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Now i'll start with the fact i actually like the stuff they pump out but i can't help but feel the designers of these miniatures we all love need to be kept away from tv's and other material. Interesting if anyone else can contribute to this thread any other similarities that i haven't mentioned as well as opinions on this. Interesting too that they seem to get annoyed at others inspiration (weren't they annoyed at the chapterhouse mega tau heavy thing due to artistic style? Not that i'm supporting either side just what i heard) yet it seems to be in some of their works.

Started with when i read the dark eldar codex. There was references to keeping what you kill or owning what you kill (i'd have to re-read the fluff at the start to quote word for word). This made me think alot of chronicles of riddick and the necromongers. Whilst to be fair chronicles of riddick was 2004 and dark eldar were what 1990 something i can't vouch for if the earlier codexes mentioned this.

Space marine techmarine - Love the new one here but when it first came out i was reminded so much of dr octopus the villian in what spider man 3 here. Didn't check the dates but would be interesting to see when spiderman 3 pics came around and when this mini came about.

I was spurred on this thought pattern after seeing forgeworlds latest mini valthex who is just so like whiplash from iron man 2 that it isn't funny. Its that or he is some kind of dominatrix techmarine with his standard forgemaster issue pleasure whips. Maybe thats what keeps the void dragon at bay in the deep love dungeon of mars? Maybe its a different kind of dragon than we think .

Blood angels - now i could be wrong here but i never thought they had fangs of any kind and were more angels that drank blood and not vampires. Maybe it snuck in for the twilight movie franchise. Guess we won't know that one till a special character by the name of edward comes in to prove it.

Grey Knights - The Dreadknight looks alot like Optimus Prime. Like the idea but ever since hearing that from a post here on dakka i just can't quite take it seriously. But hey its one step up from the mobile walking toilet. I had ideas of using the old rogue trader marneus on throne and placing him on it and converting the scriber droid to have toilet paper instead of scrolls.

Anyway sure there is plenty more.... any similarities people have they want to post with pics demonstrating?

Apologies if this has been covered before. Nice what they have in their way of a range but i can't help but groan when i see or read things that are just so obvious. Maybe its just me .

It's pretty widely known they 'borrow' themes from other franchises.

Tyranids are their version of HR Gigers Alien concept. Necrons are obviosly influenced by Terminator (and even have a nice little rule called 'We'll Be Back'). Tau are heavily themed around anime. It's allo part of the charm of GW's universe.

o0o0 wrote:Apologies if this has been covered before. Nice what they have in their way of a range but i can't help but groan when i see or read things that are just so obvious. Maybe its just me .

I don't think this has ever come up before, actually.

Heh, not seeing the problem. Sure, GW borrow from a variety of sources... so does pretty much every other fictional thing. Be it RL sources, other fictional works, whatever. Very few things are entirely 100% original, which is what people seem to demand from GW

Relevant to your OP though, I'm just not seeing a lot of what you mention. It was covered extensively in other threads, but most of these ideas were done long before the instances you claim GW took them from. Trying to find the original idea there would be pretty much impossible, as it's buried among what it inspired later and a lot of it is so barely visible it makes no sense under any application of logic. The whip thing, for example. So he has some whippy doodads... so do a great many other things after all, it's just another variation on something that's been around for a very, very long time.


I mean, sure, some things they quite plainly do it. But they do add their own flare to pretty much everything they do as well, but no one ever seems to give a damn about that or the fact that everyone else does this as well.

GW do pull from a lot of sources, often with tongue in cheek references to those sources.

I feel pretty comfortable saying that none of the ones you bring up are valid though, especially as you are giving the impression that the referenced material was created in the various movies it appeared in in the last ten years.
The fact that you seem to think that Dr Octopus and Vampires were invented for the Spider-man and Twilight movies respectively is a little terrifying.

They have always taken from other sources, often they do it openly years ago they used to do it a lot more humorously or make things a parody.

Of course now they think everything they do is so original that they can sue everyone who looks at them funny.

Oh, please let this become another IP/GW evil lawyer thread. *fingers crossed*

Nah no ip / lawyer related stuff please :/ just more a what similarities do you see in units. I'm aware many people borrow its just when some of the stuff appears pretty close looking i see it as that. Doesn't diminish the coolness factor ( i actually want to grab one of those valthex models).

Keep what you kill is in the old RT40 book as a chant from the emp's children, I even think boltthrower had it in is lyrics at some point but I may be brain damaged from that time

if you havnt heard of Bolt thrower leave wh40k now and never come back

http://www.darklyrics.com/b/boltthrower.html fyi

plastictrees wrote:Oh, please let this become another IP/GW evil lawyer thread. *fingers crossed*

I think thats a pretty safe bet. I was being disingenuous with my previous comment, OP. In fact this is a recurrent topic that rolls in as does the tide. Someone inevitably points out how Games Workshop totally ripped off Blizzard, and then it's on like Donkey Kong. Here's the wreckage of the last such thread, closed only 4 days ago, should you want to sift the ashes for what value you may find.

No need for this post to exist anymore then, don't want it getting out of control to turn into some sort of whinge thread so mods can close this if they want. Just wanted to point out some similarities i saw.

Tauzor wrote:Keep what you kill is in the old RT40 book as a chant from the emp's children, I even think boltthrower had it in is lyrics at some point but I may be brain damaged from that time

if you havnt heard of Bolt thrower leave wh40k now and never come back

http://www.darklyrics.com/b/boltthrower.html fyi

*rolls eyes*

Like what others have said, GW has borrowed from a plethora of sources, but not from the ones you mentioned. Those were borrowed from other sources from which the GW sources originated. Most of what GW has is influenced by things way before the year 2000.

Blood Angels are vampires now because of Twilight?!!??!?!

LAUGH OUT LOUD.

OP....no.

Does Dune count?

Meh is all I can say though. Its pretty obvious that they borrow but look, everyone else borrows these days

NDK looks like Optimus Prime?

Errrr No?

As you can see below, Optimus Prime is awesome, The DreadKnight is a baby carrier.

"What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun"

Ecclesiastes 1:9, written in the 4th century BC.

Paul wrote:written in the 4th century BC.

The Romans copied off the Etruscans! If something is good, copy it!

Nah Blood Angels from 2nd ed were vampires, mephiston even having a WHFB vampire lord statline. Since twilight they just got whiney about being cursed to pull in the emo kids.

2nd ed BA:


Where's the ork with a halo button...

There's a lot of similarities that people have touched upon and there's a lot of references to a whole bunch of fictional, theological, historical or more esoteric influences - even if it's just a name - like some Marines are named after actual Angels, some, like Abaddon, are easily translated to their role in the 40k universe. Some Eldar runes are very similar to Alchemical symbols for instance. I think it's possible to connect, albeit abstractly, the 40k universe to various esoteric interpretations of our own universe/humanity without sounding too 'left-field' about it. It would just take a very long time

It's amusing that each new generation seems to think that they've noticed something incredible when they realise that GW borrowed from previous sources, but then assumes that a company that has been around for more than 30 years would have borrowed from pop-culture references that are in some cases decades younger than its own products!

Warhammer 40,000 totally ripped off the Warhammer universe.

Cough.

Elves were put in high fantasy by Tolkien, so they rip off of him.
Dark Eldar being the polar opposites of the Eldar is basically like the Romulans and Vulcans, so they ripped off Star Trek.
Genestealers are Xenomorphs with human heads.
Something about Space Marines being Terrans, blah blah blah...

This idea's really been beaten to death.

Mr. Self Destruct wrote:Elves were put in high fantasy by Tolkien, so they rip off of him.

Which Tolkein, in turn, took from mythological sources

Dark Eldar being the polar opposites of the Eldar is basically like the Romulans and Vulcans, so they ripped off Star Trek.

Not to mention them being elves in space, so they ripped off themselves and Tolkein!


These things are always good for a giggle at least.

Mr. Self Destruct wrote:Elves were put in high fantasy by Tolkien, so they rip off of him.
Dark Eldar being the polar opposites of the Eldar is basically like the Romulans and Vulcans, so they ripped off Star Trek.
Genestealers are Xenomorphs with human heads.
Something about Space Marines being Terrans, blah blah blah...

This idea's really been beaten to death.

Tolkien borrowed his elves from Celtic and Norse legend, Ditto his dwarves, Orcs etc...

He's credited with bringing it all together into the source everyone is inspired by, but they were around for millenia before he came along..

The Eldar and Dark eldar are more inspired by the Lios Alfar and Svart Alfar (or the celtic version- the seelie and unseelie courts (especially in their latest iteration as dar space fey) than the Romulans and Vulcans, who in turn were 'borrowed' from the same legend sources...

Stealers are influenced by Alien, and othe good sci fi/monster movies.

Space Marines are Marines, in space, in plate armour... Bin done.. (ie Knights with guns.. )


Everything 'original' has its roots in something older.

What makes it different is putting them together into a setting. Tolkien did that with his work, pulling elements from several mythologies.

40K did something similar with references to pop culture/movies etc.

Do we really care where it originated?

So the designers should what, cloister themselves away from the rest of the world and culture?

Nothing new under the sun dude. Nothing new under the sun.

Everyone copies. As far as I have seen there is nothing COMPLETELY original around.
Copying is the reason we have culture.

It's not even necessarily an issue of copying. Quite frankly how many different permutation of 'mechanical arms' attached to someones back are there going to be? While there is some obvious borrowing of ideas, that in and of itself is neither wrong or bad. If it were, even Tolkien wouldn't have been able to put 'elves' in his books.

I converted an Inquisition Death Cult assassin a few years ago to be a DP for my Chaos Army. Posting the pics here on Dakka, I was quickly shown the idea was not new despite how new it was to me. Sometimes things just occur similarly.

Not copying but rather drawing inspiration from. Nothing is new but the current iteration of a good idea.

This is the most useless pile of vague speculation and "this sort of looks like this other thing CONSPIRACY"

LumenPraebeo wrote:

Tauzor wrote:Keep what you kill is in the old RT40 book as a chant from the emp's children, I even think boltthrower had it in is lyrics at some point but I may be brain damaged from that time

if you havnt heard of Bolt thrower leave wh40k now and never come back

http://www.darklyrics.com/b/boltthrower.html fyi

*rolls eyes*

Like what others have said, GW has borrowed from a plethora of sources, but not from the ones you mentioned. Those were borrowed from other sources from which the GW sources originated. Most of what GW has is influenced by things way before the year 2000.

You missed the sarcasim.... look for the Tolkin quip..
and rt was published in 89 .. (well 87 really but I dont want to have to go on about that again ! )
You Can roll your eyes all you like, but the sad fact is that there is more to gw history that is all hearsay on the interweb than actual having been there in person.
so hush how and run along