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Going through the list of shows I've watched over the years I end up seeing similarities between them and 40k.

Some of these are already well known:

Imperial Guard = Starship Troopers/Marines from Aliens

Genestealers = Xenomorphs

etc...

But I look at shows like Stargate and Doctor Who seeing a bunch of other comparisons as well:

Stargate Atlantis's Wraiths = Tyranids, both use living bio ships

Doctor Who Cybermen = Necrons, both have tomb worlds

Any other comparisons to 40k lore to other works of fiction?

Its unlikely Tyranids are based off of Atlantis.
Tyranids were around even in 2nd ed, irrc, or early 90s.
Stargate Atlantis is a show that was released back in the 2000s.
The dates don't match. Unless GW has a time machine.

Necrons are clearly based off of Terminator.

The Adeputs Arbites are a Judge Dredd/AD 2000 nod.

GrapeApe wrote:
The Adeputs Arbites are a Judge Dredd/AD 2000 nod.

Yep, and they even take a bit of inspiration from Robocop.
Look at their helmets

DontEatRawHagis wrote:
Going through the list of shows I've watched over the years I end up seeing similarities between them and 40k.

Some of these are already well known:

Imperial Guard = Starship Troopers/Marines from Aliens

Genestealers = Xenomorphs

etc...

But I look at shows like Stargate and Doctor Who seeing a bunch of other comparisons as well:

Stargate Atlantis's Wraiths = Tyranids, both use living bio ships

Doctor Who Cybermen = Necrons, both have tomb worlds

Any other comparisons to 40k lore to other works of fiction?

Actually, Starship Troopers is the inspiration for the space marines, not the guard. Remember that the starship troopers book predates 40k, the film does not.
From the book, here are some phrases you may have heard:
~ Drop Pod
~ Powered Armour
~ Hand Flamer

Also dune - the Navigators being a mutant subspecies controlling spaceflight and institutionalised fear of AI.

Dune, the examples are really too numerous to name

locarno24 wrote:

DontEatRawHagis wrote:
Going through the list of shows I've watched over the years I end up seeing similarities between them and 40k.

Some of these are already well known:

Imperial Guard = Starship Troopers/Marines from Aliens

Genestealers = Xenomorphs

etc...

But I look at shows like Stargate and Doctor Who seeing a bunch of other comparisons as well:

Stargate Atlantis's Wraiths = Tyranids, both use living bio ships

Doctor Who Cybermen = Necrons, both have tomb worlds

Any other comparisons to 40k lore to other works of fiction?

Actually, Starship Troopers is the inspiration for the space marines, not the guard. Remember that the starship troopers book predates 40k, the film does not.
From the book, here are some phrases you may have heard:
~ Drop Pod
~ Powered Armour
~ Hand Flamer

Also dune - the Navigators being a mutant subspecies controlling spaceflight and institutionalised fear of AI.

The current cadian range was released after the film though, iirc, so its possible.

The Eldar are Space elves, literally borrowing a name from Tolkien (hence the recent renaming).

The Guard are not Starship Troopers inspired per se; as others have noted GW plundered Heinlein for Space Marines. The original Guard felt more like Napoleonic troops in space, having Infantry, Artillery (Rapiers etc) and Cavalry.

An unholy mishmash of Dune and 2000AD forms the basis for a lot of the look and feel, as well as Dune's galaxy-spanning dystopian politics, Navigators etc.

The works of the great poets Stallone and Schwarzenegger influenced the Catachans. Somewhere between Rambo, Commando and Predator. Not to mention "Sly Marbo".

The Orks are another Tolkien borrowing, with a K switched for the C, in what may be the first work of the Adeptus Trademarkius.

HR Giger's art is clearly a huge influence, biomechanical nastiness everywhere.

Necrons are Terminator: The Army crossed with Space Undead.

The Tau are every anime battlesuit ever regurgitated by people from Nottingham.

The Chaos star and many themes are borrowed from Michael Moorcock's works.

Ghieger some chaos mutations, as well as tyranids and GSC.

Dune has the anti AI thing the tecpriests have.

The golden path in dune = farseers

Michael moorcock inspiered chaos, man vs hilself

Brasil is similar to warhammer byrocrazy

Budists are craftwolrld eldar, eastern vampiers are dark eldar.

Tau= anime

Lovecraft some aspects of chaos, as well as the c"tan

The idea that all races fear the night bringer is like douglas adams criket, or carl jungs shared subconsiusness

The thing = chaos spawn, as well as how gsc spread

The galaxy spanning dystopia thing comes also from the Foundation saga by Asimov.

Equal parts with Dune's post Leto II phase.

How rare is it to know of 2000AD comics outside the UK? Because those were a massive influence on the setting and visuals. For example Nemesis the Warlock (1980), a demonic alien fighting the Terran Empire and their Inquisition that wants to wipe out all alien life...

Spetulhu wrote:
How rare is it to know of 2000AD comics outside the UK? Because those were a massive influence on the setting and visuals. For example Nemesis the Warlock (1980), a demonic alien fighting the Terran Empire and their Inquisition that wants to wipe out all alien life...

I read 2000ad before I played rogue trader. it was totally inappropriate for 8-9yo racerguy, but helped make me what I am today. the price of having a comic book store literally a couple of blocks away from my house.

The art style drew me in and the f*&k'd up stories kept me there. I love Judge death and anytime they pulled some random stuff out their a$$es. I fully credit my messed up sense of humor to it.

Rt's fluff was, I felt just an extension of mega city 1 just expanded to galaxy size.

Spetulhu wrote:
How rare is it to know of 2000AD comics outside the UK? Because those were a massive influence on the setting and visuals. For example Nemesis the Warlock (1980), a demonic alien fighting the Terran Empire and their Inquisition that wants to wipe out all alien life...

Seconded. Nemesis is an alien/demon rebel fighting against a xenophobic and fanatical human empire who are heavily inspired by the Spanish Inquisition. Definitely a huge inspiration, which is a good thing.

They were fairly common down under (many newsagents carried them in the racks where I lived, not just comic shops).

It's because of 2000AD that I pretty much ignored the spandex-short bus crew of marvel/DC for many years.

Several 2000AD art-droid and writing droids contributed stuff to GW and 40k over the years, too.

The Arbites of 40k are pretty much Judges from Dredd's world.
Nemesis the Warlock and Torquemada's TERMIGHT empire have parallels to 40ks imperium (and the ABC Warriors' "Khronicles of Khaos" story even featured power armoured "marines" called the "Imperial Rottweillers" - and looked like terminator suits with vaguely canine countenances).

Chaos = Elric series from Michael Moorcock
Nids= Aliens
Necrons= Terminator

Isaac Asimov's foundation series had the idea of technology turned into a. Mystical religion with techpriests controlling machine spirits abd a. Machine god.

A Canticle For Liebowitz is generally regarded as a major inspiration for the adeptus mechanicus, or at least the way they're generally portrayed going after STCs and treating every part as important with ironically humorous results. in it, a monk in a post-nuclear world discovers a bunker containing the holy blueprints of Saint Liebowitz The Nuclear Engineer, and he sets about painstakingly preserving and copying the relic including the Hallowed Grocery List and the Miraculous Brown Stain.

the semi ret-con to make Orks fungus may have been influenced by the Thread from the Dragonrider books

Space Marines have a smidge of the GI from Rogue Trooper about them

and Dune, so much Dune

The idea of the hive world comes (IIRC) from Asimov. Both the Robot novels (which have the population of Earth mostly living in covered or underground cities) or the Imperial capital of Trantor from the Foundation novels.

The Elves and Orcs aren't directly from Tolkien, as such - they're GW's own WFB races given rayguns instead of swords. The Eldar also have celtic overtones that aren't present in Tolkien (the names of the craftworlds, for example, or the sacrificial Young King).

There's another image in the same section as that one Racerguy180 posted, that features walkerswith the legs taken from whichever Robotech vehicle became the Battletech Warhammer.

Genestealers are clearly inspired by Ridley Scott and H R Giger's Alien, although twisted. The Tyranids themselves? Not originally, but by the time Advanced Space Crusade redesigned the Warriors, then yes. On that note, there's an event card in the Orlock deck which gives one model a free sawn-off shotgun for the game. Its title? "In case of emergencies".

But you need to cast the net wider than just sci-fi, I think. And much further back; medieval art obviously, but the Commedia dell'arte for the Harlequin (and also the look of the Necromundan brat gangs, too) is just one example.

I feel like it is easier to list what hasn't been ripped off in the 40k universe. The Warhammer 40,000 universe has used so many ideas and twisted them to be their own, that little in the game and universe is truly original.

In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only ripoffs.

The whole Horus Heresy is more than loosely based on Paradise Lost. It's more or less Paradise Lost in space.

After reading Dune I was surprised that pretty much everything in Dune.

The stuff with Titans, energy weapons, bolters etc is from Battletech
Than we have a lot of Starship Troopers book (Space Marines, Tyranids, Dark Eldar, how the Imperium work etc) a little bit from Starship Troopers movie,

The whole Background Story, Navigators, Man of Iron, AI problems, the Mechanicum (or cypernetic) is from Dune

Even the Artwork is from Dune or better said from the first Dune movie that never made it past he concept stage.
But all later SciFi movies and art was inspired by the work done for that movie.

 kodos wrote:
The stuff with Titans, energy weapons, bolters etc is from Battletech

Probably. It does predate 40k.
Why bolters though? I'm not too familiar with battle tech.

assault rifles with case-less exploding rounds are a standard infantry weapon in Battletech
although the Bolter layout changed over time (described as case less but artworks were different)

and BT is from 1984 while Rouge Trader was launched in 1987 and 40k as we know it (a lot of changes in the fluff and style were made between 1st and 2nd edition) is from 1993

There's infantry in Battletech? I thought it was just robots fighting. That's pretty cool.
Just giant robots sound dull to me, as odd as it sounds. Its more interesting seeing how infantry deal with them, imo.

For example, Jump Pack Troops that place explosives on sensitive Mech parts like leg/arm joints

and there are actual Space Marines, Infantry trained to fight in zero gravity enviornment

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
There's infantry in Battletech? I thought it was just robots fighting. That's pretty cool.
Just giant robots sound dull to me, as odd as it sounds. Its more interesting seeing how infantry deal with them, imo.

He's wrong about the infantry rifles being at all the same as Battletech, but yes Battletech has infantry, as well as battle armored infantry

BrianDavion wrote:

He's wrong about the infantry rifles being at all the same as Battletech

ok, it is years that I last read it but the TK assault rifle description in some novels matched the early bolter description from GW

 kodos wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

He's wrong about the infantry rifles being at all the same as Battletech

ok, it is years that I last read it but the TK assault rifle description in some novels matched the early bolter description from GW

well there are only so many ways to describe large bore rifle rounds for dealing with hard armored targets.

truthfully I suspect it's more likely battletech and 40k drew their lore from the same source. I mean the Admech and Comstar for example have a LOT in common, but I think it's most likely that both GW and FASA drew from the foundation series independantly