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Hello I wanted to make a complete list of the cultural references that has inspired the different armies in 40K. You can draw inspiration from this when modelling your armies resulting in your local players catching up on the cross referenced culture. I do not know all of them so just throw them up and I will post them in the original thread.

Xeno's with Codexes:

Dark Eldar:
Vampiers living for ever but feading of others.
A slight asian slim esthetic.
Warrior Kabals -
Dark Elves with Poison Darts from varius fantasy settings.
The boats from Jabas Palace in Return from the Jedi
Wytch Kults -
Dionysus Ecstecy Cults
Gladiator Arena Fights
Haemonculty -
The hellraiser movies.
Frankenstein like monsters
Bane from some of the batman adaptions


Eldar:

Tyranids:
Zerg
Bilogical Weapons
Aliens (the movies)

Orks:

Tau:

Necrons
Necrotyn/Necrons:
Terminator movies
Egyptian Culture
C'tan:
Chuthulu

Chaos Themed Codexes:

Daemons of Chaos Codex:
Chtulu Mythos

Codex: Chaos Space Marine:
The fall of heroes in ancient myths
Chinese Mideval Motives
The Event Horision Movie

Alpha Legion
World Eaters
Word Bearers
etc.


Imperial Guards:
Different Regiments

Codex Space Wolves
Vikings
Were Wolves
Celtic Culture

Codex Blood Angels
Angels
Daemons
Duality

Codex Dark Angels

Codex Grey Knights

Codex Space Marines:

Ultra Marines

Salamanders

Raven Guard

Imperial Fists

Crimson Fists

You are way off on some of these (zerg are bsed on tyranids, not the other way around. Chaos/daemons are based on Michael Moorcocks work, very little if any Cthulhu mythos influence there, event horizon? Chaos was well established before that film came out...)

Ahhh the good old internet argument "you are wrong". You are right on all accounts. However culture does not flow just one way. Zerg are based on Tyranids, or at least the culture that spawned the idea of tyranids. However as Starcraft has been one of the biggest games on the global marked it has a big cultural legacy. Star Craft and Brood War, it's expansion as a cultural phenomenoc would have had an innpact on the creation of the 5th edition tyranid codex. The tyranid codex (and other things) would of course have an inspiration on the wings of liberty starcraft 2, and you can not watch the trailer for the new exspansion withouth thinking of tyranids. Does this mean that zerg are based on tyranids? Yes. Does it prohibit tyranids from being based on zerg? No, as the cultures have co-existed for a long time. Whenever two companies are doing something similar they will often mimic each other for a greater benefit for both of them. This can be seen with Marvel and DC Comics as many of the characters are very similar. Hawkeye/Green Arrow. Flash/Quicksilver, the list could go on. Also it is very possible that both the zerg and the tyranids are inspiered by the starship trooper book from 1959. While it is a pro-fashistic book it uses giant bug aliens as the enemy in the book. Both zerg and tyranids would have inspiered the design of the 1997 sarcastic anti-fasistick adaption of the film.

What does it matter? Well even if tyranids had a one way influence on the starcraft zerg, the fact that your oponents familiarisation of the starcraft (quite possible giving it's huge pupularaty as a game and as pop-culture) could help you conway some sort of narative or cultural signification of your modeling of your army. Mutch in the same way if you give your captain a name like centirion it would have cultural referenses to roman culture. If you call your army leviathan it could refer to the giant sea creature that lives in the ocean stating something about the sice of the alien threat. Or it could be a referance to the book from 1651 with the same name. A book that talk about social contract theory and how people on a big sicuaty will start to have a consensuss on certain rules. An idea that in the exstreme can be applyed to the hive minds absorbtion of your genetic material. This of course also plays out in the movie invasion of the body snatchers where aliens are killing people and replacing them with copoes. A movie many people believe to be a metaphore for comunisem. While I should include it in the tyranid reference list the communist culture is most pressent in the Tau xenos and not in the tyranids.

As for chaos/daemons being baed on Michael Moorcoock work that might be very true. I do not know who that is and I would be happy to include it in the lust. But the notion that there is very little chutuly mythis in there is riveted with faulty infomation. "The Call of Cthulhu" was published in 1928. Although it would be some time before all of lovercraft books would become part of the same universe. The idea of the Chtulhu mythis is that there are a lot of stronger, bigger enteties that you can not know what is out there. There are different dimensions and on the grander scale of things humans just do not register as a force at all. All we can do is to prevent the doom but we will ultimatly fail. People who dive to deeply into this will often go insane. Some disilusioned people will start worshiping these elder beings. While the mythos is quite think that is the general gist of it. This is a lot like madmen workshiping chaos and chaos cultists who do not really know what they are doing but there will be a reward in the end. While it is true that the chaos gods has an interesrt in the material world as opposed to many of the things in the chutulu mythos the general gist is the same. The good emperor, in his wisdom, saw what he was up against. If he managed to play his hand right is still playing out but it might just be that humanaty are powerless against the otherworldy enteties we do not understand. (Mind you Khorn for instance who wants skulls for the skullthrone is perhaps not very chutulu I will admit as it is just blind slaughter and humane. Chutuly mythis should be about not understanding what is happening mutch like the roadside picknick book that later inspiered the s.t.a.l.k.e.r. movie and later on the computer game.)

As for chaos being well etsablished long before the film, I do think that is fearly well known. But the film is a cultural adaptoion of warp traveling withouth a gellarfield and it serves as a strong cultural reference point of chaos in practice. An just to drove the point home the room where the warp drive is sentered is filled with pointy chaos spikes that can be seen on all of the chaos mechanisations.

All this is part of a chulture that makes warhammer more fun to play. The idea behind this list would be so that people can easier comunicate a cultural sice through their minatures and make a narative while they play.

TLDR wersion of Starcraft -> Wh40k bug influence:

<3 Macok

Orks are british I beleive. They use British inspired words (nob), have bad teeth, and make fun of the non "posh" parts of
Britain. (by being orks)

Thank you Ozomoto. BTW, do anybody know if some compiling like this exists from before?

 Ozomoto wrote:
Orks are british I beleive. They use British inspired words (nob), have bad teeth, and make fun of the non "posh" parts of Britain. (by being orks)

We like to call them 'deprived areas'.

I think that Orks are based on football hooligans and such.

 BlapBlapBlap wrote:
I think that Orks are based on football hooligans and such.

I'd heard the same - and at the time that Orks were being fleshed out in terms of their background and grim-darkness etc., football hooligans were being focused on by our media (much like gun control is right now in the US). So this makes a lot of sense, though you'll never catch GW officially admitting to it.

To answer another, Ultramarines used to be fairly free of obvious inspiration, since most of their background was written in-house and/or tied to the creation of 40K's Space Marines themselves (of course, you can easily argue that they were in turn inspired by MANY different sci-fi sources). But lately, I believe in a bid to combat what has been seen as blandness by many over the years, they've been given a Greco-Roman feel.

The Dark Angels are very clearly based on an extreme idea of monks and monasteries as they're PERCEIVED to have been in the Middle Ages. Worth noting, though - a little historical digging and you'll find monasteries could be far from dull... you could say the undercurrent of political power-plays within the Church and various plots and schemes give rise to the nature of the Unforgiven.

An interesting one to note - Chaos as we know it has evolved over a long time from the original founders of Games Workshop, Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone. Before they founded GW, the two co-wrote a "Choose Your Own Adventure" series called Fighting Fantasy, which featured Chaos Champions - though more in the fantasy style, and while I can't say for certain that these weren't inspired by other sources from the time, these had references to having been blessed by dark forces with powers beyond normal human reckoning and very occasionally were mutated as well. The idea of Greater and Lesser Daemons stems from this series too... and probably more that I forget these days... though the Daemons themselves have changed a lot.
Here's one of the Champions:


...and lastly, to echo what's been said above - never mind Tyranid Warriors - no-one else gonna point out how much that Zerg looks like a Ravener?!

I thought GW was obsessed with spikes now...

Eldar are the easiest, they're pretty much space elves.

A few I'm thinking of:
Thousand Sons - Egyptian/Persian/Zoroastrianism influence. Its pretty obvious to see the Egyptian side with their scarabs, sceptres and blades in pre-heresy pictures. Persian, their main recruiting grounds on Terra was the Achaemenid Empire (same as the Persian empire defeated by Alexander). Zoroastrianism, its mainly Ahriman but since he is a big deal for the Thousand Sons I think its worth mentioning. Its the name for the evil god (without too much spoilers, just read A Thousand Sons)

Ultramarines - Fifth Codex made it pretty clear that they are space Romans/Greeks/Macedonians. If you look at their primarch before the Emperor arrived it has combined stories from all those histories. Furthermore the use of laurels, crests on helmets, gladius short swords etc.

Dark Angels - They resemble a medieval knightly order. Their origin story (Descent of Angles novel) gives you all the hints you need.

Well these are the ones I can come up with on the spot. Sorry for my spelling. I'm not a native speaker and a dyslectic to boot.

 Mr Nobody wrote:
Eldar are the easiest, they're pretty much space elves.

They seem to be getting more japanese though as time goes on

That might just be me

Here is a spioler clip from the event horison in the spiky chaos chamber.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHKfoWh8t6o

Edit: Yes the eldars do seem more asian. while a bit elvish they have left that behind. They can conjure up wraightbone witch could be a form of flesh craftig. Also they are very budist in my mind as they try to not have to mutch feelings...or rather have one exstreme feeling at one time. Asceticism is probably the word I am thinking of.

Orks:

Road Warrior (bashed together weapons and vehicles, semi-tribal societies, living for violence and looting)

Fantasy orks (Tolkien, D&D, etc... orks have a long history in fantasy, in itself partly inspired by historical "barbarian" peoples like the Vandals)

Tyranids:

Arachnid (the "bugs" of Starship Troopers novels - mindless spiderlike creatures controlled by a psychic overmind)

Tau:

Tons of anime featuring battlesuits

Battletech (anime battlesuits filtered through western eyes)

GW has actually admitted the inspiration for Orks were sports hooligins. Soccer specifically IIRC.

Eldar are far more anime/manga derived that Tau.
The Greco/Roman theme of the Ultramarines has been there since there have been Ultramarines, the first captain models produced back around 1st/2nd edition laid down the aesthetic.
Blood angels, aside from the vampire aspect have always had a renaissance vibe, again from the original capitains.

From a 1991 catalogue.
http://www.solegends.com/citcat19911/c2006smcommanders-01.htm

I almost forgot - obvious ones, but worth mentioning, for Imperial Guard. Catachans are an amalgamation of 80s action films (Rambo, Commando, Predator) and the Cadian uniform now draws heavily from the Starship Troopers movie, it used to have less armoured pads.
And waaaaay back in the day, there was a Praetorian regiment that was based on old British Royal Guard uniforms and/or Zulu, depending on how you look at it.

The Devil Dog from the IG codex is a nickname for U.S. Marines

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil_Dog

 Hollowman wrote:


Tau:

Tons of anime featuring battlesuits

Battletech (anime battlesuits filtered through western eyes)

Incorrect, tau are star wars.

Alien allies, mechs, future weapons, assimilation into the empire... you know.

Blood Angels: clearly Greek and Roman inspired. Their features look like Alexander the Great, a young Augustus Caesar, etc.

Chaos Daemons: I agree with whoever mentioned Moorcock and Chaos. Moorcock's cosmic system of Law v Chaos is the clear inspiration and basis of the GW chaos powers. In original Warhammer they had Law as well as chaos. The Old World gods such as Mananan (or whatever) were called Law gods. British sci-fi fans like Steve Jackson, Ian Livingstone, John Blanche and Bryan Ansell were of the generation where Moorcock was de rigeur. GW in the 80s were steeped in Moorcock, they did the UK release of Stormbringer, etc. Whatever the aesthetic the origin of chaos is Moorcock. GW chaos is not like Moorcock chaos in its workings but it is based upon it.

Black Templars: absolutely clearly inspired by the Baltic Crusades of the Medieval period. The iconography is that of the Teutonic Knights (later adopted by the Prussians, German Empire, etc). The Sword Brethren were another crusading order of German knights who were absorbed into the Teutonic Knights. They have the feel of all the Crusades era knightly orders such as the Templars, Hospitallers and the various Spanish knightly orders.

 marv335 wrote:
Eldar are far more anime/manga derived that Tau.

The Tau are basically constructed from every racist stereotype about asians there is, while their tech is basically a parody/deconstruction of anime technology, being pointlessly flashy and overengineered (anime standard), yet still bulkier and more primitive than the Imperial tech that's often mocked as just that (parody/deconstruction).

Eldar, on the hand, are just WFB elves with some sci-fi trappings/aesthetic updates, with the CWE being high elves, the DE being dark elves, and the exodites being wood elves.

In fact, everything but the Tau comes from WFB in one way or another, so to really address the issue of inspiration/influence you'd have to examine those first/as well.

Dark Eldar and in a way CSM Slaanesh are a mix of BDSM/Fetish sub culture.
Tau are a mix of japeness animation (battle suit) and Europen SF comic book Tau warrior)
All IG are from Napoleon'wars to today and when you look the tanks and weapon, World War One is the main influence and so, WWI is the main influence for all the war of 40K IMHO.

Many of the Eldar names come from Irish [Gaelic?]. I've no idea if the influence goes further than that, though.

 juraigamer wrote:

 Hollowman wrote:


Tau:

Tons of anime featuring battlesuits

Battletech (anime battlesuits filtered through western eyes)

Incorrect, tau are star wars.

Alien allies, mechs, future weapons, assimilation into the empire... you know.

All four of those things are so generically sci-fi. It's hardly fair to attribute them specifically to star-wars.

Of course, now the many Celtic art styles used by the Eldar come to mind as well.

Yeah, the Eldar use celtic/gaelic sounding names, which goes back to Tolkien's elves. I believe their gods, or at least some of them, are also expies of celtic deities, but I don't know too much about celtic mythology.

Their iconography may vaguely resemble chinese logograms, but on closer inspection it becomes clear that it's actually celtic-esque designs given straighter lines and sharper edges to give a more alien, high tech look.

Crimson Fists are based on Mexico and Spanish-type countries.

hellpato wrote:
Dark Eldar and in a way CSM Slaanesh are a mix of BDSM/Fetish sub culture.
Tau are a mix of japeness animation (battle suit) and Europen SF comic book Tau warrior)
All IG are from Napoleon'wars to today and when you look the tanks and weapon, World War One is the main influence and so, WWI is the main influence for all the war of 40K IMHO.

Actually Dark Eldar have a much deeper and cultish root then many realize. Archon, Wych, and many names are from the Gnostic psychology, the noetic science of the Mystery Schools. Basically, in the most general way to explain it, Archons exist in another dimension, jump into our reality and enslave (the minds) of humans, and live off their fear and souls... Cults that get into this get into heavy drugs, and even cause themselves pain, and even suicide....believing this world is the illusion and a real world exists just beyond our sight.......Sound familiar so far? It is a 2000 to 2500 year old concept that several religions, cults, and ufo abduction theorists believe in....

Just 'me 2 cents: I'd argue the Tau have a bit of the Halo Covenant thing going on...using troops of multiple races under their dominion (Kroot and Vespid etc.), and a strict religious order with a caste system - replace Prophets with Ethereals and Bam! Tau Empire.

Also, I'd like to say Sony's Killzone Helghast look like they took a cue from the Savlar Chem Dogs!