Funny / Warhammer 40,000

Though a bleak and horrifying future, Warhammer 40,000 is not without humor, usually of the gallows kind. In fact, some consider the setting to be a comedy itself. British Humour and all...

• Battlefleet Gothic: Armada
• Black Legion
• Ciaphas Cain^note HERO OF THE IMPERIUM!!!
• Dawn of War
• Dawn of War III
• The Emperor's Gift
• Eisenhorn
• Gaunt's Ghosts
• Horus Heresy
• Night Lords
• Rogue Trader
• Space Marine Battles
• Space Wolf
• Ultramarines
• Warhammer 40,000: Eternal Crusade
• Word Bearers

From series without their own pages

• The Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer. If only for the illustrations.
  • Or the captions under the illustrations. "Ork weapons are extremely crude and prone to misfires or jamming." ^note Maybe true, but it's hard for an axe to jam and misfires don't matter much when it's one bullet out of a thousand that second. "Tyranid weapons are formed of living tissues,^note True. they often fall apart." ^note Not true. "Eldar technology is antiquated,^note  Technically true. Eldar craftsmanship is inferior to our own."^note Haha, no. "Beware the Tau - they'll sacrifice your babies to their gods!"^note The Tau are Flat Earth Atheists, plus they have very weak Warp presence and thus couldn't form gods if they wanted to. Incidentally, they also lean more toward castration rather than infanticide.
  • "...Try to manoeuvre around behind [the sentry], using cover as explained in Section 9. Recite the Litany of Stealth (refer to Emperor's Benedictions) to decrease your chances of being heard. Creep up behind him..." Even funnier when you realize there is no Litany of Stealth.
  • "Looking around corner. Only head exposed"◊.
  • The section on hull breaches in space vessels. A picture captioned "Emergency procedure if blasted into space" shows a drifting Guardsman trying to hold off the vacuum by covering his nose and mouth with his hand. Better than nothing?
  • Remember, the Tau are frightened by fire. And water. And thunder. And unnerved by hairy people. They are also derived from bovines and chew cud and have udders. They have terrible eyesight so that their hearing overcompensates, allowing you to scare them off with loud shouting. And those guns they're carrying require sustained streams to injure a healthy, armored human. It's all there in the manual, and all of it is wrong. The most correct bit is the one about terrible eyesight, but the advanced targeting systems they have more than make up for that.
  • "Orks are stupid^note True, but they do have their moments of brilliance, brittle-boned and feeble, Eldar are cowardly, cynical and sport archaic and ineffective weaponry, Tyranids are mindless, half blind and confused by sudden movements."
  • The lower half of Page 56 is a blank square with the words "KEEP THIS SPACE CLEAR. DO NOT DEFACE. ON PAIN OF DEATH"
    • The clincher? In most physical editions, the blank area always has a smudge printed on it.
  • "Pull the grenade's pin and recite this hymn"...^note Depending on how the grenade is manufactured, this might not be as big a problem as it sounds; stereotypical real life pineapple grenades don't set the fuse until the user pulls the pin AND releases the handle. Still, better to recite THEN pull.
  • "Genestealers are slow and sluggish."
  • In order to keep the horrors of the Warp secret from normal soldiers, only the major edition has a page on them and it is cleverly hidden in case troopers do manage to get ahold of the book-it's printed upside down.
  • "If you allow yourself to be killed and ingested, your soul is forfeited."
  • Note that in-universe the Guard are well aware of how useless this "information" is; in the novel Fifteen Hours they are shown noting that the only thing that the primer is good for is as toilet paper!
    • And in Ciaphas Cain, Guardsmen on the way to a combat drop are mentioned to be "reading their primers for inspiration or amusement".
  • This book also contains the punchline from brick joke started in one of Dan Abnet's Gaunt's Ghosts series where a soldier refers to the manual for help in his current situation to find the advice it gives is "If in doubt, move forward."
  • "When bayonetting an oncoming foe, thrust firmly into the throat or chest. To ensure the foe is dead repeat the procedure several times."
    • Considering what the Imperial Guard has to fight sometimes, one could say that that's not necessarily bad advice.
  • The two sections that have been updated by taping the errata over the old text so that a bit of it is still readable:
    • Sanctioned psykers are a necessary evil that should be treated with equal respect and suspicion, where the previous advice ends "...feel no pity! Exterminate without remorse!"
    • "There is no such thing as an honest alien breed, but the Tau are more dishonourable than any other." ("...potentially intelligent species.") [Paragraph about the Tau using propaganda] "Remember: the Tau lie and have no words for 'honour' and 'truth'." ("...could be negotiated with.")
• The Orks are just made of Rule of Funny and Insane Troll Logic. Even their technology operates on it. Older editions suggested that if an Ork thinks a stick can fire bullets, it will. DA RED WUNZ GO FASTA, and they do. PURPLE IS DA SNEAKYEZT, because have you seen a purple Ork?
  • Codex: Orks:
  Deafened Grots must resort to a rudimentary form of sign language. This is rarely successful because a Gretchin cannot carry very many signs.
  • The Shokk Attack Gun's misfire table. Especially what happens on a '12'.
    • Would this the be legendary "shoots himself out of his own gun" incident? (No technology misfires like Ork technology!)
    • No, that's a 10. On a 12 the gun basically tears apart space-time in a small area and utterly removes its target from existence...
  • There's the description of the Ork Pulsa Rokkit from the Apocalypse Reload expansion, which describes the warhead as a device that "generates an unstable forcefield bordering on contradictory physics... The Orks like to encourage [its] destabilization by loading it into a missile and firing it at the enemy."
    • It was erased by newer editions, but one of their weapons were bombs that were guided by enthusiastic Snotlings, Doctor Strangelove style. Snotlings who'd only realize that there was a little problem with that plan when the bomb was almost hitting its target. (In newer editions, said guidance is now provided by the much smarter Grots.)
  • The only thing more funny than Ork fluff is playing as an Ork, provided you're the sort that isn't overly stern, just happy leaving things up to the fickle hands of fate (and the dice gods). Rolling out dozens and dozens of dice for a single round of attacks alone can be a hysterical thrill if you get enough to do them all at once, and just seeing the mind-breaking (and often expensive) Kustom Konversions to models is equal parts funny and awesome; while far from tournament legal, imagine a Tonka Truck bulldozer with a "salvaged" Leman Russ cannon glued to the top and various spikey bitz all around... oh, and painted red to go faster, of course.
  • Then there's the story of the ork Warboss who entered the Warp, came out just before he first entered it, and then tracked down and killed his past self because he wanted two copies of his favorite gun, thus promptly erasing himself from existence. The ork army was so confused by da Boss killing, well, da Boss that they called off their WAAAGH! Just to make this clear, the orks are a species that exists and thrives off of Insane Troll Logic, and they were still confused by this happening and couldn't figure out how to reconcile it.
  • Out of all the factions that still have a functional economy, Orks somehow have the most stable one, in part by the fact that they use their teeth as the currency. Since Teef grow back and decay fast, they have a steady supply and no imperative to hoard any of that wealth since the Teef just go bad anyway. There are tales of orks punching eachother, or even themselves, square in the jaw for a quick buck.
  • Ork ships in Battlefleet Gothic can be equipped with Grot Targeters, which replace images of enemy ships with images of Gretchin. This actually improves the accuracy of their gunners, as every Ork has learned from a young age how to hit Grots.
  • While it is rare, Orks have been recorded falling to Chaos, specificically to the two gods Khorne and Nurgle. Khorne is an obvious choice for a race of homicidal killers to swear allegiance to, but the reason that some Orks worship Nurgle is that... he's big and green. That's it. The Orks see idols of Nurgle and assume that he's either Gork or Mork simply because he's seen as big and green. And Nurgle approves of them.
  • The Orks in Deff Skwadron apply Ork logic and develop a unique IFF for anti-air turrets: namely, IFF you hit it, it's obviously one of theirs, and IFF you miss it, it's obviously one of yours.
  • In a universe where every other faction is based off of a historical badass army, every nasty bit of every horrible insect to have ever lived, or the literal personification of negative emotions, the Orks are instead based off of football hooligans. And they actually pose the biggest threat!
  • The old Gorkamorka rules have six pages on the Dok's Meat Grinder Surgery - including results like the patient's brain being replaced with that of an angry face-eater squig, or the Dok forgetting what he's doing and performing surgery on the patient's head for an obvious leg wound, possibly including the aforementioned squig brain transplant.
  • The trailer for the 2021 Orks Codex, which sees the much-requested return of plastic Deffkopta models, has the Ork narrator claim da Meks forgot how to build them since Black Reach^note the last plastic Deffkoptas appeared in the Assault on Black Reach box set, but dey 'member'd again.
  • The Tyranids learned very quickly that Orks are not worth the trouble of subterfuge, in part because of genetic incompatability, and in part because Orks are Too Dumb to Fool. Genestealer Cults don't get very far simply because Genestealer influence, while convincing for most societies, is so profusely un-orky that Genestealer Orks get mowed down nearly immediately in sheer disgust before they even realized the ork was a Genestealer.

• From the Dark Eldar 5th Edition Codex: "Asdrubael Vect tricks his would-be rival Archon Kelithresh into opening a casket that has ostensibly been presented as a tithe. Held precariously in the collapsing field of the casket is the unstable essence of a black hole. Kelithresh's entire realm is plunged into a yawning, howling, vortex."
  • Pretty much any way Vect gets rid of his enemies. The death of High Archon Kraillath, killed by a "stray blast from a dark lance". "Stray" blast from a dark lance.
• Roboute Guiliman's criticism of Alpharius' slow but frighteningly effective tactics.
  "It's a waste of time, manpower and the Emperor's bolter shells".
• Anything that involves Trazyn the Infinite:
  • His "thank you" letter to an Inquisitor for "gifting" him five regiments of Guard. He replies with an equally interesting gift, a hypercube that is "fascinating, if you can escape from its clutches." Said Inquisitor was a character in the Grey Knight Codex. When the Inquisition split from the Grey Knights, her character profile disappeared implying that, no, she did not escape its clutches. This was later referenced in The Fall of Cadia, when Trazyn releases one of his Tesseract Vaults and out popped a female Ordo Xenos Inquisitor, albeit this is a different character named Greyfax.
  • He also casually talks to Ultramarine Captain Sicarius about how he was "old friends" with Guilliman and plans to steal his body from Macragge because his gallery is a better place for it. Unfortunately, those darned Eldar got to Guilliman first....
  • His initial interactions with Cawl in Fall of Cadia are hilarious. Cawl mistakes him for Veilwalker, and, after a clearly rehearsed speech, it registers that Cawl called him something else. Then...
  Cawl: You are an abomination
  Trazyn: "Thief" normally suffices.
• One story from the Fifth Edition Tyranid codex goes that one day, a Tau colony was facing invasion from the Tyranids. The situation looked hopeless, until the Necrons unexpectedly appeared from the colony's moon and destroyed the Tyranids. What does the Ethereal in charge of the colony do? He throws a party to celebrate their "rescue", and then decides to greet the scary metal skeletons with a grand welcoming ceremony when they come down to visit. You can guess how well that went.
  • Even better since it happens a few days after the celebration started.
• The Farsight Enclaves supplement has one in which a Tau Battlesuit during the Battle of Dal'lyth confronts an Apothecary from the Hammers of Dorn Space Marine chapter. Said Battlesuit quizzes him about what he's doing (extracting Gene Seed from fallen Space Marines), blasts a group of Marines trying to sneak attack him, then salutes the Apothecary and jumps away to carry on the battle. The Apothecary's reaction?
  "Captain Rumann? When this is over, we need to talk".
• During "The Trials of Azrael" the titular Azrael fights Kharn the Betrayer, during which Azrael proudly declares himself to Kharn as the Supreme Grand Master of the Dark Angels. Kharn reacts:
  Kharn *totally not impressed* Of course, that ridiculous helmet should have given you away.
  • Made even funnier by the fact that Kharn seems to be unaware of the fact that he, too, has a ridiculous helmet.

• In the first major codex for the Necrons, there is a hilarious outcome to a short story where a Callidius Assassin attempts to kill a target who has already been killed and replaced. By the C'Tan Deceiver. It promptly No Sells her attack, absorbs her sword, then sucks her life-energy just for kicks.
  • Apparently the Deceiver likes the spice of Polymorphine on human souls.
• The Chaos Space Marine "Doomsday Device" Apocalypse formation. The official datasheet lists the following steps for activating it:
  Announce activation
  Make demands (for instance, state claim to world domination or order construction of impressive monument in your honour).
  Disregard any enemy replies and hope your Doomsday Device works. Roll to activate.
• The lore around the Jokaero is good for a few laughs. A race of Space Orangutan cyborgs, the Jokaero are the most adept mechanics in the galaxy. They somehow instinctively know how all technology works, regardless of which race manufactured it, and can generate technology that is more advanced (and compact) than any other races can manage. Unfortunately, their technical prowess aside, they are otherwise identical to normal orangutans and act like it. Thus, making friends with one is difficult, and when it decides to start working on something you have no way of knowing if the end result will be a ring that contains enough destructive power to level a city block or an atomic banana peeler. Oh, and they also happen to be natural escape artists and, since they can undo any technology meant to contain them, any prison is completely temporary. That said, Jokaero are not above tinkering with anything they come across, meaning it's entirely possible that they will escape their prison, fiddle with it to correct its technical deficiencies, then become trapped in the new, improved device they designed.
• Due to the way it's worded, it's possible to field an Inquisitorial Army made up of 1 inquisitor and a hilariously impressive amount of Jokaeros. Nicknamed the "Barrel of Monkeys" army, it borderlined on Lethal Joke Character status as if you got the first turn, you could fire off enough lascannon shots to completely obliterate your opponent's force in one turn. But if you didn't get that first turn, they would be making it rain chunks of monkey in very short order as Jokaeros are not very durable. It's highly recommended to try this if you have the models for it, if only for the pure look of horror on your opponent's face when they realize the tiny orange monkeys can blow up tanks with their jewelry.

• One of the Chaos Daemons books mentions that the maze which protects Tzeentch's realm in the warp is completely impenetrable... except for that one time two mysterious entities "wearing the shapes of a young girl and a small dog" (heavily hinted to be Delirium and Barnabas) solved it easily. Even Tzeentch doesn't know how that happened, since the gate guardian flatly refuses to talk about it beyond accusing her of cheating.
• The Imperium discovers the genetic strain of an ancient Terran war-beast, and begins integrating it into Imperial Guard operations, even providing a guide to help the process.
  • "Who is an effective combat beast? Is it you? The question is rhetorical. It is you."
  • "Prostrate yourself before the Emperor, and I shall rub your abdomen in reward for your humility."
  • "If issued clear, verbal orders by your canid, self-report for psychological evaluation following completion of said orders."
    • As the attached, amended Chain of Command Chart shows, canids rank above common Guardsmen and NCOs, so naturally their orders must be followed.
• The novel Vaults of Terra: The Carrion Throne mentions a romance novel set in "reputed paradise world Krieg" with the convoluted title My Wish to Generate Children with You is only Exceeded by My Devotion to Him.
• Another article from The Regimental Standard^note A Warhammer Community Website designed as a Mock Imperial Guardsman/Astrum Militarum periodical designed to promote various Games Workshop merchandise and kits as blatantly obvious Imperial Propaganda, much in the vein of the Imperial Guardsman's Uplifting Primer is a guide on how to appease the Machine Spirit of your weapon to maintain proper function. One of the suggestions specifically to maintain proper operation of a lasgun is to use "binharic cants" to soothe the machine's spirit, such as "01010000 01100101 01110111 00100001 00100000 01010000 01100101 01110111 00100001" and "01001111 01100100 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01100001 00100000 01000110 01101100 01100001 01110011 01101000 01101100 01101001 01100111 01101000 01110100". Translate them into text, and they read as "Pew! Pew!" and "Ode to a Flashlight".
  • Another Regimental Sta - um, Bosspole, written in-character as Orks, explains how dakka works. High points include suggesting that you bolt a lasgun to your other gun to serve as a laser sight, saying that batteries are so-called "becoz they're good for batterin' people wiv", handling genestealer infestations by beating up infested Orks whenever they start talking about "the patriork", and ranking every kind of dakka 10/10 or better.
  • Regimental Standard advises suppressing Orks with lasgun fire prior to charging them while in combat with them, but not bayonet charging them surprisingly enough - no, instead, affix your bayonet after the charge is complete to avoid hurting yourself, much like Runs with Scissors. This is especially funny given Regimental Standard's frequent attestations of the importance and might of bayonet charges.
  • When the Gaiden Game Blackstone Fortress revealed UR-025, a Man of Iron character, the Regimental Standard did a piece assuring readers that he definitely isn't an Abominable Intelligence. The reason? He has an Imperial Eagle on his chest plate. The article explains that "no traitor, mechanical or otherwise, has EVER been deemed worthy of wearing such a symbol"... with a link redirecting to Emperor´s Children miniatures.
  • The Adeptus Custodes aren't just space Praetorian Guard. They're the Space British Royal Guard, with all the tourist trap trappings this entails. Unlike the Royal Guard, they are authorized to kill annoying tourists/Guardsmen.
  • Continuing with the Regimental Standard's proud tradition of Blatant Lies, this article claims that the Adeptus Mechanicus is actually being "generous" due to using "muskets," and equipping their tanks with "primitive" hover technology and guns that shoot bullets. A quick look at the statistics for the guns makes it abundantly clear that no, they very much are being stingy. That, and a lot of their weapons really do look like muskets.
  • For once, the Guard didn't screw up—at least, it's not entirely their fault. When the Callidius assassin from a group of assassins goes missing, the Guard is smart enough to know that they're probably disguised as a Guardsman with fake memories, so then play a regiment-wide game of Trigger the Manchurian Agent. The article also goes into why implanting an assassin with fake memories for extra concealment is Awesome, but Impractical—without any way of proving their identity, they can run into problems that they can avoid with a quick word. Such as being shot by a Commissar.

• Articles of the Regimental Standard often contain links to various Games Workshop products, which can lead to some very hilarious redirects. For example in one article clicking on the link for "Imperial High Command" will direct you to a product page for Ogryns.
• Another funny example of the aforementioned redirects: this article here describes a group of brave citizens who fought against Orks to defend their homeworld... and every redirect (from what we can tell) links you to product pages involving genestealers.
• Mentions to "delicious and nutritive" Imperial Guard rations used to redirect to the "Cadian flesh" paint tone.
• This guide to identifying Ork Kommandos in disguise not only shows obvious Orks dressed as Guardsmen or Kommisars, but also hilarious footnotes. Standout examples include:
  • For terminating a Commiss-Ork: "Even though you will subsequently face execution for striking a superior officer, you will be posthumously commended for having performed your duty."
  • On gibberish that can identify your Regimental Advisor as an Ork: "Phrases such as “Krump ’em”, “Give ’em a good kicking”, and “We should perhaps avoid bombarding our own troops”^note Which is not at all something you'd expect an Ork to say are tell-tale signs.

• The fifth edition Necrons codex not only retconned the entire faction's lore and gave them characters with personalities, but also added in a bit of humor.
  • Imotekh the Stormlord is a super genius who can come up with insanely intricate plans and strategies. However, he is utterly stumped when it comes to Orks, who always end up ruining his plans through some random act of insanity. Imotekh is so frustrated by this that he was sworn to scour the Orks from the galaxy.
• In Anthony Reynolds' novel Khârn: Eater Of Worlds, after Ruokh went on a rampage that almost killed their substitute apothecary, Dreagher brings up what happened to their actual one.
  "Does she live?" said Ruokh, his voice raw, but calmer.
  "If she didn’t, you’d already be dead," said Dreagher. "But she may yet die. We do not have an Apothecary any more. You killed him. Remember?"
  Ruokh’s eye twitched. "That was a fair fight," he growled.
  "It was to first blood."
  "I only hit him once."
  "You decapitated him."
  "There was a lot of first blood," admitted Ruokh.
• In Dark Imperium, Roboute Guilliman rather succinctly summarises the Imperium in Black Comedy fashion:
  If the Emperor Himself stood up, thought Guilliman, came down off His golden throne and proclaimed ‘I am not a god!’ then they would burn Him as a heretic.
• Imperial Gua- er, Astra Militarum Deathstrike Missiles were originally statted with a range of "Infinite". In response, many Guard players have called in Deathstrike launches from across town, other states/provinces, and in one reported case, a game in the US had strikes all the way from the UK.
• The Warhammer Twitter announcing the return of Lion El'Jonson.
• The page for the Necron Flayed Ones models on Games Workshop's website currently lists them as enabling you to "start a new 41st Millennium fashion trend."

---