Trivia / Warhammer 40,000

• Ascended House Rules: The "snake eyes on a Leadership test means an automatic pass" rule was taken from 40K and absorbed into the Warhammer Fantasy house-rule pool so spectacularly that a) many people were convinced it was an actual rule and b) a later edition made these people became right.
• Bury Your Art: The name of the Ork warlord "Mag Uruk Thraka" was pretty clearly intended to be a joke about Margaret Thatcher, who was British Prime Minister back in the 1980s when Warhammer 40K was just getting started. In the early days, such jokes and references in Warhammer material were common. Since then, however, Games Workshop became embarrassed about it, and has since gone on record denying that the name is a reference to the prime minister, essentially attributing any phonetic resemblance to coincidence. Not many people believe them.
• Cash-Cow Franchise: It's often joked that they call the game Warhammer 40,000 because it costs $40,000 to play the game - an "entry point", with the rulebooks, a basic army and assembly material, ranges around $800! And there are lots of miniatures, plus an expanded universe for those really into the plot.
• Creator Backlash: The Praetorian Guard, an Imperial Guard regiment from 3rd Edition which look like futuristic versions of the British soldiers from the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879, even down to the iconic red jackets and white pith helmets (as depicted in the 1964 film Zulu). They even had a background where they fought Feral Ork invasions. Due to contemporary cultural sensitivities around British imperial history, Games Workshop quietly discontinued the model line and have quietly stopped mentioning the regiment in lore, unlikely to ever touch or re-release the army again.
• Defictionalization:
  • Look! A Rhino. A RHINO. Our game developers are building METAL BOXES, the cowards. The FOOLS!
  • The Liber Chaotica has been published as a Sourcebook on the Chaos Gods.
  • The Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer has also been published.
  • Someone made an honest-to-Big-E chainsword.
• Fan-Work Ban: Games Workshop have placed a zero tolerance policy on fan animations after acquiring the creator behind Astartes, forcing several fans to drop their projects such as If the Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device. It only got worse from there, as they have also begun going after Game Mods and 3D modellers.
• Intercontinuity Crossover: With the increased notice of the Warhammer 40,000 franchise in the 2010s or 2020s, there's been increasingly more crossovers with other franchises such as World of Tanks and PowerWash Simulator.
• Meme Acknowledgment:
  • In a livestream promoting the Rise of the Primarch book, one of the Warhammer Community members mentioned the Smurf meme when introducing Roboute Guilliman.
  • Another livestream acknowledged the meme about the Blood Ravens stealing everything they can get their hands on, along with a disclaimer about the idea being nothing more than fanon.
  • The Regimental Standard website references the meme of fans referring to Lasguns with a flashlight attachment as "twin-linked". Apparently Guardsmen are known to do this in-universe, and it's punishable by flogging.
  • When the first preview images for the XV107 were released, rumors began swirling that it was to be a new form of stealth battlesuit. While it proved to be a more normal super-heavy battlesuit, the lore mentioned that its creator had been commissioned to design a new generation of stealthsuit, and shocked everyone when he rolled out this monstrosity instead.
  • Many fans like to ship Roboute Guilliman and Yvraine, thanks to their stable, mutually beneficial alliance and dedication to ending the millenia old war between their species. Then the Warhammer Community Team bid the fanbase Happy Thanksgiving with this post, featuring the Primarch and the Herald of Ynnead in a loving parody of Rockwell's famous "Freedom From Want" painting.
  • When announcing the new Squat bounty hunter for Necromunda, GW released a tongue-in-cheek video of Games Workshop employees seeing a request to "bring back the Squats" on Twitter and subsequently heading off to "reset the clock" (an acknowledgement of the old meme that every time someone asks for the Squats to come back, GW resets the timer until it will actually happen). The clock itself is positioned next to two other clocks (labelled "Plastic Sisters of Battle" and "Plastic Thunderhawk" - two other longstanding fan requests that never seem to see the light of day) and when the employees try to reset the clock, one of them accidentally drops it and breaks it. Cue the new Squat miniature from Forge World. Sharp-eyed viewers may notice that the Sisters clock is a few minutes to midnight; Plastic Sisters of battle were announced soon after.
  • One of the official webcomics, Chaos Undecided, acknowledged Abaddon's infamously bad track record for the crusades.
• No Origin Stories Allowed: The fate of the Unknown Primarchs and their Legions will never be revealed, originally to encourage fans to make up their own stories about them.
• Promoted Fanboy: Henry Cavill is famously a Warhammer 40,000 turbonerd, and he's set to produce and star in a Live-Action Adaptation series for Prime Video.
• Referenced by...:
  • In this video about the battleship Yamato, the presenter takes a minute to remind the audience that wartime Japan was morally different from modern times, and adds "In the grimdark of April 1945, there was only war."
  • The Marvel Comics event Sins of Sinister uses a series of time skips to take the action into an increasingly Bad Future. Each era has different references, with +1000 years clearly influenced by Warhammer 40,000. Kieron Gillen, a Promoted Fanboy who previously wrote Marvel's licenced Marneus Calgar series, titles one issue "There is Only War" (with "War" crossed out and replaced by "Me").
• Science Imitates Art: Abaddon despoliator is a species of harvestman adorned with prominent keratinous spikes, which reminded its discoverers of how Abaddon the Despoiler is "typically portrayed adorned with spikes and various sharp things".
• Screwed by the Lawyers: Games Workshop's legal team is notorious for its zealotry. Anyone making anything even vaguely reminiscent of their models, characters, setting, or games, can expect to get a cease-and-desist letter in the mail. Numerous fan projects have been shut down by them in response to this, and while they generally will allow some of them to remain as long as they can control them to some degree, anything that they think can result in a loss in revenue is stamped out right away.
• Shrug of God: Games Workshop has deliberately left everything regarding the two "missing" Primarchs open for fan speculation. Other Posthumous Characters, like Commander Puretide or the Silent King, get a similar treatment.
• Technology Marches On: While Schizo Tech has a lot to do with it, it's painfully obvious that none of the factions have equivalents to military tech and strategic advances since the 80s when the game was first made, and most the Vietnam War. Even Tau drones are limited to the same kind of ranges as remote-control planes. Artillery especially seems to be at a WW2 level at best.
• Urban Legend of Zelda: A common internet theory stated that Games Workshop received/continues to receive royalties from Blizzard Entertainment, as the latter used GW's character designs in Warcraft and Starcraft.
  • A variant claims that Starcraft began life as a Warhammer 40,000 game until Games Workshop pulled the license, leaving Blizzard to turn it into a standalone title.
  • While both parties admit that Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 did provide artistic inspiration, there was never a formal agreement in place between the two companies. Games Workshop developers were rather pleased that someone had liked their work enough to imitate it, so they opted not to press for royalties (this was back in the days before Games Workshop became known for the aggressiveness of their legal team.)
  • However, some legends say that the first draft of the first Warcraft was a pitch for a licensed Warhammer game, but no agreement could be reached.
• Word of Dante: It is widely accepted that the Orks consider purple the 'sneaky' colour. This is based on two supporting factors. First, Orks already have a series of superstitions involving the effects of colour, and their gestalt psychic powers make these superstitions a reality. ^note In brief: Red Ones Go Faster, Green is Da Best, Yellow is for More Dakka, Blue is lucky, and Black is Dead 'Ard. Second, Orks often copy the tactics and features of other armies without comprehending the purpose of said features, notably by using garish colours for camouflage without understanding that the point of camouflage is to blend in with the terrain you expect to be fighting in. Thus, combining the two led to a running gag that Orks consider purple the sneakiest colour because "'Ave you ever seen a purple Ork?"
• Word of God: After an incident with a Neo-Nazi trying to enter a tournament in Spain, GW explicitly went out and said that the Imperium is a Villain Protagonist and that anyone who says otherwise is deluding themselves.
• Writer Conflicts with Canon: On April 14th, 2024, when asked about women being members of the Adeptus Custodes in a then-recent short story, Warhammer's Twitter/X page responded by stating there have always been female Custodians "since the first of the Ten Thousand were created." While retcons are nothing new when it comes to Warhammer, previous editions (particularly the first edition Rogue Trader rulebook and the 8th edition Codex) explicitly stated beforehand that all Custodes were men.

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