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-EDIT- Oops, would a mod be kind enough to move this to 40k discussion?

I'm a bit of an oddity as I didn't start playing 40k until I was 25. I was aware of the game but never knew anyone who played it until me and a bunch of friends made the plunge together. One of the things that attracted me to the game was that the background was just an amalgamation of other fictional worlds I already loved. I think between the young age of many 40k players and GW legal's stick up the policy for protecting "their" IP a decent chunk of players don't recognize the influences. This isn't a gw bashing thread. I enjoy the 41st millennium and it's developed lots of it's own character, but I'm just interested in giving credit where credit is due.


THE BIG 4
Slayer
Metallica
Anthrax
Megade...

...just kidding.

J.R.R. Tolkien's writings (The basis of much of most any modern fantasy lore, and 40k is still basically WHFB in space.)
Michael Moorcock's Elric Saga
Frank Herbert's Dune series
Roert A. Heinlen's Starship Troopers


And then the less significant ones I can think of, as many didn't exist at the creation of Rogue Trader but elements

Robert Howard's Conan the barbarian
H.R. Geiger's art/The Alien movie series
Verhoven's Starship Troopers film
The Terminator movies
Various Japanese Mecha Anime series

I've ignored the real life historical inspirations such as Margeret Thatcher's adamantium skull or the literary references to Poe, Dostoevsky or Lionel Johnson.

I'm sure some of the bigger sci-fi and fantasy readers can point out a lot more influences than the few I threw out here.

Judge Dredd- BIG scoop of that and other grim 80's comic books of the time.

WW1 and WW2 historical stuff. The IOM has a bunch of ww1-ww2 design/uniform inspiration, and the old orks were comic Nazis.

The Commisars are SS commanders meets soviet commisars.

A lot of it was Fantasy translated to the future, of course.

Big scoop of assorted mythology and ancient history. Greco/roman, persian, Crusades eras, medieval.

A chunk of Robocop and similar good 80's scifi..





Automatically Appended Next Post:
I think you mean Elric saga, btw, by Moorcock

Ascalam wrote:Judge Dredd- BIG scoop of that and other grim 80's comic books of the time.

WW1 and WW2 historical stuff. The IOM has a bunch of ww1-ww2 design/uniform inspiration, and the old orks were comic Nazis.

The Commisars are SS commanders meets soviet commisars.

A lot of it was Fantasy translated to the future, of course.

Big scoop of assorted mythology and ancient history. Greco/roman, persian, Crusades eras, medieval.

A chunk of Robocop and similar good 80's scifi..





Automatically Appended Next Post:
I think you mean Elric saga, btw, by Moorcock

Right you are on all counts. I don't know how I could have forgotten Judge Dread in that list. I purposely ignored the historical stuff because the amount of wwi/wwii, British colonial, and pop depictions of medieval and ancient culture are too many to count.