Is it true that 40k is loosely based off of Judge Dredd?

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**Haighus**

Breton wrote:
Vache Glace wrote:
just wondering!

Gaunt's Ghosts - Dirty Dozen

Huh, I thought the Ghosts owe much more to Sharpe's Rifles. Schaeffer's Last Chancers is more akin to the Dirty Dozen.

**Gert**

Breton wrote:
Gaunt's Ghosts - Dirty Dozen

Slight correction as Gaunt's Ghosts are based on Sharpe's Rifles. It's the Last Chancers that are loosely based on the Dirty Dozen.

**Tsagualsa**

Kid_Kyoto wrote:
True but as far as I know no one else used the name before (even the Matchbox toy it was based on was called something else) so I don't think it's a stretch to assume the former makers of Judge Dredd games might have been inspired by it.

Also the whole Thacher-era parody the runs through both universes. Ah 80s Brits, you had not idea how bad it could get.

The whole Judge Dredd Cursed Earth episode is itself a pastiche of earlier Sci-Fi stories and movies, notably 'Damnation Alley', which features vehicles called 'Land Master' and is in general very very similar to parts of the Cursed Earth arc:

Denton has been considering going to Albany, New York, to find the source of the lone radio transmission that has been aired weekly since the war. He and the remaining others set out in two Air Force Landmasters—giant, 12-wheeled armored personnel carriers fitted with rocket launchers, flame throwers and cannons, capable of climbing 60-degree inclines, and operating in water. They must cross Damnation Alley, considered "the path of least resistance" between intense radiation areas.

Along their journey, one of the Landmasters becomes disabled in a storm (which also kills Perry), and they encounter mutated "killer cockroaches" in the ruins of Salt Lake City that trap and eat Keegan alive. Denton and Tanner also pick up two survivors: a woman in Las Vegas, Janice (Dominique Sanda), and a teenage boy, Billy (Jackie Earle Haley), discovered in an abandoned house in the High Plains. They fight a band of gun-toting mountain men they encounter in the ruins of a gas station in the Midwest. Denton uses the Landmaster's rocket launchers to destroy the gas station and the madmen's buildings.

As they continue their journey, the Landmaster develops a problem with its drivetrain near Detroit. Denton comments that it was "designed to use spare truck parts", semi-trucks in particular. In Detroit they enter a large wrecking yard in search of the needed parts. A large, hemisphere-wide storm comes upon the group and they take shelter in their vehicle just as a megatsunami washes them away. After the storm passes, they are adrift in a large body of water and it appears that the Earth has returned to its normal axis as the sky is clear.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damnation_Alley_(film)

The movie is about a year older than the Cursed Earth arc, the book has a decade on it.

**Soulless**

All extensive and wide works will have inspiration from others. 40k probably more so than others, sometimes so obvious its embarrasing.

If I would say two things that spawned the idea for 40k it would be Foundation and Dune.

One of the biggest "aha" moments ive had was when I first came across the technoreligion and its priesthood in Foundation.
The first book also features powerful traders, I dont remember if they are even referred to as "rogue traders" but they definitely are.

Dune, of course, with all its medievalicous stupidity is a huge inspiration for 40k, the fourth book is named "God emperor of Dune".

**mrFickle**

Toofast wrote:
jeffersonian000 wrote:
I always felt that Tau represented how GW views the US military, all high-tech but can't shoot worth a damn.

SJ

We were accurate enough shooting red coats to make them @#$% off back to their island so I'm not sure where they got that idea...

The British were never gonna win against those big robot suits

**Insectum7**

Tsagualsa wrote:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damnation_Alley_(film)

The movie is about a year older than the Cursed Earth arc, the book has a decade on it.

100% gonna give that a watch!

**Daba**

Soulless wrote:
All extensive and wide works will have inspiration from others. 40k probably more so than others, sometimes so obvious its embarrasing.

If I would say two things that spawned the idea for 40k it would be Foundation and Dune.

One of the biggest "aha" moments ive had was when I first came across the technoreligion and its priesthood in Foundation.
The first book also features powerful traders, I dont remember if they are even referred to as "rogue traders" but they definitely are.

Dune, of course, with all its medievalicous stupidity is a huge inspiration for 40k, the fourth book is named "God emperor of Dune".

Foundation’s decline of civilisation around the galaxy was probably a huge influence, especially to early 40K.