dead is exactly common...)
** The Orks actually consider being turned into a trophy a DueToTheDead for foes worthy of it. Very ValuesDissonance.
** As Orks reproduce via spores and constantly release them, and release a bunch when they die - Imperium forces regularly use flamers to burn their corpses, [[KillItWithFire if not directly employ them in battle against them]].
* DumbIsGood (A major tenet of Imperial dogma: "Thought Begets Heresy; Heresy Begets Retribution," "Only the Awkward Question; Only the Foolish Ask Twice," and "Blessed Is The Mind Too Small For Doubt" are all common quotes in the fluff.)
* DuringTheWar (Though sometimes it feels more like AfterTheEnd.)
* DyingAsYourself
* {{Dystopia}} (It really, really doesn't get any worse.)
** Although, according to the progression of the canon in the rulebooks, [[ItGotWorse it is getting worse. MUCH worse.]]
* EarthShatteringKaboom (Just about every large Imperial vessel is equipped for Exterminatus, the cleansing of an entire planet, which is often employed at the mere ''suspicion'' of heresy. Then there are the Eldar [[ForgottenSuperweapon Akliamor]], the [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Planet Killer]], the [[ArtifactOfDoom Blackstone Fortresses]]...)
* EarthIsTheCentreOfTheUniverse (Played literally, and justified. Earth is the site of the psychic beacon known as the Astronomican, necessary for humanity's faster-than-light travel.)
* EldritchAbomination (''Crawling'' with them.)
* EldritchLocation (Daemon worlds.)
* EliteMooks (Elites choices, of course. Also, Space Marines in general, compared to the rest of the Imperium's armed forces.)
* ElvesVsDwarves (Everyone with a motive more complicated than "must eat" or "must kill" has some ideological (or genetically-engineered) disdain of everyone else or some futile set of grudges.)
* EmotionEater (C'tan, Dark Eldar, a lot of Chaos things.)
* EmotionsVsStoicism (Heck, it was the wanton debauchery of the Eldar that created the chaos god Slaneesh, is it any wonder that some degree of emotional control is not just a virtue but a ''survival tactic''?)
* EmpathicWeapon (Imperial Titans, Eldar witchblades. Chaos daemon weapons are more ArtifactOfDoom.)
* EmperorScientist (The Emperor, appropriately enough.)
* TheEmpire (''The "good" guys.'')
* EmpireWithADarkSecret (The Tau Empire has a few skeletons in its closet. The Imperium of Mankind has entire ''mausoleums''. To go further, since they inadvertently created ''an entire Chaos god'', one of [[HighOctaneNightmareFuel the most terrifying forces in the Galaxy]] (and in this case, the {{Squick}}iest of the four), you could say the Eldar have an entire ''necropolis''. The other sides also have dark histories; they're just more honest about them.)
* TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt (This age of mankind has been dubbed ''The Time Of Ending'', since it is believed that humanity will either be extinguished, or it will evolve into a brand new species.)
* EnemyCivilWar (Ongoing between various factions of Chaos, the Imperium, Tyranids, and Dark Eldar since the beginning, and still no end in sight. Literally a way of life for the Orks.)
** Possibly subverted by the Tyranids, as they waste no ammo (they eat it back up), and the winning swarm acquires any useful genes the losing swarm picked up, thereby strenghtening the race as a whole.
* EnemyMine (Very, very occasionally, two factions will work together to destroy a common enemy, and may even give each other a few minutes to run when it's all over. Again, a way of life for the Orks; the only thing that can put a stop to Orkish infighting is another, more enjoyable enemy to stomp.)
* EnergyWeapon (From the humble lasgun to the odd {{Wave Motion Gun}}, 40k has energy weapons of every size.)
* EnergyBeings (Daemons are these in the Warp, where they [[HyperspaceIsAScaryPlace attempt to break into spaceships travelling through it and devour the souls of everyone inside.]])
* EnthusiasmVersusStoicism
* EqualOpportunityEvil (Chaos accepts/corrupts everyone, regardless of species, though the main races are, in general, conveniently resistant or immune - Eldar know how to resist, Tau have next to no warp presence, and Orks and Tyranids have huge psychic strength and are too devoted to a single purpose (WAAAGH/OM NOM NOM, respectively) to be easily corrupted. The Necrons appear to have contractual immunity, considering Chaos comes from the Warp and the Warp is anathema to them.)
** Although chaos orks do appear, particularly stormboy kultz.
* EstablishingCharacterMoment (The stories and legends about the Primarchs, semi-mythical figureheads of the SpaceMarine legions, and the Emperor nearly all involve some establishing moment from the Primarchs first actions after being ''born'' (normally slaughtering hordes of aliens) to the first meetings between the Emperor and the Primarchs which will say something important about how they saw him or why they betrayed him.)
* TheEternalChurchill (The Imperium lives by this trope. Though individual worlds may enjoy centuries of peace, the Imperium as a whole has been fighting a war for survival on a hundred thousand fronts for ten millennia.)
* EternalEngine (Adeptus Mechanicus Forge Worlds are described as being planets covered in these. Or as planets that ''are'' these.)
* EveryoneCallsHimBarkeep (Everyone calls him... the Immortal God-Emperor of Mankind.)
* EverythingIsBetterWithMonkeys (The Jokaero.)
* EverythingTryingToKillYou (Non-video game example: the setting in general, life on a Death World in particular.)
* TheEvilArmy (The forces of Chaos, the Dark Eldar, and the armies of the Imperium on a bad day (or under a bad leader).)
* EvilCounterpart (Chaos Space Marines to Space Marines, Lost And The Damned to Imperial Guard, Dark Eldar to Craftworld Eldar.)
** Not that those they're the counterparts to are ''good guys''...
** Although it only appears that way from the outside. Some Craftworld Eldar see their Dark brethren as not so much "evil twin", as just a {{Jerkass}} sibling. The "Great Work" of the Harlequins is to reunite the two factions; not necessarily through any major change either factions' lifestyles.
* EvilFeelsGood (Renegade Marines.)
* EvilIsNotAToy (Chaos, the C'tan.)
* EvilOverlord (Every Chaos Lord, Dark Eldar Archon and Ork warboss, and about half of the Imperium's governors.)
* EvilIsSexy (One word: Slaanesh.)
* EvilLaugh (Chaos specialise in this; most Traitor Marines having been turned batshit insane over ten thousand years of war and slaughter, and the mind-warping effects of the Immaterium. ''DawnOfWar'' has Chaos Marines randomly break down and cackle occasionally.)
* EvilPrince (Horus, the first and most favored son of the Emperor)
* EvilTowerOfOminousness (The tower on the Thousand Sons' adopted homeworld, Adeptus Arbites citadels, Space Marine Fortress-Monasteries, Inquisition strongholds etc.)
* EvilVersusEvil (Try and find any ''other'' conflict in [[BlackAndGrayMorality this universe]].)
** Maybe if we went further back in time, we could find some genuine objectively good guys. Probably before Horus's treachery, though.
* EvilerThanThou (An ongoing contest between all the factions.)
* ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin (Most prominent example being the Planet Killer.)
* ExoticWeaponSupremacy
* ExpansionPackWorld (Suddenly, the Tau Empire!)
* ExplosiveLeash (Used on Imperial Penal Legion troopers to keep them killing the enemies of the Emperor and not their fellow Imperials or each other.)
* {{Expy}} (Lord Solar Macharius, of Alexander the Great.)
** "[[{{Rambo}} Sly Marbo]]".
** The [[strike:[[{{Dune}} Navigators' Guild]]]] Navis Nobilite.
** The majority of the Imperial Guard is designed around this trope.
*** "[[InSovietRussiaTropeMocksYou In the Valhallan Army, it takes more courage to retreat than to advance.]]"
*** "[[TheBritishEmpire Praetorians! First rank FIRE! Second rank FIRE! Independent fire at will!]]"
** ''GauntsGhosts'' for ''Sharpe'' in the beginning, though they've moved away from that and become more original. Similarly, CiaphasCain ('''HERO''' etc. etc.) for ''Flashman''.
** Necrons seem to be an army made up entirely of {{Terminator}}s, complete with a special rule entitled [[CatchPhrase "We'll Be Back".]]
* ExtremeOmnivore (Tyranids eat everything up to and including ''entire planets'', right down to the bedrock, ''including the atmosphere''.)
** Orks count, too, due to their incredibly robust physiology. Point in case, Ork Fighta-Bommas run their fuel lines through their cockpits, in case the pilot gets thirsty.
** Space Marines, due to their various enhancements, are also able to survive by eating things most people wouldn't consider food.
** The Kroot eat anything they can so near future generations will take on certain aspects... they also digest EVERYTHING they eat, to make up for the few things they don't.
* EyeBeams (played straight with Eldar Striking Scorpions and Dark Eldar Incubi, who have lasers mounted on their helmets. Commissar Sebastian Yarrick, having had his ''eye shot out of his skull'', had it replaced with a bionic laser eye implant.)
**"If the Orks believed he had the Evil Eye, then by the Emperor, an Evil Eye he would have!"
* EyepatchOfPower (Yarrick's aforementioned bionic laser eye. Prince Yriel of the Eldar also sports one.)
* FaceFullOfAlienWingWong (Genestealers.)
* FaceHeelTurn (Biggest example would be Horus. The brightest hope of all humanity since the Emperor, beloved by all of mankind, a peerless warrior and sublime statesman. The very best that humanity could ever be... is almost killed and shown Scrooge like visions of a future where he is forgotten and his Father is worshipped as a God across a million worlds. Cue instant patricidal hatred, and the begginings of a rebellion that would eventually damn the Galaxy into a slow decay of labyrinthine beaurocracy, never ending bloodshed, and, perhaps most tragically, no future for mankind. In other words... [[SelfFulfillingProphecy exactly what he saw]].)
** He hasn't quite been forgotten, even by the [[strike: RedShirtArmy]] Imperial Guard; a character in the CiaphasCain book ''Caves of Ice'' describes a recently-shot Ork as being "deader than Horus". Also, officers with the rank of "Warmaster" (Horus's old title) often change it to something else to avoid the unpleasant associations with the title.
** His name also appears to be a curse in some circles; in ''{{Damnatus}}'' Wodan comments angrily "Where the Horus are we now?"
* FacelessGoons (Most troops are either alien monsters or wear full-face helmets, but most squad leaders and superior officers ''don't'', to make them stand out more. Yes, men in suits of PoweredArmour the size of ''tanks'' are running around with their heads completely exposed. Good thing 40k snipers haven't learned to hit the weak point ForMassiveDamage.)
** Of course, Space Marines have skulls made of reinforced armour and can take small arms fire to the face. Then there's the Space Wolves who don't wear helmets because they can tell the location, armament, and morale of nearby enemies based on their insane sense of smell.
** Another explanation for why some Space Marines and other users of power armor don't wear helmets is given by Inquisitor Amberley Vail in the CiaphasCain novel ''Duty Calls'': since most sets of power armor are hundreds, sometimes thousands, of years old, the oxygen scrubbers that recycle air for the user are "tainted with the lingering bouquet of Emperor knows how many centuries of old sweat and flatulence."
** The best reason so far to justify it was cooked up on warseer. Marines spend so much time up close and personal with a chainaxe, that visor lens are gonna be covered in blood most of the time anyway.
** {{Word Of God}} is generally that the characters ''do'' wear their helmets, but the models representing them don't to make them [[RuleofCool more distinctive]].
* TheFaceless (Eloeholth the Faceless, possible main villain of DarkHeresy.)
* FaintingSeer (Imperial Psykers with prophetic abilities tend to go a bit... quibbly when particularly world-shattering events, like Black Crusades, Tyranid invasions, or Ork [=WAAAGH!s=] are about to happen. Naturally, since this is [=40k=], the side effects are [[YourHeadASplode generally more messy and permanent]] than simple fainting.)
* TheFairFolk (All varieties of Eldar are, when you get down to it, ''bastards''. Though at least the Craftworld Eldar justify it by putting the survival of their own kind above that of the other races.)
* FallenHero (Every Chaos Space Marine. Some (the original Traitor Legions) in a vast Chaos-inspired collective rebellion known as the Horus Heresy, ten millennia before the setting; some (Renegades) later, for various reasons. Even most of the Chaos Primarchs were once noble heroes with genuinely sympathetic backstory, and some, such as Magnus and Fulgrim, have particularly tragic reasons for their descent into damnation.)
** A particularly tragic example is the Fallen Angels, a group of Dark Angel Space Marines who were tricked into siding with Chaos during the Heresy, and are mercilessly hunted and tortured by their loyalist brothers.
** How about the Thousand Sons? If the God-Emperor had not sent the Space Wolves in response to Magnus' attempt to warn him about Horus' treachery, the Thousand Sons may not have fallen to Chaos.
*** In the HorusHeresy book ''False Gods'', the Emperor sent the Space Wolves to ''arrest'' Magnus. Russ attacked because Horus incited him to kill Magnus. When he hears it succeeded, Horus gloats that Magnus will end up on his side.
** Horus himself is the most prominent example at hand. An incredibly talented, charismatic and powerful leader, Horus was, essentially, tricked into rebelling by being shown a future where (so he thought) he had been forgotten (along with all the other traitor primarchs) and the Emperor was worshipped as a God. Ironically / Tragically, this was in fact that future that his very rebellion would create.
** The first Eldar Striking Scorpion Phoenix Lord, Ahra, left his aspect shrine to journey through the Dark Eldar-inhabited Webway. The Dark Eldar have a unit called Incubi, which are supposedly composed entirely of fallen Striking Scorpions.
* FandomRivalry (With ''{{Starcraft}}''. Also with ''{{Warhammer}}'' on a certain level.)
* FanDumb ([+[[ComplainingAboutPeopleNotLikingTheShow Oh.]][[BeyondTheImpossible Mein.]][[GratuitousGerman GOTT.]]+])
** Are you suggesting we take our fandom too seriously?! [[HypocriticalHumor That's HERESY!!]]
* FanNickname (Hundreds. A popular nickname for the blue-armoured {{Ultramarines}} is "Smurfs", which logically leads to their Chapter Master being known as "Papa Smurf". [[http://wiki.reliccommunity.com/Forum_abbreviations#Tabletop_forum_abbreviations A list is available here.]])
* FantasticRacism ("Beware the alien, the mutant, the heretic." The Imperium of Man is rabidly and xenocidally human-centric, but considering that the Eldar view every other species as mindless pawns to be manipulated, the Tau are divided into genetically "pure" castes based on their physical specialisations, the Orks tend to "crump any o' 'dose gits what ain't Orky enuff!" - including ''other Orks'' - and everything else is trying to kill everything else, it's fairly understandable.)
* FantasyCounterpartCulture
** Among the Space Marines, we have the Viking Space Wolves, the Mongol White Scars, the Roman Ultramarines as the most obvious examples.
** Imperial Guard regiments include the World War II German-inspired Steel Legion and the rather more {{Grimdark}} World War II German-inspired Death Korps of Krieg, the fur-hatted Russian Valhallans and Cossack-based Vostroyan Firstborn, the Arabic Tallarn Desert Raiders, the Vietnam War-themed Catachan Jungle Fighters, the Prussian-esque Mordians, the pith-helmeted, red-coated Praetorians, the tribal Attilan Rough Riders (just guess), and the Welsh/Scottish Tanith First-and-Only.
*** The Cadians are intended to be your standard modern/futuristic soldiers but their name is supposedly a reference to Canada's underappreciated army; their [[ScottMcNeil accents]] in DawnOfWar seem to back up that theory.
** The Orks started life as a caricature of British football hooligans.
** In the Dawn of War series, the Tau are characterised by distinctly Asian accents, which rather coincides with their Taoist philosophy and rather {{Animesque}} designs. They're also commonly seen as Space Communists for their "Greater Good" philosophy.
** The Eldar are a grab-bag of different cultures, combining Greek, Japanese, medieval European, and Commedia del'Arte influences with good old-fashioned Tolkienesque elvishness.
** Both the Necrons and the Thousand Sons Chaos Space Marines show ancient Egyptian influence in their design.
* FastRoping (A tactic that was introduced in the ''Cities of Death'' expansion that allows troops to drop directly onto buildings from their skimmers.)
* FasterThanLightTravel (''[[HyperspaceIsAScaryPlace through hell]]''.)
* FateWorseThanDeath ("Pray they don't take you alive.")
* TheFederation (The Tau Empire, who ironically would be the ''bad guys'' in most settings. In 40k, they're the ''idealistic'' ones.)
* FeelNoPain (Necrons, Orks, Space Marines, Nurgle, Thousand Sons. Don't even ''ask'' about [[TooKinkyToTorture followers of Slaanesh]]...)
* FetishFuel (Between Slaanesh in general, the Dark Eldar, and some of the more esoteric Sisters of Battle troop types...)
** And it's been [[IKnewIt confirmed]]: Sisters of Battle are ''not'' required to be celibate, and there ''are'' female Commissars. Of course, anyone hitting on a Battle Sister is likely to be mercilessly shot in mid-pick up line. (Or just have their head twisted off. Why waste the bullet on an annoying civilian?)
* FetusTerrible (The offspring of the Genestealer-subverted.)
* FeudalFuture (The Imperium, Ork empires, and Saim-Hann Craftworld being the most prominent, though most interstellar organizations eventually exhibit shades of this. Justified in all cases by slow and unreliable interstellar communications and travel.)
* FinaglesLaw (Applies to everything and everyone, everywhere.)
** To the point that the rogue chaos god Zuvassin is, for the most part, the AnthropomorphicPersonification of Murphy's Law; he doesn't so much as give his worshippers orders as much as just let them loose, because if he actually were to give orders, they would find some way of messing them up.
* FisherKing (Daemon worlds.)
* FiveRoundsRapid (In background material, trying to take down warp-spawned horrors with conventional weapons usually achieves nothing, and [[DepletedPhlebotinumShells alternative]] [[KillItWithFire methods]] must be [[WhoYouGonnaCall employed]]. Generally averted in the tabletop game; even greater daemons and star-gods ''can'' be hurt, but can take a hell of a lot of punishment.)
** On the tabletop, FiveRoundsRapid is ineffective. Five ''Hundred'' Rounds Rapid, on the other hand...
* FlatEarthAtheist (The Tau, whose lack of warp sensitivity and general inexperience and naivety makes them doubt stories of daemons and other warp-spawned horrors.)
** The HorusHeresy novels have shades of this in places too - the Emperor has promoted a society besed on atheistic secularism, so people lend absolutely no credit to stories of Chaos Gods being behind the various Bad Things that happen for the first few books. It doesn't help...
* FlechetteStorm (Eldar shuriken weapons, Dark Eldar splinter weapons, and at least one type of bolter shell all work like this.)
* ForDoomTheBellTolls (The Bell of Lost Souls is located atop one of the highest towers of the Imperial Palace, and tolls once whenever a truly great hero of the Imperium dies. It is said to be audible on the other side of the planet.)
** It is hinted at in the fluff that the bell tolls for every space marine that died in service to the Emperor. It must be ringing nearly all day and night if that is true.
* ForScience (Guiding star of the Adeptus Mechanicus, though their definition of "scientific progress" is tracking down and recovering ancient relics. That's the only difference; the Mechanicus will go to ''any'' ends to recover even a fragment of a [=STC=] device, no matter the cost. The Logician cult from ''DarkHeresy'' takes this creed even further, often with horrifying results.)
* ForTheEvulz (Chaos, Dark Eldar, and Orks pretty much have this as their main motivation.)
* FragileSpeedster (Taken to extremes by the Eldar; taken to ''ridiculous'' extremes by Dark Eldar.)
* FrickinLaserBeams (Starting with lasguns.)
* FriendlyEnemy (Ghazghkull Thraka, to Commissar Yarrick. The feeling is ''not'' mutual.)
** Orks have a word to describe this: "Skumgrod" roughly translates to "Favourite Enemy." Or "Best Friend." This is the Ork psyche in a nutshell.
* ForeverWar (That should be obvious by now.)
* FourIsDeath (The four chief [[GodIsEvil Chaos Gods]], TheCorruption distilled. Massively powerful warp entities, each a reflection of one survivalist emotion as present in the collective subconscious of all sentient beings. Each has their own set of daemonic creatures and corrupted followers. Similarly, the surviving C'tan number four: [[TheChessmaster The Deceiver]], [[TheGrimReaper The Nightbringer]], [[AndIMustScream The Outsider]] and the [[DeusEstMachina Void Dragon]].
* FullFrontalAssault ([[FetishFuel Sisters Repentia]], [[NightmareFuel Arco-flagellants]], and [[SealedEvilInACan daemonhosts]].)
* FunetikAksent (Orks.)
* GaidenGame (The various {{Spinoff}}s listed in the introduction.)
* GalacticConqueror (Too many to count. Some evil, some ''really'' evil.)
* GameBreaker (The new Ork codex, especially the infamous Nob Biker list, an army list designed around a loop hole in the wound allocation rules of 5th edition.)
** Fortunately, Nob Bikers are losing favor solely out of fear of the new IG codex. Nob Bikers have a terrible match up against mechanized guard armies due to multiple strength 8 AOE attacks being able to cut them easily. Wow, being scrapped because the list has one bad match up. Sounds like the people playing those lists were only interested in easy wins.
** The Ork special character Ghazghkull Thraka personified this trope throughout the editions, currently its because of his two-turn buff that makes all ork infantry very mobile, and grants him the hardest defence to beat in the game (Rolling a 1 on a six sided dice, four times in a row), but only for two turns... The problem is that the average game is ''six'' turns.
** ''Second Edition'' had it's share, some of which were errata'd out in ''White Dwarf''. For example, Wolf Guard Terminators were said to be able to take any combination of weapons and could be built from stock parts with an Assault Cannon and Cyclone Missile Launcher [''White Dwarf'' said if such a deadly squad actually existed it would have been included in the fluff text], the Imperial Assassin could in theory be disguised as a Gretchin while wearing Terminator Armour and riding a bike [removed when the Polymorphine Wargear was made specific to Calledus Assassins] and the Strategy Card 'Virus Outbreak' could cripple an entire Ork or Imperial Guard army before a battle even started [the official line was that players should destroy their copy of the card].
*** A lot of ''Second Edition'' special characters were also so powerful the game would end up revolving around them; many of the ''Third Edition'' changes were designed specifically to play down the monstrously complex special rules and wargear posessed by such characters.
* GangOfHats (All the various gangs from ''Necromunda''.)
* GatlingGood (Consider the Assault Cannon, a gatling gun which can cut through light vehicles. Next, consider the Punisher Gatling Cannon, a gatling gun the size of a main tank cannon that can slaughter entire squads of light infantry at a time. Then the Vulcan Mega-Bolter, a gatling gun the size of a ''whole tank'' that can mow down armies. Now look at the Hellstorm cannon, a gatling gun the size of a ''skyscraper''. And that's just in the Imperium. Yep, 40k ''likes'' this one.)
* GeneralFailure (One begins to wonder why [[strike:[[MemeticMutation Failbaddon]]]] Abaddon the Despoiler even bothers with his Black Crusades any more. Despite being able to unite just about every [[AlwaysChaoticEvil Chaos]] faction, daemon, monster, corrupted legion of super-soldiers and titanic war machine under his banner, he's failed at [[FailureIsTheOnlyOption every attempt to destroy the Imperium]] for ''ten thousand years''. To be fair, he does have to go through the most heavily-fortified world in the galaxy, and total destruction of the Imperium of Man doesn't seem to be his only goal - some of his crusades were centred around aquiring various [[ArtifactofDoom Artefacts of Doom]] for example.)
* GeneralRipper (More or less Imperial policy.)
* GeneticMemory (Space Marines and Tyranid Lictors have the ability to absorb the memories of the dead by eating their flesh, particularly the brain. In addition, each Space Marine Chapter is based on the genetic templates of one of the [[AGodAmI Primarchs]], and occasionally display traits and memories of that Primarch; BloodAngels, for example have a random chance of triggering the genetic memory of their Primarch's bloody death, which can drive them into an UnstoppableRage. Ork Mekboyz and Painboyz have their (respectively) technological and medical talents genetically encoded, and Kroot are said in designers' notes to have gained Ork technology through their ability to absorb the DNA of prey.)
* GenreSavvy (Ork madboyz have been known to [[MediumAwareness mutter about "Rolls" and "The meta game"]]...)
**T he Imperial Guard are so aware of their RedshirtArmy status that the commissar unit was developed specifically to address their [[YouHaveFailedMe morale problems]].
* GeoEffects (Placing units in or behind pieces of terrain can greatly increase their chances of survival thanks to various rules for movement, shooting, and close combat.)
* GetAHoldOfYourselfMan (Common among the Imperial Guard. Occasionally delivered via bullet.)
* GhostShip (Space Hulks. Also some Eldar vessels, albeit more as "ships crewed by ghosts" than the traditional sense.)
* GiantFlyer (Winged strains of the larger Tyranids.)
* GiantMook (Squad leaders: Veteran Sergeants, Sybarites, Warlocks etcetera. Literally in the case of Ork squad leaders (aka Nobz), who are actually [[LargeAndInCharge physically larger]] than the Boyz under their command.)
* GiantSpider (Giant ''robot'' spiders, no less, in the form of Necron Tomb Spyders, and a {{Humongous Mecha}}-scale variant called the Tomb Stalker.)
* GirlWithPsychoWeapon (Sisters of Battle "Sisters Repentia", entire squads of young women wearing scraps of parchment and carrying ''[[{{BFS}} eight-foot-long]] [[ChainsawGood chainsaw swords]]'', driven on by an armoured woman with a [[WhipItGood barbed cat-o-nine-tails]] [[DualWielding in each hand]], who are apparently assigned to these squads to "repent" for perceived acts of immorality. FetishFuel much?)
* GladiatorRevolt (The backstory of Angron, the primarch of the World Eaters in Warhammer 40000's copious backstory, involves this.)
* GlassCannon (Eldar put emphasis on the "cannon", Dark Eldar on the "glass".)
* GlowingEyesOfDoom (''Everyone'' seems to have these.)
* {{Golem}} (Eldar wraith-constructs.)
* GoddamnOrks (Orks (indirectly) the trope namer. But also....Boy howdy...Goddamn Chaos Space Marines, Goddamn Dark Eldar, Goddamn Necrons, Goddamn Tyranids...)
*GodEmperor (Read through the page and if you can't guess who it is by the end, we'll give you a cookie. We'll even give you a clue, his name begins God- and ends -peror and despite ascending to literal godhood after his reign ended due to the worship of the masses [[SuspiciouslySpecificDenial he is so totally not a]] ''{{Dune}}'' rip-off.)
** Ironically, the guy tried to make sure that he wouldn't. It didn't work. Far worse than he would [[AlternativeCharacterInterpretation publically admit]] to liking.
* GodIsEvil (Taken to an extreme.)
** Tzeentch: {{Chessmaster}} god of change, mutation, manipulation, sorcery, {{Magnificent Bastard}}s and the long game. Daemons take the form of mutated horrible things which squirt hellfire from every orifice; followers are usually mutated-beyond-all-recognition sorcerers, or automatons reduced to dust sealed inside armour. Odds are high that everything going on in the entire ''galaxy'' is part of his XanatosRoulette. Reflection of the emotion of ''hope''.
** Nurgle: God of decay, disease, corruption, entropy, maggots and BodyHorror. Daemons take the form of potbellied maggotridden monsters of barely-held-together rotten flesh, mortal followers aren't much better. Apparently has a sense of humour, and is called ''Grandfather Nurgle'' by his followers, who see him as a [[NightmareFuel kind and loving god.]] Born from the emotion of ''despair''.
** Khorne: God of rage, violence, war, [[{{BFS}} oversized weapons]] and the AxeCrazy. Daemons take the form of spiky muscular freaks covered with blood and brass, usually holding really big axes. Followers are uniformly psychotic axe-waving {{Blood Knight}}s, although this may be something of a {{Flanderisation}} - earlier background material described Khorne as the god of martial prowess, not just blind, screaming bloodlust. Khorne embodies the emotion of ''rage''.
** Slaanesh: God of pleasure, excess, FetishFuel, indulgence, {{Sense Freak}}s and DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything. Daemons are [[{{Stripperiffic}} bizarrely sensual]] things ranging from [[HornyDevils seductive siren-creatures]] absolutely ''covered'' in breasts to enormous worms with [[NightmareFuel prehensile tongues]] which are... also covered in breasts. Accidentally {{squick}}ed from the decadance of the Eldar, its birth destroying most of their civilisation in a galaxy-wide MindRape. Slaanesh embodies the emotion of ''desire''.
** Gork and Mork: the ork gods of Cunning Brutality and Brutal Cunning (The subtle distinction being: one hits you when you're not looking at it, the other hits you really hard when you are; orks have fought wars over which god is which). Reflection of ... er ... everything AxeCrazy in existence? By the way, those two kinda qualify as nice ones, or at least ComicRelief ones.
** Then we have the Star Gods C'tan, who ''eat souls'', or each other for that matter.
*** All the Chaos gods eat souls, it's what happens to their followers when they die (and the Eldar if they don't use soulstones).
** The God Emperor of Mankind, a fascist overlord who reunited humanity by CurbStomping everyone not agreeing with him being in charge, who qualifies as ''less evil''.
* GoodIsBoring (Fortunately, there's very little of it around.)
* GoodIsNotNice (The Salamanders fight not for glory, but for the people. Hurting civilians is a BerserkButton for them, which a chapter master found out the hard way. Outside of that, they're ruthless in battle and are an entire chapter of [[{{ScaryBlackMan}} scary black men]] who like to burn things.)
** Also the Space Wolves, an entire chapter of ChaoticGood {{Boisterous Bruiser}}s who are scary enough to convince the ''[[StateSec Inquisition]]'' to change its operating policy.
**Tau rule can seem restrictive to people not accustomed to it, but the Tau inhabitants like it quite a lot. Even the humans are probably better off than they would be in most other places.
* {{Gotterdammerung}} (Literal and metaphorical.)
* GothicPunk (The ''nicer'' Imperial worlds are like this.)
* GrimReaper (The Nightbringer ''is'' the Grim Reaper of 40k, a hooded, scythe-wielding omnicidal star-god who gave all creatures (except the Orks) the fear of death. A lot of others in the universe like to style themselves after the ideal of the hooded reaper, including Eldar Dark Reapers and their Phoenix Lord Maugan Ra, various Dark Angels, the Death Guard primarch Mortarion and a few of his champions.)
** In the case of the Dark Reapers and Maugan Ra, this is directly from the Nightbringer. The Eldar Aspect Warriors are all embodying a single aspect of Khaine, the Eldar War God; the aspect of the Reaper is a direct result of Khaine getting a bit of the Nightbringer stuck in him.
* {{Grimmification}} (First-edition Rogue Trader started off - ''started off'' - as a spectacularly grim and horrible place where the good guys were insane thugs and war and horror dominated everything. [[ItGotWorse It got much, much, much,]] ''[[ItGotWorse much]]'' [[ItGotWorse worse]].)
* GunsAkimbo (Cypher and Sisters of Battle Seraphim, mostly.)
* GunInMyPocket (Plenty of examples of models holding their guns in, shall we say, suggestive ways, but kings of this trope are the old Ork Gargant and Imperator Titan models, both of which featured rather unfortunately placed trouser cannons.)
* HalfHumanHybrids (Genestealer hybrids, though in an unusual take the original Genestealer itself is never a parent - it [[FaceFullOfAlienWingWong infects another creature with its genetic material]], and when that creature reproduces normally with another of its kind, [[FetusTerrible the offspring will be part Genestealer]]. Necron Pariahs are horrifying hybrids of Untouchable humans and Necron technology.)
* HangingSeparately (Common among the Imperial armed forces, governments, the Inquisition, etc., much to the Imperium's detriment.)
* HanlonsRazor (Almost always inverted - never attribute to stupidity what can be explained by malice or conspiracy.)
* HauntedTechnology (Chaos has a bad habit of corrupting, if not outright possessing, various bits of technology.)
* HaveYouSeenMyGod (All but three of the old Eldar pantheon were killed before or during the Fall of the Eldar; the survivors are Cegorach, the Laughing God of the Harlequins, who hides out in the Webway and foils the plans of Chaos from the sidelines; Khaine, the god of war, who was shattered into pieces which sleep in each craftworld as [[PhysicalGod Avatars]]; and Isha, the mother goddess, imprisoned by the Chaos God Nurgle to test his plagues on, who nevertheless secretly whispers out the cure to every said plague to try and help her children in the material universe. The Eldar are also attempting to create Ynnead, a new god of death, from the souls of dead Eldar stored in the Craftworlds' Infinity Circuits, the idea being that when the very last Eldar dies, Ynnead will be strong enough to rise and defeat Slaanesh. Hopefully.)
* HeWhoFightsMonsters (Older Inquisitors tend to have radical (not, not [[TotallyRadical that kind of radical]]) ideas about protecting the Imperium, such as using alien technology to battle aliens or daemon-possessed weapons and artifacts to battle Chaos. This tends to cause friction with younger, more puritanical Inquisitors. Some postulate that this is the inevitable fate of every Inquisitor, and given their job description, it's not very surprising.)
** How do you get rid of crime on a planet? Why, become [[DeathNote a terrifying serial killer who kills all the other criminals, down to jaywalkers]]. At least, that's how the [[BatMan Night Haunter]], Primarch of the Night Lords, chose to go about it. Is it really surprising he fell to Chaos?
* TheHeartless (Daemons of Chaos.)
** Dark Eldar fit this, too. Especially mandrakes.
* HealingFactor (The entire gimmick of the Necrons and their "We'll Be Back" special rule, C'tan with their Necrodermis "skin", and certain Tyranid monstrous creatures. To a lesser degree Orks, who routinely survive anything [[strike:short of]] including decapitation.)
* {{Hellgate}} (The Eye of Terror, the Maelstrom, Van Groethe's Rapidity...)
* {{Hellhound}} (Khornate Flesh Hounds. Also, to a lesser extent, Dark Eldar Warp Beasts. The Imperial Guard also have the Hellhound, a tank armed with a [[KillItWithFire flamethrower]].)
* HellishHorse (Daemonic mounts. Generally... [[{{Understatement}} somewhat less than pleasant]].)
* HeroicBSOD (Horus's BSOD was so epic, it ended up destroying the galaxy-wide empire he'd fought so hard to build in the first place.)
* HeroicWillpower (Both played straight, and inverted - ''Villainous'' Willpower determines which of the two possible OneWingedAngel routes a follower of Chaos goes down, mutating into either a mindless Chaos Spawn, or a PhysicalGod.)
* HeroicSacrifice (Generally how the nice people in ''{{Warhammer40000}}'' die if it's on their own terms.)
** To quote von Remus from ''{{Damnatus}}'': In this universe, one is either sacrificed, or sacrifices themself.
* HiddenElfVillage (Eldar craftworlds, Exodite worlds, and Maiden Worlds. The Eldar aren't a very social bunch.)
** Epitomized by the Dark Eldar city of Commorragh, which doesn't even exist in the material world; but is hidden in the "Webway", a sort of interdimensional labyrinth that exists between the Warp and the material world.
** They can be very sociable...to other Eldar. Everyone else, not so much.
* HighlyConspicuousUniform (Then again, being an obvious target is not particularly problematic for a human tank...)
* HiveMind (The Tyranids.)
* HiveQueen (Tyranid Synapse Creatures.)
* {{Hobbits}} (Seldom seen, but present as specialist snipers in the Imperial Guard.)
* HollywoodAtheist (The Tau take this one so far it turns back on itself and they become ScaryDogmaticAliens. The Emperor is portrayed as one as well; in one story he goes to the last church on Terra with the express purpose of destroying it, but not before he's [[WhatTheHellHero broken the faith]] of the [[GoodShepherd priest]] living inside and offered him a chance to join the new Imperium.)
* HollywoodCyborg (While there are "realistic" bionics, senior Mechanicus adepts often approach full-body conversion in their attempts to remove every trace of "weak flesh". Also Cyborks, Orks who suffered from particularly grievous injury or a particularly enthusiastic Painboy, and acquired lots of bionik bitz as a result.)
* HollywoodTactics (Generally averted by most races, barring the odd Imperial Guard regiment. Both thoroughly embraced and thoroughly subverted by the Orks, who actually ''make it work''. Played straight in some comics and game cutscenes, though.)
* {{Homage}} (Tonnes and tonnes of 'em, some minor, like planets named after Games Developers or deodorants, some much more major. The best example of a major homage would be the Necrons, started as a clear and blatant homage to the ''Terminator'' films: mysterious robotic skeletons, who carried on trying to kill you even if reduced to crawling torsos with no legs, and a special rule called "I'll Be Back". Later changes [[RetCon departed from this]], focusing more on their image as impossibly ancient servants of even more impossibly ancient monsters. Essentially now a bunch of [[AncientConspiracy Ancient Evil]] {{Determinator}}s with rather too much scalpel imagery, they maintain the robo-skeleton and "I'll Be Back".)
** In what may be a twisted homage to the original Terminator's flesh gradually getting messed up to reveal the robotic endoskeleton (as well as a reference to the Aztec deity Xipe Totec), Necron Flayed Ones invert this: they start as machines that then ''[[HighOctaneNightmareFuel drape themselves in the flayed corpses of their victims]]''.
* HopelessWar (For ''everyone''.)
* HopeSpot (Why the Imperium discourages the foolish notion of hope.)
* HordeOfAlienLocusts (Tyranids are possibly the ur-example.)
* HornyDevils (Slaaneshi Daemons and Dark Eldar. The latter even have elite troops called Incubi and Succubi.)
* HornyVikings (Space Wolves are Vikings IN SPACE, though they don't wear horned helmets - those are reserved for Chaos Marines.)
* HorseOfADifferentColor (mutant horses, cyber-horses, cyber-boars, giant lizards, daemons that look like slugs, daemons that look like ''metal rhinos''...)
* HouseRules (If you and your opponent agree to them.)
** The rulebook actually takes a very congenial stance towards them. Some things basically HAVE to be decided by the players (especially when dealing with terrain).
* HoverTank (The Tau's Hammerhead, and the Eldar's Falcon and its offshoots.)
* {{HSQ}} (You must have thought of a few expletives if you read everything from the top to here, at least. [[BeyondTheImpossible Just keep in mind that you are only half-way through, though.]])
* HumansAreBastards (Although, to be fair, ''so is everyone else.'' In addition, it has been established that the Imperium ''[[InherentInTheSystem has]]'' [[InherentInTheSystem to be terrible in order to survive.]] So Humans Are Bastards out of necessity rather than choice. Think of it as IDidWhatIHadToDo on a larger scale.)
* HumanityIsSuperior (Which is why everything else should be [[KillItWithFire killed with fire]].)
* HumanResources (The one resource the Imperium has in unlimited amounts, which tends to lead to... [[WeHaveReserves wastefulness]].)
* HumansByAnyOtherName (We're [[IncrediblyLamePun mon'keigh]] to the Eldar, gue'la to the Tau, [[strike:humies]] 'umies to the Orks, playthings to the Dark Eldar, and lunch to the Tyranids.)
* HumanSacrifice
* HumongousMecha (Titans, Gargants and, to a lesser extent, Space Marine Dreadnoughts, Ork Dreads and Killa Kans, Eldar Wraithlords and War Walkers, Chaos Defilers, Tau Battlesuits, Witch Hunter Penitent Engines...)
* HyperspaceIsAScaryPlace (The Warp, or Immaterium, is a reflection of the emotions of all sentient beings, the collective DreamLand of the galaxy and home to all the nightmares there have ever been, given form. Part SpiritWorld, part PhantomZone, a sea of emotion and the source of all psychic power, it's also the daemon-infested home of the [[CosmicHorror Chaos Gods]] and is, for all intents and purposes, ''hell''. And going through it is the only faster-than-light travel available to most races.)
* IKnowYourTrueName (Daemons and the Grimoire of True Names.)
* ImAHumanitarian (Soylent Viridians, a form of food ration, also referred to as "corpse starch.")
** There's also a widely known and somewhat popular religious sect whose main gimmick is cannibalism, though this behavior is generally frowned upon by the Ecclesiarchy as a whole.
** The Kroot have this as their [[PlanetofHats hat]], as when they eat something they incorporate parts of its genome into their reproductive DNA. They began as vultures scavanging ork corpses and eventually became a bipedal, if still distinctly avian, species that eats their own (and everyone else's) dead, if the individual was strong enough to warrant being incorporated into future generations.
* ImmuneToBullets (Big daemons and monsters are generally more or less proof against [[FiveRoundsRapid small arms]], though not against heavy weapons.)
** The Dark Eldar have Grotesques, crazed BDSM fans who have turned upon their own bodies. Their special rule lets them ignore all shooting attacks with a Strength of 5 or lower. They have 2 wounds. Yeah.
** Armour Value 14. Especially the Monolith.
* ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice (Sometimes on a ''chainsaw''.)
* ImperialStormtrooperMarksmanshipAcademy (Orks + guns = hilarity. Fortunately, they have MoreDakka where that came from. Averted with the Imperium of Man's own Storm Troopers, who can aim just as well as any Space Marine.)
* ImplacableMan (Things like higher-level Tyranids, Space Marines, Orks and Daemons are ridiculously hard to take down, but the Necrons ''really'' take the cake.)
* ImplausibleFencingPowers (In the spin-off game, Inquisitor, characters are able to take a talent called "Deflect Shot" which allows them to attempt and deflect any shots fired at them as long as they are armed with either a power weapon (a melee weapon surrounded by a matter-disrupting energy field) or a force weapon (which is psychically linked to its wielder). This is also demonstrated in the last book of the {{Eisenhorn}} trilogy.)
** Although, in an odd case of quasi-realism, when somebody else does this in ''Ravenor'', Harlon Nayl's answer is to switch to full auto and shoot her to bits.
* ImprovisedWeapon (All Ork equipment is basically improvised out of bits of scrap metal. Even spaceships, because...)
* ItRunsOnNonsensoleum (...Ork technology is a [[JustifiedTrope justified]] case of this.)
* InfernalRetaliation (Only mentioned in relationship to Tyranids, but more than likely applies to Necrons and Orks as well.)
* InitiationCeremony (Space Marines, especially the Grey Knights; also Chaos.)
* InstrumentOfMurder (Noise Marines.)
* IntangibleMan (Necron Wraiths.)
* InterserviceRivalry (To the point that rival Imperial Guard regiments, Space Marine chapters, Inquisitorial task forces, or any combination of the above will occasionally open fire on each other in the name of the Emperor.)
* InTheNameOfTheMoon (Every faction has their own equivalent.)
* InvoluntaryShapeshifting (''Everything'' touched by Tzeentch.)
* InherentInTheSystem (Were the oppressive and xenophobic Imperium of Man to ever fall (or even undergo significant reorganisation), the resultant chaos would lead directly and rapidly to Mankind's extinction at the hands of its many, ''many'' enemies.)
* InsaneTrollLogic (Orks frequently and ''hilariously'' come to such 'logical' conclusions. Of course, [[ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve since things tend to work if they believe it does]]...)
* InWorkingOrder (Justified for Orks - if they think it'll work, it will, even if it's actually broken. Averted and avoided by everyone else.)
* ItGotWorse (And how! The 5th Edition of the game has taken this even further, fleshing out the history of the past few hundred years - the ''Time of Ending'' - and revealing just how ''monumentally screwed'' the Imperium actually is. Although, given this is 40k, with loose ends such as [[spoiler:the prophesied return of the missing Primarchs, the Alpha Legion, various Eldar contingencies and the possible rebirth of the Emperor via the Star Child]], it's unlikely any faction is going to gain total victory.)
* ItsRainingMen (Deep Strike.)
* JackBauerInterrogationTechnique (The "Nine Actions" are the Inquisition's specific guidelines on gradually increasing the intensity of their questioning, psyhological manipulation, torture, and MindRape. Action Nine would kill any normal human pretty quick, but then normal humans usually give in at about the two-mark, which [[ToThePain involves explaining exactly what is going to happen through the next seven stages]].)
** Dark Eldar are also adept at this, owing to their [[TortureTechnician experience with torture in general]]. Generally, however, they're more interested in the captive's screaming than in any information he might have to offer.
* JerkWithAHeartOfGold (Roboute Guilliman, primarch of the Ultramarines. Sure he could be an ass, but he legitimately cared about the people. His actions and policies would eventually lead to the Ultramar system becoming one of the nicest (and least corrupt) places in the Imperium.)
* JoinTheArmyTheySaid (The Imperial Guard.)
** Or, to quote 1d4chan, "Join the Imperial Guard or die. Then die."
* JudgeJuryAndExecutioner (Several organisations and individuals with this power. The Adeptus Arbites who enforce Imperial law (and who [[CaptainErsatz rather resemble]] the [[JudgeDredd Judges of Mega City One]], although this is superficial: according to ''DarkHeresy'', abandoning due process and using summary execution is the worst heresy an Arbites officer can commit), the [[InSovietRussiaTropeMocksYou Commissars]] of the [[RedshirtArmy Imperial Guard]], the [[ChurchMilitant Ecclesiarchy]] (who tend to favour [[FateWorseThanDeath unusual punishments]]) and, of course, the Inquisition. Innocence proves ''nothing.'')
** "A plea of innocent in my courtroom is guilty of wasting my time. Guilty."
** Unusual punishments... or KillItWithFire.
* TheJuggernaut (Necrons, Tyranids, and the Imperial Guard. There's also a breed of Khornate daemon actually ''called'' the Juggernaut; for the uninitiated, it's the thing that looks like an angry metal rhino.)
* JuliusBeethovenDaVinci (The Emperor may have been Jesus, among numerous other historical figures.)
* KickTheDog (Everyone, to everything, all the time.)
* KillEmAll (This one was a no-brainer.)
* KillerRabbit (The Catachan Barking Toad, a large, [[http://uk.games-workshop.com/download/popup.htm?/warhammer40000/creature-feature/images/toad-big.jpg sad-looking amphibian]] sometimes dubbed the [[MemeticMutation "Ronery Toad"]]. If attacked, hurt or even surprised, it [[TakingYouWithMe explodes into a cloud of obscenely virulent toxins]], killing absolutely everything for miles around and poisoning the earth so that nothing will ever grow there again.)
* KillItWithFire (''Government policy'' towards ''everything.'' The Salamanders chapter of Space Marines and the Witch Hunters specialize in fire based weapons.)
* KilledOffForReal (GW's OldShame, the Squats.)
** Also Eldar special character Eldrad Ulthran, who made a HeroicSacrifice at the end of the 13th Black Crusade global campaign.
* KingInTheMountain (The Emperor, several primarchs. Or so it is said.)
* KnightTemplar (Considered an ideal in the Imperium.)
* LargeAndInCharge (Orks actually get steadily bigger as they gain more authority, Chaos Lords who have ascended to daemonhood tower over their merely giant minions, and the size of Tyranid "Synapse Creatures" leads to one piece of advice in dealing with Tyranids: "SHOOT THE BIG ONES!". Also [[PhysicalGod the manifest gods]] of the Necron race -C'tan- have a special rule called "Above All Others" on the battlefield, which is pretty self-explanatory)
* LargeHam (Given how many characters are batshit insane, and how insanity tends to feel good in this setting... players who don't treat the game as SeriousBusiness tend to get hammy as time goes on.)
* LaserBlade (Most power weapons are a disruption field-based variant of this, but a couple of genuine laser swords have come up in the fluff.)
* LaserSight (Tau markerlights are a variation of this, and they also appear on a lot of Imperial Guard weapons. Some unkind players suggest that Imperial lasguns ''are'' laser sights; while they can remove a head or limb with a single shot, compared to the ''other'' weapons...)
** An Ork Targita or Gitfinda can be a crude version of this.
* LastStand (At any given moment, somewhere in the galaxy, an Imperial force is being wiped out to the last man. "The blood of martyrs is the seed of the Imperium.")
* LawfulGood: The Salamanders are the closest thing this game has to a true good faction. Being 40k, GoodIsNotNice.
**Ditto for the Lawful Goodish Tau.
* LawfulStupidChaoticStupid (Plenty of examples of both.)
* LawOfChromaticSuperiority ([[FunetikAksent Da blue wunz iz lucky, and da red wunz go FASTA!]])
* LawOfInverseRecoil (Averted - firing an Autocannon has been known to break bones in an ordinary human, while Imperial missile launchers have been stated to have no recoil when fired correctly.)
** In 2nd Edition, Wazdakka Gutzmek (an Ork mekboy) rode a motorcycle that mounted a battle cannon, a fairly large ''tank cannon''. The recoil would knock his bike back several yards every time he fired it.
** Bolters are a strange example, and have many inconsistencies. They would actually be a lower recoil weapon than a traditional projectile weapon due to the bolts being self propelled; some publications have them with little recoil while others demonstrate massive recoil for the imagery.
*** [[FanWank There is fluff that adequately explains]] the bolter recoil issue. The ammo is essentially a variant on [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrojet gyrojet ammunition]]. One of the flaws of this type of ammo is that it needs a good space before it gets up to full speed, so it can't be used at close range. Bolter ammo overcomes this flaw by firing it with an explosive charge like traditional solid ammo, with the rocket part used to maintain high velocity over a longer range. Since there are numerous variants on the bolter and bolt pistol, and a range of calibers, the intensity of the recoil will also vary, just like with real-world weapons. Add to that, bolters are typically used by superstrong superhumans, or exceptionally strong humans in power armour. A recoil that would knock an Imperial Guardsman on his ass could be handled by a [[ChurchMilitant Battle Sister]], and would barely be noticed by a Space Marine.
*** The Bolters used by the Imperial Guard are probably smaller than those used by the Space Marines and Battle Sisters, the Guard uses Heavy Bolters mounted on tripods while the Marines just shoot them two handed, and the Commissar's signature Bolt Pistols would probably look tiny compared to a Space Marine's Bolt Pistol.
* LeanAndMean (The Dark Eldar.)
* LeastCommonSkinTone (In the future there is only war... and white people.)
** Though [[strike:most]] [[RetCon all]] of the Space Marines of the Salamanders chapter are black in official art, and the White Scars are distinctly Asian. [[AllThereInTheManual The fluff]] states the Tau have different skin colours, although all are variants on blue/grey. We have the distinctly shh-we're-not-Arabs Tallarns too.)
** Also, one of Inquisitor Vail's footnotes in ''Caves of Ice'' indicates that while black people are decidedly rare on Valhalla, there are several nearby planets where pretty damn near ''everyone'' is black. Of course, there are still about 100 billion times more white people in the Imperium, SoYeah.
** Also a good few modern Imperial Guard armies have black soldiers, especially the Catchians. It's how the gamer paints his stuff really.
**And Inquisitor Toth from ''Dawn of War'' is black.
* TheLegionsOfHell (Chaos. But they won't stay there, because they're...)
* LikeABadassOutOfHell (Chaos Marines, and anyone crazy enough to invade the Eye of Terror-mostly Space Wolves and Orks.)
* TheLibraryOfBabel (The Black Library.)
* LightIsNotGood (The ChurchMilitant makes sure of this one.)
* LightningBruiser (Necrons exhibit shades of this on the ground (assuming they make full use of their monoliths and other fast-moving troops), but their naval fleet ''really'' takes the cake.)
** The [[AsskickingEqualsAuthority commanders]] of many armies are wicked fast in combat, orders of magnitude tougher than basic infantry, and often capable of wiping out entire ''squads'' of enemy troops single-handed in melee.
** A fair number of armies' units in the first place. Space Marines in particular are consistently noted as being more agile than anyone would expect given their bulkiness and mass.
* LivingShip (Tyranid vessels.)
** Eldar vessels are living in a way, some even have no crew being piloted solely by the [[GhostShip spirits of the dead]].
* LizardFolk (Loxatl are [[strike:lizardmen]] amphibian-men that are very resistant to lasgun fire and have weapons that would be very nasty in any other setting. There are also the Slann, the RecycledInSpace version of ''{{Warhammer}}'' Lizardmen, though they don't show up much in the fluff anymore.)
* LoadsAndLoadsOfRules (''Rogue Trader's'' comically huge rulebook, and ''Second edition's'' obsession with insanely complex special rules. Just try firing a Conversion Beamer or Thudd Gun without having to consult the rulebook repeatedly.)
* LookOnMyWorksYeMightyAndDespair (The Eldar and pre-Imperium humanity. Also the Necrontyr -precursors to Necrons- have achieved an incredible level of technological advancement before turning their souls over to C'tan and becoming the [[OmnicidalManiac legion of killer robots that held the entire galaxy in their sway]], but then of course [[ItGotWorse something even worse came along in the form of Enslavers]])
* LostColony (All over the place.)
* LostTechnology (See also CargoCult, AncientAstronauts, SufficientlyAdvancedAlien and SealedEvilInACan. The Blackstone Fortresses come under ''all five''.)
* LovesTheSoundOfScreaming (The Dark Eldar.)
* MacrossMissileMassacre (Sisters of Battle Exorcists, huge gothic church organs mounted on the backs of tanks, which fire anti-tank missiles as the battle nun in her armoured cockpit presses the keys. 40k, quite literally, [[IncrediblyLamePun pulls out ALL the stops.]])
* TheMadHatter (Occasionally seen as a symptom of corruption by Chaos, particularly by Tzeentch.)
* MadOracle (Precognition is a fairly well-known power of psykers, but carries with it TheDarkSide. Aside from the Eldar, TheDarkSide seems to win more often than not with would-be prophets.)
* MadScientist (A great many Imperial tech-priests fall into this, though arguably ''all'' tech-priests are insane [[CargoCult by]] [[AveMachina modern]] [[CyberneticsEatYourSoul standards]]. Non-Imperial examples include Fabius Bile, Dark Eldar Haemonculi, and Ork Painboyz and Mekboyz (also known, appropriately enough, as Mad Doks and Mekaniaks respectively).)
* MadeOfEvil (Chaos.)
* MadnessMantra (Blood for the Blood God! Blood for the Blood God!!! BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!!!)
** And Skulls for the Skull Throne!
** MAIM! KILL! BURN! MAIM! KILL! BURN! MAIM etc. etc.
** In the spinoff game ''BattlefleetGothic'', an entire ''starship'' gets a MadnessMantra: the Chaos cruiser ''Killfrenzy'' is so named because, whenever it draws near, all that can be heard on every comms frequency is an endlessly-looping broadcast of +++KILLFRENZY KILLFRENZY KILLFRENZY KILLFRENZY KILLFRENZY+++
* MagicKnight (Space Marine Librarians, Chaos Sorcerers, Eldar Warlocks...the Grey Knights are a whole ''army'' of these.)
* MagicMisfire (Perils of the Warp.)
* {{Magitek}} (Mostly the Eldar and the Necrons, though Imperial and Chaos gear crosses into this sometimes.)
* TheMagnificent (Kharn the Betrayer, Abaddon the Despoiler, and Scyrak the Slaughterer -- among others)
* MagnificentBastard (Tzeentch is literally the ''god'' of Magnificent Bastards, and the Emperor is no slouch, either. On the mostly-mortal side of things, the Alpha Legion of Chaos Space Marines is composed entirely of Magnificent Bastards.)
* ManEatingPlant (Crop up all the time on {{Death World}}s.)
* TheMario (Space Marines.)
* MarySuetopia (The Tau Empire, relatively speaking.)
* MaybeMagicMaybeMundane (40k loves this one, given how blurry the line between magic and technology tends to be.)
* McNinja (Anything that has Infiltration, and then some.)
** Particularly Genestealers and Lictors (alien ninja) and Harlequins ([[NinjaPirateZombieRobot space elf killer clown ninja]]).
* MeaningfulName (Both played straight and inverted where Space Marine Chapters are concerned; a popular joke pokes fun at this.)
** in a stunning display of originality, Corax (latin for "raven") is the primarch of the Raven Guard.
** in an [[UpToEleven even more stunning one]], Ferrus Manus (latin for "iron hand") is the primarch of the Iron Hands, and he has ''actual'' iron hands.
* MechaMooks (Necrons.)
* MechanicalHorse (Krieg Death Riders and the like on the Imperial side, cyboars for the Orks.)
** Mogul Kamir of Atilla had a mechanical horse made for him by the Adeptus Mechanicus, because he kept riding the flesh-and-blood ones to death.
* MedievalStasis ([[RecycledInSpace In SPACE!]] Also literal on many worlds.)
* MentalWorld (The Warp.)
* MemeticMolester (Lucius the Eternal. Even has his cry of OH YEEAAHHH!!!! (sounding like the Kool-Aid Man).)
** Sisters of Battle are pedophiles, Eldrad lusts after the young (and supple) races, and Macha Biel-Tan ''cannot'' for the life of her lose her virginity. There are also numerous theories about what would happen if Slaanesh and the tentacle-happy Tyranids ever got together...
* MemeticMutation (The Traditional Games board of [[ImageBoards 4chan]] has spawned a great many 40k- and DawnOfWar-based memes, such as "Drive me closer! I want to hit them with my sword!" and "METAL BOXES!")
** Spess Mahreens, todeh tha enemeh is at awor dowur! Fer the Emprah!
** Hwee cap-toored eet fohr kay-ohss!
** [[TeamFortress2 CALLIDUS SAPPIN' MAH GUN DRONE!]]
** Kharn the Betrayer is a pretty swell guy. Eldrad, however, is a dick.
** [[DawnOfWar "Vindicare Assassins cannot fire upon Eldar Farseers due to love".]]
** The Tyranids' goals are also critically described as "OM NOM NOM NOM.".
* MerchandiseDriven (Oddly enough, the majority of the background material and fiction does ''not'' fall to this trope, although rules modifications and new army lists are often accused of changing stats only to boost sales of certain models, and both the monthly magazine ''White Dwarf'' and the Games Workshop website have gradually become less hobby supplements and more miniatures catalogues.)
* MercyKill (The Emperor's Peace.)
* MessianicArchetype (The Emperor.)
* MightyGlacier (Models wielding {{Power Fist}}s strike last in close combat, but can punch clean through tank armor and pound enemy infantry into a bloody paste. The Leman Russ battle tank is slower than most vehicles its size, but it's a stable firing platform capable of unleashing twice as much firepower as most other tanks at combat speed.)
* MilitaryMashupMachine (The Imperium in particular has a recurring love affair with these, and the Tau may be starting to lean this way.)
* TheMilkyWayIsTheOnlyWay (Mostly justified by the limitations of the various races' FTL. The Tyranids come from outside the Milky Way, but nothing more is known.)
* MindRape (40k ''loves'' this one:)
** The process of turning a psychically sensitive human into an Astropath is basically a MindRape, though it has a few physical aspects as well, such as their eyes being completely burned out.
** Daemonic possession.
** A lot of psychic powers are basically this, most obviously an Eldar power called "Mind War".
** The psycho/hypnotherapy Space Marines undergo as part of their conversion from human to Astartes is a limited form of MindRape, a sort of mental TheSpartanWay.
*** And Grey Knight training takes this even further, involving as it does the [[MarkOfTheBeast "Six Hundred and Sixty-Six Rites of the Emperor", which is longhand for 666 mind rapes.]]
*** Also worthy of mention are the Exorcists chapter of Space Marines, who have a innate edge against Daemons due to their training involving getting deliberately possessed and then exorcised.
** The Nightbringer Mind Raped proto-life so horribly that he ''instilled the fear of death in all living creatures in the galaxy'', except the Orks.
* MiniMecha (The Eldar War Walkers and Imperial Guard Sentinels.)
* MohsScaleOfSciFiHardness (Among the softest on the scale. In 40k, RuleOfCool ''is'' physics.)
* MoreDakka (The TropeNamer, and home to the greatest examples in fiction or out of it.)
* MoreTeethThanTheOsmondFamily (Tyranids.)
* MoreThanMindControl (Chaos is insidious indeed.)
* MonogenderMonsters (Orks, all Boyz.)
* MonsterClown (Eldar Harlequins are [[NinjaPirateZombieRobot psychedelic space elf ninja killer clowns]]. They wear holographic harlequin costumes and extremely scary masks, and carry horrifyingly nasty weapons even by 40k standards; as an example, their usual squad support weapon fires molecule-edged crystal discs covered in toxins that make the target's ''blood explode''. They worship the "Laughing God", and are the Eldar equivalent of a roving carnival, visiting the various Craftworlds and acting out tales from Eldar mythology with holographic, psychically-enhanced interpretive dance. When they're not killing people in unspeakably horrible ways, that is.)
** Just to put this one in perspective, the Dark Eldar, a race of beings who have an almost genetic urge to torture people in anatomically horrific ways, are terrified of the Harlequins and dare not refuse them entry into the normally impregnable dimension they reside in.
* MoralEventHorizon (The Tau and Eldar are about the only ones who even realize there is one, the Eldar having found out about it the hard way, and even then they [[OurElvesAreBetter don't think it applies to anyone]] ''[[OurElvesAreBetter else]]''.)
* MorallyAmbiguousDoctorate (Ork Mad Doks and Painboyz to a Boy.)
** Ork medical knowledge is genetic, and anyone claiming to be a dok is licensed to operate. [[MadScientist That doesn't necessarily mean you'll like the results, though....]]
* MosesInTheBullrushes (The Primarchs, Mortarion especially.)
* MotiveDecay (Those who attempt to use Chaos generally end up being used by it - and not caring.)
* MultiArmedAndDangerous (Warp Spider Exarchs, the mandrake Decapitator, certain Mechanicus adepts, some cyborks, every Tyranid ever.)
* MusicalAssassin (Noise Marines and Goff Rokkerz kill with ThePowerOfRock.)
* MyCountryRightOrWrong (The Imperial Guard sometimes gets this treatment, especially when they're the antagonists.)
* MySignificanceSenseIsTingling (Psykers can sometimes feel the psychic backlash of mass deaths or other strange events in the Warp. They can also detect the warp shadow of an oncoming Tyranid hive fleet, by going insane and dying.)
* NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast (Chaos leaders' names like Kharn, Abaddon and Scyrak sound scary enough, and then you find that their respective nicknames are "the Betrayer", "the Despoiler" and "the Slaughterer". Ork names tend to be made up of words like "smash" and "skull," and that's before you get to the self-given titles like "Arch-Arsonist," "Arch-Dictator," "Arch-Maniac," and for a change of pace, "Da Big Bad Beast."
** Also names like Decapitator or the Red Terror.
** Dark Eldar get in on this, too. Lelith Hesperax, Urien Rakarth, and Asdrubael Vect, Supreme Lord of the Kabal of the Black Heart are all about as nice as they sound.
* NecessarilyEvil (Imperial servants in general, and Inquisitors in particular, knowingly and willingly do horrible things to innocent people on a regular basis because the consequences for ''not'' doing so could be catastrophic for humanity as a whole.)
* NegativeSpaceWedgie (You really can't get more negative than the Eye of Terror.)
* NeglectfulPrecursors (Strangely enough, inverted as it's more like neglectful moderners. Back in the golden age of technology, people were smart enough to create standard template constructs ([=STCs=]). Anyone who had one could build anything from a house to a tank if the situation required, regardless of ability or technology. Ten thousand years later, these same items created millenia ago are still in use, but the massive galaxy-spanning Imperium appears to be having trouble finding the things.)
**To be more exact, the Imperium is having trouble finding even drawings of the things. A single ancient sketch of a blueprint taken off a broken STC (Broken is as good as they come after 20,000 years or so) is a prize enough to burn entire star systems.
* NewTechnologyIsEvil (Cornerstone of the Adeptus Mechanicus.)
** Ask any two Magi and you'll get at least two answers, though. They all believe in the existing rituals of construction and maintenance, most believe in reverse engineering, enough believe in "respectful improvement" that new weapons do emerge, and they sometimes fight each other over whether xenos tech can be studied and recreated in a "purified" form or is just a blasphemy against the Machine-God.
* NiceHat (Commissars', though [[BadBoss the wearers aren't.]])
* NietzscheWannabe (And they're the unbelievably and naively ''optimistic'' in this setting. Be honest and ask yourself what's worse: a cold and uncaring universe, or a universe actively out to get you?)
* NightOfTheLivingMooks (Necrons.)
* NightmareFuel ([[NightmareFuelUnleaded Unleaded]]) (''Oceans'' of it. Absolutely wall-to-wall, to the point that explicit descriptions of people being raped by axe-waving daemons, flayed alive and cut to pieces with chainsaws rarely get a raised eyebrow from veterans of the game.)
* NightVisionGoggles (Tau blacksun filters, Imperial "heat see" devices and Space Marine autosensors.)
* NinjaPirateZombieRobot (*deep breath*:)
** Repentant fanatical bondage nuns with chainsaw flamethrowers.
** Psychic space elf torture-obsessed ninja bondage pirates/psychedelic ninja ''killer clowns''/knights on flying bikes with laser lances/wizards/split-personality warriors with chainsaw swords and guns that shoot ninja stars/Luddite wood-elf hippie dinosaur riders.
** Skin-stealing soul-eating green-lightning-spraying undead doom robots.
** Psychic genetically engineered fanatically religious daemon-killing knights.
** Genetically engineered green-skinned soccer-hooligan axe-crazy techno-barbarian space-orc aliens who are subconsciously psychic.
** Asian caste-based bunny-eared-mecha-using alien hooved collectivist suicide bombers.
** Axe-waving blood-drinking/mutated burning tentacley/rotting maggot-ridden cyclopean/androgynous crab-clawed sex-fiend psychic emotion daemons.
** Viking/Mongol/Roman/Spartan/perverted SenseFreak bondage-obsessed/AxeCrazy/magic zombie/cyborg/vampire/Daemon-possessed genetically engineered power-armoured super-soldier {{warrior monk}}s.
* NoOneGetsLeftBehind (Thoroughly averted for the most part - the Tau and Eldar are about the only ones who ever try, and the Eldar consider recovering the waystones of the dead good enough consolation for being unable to save the bodies of the living (because the waystones [[SoulJar contain the soul]] of the dead Eldar). Similarly, although the Marines consider it the highest honour to die in battle, they'll fight hard to recover the progenoid glands from the still-cooling bodies of their battle brothers.)
** Necrons have an automated version of this.
** Also, given the CargoCult[=/=]AncestralWeapon nature of technology in the Imperium, the Adeptus Mechanicus and the Space Marines will often insist, and go to sometimes-absurd lengths to ensure that No ''Tech'' Gets Left Behind.
** Orks invert this trope brutally and repeatedly.
* NoPlansNoPrototypeNoBackup (Even the best and brightest Mekboyz don't know how some of the things they build work, or occasionally even what they had in mind when they started nailing bits on. Often the purpose of a mekboy speshul invention can only be determined by testing it, a dangerous pursuit.)
* NothingButSkulls (Most commonly associated with the Imperium. Yes, the [[strike:good guys]] protagonists. They're also known for using skulls as {{Attack Drone}}s.)
** Orks, followers of Khorne, and Dark Eldar aren't slouches in the skull-taking department, either.
* {{Noun Verber}}s (Lots of Space Marines, both Imperial and Chaos: World Eaters, Word Bearers, SoulDrinkers, Flesh Tearers, Flesh Eaters, Blood Drinkers, Skull Takers, Deathmongers, Fire Reavers...)
* NukeEm (Standard Imperial policy on dealing with anything more dangerous than an angry dog. Usually the right thing to do.)
** A particularly egregious example is the Death Korps of Krieg, who "subjected their homeworld to a 500-year campaign of atomic cleansing."
* NumberOfTheBeast (The Grey Knights are Chapter 666, and their initiation involves the 666 [[MindRape Rites of the Emperor]]. They hunt daemons.)
* NumberedHomeworld (Both averted and played straight.)
* ObstructiveBureaucrat (Planets of them. At least one of them is actually on the verge of civil war because they're running out of places to store the paperwork.)
* ObviouslyEvil (Played straight, but also possibly subverted [[AlternateCharacterInterpretation depending on just how "evil" you consider the Imperium.]])
* ObviousRulePatch (''White Dwarf'' used to give out official rulings against interpreting the second edition rules in stupid ways. For example, your Imperial Assassin using the shape-changing drug Polymorphine is not allowed to disguise himself as a tiny Gretchin while wearing Terminator Armour and riding an armoured motorbike just because the rules don't specifically say he can't.)
* OfficerAndAGentleman (The Imperial ideal. True to real life, many are also corrupt, incompetent, treasonous, or all-around bastards.)
* OffscreenVillainDarkMatter (Ten thousand years of continuous war, and the Traitor Marines are ''still'' in bolter shells. This has been made somewhat less ridiculous in recent fluff, with mention of Chaos forge worlds, and a change in focus towards Renegade (recently-corrupted) Marines to distract from the question of how the original Traitor Legions even still ''exist''. And since they do reside in the Eye of Terror, where "physics" is even more of a joke than elsewhere, they have ''literal'' OffscreenVillainDarkMatter.)
* TheOgre (Ogryns of the Imperial Guard, armed with automatic shotguns designed to be equally useful as giant clubs.)
** Feral World Ogryns, from the abhuman rules in ''White Dwarf'', don't even get the shotguns.
* OldShame (GW regards the Squats and Zoats as "things better left forgotten." However, hints of them do pop up in new material from time to time...)
* OmnicidalManiac (Necrons, Tyranids, and certain Chaos factions to some extent. Orks too, just for fun.)
* OneGenderRace (Justified by the Orks because they reproduce asexually and are biologically a lot like fungi, justified by Space Marines for genetic engineering reasons and Sisters of Battle for political loophole reasons, avoided by Eldar, Dark Eldar and Imperial Guard, mostly played straight by Tau, don't even ask about the Necrons. Or Tyranids.)
**Tau have different sexual characteristics from humans. The female dissected in ''Xenology'' is nearly indistingushable from a male Tau. End result: you could be fielding an all-female or all-male or mixed group of Fire Warriors. There's no way to know.
* OneManArmy (The entire point of Space Marines. Also taken to ''ridiculous'' limits by Shas'la Kais from the forgettable 40k [=FPS=] ''Fire Warrior''. Also the Primarchs and the members of the Adeptus Custodes.)
* OneWingedAngel (Warriors of Chaos can be blessed or cursed with "gifts" from their patron Gods, turning them steadily more inhuman. Eventually, at a certain point, the weak-willed become mindless Chaos Spawn, while those with sufficient willpower ascend into Daemon Princes who retain their sentience and control over their vast powers. In either case the warrior now becomes a full Daemon extra vulnerable to anti-Daemon abilities and armament.)
* OneWorldOrder (The Tau Empire, though as their fluff is expanded, differences between Tau Septs are starting to appear.)
* OnlySaneMan (Possibly the Tau Empire, though this is more of a subversion - it's the insane people who are completely correct and realistic about things, and the sane Tau seek to play by the rules in a universe that has none.)
* OrcusOnHisThrone (Of the Chaos daemon Primarchs, a grand total of one has left his daemon world to attack the Imperium. And he got booted back home by a bunch of angry Space Vikings.)
** If you're talking about Angron, he was reputedly stoppped by the Grey Knights. But I think this has hapened several times. The Primarchs apparently have other things to amuse themselves with.
* OrderVersusChaos (Generally accepted as Imperium, Eldar, and Tau for Order, and Orks, Dark Eldar and, well, Chaos for Chaos. Necrons and Tyranids are off to the side a bit.)
** One could argue that the Necrons are also on the side of Order--just that their method of defeating Chaos (the ideology, not the faction) is to [[KillEmAll kill off anything and everything else that could possibly upset the natural order of the universe, i.e. sentient life]].
* OrganicTechnology (See Tyranids again.)
* OurMonstersAreDifferent
** OurAngelsAreDifferent (Do ''your'' [[BloodAngels angels]] wield automatic rocket launchers and chainsaw swords? I didn't think so.)
** OurDemonsAreDifferent (A daemon is technically any being that dwells in the Warp, but true daemons in 40k are the personifications of rage, despair, pleasure, or hope - and not even that last one is pleasant.)
** OurDragonsAreDifferent (Dragons are creatures of Eldar myth, but it's recently been indicated that the C'Tan Void Dragon takes a dragon-like avatar as well.)
** [[OurDwarvesAreAllTheSame Our Dwarves Got Eaten By Giant Bugs And We Don't Talk About Them Anymore. Got It?]]
*** [[OurDwarvesAreAllTheSame ...But Our Other Dwarves Are Still All The Same]] (The Demiurg, from what little we've seen of them, are still stocky, Ork-hating, hairy miners and traders... [-[[RecycledInSpace IN SPACE!]]-])
** OurElvesAreBetter (Two main subspecies, the Eldar and the Dark Eldar. Both are pointy-eared clairvoyant bastards; the Eldar place more emphasis on the "clairvoyant" part of the description, while the Dark Eldar put more emphasis on the "bastards.")
** OurGhostsAreDifferent (And armed to the teeth... see Necrons, especially Wraiths.)
** OurGiantsAreBigger (Big Mutants, larger subtypes of Ogryn.)
** OurGoblinsAreDifferent (Gretchen/grots serve the Orks as ammo runts, ammo, emergency rations, las-shields, bullet shields, better footing, minefield clearance, rocket guiding systems and spare parts, among other things.)
** OurOrcsAreDifferent (Traditional fantasy Orcs meet football hooligan stereotypes meet a [[MoreDakka whole lot of dakka]] and Mad Max/Reaver type vehicles/ships. It says a lot about just how horrible the Warhammer 40000 universe is that these crazed, violent lunatics, whose societies revolve around killing or brutalising anyone and everyone - including each other - are ''the comic relief race''.)
** OurSoulsAreDifferent (The Warp, mostly.)
** OurVampiresAreDifferent (Are your vampires made by being genetically modified from an [[OurAngelsAreDifferent practical angel]]'s genes?)
** OurWerewolvesAreDifferent (Wulfen)
* OutgrownSuchSillySuperstitions (The Imperium was created as a galaxy-wide example of this trope, and during the course of the Heresy became a [[HeWhoFightsMonsters comprehensive and horrible subversion]].)
** Of course, there is a school of thought that says the Emperor only tried to steer humanity away from religion precisely because he KNEW there were gods out there, and nasty ones at that. Then there's some subtle references in at least some of the novels that suggest the Emperor to be the [[strike:fifth]] [[strike:[[RetCon sixth]]]] [[strike:[[BrotherChuck seventh]]]] '''latest''' Chaos God, who is only prevented from kicking the snot out of the other big four because he is still tethered to his mortal form...
* OutOfTheInferno (Happens a lot, especially with Space Marines, Orks, and particularly Necrons.)
* OvershadowedByAwesome (Various examples, with the Imperial Guard probably being the clearest example.)
* ParentalIssues (The Emperor and the Primarchs.)
** TrulySingleParent (The Emperor was responsible for the creation of the twenty Primarchs before the start of the Great Crusade, at least partly from his own DNA.)
** ParentalAbandonment (The infant Primarchs were scattered through [[HyperspaceIsAScaryPlace the Warp]] by the Chaos gods, coming to rest on various human worlds throughout the galaxy. It was, to be fair, hardly intentional, but they were all adults before the Emperor found them again.)
** LikeFatherLikeSon (Of the eighteen known, each Primarch had risen to a position of power before they were found, and most were the rulers of one or more planets.)
** RaisedByWolves (Literally in the case of Leman Russ, more figuratively for some of the others.)
** ParentalFavoritism / TheUnFavourite (Horus was the Emperor's "first son", both in order found and as the Warmaster of the Great Crusade, while some of the Emperor's decisions about his other children (especially concerning Magnus the Red) have been... [[WhatTheHellHero questionable]].)
** CallingTheOldManOut (The Horus Heresy. Never let it be said that 40K does things on a small scale.)
** OffingTheOffspring (As a direct result of the above.)
** CainAndAbel (Guilliman killed Alpharius after Horus' followers scattered, and was later mortally wounded and forced [[HumanPopsicle into stasis]] by Fulgrim.) [[spoiler:(Though it was hinted that either Alpharius or his identical twin may [[FakingTheDead not be as dead as was thought]].)]]
*** In all likelihood, [[spoiler:both Alpharius and Omegon are probably alive, as the entire Alpha Legion present themselves as Alpharius at one point or another. It is quite possible that the Alpharius killed was just a high up Space Marine sent to prove their worth]].
*** Horus killing Sanguinius for refusing to join him before the final fight with the Emperor.
** PromotionToParent (Roboute Guilliman essentially promoted himself after the Emperor's death/ascension/interment.)
** RageAgainstTheMentor (Alpharius, against Roboute Guilliman, although Alpharius admitted nothing more than a pragmatic indifferance to his brother's boasting. Other examples include Rogal Dorn, Primarch of the Imperial Fists, masters of fortifaction and endurance and Peteraubo, the Primarch of the siege expert Iron Warriors.
*** Perhaps the biggest example of this trope is that of Horus and Abaddon. Abaddon looked up to Horus, and his loyalty (before and during the heresy) was greater than any other. Except for when Horus eventually loses the siege of Terra and Abaddon starts having second thoughts. Cue taking immediate command of all chaos forces and retreating back to the Eye of Terror, thus coining the phrase "Horus was weak, Horus was a fool". Such was his hatred of Horus's weakness, Abaddon renamed the Sons of Horus legion to the Black Legion and, upon hearing about even the potential to clone Horus, launched an all out attack to destroy the project. Not that Abaddon has done much better than Horus... [[FailureIsTheOnlyOption 13 Black crusades later and not an awful lot has changed....]]
* PeoplePuppets (Occasionally seen as an ability of psykers.)
* PercussiveMaintenance (Often a ''religious ritual'', complete with chanting and sacred unguents, and ''it works''. In one battle report, a Techmarine was described as fixing a ''complete tank engine'' with "a lot of chanting, and a few hammer blows".)
** Ork Meks as well, via the "think it works" method.
* PersonOfMassDestruction (Untrained Psykers are regarded as these by the Imperium, with good reason.)
* PhantasySpelling (Chaos "daemons" might or might not be an example of this. The word technically means "minor deity", but since that's what a lot of daemons actually ''are''...)
* PhantomZone (The Warp. Again.)
* PhysicalGod (The Emperor may have been one of these, and the Primarchs were basically demigods; also, the Avatars of Khaine and the C'tan. Daemon Princes can sometimes have pretty god-like powers, too.)
* {{Pirate}}
* PistolWhipping (A game mechanic.)
* {{Plaguemaster}} (Nurgle in a nutshell.)
* PlanetOfHats (Applies to several races, to try and reduce their SeparateButIdentical nature.)
** Imperial Guard: Everyone from Cadia is a soldier, everyone from Krieg is an exceptionally grim and dour soldier in a longcoat, everyone from Praetoria is a ''Zulu'' extra, everyone from Catachan is Rambo (but more hardcore).
** Eldar: Five major subfactions are each a Craftworld of Pointy Helmets: everyone from Ulthwe is either a professional soldier or a [[PsychicPowers Seer]], everyone from Alaitoc is a [[ColdSniper hooded loner with a sniper rifle]], everyone from Biel-Tan is an [[SplitPersonality Aspect Warrior]], everyone from Saim-Hann rides a [[AirJousting flying]] [[BadassBiker bike]], everyone from Iyanden is ''[[NightOfTheLivingMooks dead]]''.
** Orks: Every [[{{Goth}} Goff]] is grim and dour and [[SeriousBusiness takes fighting (comparatively) seriously]], every Evil Sun is fanatically obsessed with fast-moving [[LawOfChromaticSuperiority red]] vehicles, every Deathskull is a thieving bastard who [[MoreDakka welds guns together into bigger guns]], every Bad Moon is a [[RichBitch rich bastard]] who buys all the best wargear, every Snakebite is a [[SpaceAmish backwoods hick]] who clings to traditional ways of doing things, and every Blood Axe is a [[{{Ninja}} sneaky bastard]] who believes in [=un-Orky=] things like ''tactics'' and ''camouflage''.
** Space Marines: Ultramarines are all Romans, Space Wolves are all Vikings, White Scars are all Mongols. Dark Angels were, at one point in their history, all Native Americans, which is why the Deathwing Terminators have feathers and beads hanging from their armour.
** Chaos Space Marines: Every Word Bearer is a religious fanatic, every World Eater is a beserker, every Thousand Son is an Egyptian style sorcerer or an empty shell, every Death Guard is a rotting bloated disease bag, every Emperor's Children is a hedonistic heavy metal guitarist (minus Fabius Bile), every Iron Warrior is a siege engineer, every Night Lord is a scary ass serial killer, and every Alpha Legion is a sneaky, identical, unorthodox MagnificentBastard.
* PlanetLooters (Mostly Orks, but occasionally the Imperium. Tyranids and Necrons go [[ApocalypseHow some way beyond]] "looters".)
** Note Orks will occasionally loot a planet and turn it into a space ship of ridiculous size.
*** Well they don't use the planets themselves, but they equip large asteroids with a planet worth of weapons and some engines (big ones), and then go merry hunting around the galaxy in their new "Da Rok".
* PlanetVille (Averted and played straight in equal measure. A lot of fluff has, often for game reasons, the fate of systems decided by tiny battles, while just as much - particularly the novels and worldwide campaigns - features thoroughly "realistic" planetary campaigns, with millions upon millions of soldiers and years of fighting involved.)
* PlantAliens (The Orks are symbiotic creatures, a seemingly mammal-like anatomy with a fungus in its skin and blood, meaning they have green skin but red blood. They [[MonogenderMonsters reproduce asexually]], giving off spores all the time which [[RespawningEnemies grow new Orks]] in underground wombs, and as a result are nearly impossible to completely wipe out by any means short of planet-wide firey holocaust.)
* PleasurePlanet (Garden Worlds.)
* PlotArmor: All races to an extent but some tend to have more than others. The most extreme example of this trope are the Tau, which earns them a certain degree of hate from the fan base.
* PluckyComicRelief (You know you're on the [[SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism extreme end on the cynical side of the scale]] when this role is filled by the [[BloodKnight rampaging, murderous hordes of orks]], whose idea of a good time is to indiscriminately kill anything, including each other, and introducing people's internal organs to daylight.)
* PortalNetwork (The Eldar Webway.)
* PowerBornOfMadness (Followers of Chaos are generally crazy enough to do ''anything'', but the Imperium itself acknowledges this trope: "In the darkness, a blind man is the best guide; in an age of madness, look to the madman to lead the way.")
* PowerCrystal (Eldar have their "Waystones", a gem worn over the heart which captures the soul of the Eldar upon death to prevent it from being painfully devoured by the Chaos god Slaanesh. These spirit stones allow the Eldar a peculiar kind of necromancy with Wraithguard and Wraithlords, battle constructs controlled by the spirit of a long-dead Eldar in a waystone. The Eldar also pimp out their vehicles and weapons with countless more mundane gems.)
* PowerFist (TropeNamer.)
* PowerFloats (C'tan.)
* PowerGivesYouWings (Living Saints, daemon princes.)
* PowerIncontinence (Usually human and Ork psykers, but also some Chaos sorcerers.)
* PowerLimiter (Applied to psykers such as Astropaths and Guard Sanctioned Psykers, making them less powerful but a little less likely to go insane and melt everyone.)
* ThePowerOfRock (Slaaneshi Noise Marines. Corrupt power armoured super soldiers armed with daemonic ''killer guitars'', who blow people apart with their ''power chords''.)
** Ork Goff Rokkerz also fit in here.
* PoweredArmour (Ubiquitous.)
** Imperial: Varies from what-it-says-on-the-tin man-sized suits of armour that can carry themselves and enhance strength a little, to one-man-army exoskeletons plugged directly into the skin that turn you into a walking tank, can shrug off armies, enhance strength a hundredfold and carry a [[{{BFG}} built-in minigun]] and [[ChainsawGood chainsaw]] [[PowerFist fist.]]
** Chaos: As above, corrupted by the forces of [[SpikesOfVillainy spiky Chaos]] and pulsating with daemonic energies, screaming faces and little kids' bones. Also, might involve horns and tentacles.
** Eldar: Advanced body-suits made out of living plastic covered in gems, can change shape according to the will of the user and frequently come with psychically activated helmet-mounted nasties. Generally doesn't enhance strength but can come with integrated weapons. Can also come equipped with holographic generators, which let them dance around while the enemy think they're somewhere else, which while being utter genius, is useless against someone blasting you with a tank (In theory).
*** Dark Eldar: As above with blades and SpikesOfVillainy... [[{{Stripperiffic}} when they bother to wear it.]]
** Orks: The Scrapheap Challenge approach to power armour: gigantic ramshackle suits bolted together out of giant pistons and tank parts with ridiculously big cannons and huge bladed claws all over, powered by anything from nuclear reactors to steam power, lumbering and lethal for the user but practically unstoppable.
** Tau: {{Animesque}} suits ranging from Tau-sized bodysuits with cloaking fields to mini-HumongousMecha mounting vehicle-killing railguns and packing small saucer-shaped drones for shielding. Usually lacks competent melee weaponry, though. Granted, the suit itself is strong enough to make a tank explode by kicking the engine, but that doesn't change the fact that the Tau inside fights like a little old lady.
* PraetorianGuard (The Adeptus Custodes.)
** Also note that the Imperial Guard regiment called the Praetorian Guard is [[TheBritishEmpire nothing to do with the trope.]]
* PreAssKickingOneLiner
* PrescienceIsPredictable
* [[PrettyLittleHeadshots Pretty Little Tank Piercing Shots]] (The description of Tau railguns in the Tau codex says that there was a little entry hole in the front of a Leman Russ, a little exit hole in the back, and the liquified remains of the crew forming a 20ft stain coming out the back of the tank. [[LudicrousGibs Gibs do not get much more ludicrous]].)
* PrimalFear (Apart from being ''made'' largely out of hideous monsters and darkness, Sarpedon's main psychic power in the Soul Drinker series deserves points: it's called the Hell, and it conjures illusions of whatever Sarpedon thinks will scare the crap out of the enemy, such as making all his Marines three times as large or causing hellbats to come out of nowhere.)
** And let's not forget the C'tan ''Nightbringer'', who has the honor of being the origin for the fear of death in all living things (as well as the Grim Reaper figure) - except the Orks and Tyranids, of course.
* PrivateMilitaryContractors (For all the Tau's efforts at securing their loyalty, the Kroot will work for anyone who can offer appropriate compensation. Ork and Dark Eldar mercenaries have also been seen on occasion, as well as Human ones.)
* ProperlyParanoid (Justified - if you're ''not'' paranoid in this setting, you should be: everything ''really is'' [[EverythingTryingToKillYou out to get you.]])
* ProudWarriorRaceGuy (Khorne Berserkers are one part this to nine parts AxeCrazy. And "Orks iz made for fightin'." Space Marines also qualify to some extent. Also: Biel-tan, Lucius the Eternal, Cadia, the Tau Fire Caste . . . let's just say 40k is quite fond of this trope and move on.)
* PsychicLink (Eldar specialise in these.)
* PsychicPowers (In the background, necessary for FTL travel, but carry the risk of being possessed or worse by daemons. In the game, originally the excuse for a RecycledInSpace magic system, now mostly minor but useful powers in some armies.)
* PsychicStatic (The Shadow in the Warp.)
* PsychoForHire (Lots of people, ''especially'' the Dark Eldar.)
* PsychopathicManchild (Orks, to a Boy.)
* PunctuationShaker (Tau personal names are bad; Tau ''spaceship'' names are nigh-unpronouncable.)
* PunyEarthlings (Humans are among the most feeble things that can be seen on the battlefields of the 41st Millenium. The Imperial Guard attempt to compensate for this with [[MoreDakka weight of fire]], [[BaseOnWheels very large tanks]] and [[WeHaveReserves sheer numbers]].)
** Geneboosted implanted humans however are a completely different matter even before you add the enormous power armour.
* PuttingOnTheReich (The uniform of many Imperial regiments.)
* QuirkyMinibossSquad (Command squads. Also nobz mobz.)
* RagtagBunchOfMisfits (Imperial penal legions, entire armies of convicts sentenced to death at the hands of the enemy; [[RedemptionEqualsDeath in death they may be forgiven for their crimes.]] The best known unit is Colonel Schaeffer's "Last Chancers", inspired by every war-movie RagtagBunchOfMisfits ever.)
* RammingAlwaysWorks (Killboy of ''Deff Skwadron'', whose favourite move is to crash his plane into the enemy's plane)
* RandomNumberGod (A number of bizarre good-luck superstitions have arisen, such as never calling missile launchers by their proper name (it has the word "miss" in it), the idea that painted models are luckier than unpainted models, the usage of blue dice for important rolls and the practice of occasionally muttering prayers to the Emperor. Never taken seriously, but often endearing.)
* RainOfBlood (Khorne, through the actions of his champions.)
* RatedMForManly (Though the women are just as badass.)
* RazorFloss (Many Eldar weapons.)
* ReallyBigGun (Humongous and dreadfully lethal pistols abound, most notably the Imperial bolt pistol, which fires small armour-piercing rocket grenades.)
* RealityIsOutToLunch (In the Eye of Terror.)
* RealityWarper (C'tan, distinct from the setting's other gods in that they are ''literal'' {{Physical God}}s, immensely powerful in the material world rather than being warp entities. The more powerful psykers can also break the setting's (already tenuous) grip on physics.)
* ReallySevenHundredYearsOld (Most wealthy Imperials, via juvenat technology.)
* RecycledInSpace (Began as a RecycledInSpace version of ''{{Warhammer}}'', which predated it by four years, but has over time diverged from it. Now contains a RecycledInSpace of nearly every fantasy and SF trope imaginable, turned DarkerAndEdgier to a ridiculous degree and armed to the teeth. [[ChainsawGood With chainsaws that are]] [[KillItWithFire on fire.]])
* RedEyesTakeWarning (The Salamanders are revealed to have red eyes in the 5th edition Space Marine codex. Most Orks have red eyes as well, though a few exhibit yellow or other colors.)
* TheRedPlanet (Home to the [[CargoCult Adeptus Mechanicus]].)
* RedRightHand (Marks of Chaos.)
* RedemptionEqualsDeath (One of the fundamental concepts behind the ChurchMilitant's idea of "[[FateWorseThanDeath penance]].")
* RedshirtArmy (The Imperial Guardsmen are ordinary humans in a world filled with genetically engineered {{Super Soldier}}s in both religious-fanatic and daemon-corrupted flavours, [[RobotWar unstoppable death robots]], and aliens with horribly lethal weapons and/or terrifying PsychicPowers. They are surprisingly GenreSavvy about this, meaning that infantry have crap morale because they know exactly how expendable they are. Of course, [[YouHaveFailedMe Commissars]] are there to solve that little problem.)
** Typically, a world's Planetary Defense Force (PDF) has it even worse than the Guard, as their primary job in most stories is to die horribly at the hands of the invading forces until the Imperial Guard arrives. That's right, they're the RedshirtArmy ''for'' the RedshirtArmy.
* RefugeInAudacity (Basically ''runs'' off this and RuleOfCool.)
* RefugeInCool (RuleOfCool in the sense of "governed by.")
* ReignOfTerror (Began with the Emperor's unification of Terra and has since settled into a permanent state of affairs.)
* ReligionIsMagic (Used to its fullest by both the Imperium and Chaos, especially the Sisters of Battle, who can literally ''stop bullets'' with their faith.)
* ReligionOfEvil (Chaos cults. Not that the "good" religions are much better.)
* RetCon (The Squats, Zoats and the fifth Chaos God, Malal, were removed from the game background - the Squats because they weren't sure what to do with them, Malal because they weren't quite sure who owned the copyright. Other forces changed drastically, for example, the Tyranids turning from curiosity bugs into a [[HordeOfAlienLocusts galaxy-eating horror]], and the C'tan becoming the Necrons' star gods.)
** There have also been a number of {{RetCon}}s of technology, such as Terminator armour and plasma weapons being changed from utterly irreplaceable relics to simply very, very difficult to make.
** The removal of the Squats is not a RetCon so much as a DroppedABridgeOnHim, as they officially existed, but were utterly eradicated by the Tyranid Hive Fleet Kraken. The Zoats get a quarter-page mention in the Tyranid book, as they were wiped out by the Imperium.
** The general tone of the setting has shifted quite a bit over the years. In the original ''Rogue Trader'' rulebook, the Imperium had a ragtag, ScavengerWorld feel (still present but not to the same degree). In fact, the whole thing had kind of a ''MadMax'' [-[[RecycledInSpace IN SPACE]]-] feel to it. The copious amounts of black humor and irony that marked ''Rogue Trader'' have also been downplayed over time.
** Inquisitors were originally lone adventurers not unlike U.S. Marshals in Western fiction--our friend Obiwan Sherlock Clousseau would ''not'' fit in with the Inquisiton of modern ''40K''.
** At first, Orks were capable of sexual reproduction; now they hatch from pods. Also, they were originally created by the Snotlings, who eventually devolved into semi-sapience; now they're creations of the Old Ones.
** Daemons and Chaos were originally not part of the setting; the Warp was instead inhabited by a variety of dangerous but non-daemonic "Warp Creatures", such as Enslavers, Psychaneuein, and ''Vampires'', though it was mentioned that some inspired legends of demons on especially superstitious planets, and they still were drawn to unprotected psykers.
** The Tyranids at first were less bestial in appearance, and the Hive Mind concept wasn't as thoroughly fleshed out. The Genestealers were originally unconnected to them.
** There was a lot less romanticization/fetishization of the Space Marines in ''Rogue Trader''--they were clearly {{Badass}} mofos, and the most dangerous fighting force in the setting, but they were also played as the most brutal and insane individuals in a brutal, insane universe. In fact, most were recruited from psychotic murderers on feral planets. Most of their transhuman elements (such as all those extra organs) were also added in later.
*** The Soul Drinkers novel ''Crimson Tears'' has a Guard general describing them pretty much exactly like that.
* ReverseMole (Possibly [[spoiler:the entire Alpha Legion, according to recently-published fluff. Secretive {{Magnificent Bastard}}s that they are, no one's quite sure for certain]].)
* TheRightHandOfDoom (All those {{Power Fist}}s give this effect, often occurs in the mutations of daemon princes but special mention must go to the Crimson Fists who all paint just one of their hands so that it at least looks a little bit more prominent.)
** One member of the Soul Drinkers has an extremely large mutant hand, which he either uses to wield his power axe to great effect, or uses to splat people dead while using his normal hand to use the axe.
* RightHandVersusLeftHand (Common in the Imperium, ''standard operating procedure'' in the Inquisition.)
** Dark Eldar.
** Orks tend to add in both feet, and an all in brawl ensures.
** Tzeench will add an impossable number of tentacles, limbs and psychic appendages and [[TengenToppaGurrenLagann give them a hard, manly twist]] just so...
* RobeAndWizardHat (Eldar Farseers, some Chaos sorcerers.)
* RobotWar (Wherever the Necrons show up.)
* {{Roboteching}} (Tau Smart Missile systems.)
* RockBeatsLaser (A setting of world-splitting superweapons, ludicrously powerful weaponry and interstellar empires, and the standard tactic of most factions is to charge screaming at their foes waving a sharp thing. And it ''works''.)
** To be fair, if you're 8ft tall, largely immune to firepower and can throw tanks into the sun it is a lot more logical.
* {{Room 101}} (Commorragh, the home of the Dark Eldar, is implied to be a ''City'' 101.)
* RoomFullOfCrazy (Psykers are prone to this)
* RubberForeheadAliens (Eldar resemble nothing so much as tall, thin humans with pointy ears, Tau stocky grey humans with funny toes and faces. Justified, or at least Lampshaded, as of Xenology.)
* [[RuleThirtyFour Rule #34]] (Sexy Tyranids, loli Daemonettes, the Ronery Wych, Faptau... among others. ''Beware'' [[NightmareFuel some of the stuff]] that comes out of [[ImageBoards /tg/]].)
* RuleOfFunny (The Orks. Seriously, just read their [[BloodyHilarious Codex]] and you'll understand.)
* RuleOfPerception (According to 40k's What You See Is What You Get rules (which are [[WhatYouSeeIsWhatYouGet not the same thing as the trope of that name]]), if a particular upgrade or piece of wargear isn't somehow visible on a model, the model can't claim to have it. This encourages players to [[strike:spend more money on toys]] come up with interesting conversions to represent these upgrades, particularly in the case of things like veteran skills and other non-physical traits.)
* ScaleOfScientificSins (Unsurprisingly, pings on all 7 sins.)
* ScaryBlackMan (The Salamanders are an entire chapter of this, and they're one of the nicer chapters of Space Marines.)
* ScaryDogmaticAliens (''All'' the factions:)
** The Imperium of Man and its subfactions: Scary Dogmatic ''Humans''. Xenocidal and imperialist, as happy to wipe out billions of its own people as it is to exterminate entire alien races.
** Chaos: [[CosmicHorror Extra-dimensional malevolent gods and daemons]] that are capable of crossing into the physical realm and [[TheCorruption corrupting the minds and bodies of sentient species]]. Four principal Chaos Gods and countless lesser deities and daemon princes, served by billions of cultists and thousands of ancient daemon-corrupted {{Super Soldier}}s who rebelled against the Imperium during a galaxy-splitting civil war ten thousand years before the setting. [[CardCarryingVillain Unquestionably evil]], delighting in murder and depravity. The four main gods are born from the emotions of hope, love, bravery and acceptance; this should tell you most of what you need to know about 40k's place on the SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism.
** [[OurElvesAreBetter Craftworld Eldar]]: Dying elder race with massive superiority complex. Through their past depravity responsible for creating the Chaos god Slaanesh. Not quite Xenocidal, but consider the deaths of millions of humans to safeguard a few hundred Eldar lives more than a fair trade, and have the [[PsychicPowers psychic]] future-prediction and manipulative skills to make that sort of thing a reality rather than a dream. As an example, they tricked the Ork warlord Ghazghkull Thraka into attacking the human planet of Armageddon, setting off the Second and Third War for Armageddon, killing ''billions'' of humans, just to prevent Ghazghkull from attacking one of their world-ships. The FragileSpeedster[=/=]GlassCannon race, with some conceptual ties to ''Warhammer'''s High Elves.
*** Dark Eldar: Torture-obsessed Dark Elf-esque counterparts to the Craftworld Eldar. ''Still'' practice the same depravity that led to their race's fall. Sadistic in the extreme, need to [[SoulEater feed on others' souls]] to avoid their own being devoured by the Chaos God Slaanesh. They rival Slaanesh for the kinkiest faction, and in game terms take the jets-equipped glass cannon even further than their Craftworld cousins.
*** Exodite Eldar: Descendents of Eldar who left before the fall to live simpler lives on planets with harsh conditions. Their tech is deliberately less advanced than that of their Craftworld counterparts, and by choice they are reclusive, sticking to their own planets for the most part, making them [[RecycledInSpace Wood Elves in Space]]. They are a background plot element rather than a playable faction, but unofficial army lists have been made for them, complete with ''dinosaur-riding, laser-lance-equipped knights''.
*** Harlequins: A meta-faction with members drawn more or less equally from the other three factions, who form troupes of wandering [[NinjaPirateZombieRobot bards, historians, performers, and high-speed close-combat specialists]] who are [[MonsterClown feared and respected]] by the elite troops of all sentient races, including their own. Probably the biggest and strongest [[GlassCannon glass hammer]] in the game. All of this is, of course, secondary to their "Great Work", which is the re-uniting of the other Eldar factions and hastening the [[HaveYouSeenMyGod creation of Ynnead]], the Eldar god of death, who will destroy the Chaos gods and cause the Eldar race to be reborn as near-invicible demigods.
** Orks: Genetically engineered by a [[{{Precursors}} precursor species]] as a biological weapon. [[BizarreAlienBiology Peculiar biology]] (see PlantAliens), personalities based on ridiculously exaggerated football hooligan stereotypes, all "[[MonogenderMonsters boyz]]" and speak with {{Funetik Aksent}}s. Violently sociopathic, prone to infighting, and genocidal, but all in good fun; an Ork "Waaagh" is described as a combination of mass migration, pub crawl and holy war. Highly [[PsychicPowers psychic]], but not aware of it - Ork technology [[ItRunsOnNonsensoleum only works because the Orks THINK it should.]] This also has other effects - for example, Orks piously believe "da red wunz go fasta", so if an Ork paints his bike red, it ''will'' [[ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve go faster]].
*** An entire spinoff game, ''Gorkamorka'', concerns a planet full of Orks that holds no strategic importance to the other races, with the Orks having no way off (having turned their space hulk into massive statues of two gods... and then destroyed them). They pass their time with a massive, futile tribal war between themselves.
** Tau: Technologically advanced humanoids with a rigidly caste-based society. The Ethereal caste rule over the [[ElementalRockPaperScissors Earth, Air, Fire and Water]] castes, who are all utterly loyal and devoted (one theory has it the control is based on pheromones). They see themselves as [[BenevolentAlienInvasion benevolent imperialists]] fighting religiously for the 'Greater Good,' and are singled out for being the only faction that seriously engages in diplomacy or offers anything other than genocidal total war. Despite a thing for [[UnreliableNarrator (allegedly)]] [[UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans mass sterilisation, warmongering and concentration camps]], they really are the nicest people you'll find in this galaxy. Imperialist, expansionist, slightly fanatical ("slightly" in this setting meaning that only one mech per army can be upgraded to a suicide bomber.)
*** Gue'la! How dare you question the GREATER GOOD?
** Tyranids: Extra-galactic locusts in apparently limitless numbers. If they take over a planet, they [[PlanetEater devour all organic material, eat the soil, drain the geothermal heat from the planet's core, drink the oceans and suck up the atmosphere]], leaving a cold airless rock. ''[[HordeOfAlienLocusts Hungry]]''. Extremely [[PsychicPowers psychic]], with the [[PsychicStatic psychic chatter]] that forms their HiveMind being so powerful that their mere presence drives psychics insane and interferes with technology that uses psychics - including interstellar travel and communications. [[BugWar Bug Wars]] crop up wherever they go, with the suggestion that the three galaxy-eatingly-enormous, near-unstoppable Hive Fleets are just ''scouts'' for [[TheWarHasJustBegun the real invasion]].
** Necrons: Ancient undead metal constructs powered by the souls of long-dead aliens that hate all living things. In thrall to gods (and actual [[PhysicalGod physical ones]] by that) that wish to consume all life. Ridiculously advanced technology, [[ImplacableMan almost impossible to kill]], [[OmnicidalManiac omnicidal]] down to the last bacterium.
* SceneryGorn (About half of the art. A fair proportion of the other half is just regular {{Gorn}}.)
* SchizoTech (Planets in the Imperium of Man range from Stone Age-level Feral Worlds to hyper-tech Forge Worlds.)
* ScienceRelatedMemeticDisorder (Orks again.)
* SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale (Has a love-hate relationship with this one. At times, distances, timescales and the number of soldiers needed to launch a sector-spanning crusade are handled "realistically", but just as often a few hundred Space Marines defend - or ''purge'' - an ''entire world''. Of course, they are [[SuperSoldier Space Marines]]...)
** The models also have some scale issues; for example, the Leman Russ tank, compared to a Guardsman figure, has a 16-inch main gun and two 3-inch repeating cannons.
* ScrappyMechanic (Kill points are generally hated by the fan base for being poorly balanced. Guard players hate the rule with an unparallelled vengance because it made 1/3 of the game's missions UnWinnable until the Guard players [[ThrowTheDogABone got a new codex.]])
** The 4th edition skimmer rules received lots of hate because of the way Eldar players abused them.
*** As did the Second Edition Tyranid 'strategy card' table which would often screw over half the opposing army before the battle had even started.
** 4th edition consolidation rules were hated by shooting armies due to the chain reaction of doom that would always happen.
** The 5th edition wound allocation rules are hated for being slow, counter intuitive, and abuse prone. More so for units with varied war gear and multi wounds such as [[{{GameBreaker}} Nob Bikers]] and Seer Council. The former is UnWinnable for Tau players.
* ScreamingWarrior (Eldar Howling Banshees, who - thanks to a psychosonic amplifier in their masks - can actually ''shut down someone's nervous system'' by screaming at him.)
* ScrewYouElves (Well, Screw You, Eldar...)
* ScryVsScry (Primarily between Eldar farseers and Tzeentchian sorcerers; human and even ork soothsayers sometimes try this as well, but are generally far less successful at it.)
* SealedArmyInACan (Subverted with the Necrons, in that they can't be controlled. Overlaps with SealedEvilInACan.)
* SealedEvilInACan (Many, many examples.)
** Just about everything can have a daemon sealed in it, turning an ordinary weapon - or monument, or tank, or ''planet'' - into an ArtifactOfDoom.
** It's heavily implied that the Forge World of Mars imprisons the Void Dragon, a sleeping C'tan star-god. The Outsider, another C'tan, is currently trapped in a ''Dyson sphere'' (also batshit insane.)
** Done both metaphorically and literally by the Necrontyr, a short-lived, life-hating race who had themselves sealed in undying living-metal battle shells, becoming the Necrons. "In a can" indeed.
* SenseFreak (Followers of Slaanesh.)
* SenselessSacrifice (There are many {{HeroicSacrifice}}s in {{Warhammer40000}}, "But the universe is a big place and, whatever happens, you will not be missed...")
* SeparateButIdentical (All races suffer really badly from this, although it's being gradually fixed with different Craftworlds, bio-augmentation, regimental doctrines, etc.)
* ShadowDictator (The God-Emperor of Mankind. The ''official'' story is that he was mortally wounded in a duel with Horus and has been hooked up to the Golden Throne and [[NotQuiteDead preserved in a state between life and death]] ever since, but sometimes it's alluded that he might be, in fact, long dead. Of course, those making said statements generally happen to be enemies of the Imperium, so it's impossible to know whether or not they're true.)
* ShapeshifterWeapon (Chaos Obliterators combine this with ArmCannon in an interesting way.)
* SharedUniverse (Particularly in the novels; most fans regard anything written by some authors, especially C.S. Goto, as automatically non-canon.)
* ShinyLookingSpaceships (Eldar/Tau, mostly.)
* ShockAndAwe (Necron ranged weapons typically fire bolts of green lightning that [[HighOctaneNightmareFuel strip away the target's flesh one molecular layer at a time]]. A great many psychic powers also involve using bolts of lightning to fry people.)
* ShootTheDog (Happens very, very often in the Imperium. One of a commisar's duties is to maintain unit cohesion and discipline- by execution, if necessary. Discovered psykers are usually killed to stop them getting daemon-possessed and destroying worlds, fed to the Astronomicon to preserve it and the Emperor, or put through brutal conditioning to serve the Imperium as "sanctioned" psykers. And, if that weren't bad enough, in extreme catastrophes ''planets'' are subjected to Exterminatus in order to prevent the taint from spreading and put the inhabitants out of their misery. To highlight how monumentally screwed up this galaxy is, people are actually ''awarded medals'' for such acts.)
* ShortRangeLongRangeWeapon (Shamelessly prevalent in the tabletop game, even the artillery. The worst offender is the Imperial Guard Basilisk, whose range is both unnecessarily long for the tabletop game - twenty ''feet'', several times the length of the average game table - while also far, far too short for an artillery piece of that size.)
** As of the 5th edition Imperial Guard codex, the Basilisk has passed its crown to the Deathstrike Missile, an ''intercontinental ballistic missile'' with a range of 12" - 960". In other words, an ICBM with a maximum range of less than a mile, that can also be used to shoot at people standing ''sixty feet'' from the launch site. ShortRangeLongRangeWeapon indeed. (As of the latest errata, the Deathstrike's maximum range is now officially unlimited, but it can still shoot people standing just off the launch pad.)
* ShouldersOfDoom (Space Marine armour takes this to ridiculous heights. And widths.)
* ShoutOut (Tonnes, some subtle, some obvious.)
* ShroudedInMyth (Space Marines are seen as legends by most of the Imperium. Seeing that the legends are true is generally a bad sign.)
* ShrugOfGod (Games Workshop has deliberately left everything regarding the two "missing" Primarchs open for fan speculation. Ditto for other major characters, like Commander Farsight.)
* SicklyGreenGlow (Necrons in general and gauss weapons in particular.)
* SigilSpam (Most Imperial organisations.)
* SingleBiomePlanet (Used and averted equally often.)
* SinisterScythe (Trademark of Nurgle followers and the [[GrimReaper Nightbringer]].)
* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism (Take a wild guess. This is a universe where extreme prejudice and xenophobia against anyone ''remotely'' different -- psykers, mutants, etc. -- is truly the best option, since anything else will, in a best case secenario, get you possessed by demons.)
* SlidingScaleOfSillinessVersusSeriousness (Generally sits at the far serious end. Most of the time, the extreme {{GRIM DARK}}NESS of the setting is played deadly straight, taking the painful, horrific hopelessness of the setting almost - but not quite - to the point of parody. At other times, particularly in the CiaphasCain novels and the GaidenGame Gorkamorka, the brutality, insanity and genocide are broken up by occasional humour and silliness... albeit humour so dark light cannot escape its surface.)
* SlidingScaleOfTurnRealism (Turn by Turn.)
* TheSlowWalk (Necrons are masters of this, as is any unit with the Slow and Purposeful rule (e.g. Obliterators, Meganobz, Thousand Sons).)
* TheSmurfettePrinciple (A dearth of female special characters usable in the game proper, although the fluff doesn't suffer from this so badly.)
* SomeCallMeTim (Some call me Commander Farsight. Standard practice with Tau.)
** Somewhat averted by ork ''players'', most of them remember simple manageable names like [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Wazdakka Gutzmek]] or [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka]].
* SomethingWickedThisWayComes (The tyranid's approach can be felt as a shadow in the warp by psykers. And when they're closer by normal people noticing how said psykers tend to [[YourHeadASplode go mad and/or die]].)
* {{Sourcebook}} ([[AllThereInTheManual By the bucketload]].)
* SoundOff (Imperial battle hymns, Ork war chants.)
* SortingAlgorithmOfEvil (The Tau aside, the question is... where does the algorithm ''begin'' in this setting?)
** It begins with the Tau, and no one knows where it ends because anyone who sees just how horrible this can get explodes into a shower of condensed insanity and pain.
** The Imperium also sends its forces to a planet based off this - the worse the situation there gets, the more Mooks, EliteMooks, TankGoodness and HumongousMecha it sends. If that all fails, they call down [[EarthShatteringKaboom Exterminatus on the planet]].
* SpaceAmish (The Imperium actually has "medieval worlds" and "feral worlds." The Eldar have exodites, and the Orks have feral tribes and the Snakebite clan.)
* SpaceIsAnOcean (Complete with starship-sized kraken and moon-sized leviathans. Also see the ''BattlefleetGothic'' page.)
* SpaceMarine (Imperial Guard Stormtroopers, Tau Fire Warriors, Eldar Aspect Warriors, just about any Necron, but especially...)
** SuperSoldier (...The guys ''called'' Space Marines.)
* SpaceOpera (Emphasis on the epic heroes, villains, and battles - not so much on the love stories.)
* SpacePirates (Eldar, Dark Eldar and sometimes Orks, Chaos and Humans.)
** Kaptin Badrukk of the Orks even wears a pirate hat.
* SpaceRomans (The Imperium, right down to the Latin. Especially the Ultramarines.)
* TheSpartanWay (Taken to utterly ridiculous extremes by the Space Marines and Chaos Space Marines. Just ''look'' at the page quote.)
* SphereOfDestruction (Eldar wraithcannons and D-cannons and Imperial vortex weapons work this way, neatly removing perfect spheres of matter and sending them ''straight to hell''.)
* SpiderTank (Chaos, specifically Defilers and Brass Scorpions. Necron Tomb Stalkers may also qualify.)
* SpikesOfVillainy (Chaos all the way. Dark Eldar go for more of a bladed look, while Orks will mix spikes with blades and add anything else brutal you can think of.)
* SplitPersonality (Throughout their lives, Eldar allow themselves to only follow one "path" (such as the path of the sculptor, warrior, seer) at a time, in effect subjecting their ''personalities'' to CripplingOverspecialisation.)
* SpotlightStealingSquad (The entire game, if you ask many [[{{Warhammer}} Warhammer Fantasy]] players. A recent ''White Dwarf'' commemorating the latest SpaceMarine release had a staggering total of one article dedicated to WHFB and one dedicated to TheLordOfTheRings. Everything else was dedicated to the Marines, a level of coverage roughly on par with a Catholic newspaper during a papal visit.)
** Though, TSOALR seems to say this got [[http://tsoalr.com/?p=1120 switched around lately...]]
* SpyCatsuit (Several Eldar have one, but it's pretty much standard issue for the Officio Assassinorum agents of the Imperium. Some employ chamaeleonic mimicry abilities, others have no special reason apart from being FetishFuel. In one of the newer novels, this tendency is repeatedly {{lampshaded}} when several characters can't keep their eyes from the girl-assassin brought up by a [[ChainsawGood rather]] [[KillItWithFire puritanical]] [[SexIsEvil sect]] who would most likely kill them if she had any idea ''why'' they looked at her like that)
* {{Squick}} (The Dark Eldar basically live on it. Slaanesh was literally ''created by it''.)
* SquishyWizard (Played straight by most races' psykers, but subverted by some being real hardcases, such as Tyranid Hive Tyrants (but not Zoanthropes), Space Marine Librarians, Grey Knights and Chaos Daemons. Eldar Farseers are actually ''tougher'' than most other Eldar, due to slowly turning into crystal.)
* StabTheSky (Common pose of characters in artwork-not so much in actual tabletop models.)
* StandardRedshirtProcedure (Some Imperial Guard regiments.)
* StandardSciFiSetting (Only painted black and covered in skulls.)
* StandardTimeUnits (The Imperium's officially runs on Terran years, and presumably Terran days onboard starships.)
* StanleySteamerSpaceship (And Stanley Steamer ''Tanks''.)
* StateSec (The Imperium's secret police are called the ''Inquisition''. It suits them.)
* StatusQuoIsGod (The huge fate-of-the-galaxy-depends-on-the-outcome-of-this summer global campaigns never seem to change anything. However, 5th Edition advances the plot a couple of hundred years, and the Imperium, though it hasn't collapsed yet, is apparently more screwed than ever before.)
* StrippedToTheBone (Necrons make wide use of gauss-flayer weapons, which strip the target away layer by molecule-thick layer - although most have so much power that even a single shot usually ends up vaporising the victim whole.)
* StrongAsTheyNeedToBe (Depending on the writer, the Guard can be filled with competent men and women able to pull their weight against the superhuman enemies of the Imperium or full of redshirts only good for cannon fodder and buying time for the tanks or Space Marines.)
** Note that Imperial regiments probably vary like this, due to varied enrollment/conscription and training methods over the big galaxy.
* SubspaceAnsible (Sending telepathic messages... through ''hell''...)
* SufficientlyAdvancedAlien (C'tan/Necrons, and to a lesser extent the Eldar.)
* SummonMagic (Summoning daemons.)
* SuperpowerMeltdown (Happens to psykers. A lot.)
* SuperpowerfulGenetics (The Primarchs and the Space Marines. Also Orks.)
* SuperRegistrationAct (An ''extremely'' euphemistic way of describing the treatment of psykers.)
* SuperpoweredMooks (Psykers and those "blessed" by the Chaos gods.)
* SuperweaponSurprise (Eldar Maiden worlds and Imperial medieval worlds - Do not touch without a force big enough to repel the reinforcements.)
* SurvivalMantra (The many, ''many'' little prayers and litanies recited on a regular basis by the Imperials. Often have [[MadnessMantra Chaotic counterparts]].)
* SwissArmyWeapon (Obliterators again.)
* SwordAndGun (Generally favoured by every somewhat-sentient race in the game for close-quarters combat troops.)
* {{Synchronisation}} (Titans and their Princeps, some ships and their captains.)
* {{Tagline}} ("There is no time for peace. No respite. No forgiveness. There is only WAR!" "In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war!" [[CaptainObvious Really?]])
* TakeCover (Terrain on the table is not just for decoration, as hiding behind a bush can protect you from even anti-tank weaponry (though not flamethrowers).)
** This is because in practical terms cover also represents the firer missing the target due to obscuring, or simply not seeing the target and not firing at all.
* TakingYouWithMe (Once again, taken to extremes; a good example would be the Eversor Assassin. When you kill him, his ''blood explodes'' with tank-destroying force. All vehicles in the game have a chance of exploding, to the misfortune of everyone around, when destroyed.)
* TalkToTheFist (Standard Imperium policy with talkative xenos filth.)
* TannhauserGate
* TankGoodness (Naturally, taken up to eleven. Every race has its armoured death machines, but honestly the Imperial Guard Armoured Companies are the ''kings'' of this trope. '''TANKS FOR THE TANK GOD, TREADS FOR THE TREAD THRONE!''')
* TearJerker (For a series that is so insane that it really shouldn't be taken seriously, its casual treatment of unbelievable courage in the face of impossible odds makes it a favorite for those who don't mind shedding ManlyTears.)
** Indeed, there's a reason why the novels focusing on the Imperial Guard in particular are so successful, as they slap a human face on the setting and more often than not - dare I say it? - a touch of optimism and faith in the human spirit. It's the insanity of the setting that makes this so effective.
* {{Technopath}} (Eldar are and know it, Ork Meks are but don't, and the Adeptus Mechanicus ''think'' they are.)
** They may even be- certainly they are in the tabletop spinoff ''DarkHeresy''. The amount of ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve going on here is deliberately ambiguous.
* TechnoWizard (The Adeptus Mechanicus takes the "wizard" part seriously, to boot.)
* TeleFrag (The Ork Shokk Attak Gun - see {{BFG}}.)
* TelepathicSpacemen (Imperial Astropaths.)
* TeleportersAndTransporters (The Imperium has a few of these, though they have the kind of reliability you expect when maintenance consists of a lot of chanting and application of sacred oil. The Ork mek Orkimedes also created a "tellyporta" device for the Battle of Armageddon.)
* TempleOfDoom (Necron tombs form the majority, although there are (probably) other cases.)
** Chaos and Dark Eldar leaders have been known to consecrate temples to themselves. And by consecrate, I mean decorate with skins ans spikes.
* TemporalParadox (Though TimeTravel is rare in the 40K universe, the Warp does strange things sometimes. Take, for example, the waaagh of one Ork Warboss traveling back through time via warp-storm, meeting up with his army's past self, then ''attacking it so he could have two copies of his favorite gun.'' The remaining Orks were so confused by the result that the waaagh was called off.)
* ThatsNoMoon (Necron tomb-complexes tend to look relatively small and innocuous at first... then they're revealed to be much, ''much'' bigger, and often occupied by their builders.)
* TheoryOfNarrativeCausality (Why do things keep getting worse and the factions less sympathetic? Inertia and because the writers say so.)
* ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill (Standard operating procedure for the Imperium. Justified in that there are some things you'll want to kill ''really quickly'' in this universe, and some things you want to stay ''very'' dead.)
* TheThermidor (All of the Imperium's reforms and resolved civil wars since the Horus Heresy.)
* TheseAreThingsManWasNotMeantToKnow (Be strong in your ignorance!)
** More often than not taken literally, as deep knowledge of Chaos will corrupt and/or drive insane all but the most strong-willed of humans.
* TheyChangedItNowItSucks (Practically a warcry for the hardcore 40k fandom. The fans love to bitch about the game almost as much, if not more so, then they like to play the game itself.)
* ThisIsADrill (Corvus assault pods for Titans, the bizarre-yet-cool mole mortar.)
* ThisIsYourBrainOnEvil (Chaos tends to have this effect on the mind - goes double for psykers. SANITY IS FOR THE WEAK!)
* ThisIsYourPremiseOnDrugs (Warhammer40000 is your StandardSciFiSetting injected with a cocktail of every drug known to man and genuine lunar dust, stuck in a blender with {{Alien}}, [[BattleTech Mechwarrior]], StarshipTroopers and StarWars, bathed in blood and turned up to eleventy billion (and then [[IncendiaryExponent set on fire]]). [[CrossesTheLineTwice Twice.]] [[ChainsawGood With 8ft chainsaws.]])
* ThrowTheDogABone: The 5th edition Imperial Guard codex does this for Imperial Guard players.
* TimeAbyss (Most Eldar, but a few ancient Marines and Chaos Marines cross into this trope as well.)
* TookALevelInBadass (The Imperial Guard went from the whipping boys of the entire setting to the utterly terrifying gods of mechanised combat in the space of one codex.)
* TomeOfEldritchLore (The Black Library is an entire extradimensional stronghold full of these. See also the Book of Lorgar.)
* TortureTechnician (Dark Eldar Haemonculi, quite a lot of Inquisitors. Most Ork painboyz have got the Torture part down, but the Technician (keeping him alive) part is usually ignored.)
* TouchedByVorlons (Not always a good thing... in fact, almost ''never'' a good thing. Partly because you're liable to get nailed to a stick and purged with flame if you get touched by ''any'' alien... or listen to them... or look at them... or live in the same general area as someone who looked at them... and Emperor help you if someone on your planet was engaged in a Chaos Cult.)
* TouchOfDeath (Mainly used by C'tan and daemons, but the odd high-power psyker has been known to do this.)
* TournamentPlay (The kind of competition at a 40k Grand Tournament is enough to give the casual player horrible nightmares. Quite appropriate for the setting.)
* TrainingFromHell (Pretty much the only training there is. The only way they can top it is by having people trained ''[[BeyondTheImpossible inside]]'' [[BeyondTheImpossible the universe's hell]].)
* TranquilFury (Usually this or an {{Unstoppable Rage}}.)
* TranslationConvention ("Low Gothic", the common language of the Imperium, is presented as English, while "High Gothic" is rendered in [[CanisLatinicus Pseudo-Latin]]. Ork language is generally shown as English with a FunetikAksent, and is sometimes explicitly said to be pidgin Low Gothic. Depending on the context, nonhuman languages are either translated as English, or shown to need interpreters.)
* TreacheryCoverUp (Most of the Imperium's citizenry don't know anything about the Horus Heresy, including the fact that fully half of the Space Marine Legions rebelled against the Emperor.)
** Did someone forget the Dark Angels?
* {{Trope2000}} (... Wait, why settle for two when you can have 40?)
* TropeOverdosed (We reiterate: 40k contains examples of damn near everything, most of it [[EverythingTryingToKillYou trying to kill you]]. And the rest of them have something worse in store for you...)
** Note that at least half of all QuotesWiki entries seemingly have one or more quotes from Warhammer40K.
* {{Troperrific}} (See above.)
* TurnBasedStrategy
* {{Ubermensch}} (The Emperor himself.)
* UglyGuyHotWife (Nurgle and Isha.)
* UltimateEvil (The Emperor, the Chaos Gods, and the C'tan all get this treatment to varying degrees.)
* UnCancelled (Even ''this'' was turned UpToEleven, as ''DarkHeresy'' was released, cancelled and UnCancelled ''within the space of a month.'')
* TheUnmasquedWorld (The realisation that daemons actually existed was the death knell for Imperial Truth, and helped kick-start the Horus Heresy.)
* UnnecessarilyLargeInterior (All Imperial ships. Also covered in religious iconography and kilometres-high skulls-and-eagles gold bling.)
* {{Unobtainium}} (Plenty of it; Wraithbone, Necrodermis and Adamantine are the widest used examples.)
* UnpredictableResults (Anything connected to the Warp or Ork technology. Represented ingame by psykers suffering "perils of the warp" attacks and more esoteric Orky wargear having its own tables of random effects. Ork ''psykers'' are beyond random, rolling just to see what completely-unpredictable power they ''get''... every turn.)
* TheUnpronounceable (Tau names can get hard to pronounce - but ask any BattlefleetGothic player about Tau ''ship'' names...)
* UnusualUserInterface (A lot of Eldar and Imperial gear.)
* UnstoppableRage (Black Templars. BloodAngels. Khorne Berserkers. Even Eldar, when the Avatar is nearby.)
* UpToEleven ('''''Everything.''''' And often to twelve, thirteen and [[strike:several]] [[strike:over nine]] forty thousand.)
* UrbanSegregation (Taken to utter extremes with hive cities.)
* UsedFuture (Again, taken to extremes. Almost all of the current technology and equipment being used by the Imperium is ''thousands of years old'', and much of it they can't even make any more.)
* UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans (For the Greater Good!)
** The Logician cult described in ''DarkHeresy'' combines this with copious amounts of ForScience, as they are perfectly willing to sacrifice millions of human lives -- at a time -- in the name of returning to humanity's technological golden age.
* VaderBreath (Because of the wildly differing techlevel of the setting, cybernetic lungs can work perfectly well and even better than the natural ones - or they may let the recipient do an unwilling Vader-impersonation, which is not practical when you're trying to be stealthy.)
* VapourWear (Dark Eldar Wyches practically wear ''anti''-clothing.)
* VillainByDefault (Upon close inspection, ''everyone''.)
* ViolenceIsTheOnlyOption (No comment necessary.)
* WarForFunAndProfit (The Orks, who go on interstellar sprees that leave billions dead because they're ''fun''. "Orks iz made for fightin' and winnin'.")
* TheWarHasJustBegun (Countering the Gotterdammerung of the Eldar and Imperium, increasingly heavy hints have been dropped that the Necrons are just beginning to wake up for their galaxy-wide omnicidal spree and the Tyranid Hive Fleets have barely started to turn their attention on our galaxy.)
* WarIsHell (In some instances, literally.)
* WarriorHeaven (The Realm of Chaos... though perhaps more of a Warrior ''Hell''. Unless you're an Ork.)
--> ''"Told yer I knew where da best fightin' woz." -- Great Boss Tuska''
* WarriorPoet (The Craftworld Eldar.)
* WaveMotionGun (Bombardment Guns, Nova Cannons, the appropriately-named Planet Killer, etc...)
* WeAreAsMayflies (Eldar are immortal; so, biologically, are Space Marines and Orks, though their entire lives being devoted to war somewhat gets in the way of that. Nobody's found ''anything'' that can stop the Necrons getting back up.)
** It is worth mentioning that in at least one case in the novels the Necrons in question had been partially vaporized and the remainder was a little puddle of liquid metal on the ground. They ''still'' managed to teleport back to their base for repairs.
** Averted by the Tau. They're pretty short-lived, with fifty years being considered ancient to them. They're painfully aware of this.
* WeAreEverywhere (The Inquisition.)
* WeAREStrugglingTogether (Chaos.)
* WeAreTeamCannonFodder (Kroot, Imperial Guard anytime they aren't the protagonists, Gretchin, ''everyone else'' for the Eldar.)
* WeHaveReserves (Basically the CatchPhrase of the Orks and Imperial Guard. Tyranids take this to such an extreme that their {{Mooks}} don't even ''have digestive systems'' - they are created, sent into battle for a few hours of frenzied combat, and then recycled. [[JustifiedTrope On the other hand, the universe is ''very'' a big place, just like the mentioned species' numbers.]])
* WeWillUseManualLaborInTheFuture (As an example, gigantic anti-ship missiles with onboard reactors and homing [=AIs=] are loaded with the back-breaking labour of thousands of deckhands. Using ropes. While being whipped.)
**That's nothing. Orks use Gretchin as guidance systems in their giant missles.
* WeaponOfChoice
** The Imperial Guard almost universally tote [[FrickinLaserBeams laser weapons]] and [[TankGoodness tanks. Lots and lots of tanks]].
** The Space Marines favour [[ReallyBigGun bolt weapons]] and [[ChainsawGood chainsaws]].
** The Chaos Space Marines prefer ''[[SpikesOfVillainy spiky]]'' bolt weapons and chainsaws. Various specific cults have sonic weapons, chainsaw axes, and ''pus'' as their Weapons of Choice.
** The Daemonhunters ("Ordo Malleus") have a bit of a thing for [[DropTheHammer hammers]].
** The Eldar mainly use [[AbsurdlySharpBlade absurdly sharp]] [[FlechetteStorm shuriken weapons]], though individual [[CripplingOverspecialisation Aspect temples]] have their own ritualised Weapons of Choice.
** [[ChurchMilitant The Witch Hunters]] KillItWithFIRE.
** No Ork is happy without his choppa and his [[MoreDakka dakka]]. Except if they pass up one for more of the other.
** The Necrons kill you with green lightning. Except when they tear you apart with claws and wear sheets of your flesh for a hat.
** The Tau stick to [[strike: mere]] [[MagneticWeapons railguns and pulse rifles]]. Extremely powerful ones at that.
** [[NightmareFuel The Tyranids prefer the tactic of jumping on you and]] ''[[NightmareFuelUnleaded eating your face.]]''
* WeirdScience
* WellIntentionedExtremist (The Tau. The "well intentioned" bit is what sets them apart.)
* WellDoneSonGuy (Several primarchs. Giving up on that was one motive to join the HorusHeresy.)
* TheWesley (The Necrons and their C'tan masters are seen by some as an entire faction of this. The Tau were too until they got more of the Grimdark slapped on.)
* WhatMeasureIsANonHuman (Although, to be fair, pretty much every other race sees those not of its kind as worthless too.)
* WhenAllYouHaveIsAHammer (The Imperial Guard. When all you have is men and tanks... a ''lot'' of men and tanks... The Imperial Guard has been even referred to as 'The Hammer of the Emperor')
* WhipItGood (Has FetishFuel examples with Dark Eldar Agonisers and Sisters of Battle "Mistresses", and a rare non-fetishy example with Arco-Flagellants, which are [[NightmareFuel just plain horrible]].)
** Oh, and Chaos has a psychic power called Lash of Submission. Guess which god it's associated with.
** Ork runtherdz often carry grot prods and whips.
* WhiteHairedPrettyGirl (The Sisters of Battle often bleach their hair white, though whether they're actually ''pretty'' varies from artist to artist)
* TheWhiteHouse (The Imperial Palace, which is said to cover most of Europe and be visible ''from Mars''.)
* WhiteMagic (Sisters of Battle Acts of Faith... maybe.)
* WhosLaughingNow: Everyone else's thoughts about Guard players when the Guard finally got a good codex.
* WhoYouGonnaCall (The Sisters of Battle or the Inquisition, generally, including the Grey Knights and the Deathwatch. Calling might [[ShootTheDog get you killed]], but not calling will often have worse results.)
* WithCatlikeTread: "Recite the Litany of Stealth to reduce your chances of being heard."
* WithMyHandsTied (Just about everyone, hence why more... exotic... measures are commonly employed.)
* WingedHumanoid (As well as having troops in the Eldar, Dark Eldar and Chaos use "jump packs" with mechanical wings, there are examples of humanoids with actual wings. The Primarch Sanguinius, known as "the Angel", had perfect white wings, and the [[AmazonBrigade Battle Sisters]]' Living Saint manifests them as part of being a saint. Of course, this being 40k, the Angel was a vampiric demigod who fought giant blood daemons.
* WithGreatPowerComesGreatInsanity (And with that insanity comes even more power!)
* WithUsOrAgainstUs (The Imperium, the Tau. The rest [[KillEmAll generally don't even bother to ask]], and even the Imperium [[FantasticRacism generally only bothers to ask if you're human]].)
* WitchSpecies (Eldar. Human psykers are also regularly referred to as "witches".)
* AWizardDidIt (The Warp did it. Or the Eldar. Or the C'tan. Or Tzeentch.)
* WolfMan (Wulfen are basically werewolves. In space. With guns. In power armour. )
* WombLevel (The interior of Tyranid hiveships.)
* WoodenShipsAndIronMen (life on board Imperial Fleet ships is this trope RecycledInSpace)
* TheWorfEffect (New races or factions are commonly introduced in the background completely dominating Space Marines. One particularly memorable example has a Necron destroyer firing straight through a near-invulnerable Land Raider tank, accompanied by an AfterActionReport of tech-priests talking about the obscene amount of power required to do such a thing.)
** TheWorfBarrage (Often used as part of the above.)
* WorldGoneMad (Creeps into this territory at times-the universe is a CrapsackWorld taken to such a ludicrous extent that one sometimes wonders if the setting hasn't well and truly lost its marbles.)
* WorldHalfEmpty (Warhammer 40K is by far one of the most relentlessly grim and hopeless settings in all of fiction. Note that this could very well be literal, depending on how much the Tyranids have already eaten.)
* TheWorldIsAlwaysDoomed ("World" meaning ''the entire galaxy''. Or just any world chosen at random.)
* WorldOfHam ([[DawnOfWar INDEED!]])
* WorldOfBadass (If there is indeed only war, it would make only the {{Badass}} survive. [[EverythingIsTryingToKillYou Well, it's generally 'survive for a bit longer...']])
* TheWormThatWalks (The alien Slaugth, one of the (many) primary antagonists in ''DarkHeresy''.)
* WretchedHive (The "Underhive" in hive cities ''always'' qualifies - sometimes the entire arcology, with its population of billions.)
* XanatosRoulette (Everything in the galaxy, as played by Tzeentch (who rigs the game), the Deceiver (who rigs the players), and the Emperor (who knows when to call in the cops))
* XtremeKoolLetterz (The Orks' FunetikAksent is written with these. Other examples, such as Dark Eldar Wyches, feature occasionally.)
* YouAreNotReady (Common Eldar sentiment to humans. The most common reply is a bolt shell to the face.)
* YouHaveFailedMe (Regularly used by Chaos, Orks and Imperial Commissars.)
* YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness (Gleefully employed by followers of Chaos and the Dark Eldar.)
* YourHeadASplode (When a psychic MindRape is a bit too subtle. Ork Weirdboyz even used to have a power called "'Eadbang", which is [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin exactly what it sounds like.]] An 'Eadbang is also how the Orks refer to what happens when a Weirdboy suffers Perils of the Warp. Just guess what happens...)
* YouKillItYouBoughtIt (The Ork hierarchy tends to work this way, ditto the Dark Eldar and Chaos: if you succeed in killing the previous Warboss/Archite/Lord, the former officeholder clearly didn't deserve the job.)
* ZeppelinsFromAnotherWorld (The Squats had ironclad airships)
* ZergRush ZergRush (Tyranids - unsurprisingly, as the ''Zerg themselves'' were based on them. A lot of "horde" armies, such as Orks and Imperial Guard, employ this one as well.)
* ZombieApocalypse (After occasionally menacing the depths of Necromunda, plague zombies cropped up in force during the 13th Black Crusade, courtesy of Nurgle. ''DarkHeresy'' introduces many more new and exciting ways for characters to find themselves up to their eyeballs in shambling dead.)
** And there's ''another'' kind in ''The Bleeding Chalice'', where it's all the fault of a super-mutant produced by a Techpriest experiment on cleansing mutations, and who can psychically create viruses ''through ship hulls and hard vacuum'' that have this effect. His main battlecruiser is essentially intended as a massive [[ItsRainingMen drop assault]] ship that breaks apart and spews down a ridiculous number of zombies, making the first ''air drop'' ZombieApocalypse.

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