Editing Warhammer 40,000 (section)

===Influences===
[[Rick Priestley]] cites [[J. R. R. Tolkien]], [[H. P. Lovecraft]], ''[[Dune (franchise)|Dune]]'', ''[[Paradise Lost]]'', and ''[[2000 AD (comics)|2000 AD]]'' as major influences on the setting.

The Chaos Gods were added to the setting by Bryan Ansell and developed further by Priestley. Priestley felt that ''Warhammer''{{'}}s concept of Chaos, as detailed by Ansell in the supplement ''Realms of Chaos'', was too simplistic and too similar to the works of [[Michael Moorcock]], so he developed it further, taking inspiration from ''[[Paradise Lost]]''.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://cardboardsandwich.com/features/blood-dice-and-darkness-how-warhammer-defined-gaming-for-a-generation/ |title=Blood, dice and darkness: how Warhammer defined gaming for a generation |first=Owen |last=Duffy |work=Cardboard Sandwich |date=11 December 2015 |quote='Bryan's idea of Chaos was very much derived from [science fiction and fantasy author] Michael Moorcock,' he said. 'I always thought it was a little too close for comfort, it looked like we were just copying.'<br />'But I'd always had this sense of Chaos existing as described in ''[[Paradise Lost]]''. I’d tried to bring elements of that into the background and gradually change it from a description of daemons into a kind of force out of which came realities, a kind of literal primal chaos.'<br />“'Unless you've read ''Paradise Lost'' you don't get it. The whole Horus Heresy is just a parody of the fall of Lucifer as described by Milton.' |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160518214819/http://cardboardsandwich.com/features/blood-dice-and-darkness-how-warhammer-defined-gaming-for-a-generation/ |archive-date=18 May 2016 }}</ref> The story of the Emperor's favoured sons succumbing to the temptations of Chaos deliberately parallels the fall of Satan in ''Paradise Lost''. The religious themes are primarily inspired by the early history of Christianity. Daemons in WH40K are the embodiment of human nightmares and dark emotion, given physical form and sentience by the Warp—this idea comes from the 1956 movie ''[[Forbidden Planet]]''.{{citation needed|date=March 2025}} Chaos carries a lot of influences from H. P. Lovecraft, such as mystical artefacts that drive people insane and secretive cults dedicated to evil gods.

The Emperor of Man was inspired by various fictional god-kings, such as [[Leto Atreides II]] from the novel ''[[God Emperor of Dune]]'' by [[Frank Herbert]], and King Huon from the [[The History of the Runestaff|''Runestaff'']] novels by [[Michael Moorcock]].

Humans fear artificial intelligence and creating or protecting an artificial intelligence (or 'abominable intelligence' ) is a capital offence (though most 'crimes' such as petty theft or adjusting machinery are also capital offences in the Imperium). This comes from the ''[[Dune (franchise)|Dune]]'' novels. As in the ''Dune'' setting, the prohibition on artificial intelligence was passed after an ancient war against malevolent androids.{{Citation needed|date=September 2021}}

{{blockquote|To me the background to 40K was always intended to be ironic. [...] The fact that the Space Marines were lauded as heroes within Games Workshop always amused me, because they're brutal, but they're also completely self-deceiving. The whole idea of the Emperor is that you don't know whether he's alive or dead. The whole Imperium might be running on superstition. There's no guarantee that the Emperor is anything other than a corpse with a residual mental ability to direct spacecraft. It's got some parallels with religious beliefs and principles, and I think a lot of that got missed and overwritten.|Rick Priestley, in a December 2015 interview with ''Unplugged Games''<ref>{{cite web |url=http://cardboardsandwich.com/features/blood-dice-and-darkness-how-warhammer-defined-gaming-for-a-generation/ |title=Blood, dice and darkness: how Warhammer defined gaming for a generation |first=Owen |last=Duffy |work=Cardboard Sandwich |date=11 December 2015 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160518214819/http://cardboardsandwich.com/features/blood-dice-and-darkness-how-warhammer-defined-gaming-for-a-generation/ |archive-date=18 May 2016 }}</ref>|source=}}